Talking to Friends, Co-workers, Family about Circumcision

intact · 2020-05-30T15:02:50+00:00

This discussion (about moms checking our foreskins/circumcisions up close) got me thinking about all the conversations I've had with others about circumcisio...

circhead

vividvicissitude wrote
I'd wanna go live in Europe or something and be the vulgar American with the cut cock.

haha, Yes exactly! And I love the idea of possibly getting cut for someone because at the end of the day it's what I want anyway. It's a turn on to have anything about that type of thing. There was a girl I would ask to come to the doctor with me if I was having it done. Or if she's just a girlfriend and it's not even serious, you could still ask her to be by your side during the healing process. And if you think about it this way, most girls don't have any experience with something new like that. They know cut dicks. They know about uncut guys but usually "haven't seen one". And that's all. It would be really interesting for them to see someone newly cut with a fresh pink head not yet hardened. And all the sensitivity things that come with it.

And believe me, if get it done and I'm in another country I'm "accidentally" showing it to everyone lol. Probably regardless actually. I would want them to know.

intact

Insecurity causes people to do and say many unhealthy/cruel things. I call it "putting oneself up by putting others down," and it's pervasive. I have to think that confusion over what circumcision actually does makes it worse, because the guy doesn't really know what was taken from him. So he projects all his anxiety onto the intact guy(s).

As I mentioned, I have always tried to avoid disclosing whether I'm circumcised in these conversations. To say I'm not cut to a cut guy raises the unavoidable question of which is better, and that could put him on the defensive really quick. And as we know, with few exceptions, circumcised fathers are probably the worst about circumcising their sons.

That's always been my focus: protect the boy if at all possible. I don't really care what the parents think of me, and I know I have' alienated some by speaking to them at all.

It's worth it knowing there's at least one man out there who'll wonder how he got so lucky to keep his foreskin.

circhead

intact wrote
Insecurity causes people to do and say many unhealthy/cruel things. I call it "putting oneself up by putting others down," and it's pervasive. I have to think that confusion over what circumcision actually does makes it worse, because the guy doesn't really know what was taken from him. So he projects all his anxiety onto the intact guy(s).

As I mentioned, I have always tried to avoid disclosing whether I'm circumcised in these conversations. To say I'm not cut to a cut guy raises the unavoidable question of which is better, and that could put him on the defensive really quick. And as we know, with few exceptions, circumcised fathers are probably the worst about circumcising their sons.

That's always been my focus: protect the boy if at all possible. I don't really care what the parents think of me, and I know I have' alienated some by speaking to them at all.

It's worth it knowing there's at least one man out there who'll wonder how he got so lucky to keep his foreskin.

That's true. I think I got on a roll about something else in my responses but I've mentioned it on a few occasions but I think people in my age range are mostly more concerned with what's popular. And I guess with all the documentaries and discussions that's been taking place, it's making this topic even more unbalanced. A lot of people, including girls, talking about circumcision but still only in the direction of it needs to be done.

And on the social level, it's just looked at as such a default choice that no one questions it.

intact

circhead wrote
I think people in my age range are mostly more concerned with what's popular. And I guess with all the documentaries and discussions that's been taking place, it's making this topic even more unbalanced. A lot of people, including girls, talking about circumcision but still only in the direction of it needs to be done.

And on the social level, it's just looked at as such a default choice that no one questions it.

A mandatory 12 years of classroom schooling teaches us one thing for sure: conformity matters most.

circhead

intact wrote
circhead wrote
I think people in my age range are mostly more concerned with what's popular. And I guess with all the documentaries and discussions that's been taking place, it's making this topic even more unbalanced. A lot of people, including girls, talking about circumcision but still only in the direction of it needs to be done.

And on the social level, it's just looked at as such a default choice that no one questions it.

A mandatory 12 years of classroom schooling teaches us one thing for sure: conformity matters most.

Absolutely.

JL0101

oh damn, i feel really sorry for you guys, that they messed up your brains so much with that peer pressure, that you are even thinking about cutting the most sensitive part of your body off. to me that thought of mutilating oneself is just sickening and this is completely out of question.

MrMeTheFirst

My thought is that, if you are going to bring it up, trying to introduce the topic as gently as possible and trying to do it in a way that (at least initially) focuses more on the procedure being a cosmetic surgery with questionable research as to medical benefit as opposed to focusing on the potential harm in terms of sexual function and sensitivity loss, since that may result in someone who is circumcised responding by closing down and becoming defensive. Here are bullet points outlining an approach that I might take:

It’s very interesting how medical bias has influenced pediatrics. For example, up until recently almost everything we know about human anatomy was learned from autopsies of the poor. As a result, doctors used to think that a normal human thymus was significantly smaller in children since malnourished children had stunted thymuses. When doctors began to study SIDS (Studied Infant Death Syndrome) they noticed that the more affluent children in their care that died of SIDS had significantly larger thymuses than shown in the medical textbooks, even though they were perfectly normal. Through the 1920’s and 30’s doctors speculated that SIDS was caused by an enlarged thymus blocking airways and prescribed routine radiation of the thymus in new born children to shrink the thymus. This did nothing to stop SIDS. However, the thymus is right next to the thyroid, which is very sensitive to radiation. It’s believed that thousands of babies died of thyroid cancer, not to mention those who developed thyroid cancer later in life, as a result of this well intention practice. [Login to see the link]
Using the SIDS / Thymus issues to transition to questioning what cultural and medical bias might impact the decisions doctors and parents make today with the best of intentions. I think stressing that the intentions of the individuals are good is important to prevent someone who may support circumcision from shutting down and becoming defensive.
Taking cultural bias to ourselves today, contrasting European and American research as a lens to look at circumcision seems like a natural next step. Two studies looking at very similar information may reach wildly different conclusions. [Login to see the link] looked at bacteria in circumcised and intact men and found that intact men had more bacteria which they speculated may decrease the risk of HPV. [Login to see the link] looked at the types of bacteria present on a circumcised penis, intact penis, and in the vagina and concluded that the bacterial bios on a circumcised penis more closely resembled those in the vagina and then speculated that therefore an intact partner was less disruptive to the vagina.
Highlighting that often times you can tell where a study was produced by it’s findings, with pro circumcision studies often being in America and ones that reach other conclusions often being in Europe.
Wine might make for an interesting change of topic 🙂 Every so often you find a study on the benefits of drinking wine. Some of these studies may be valid, but many have been called into question in recent years. The type of person who is more likely to drink wine is generally more affluent. More affluence is generally associated with healthier diet, less financial stress, and (in the United States) more comprehensive health coverage. It’s very difficult to separate benefits from drinking wine from benefits of affluence.
In the United States, one significant factor that determines if an individual is circumcised is if their parents are affluent enough to have comprehensive health insurance that covers the procedure. There are many studies that find correlations between circumcision and certain diseases in the United States. However, how are these studies able to like correlation to causation when the parents of circumcised children are more likely to have some degree of affluence. Affluent mothers are more likely to be able to nurse their children or have a job where they can pump breast milk. Children of affluent parents are more likely to have better diets and themselves grow up to be affluent and have many of the same health benefits associated with drinking wine. In Europe, where there is generally universal health coverage and this socioeconomic correlation to circumcision is not present, these finding can often not be reproduced.
From there, I would frame circumcision as a cosmetic procedure. Social attitudes towards bodies change and what is considered fashionable today is not indicative of what will be fashionable tomorrow. Framing it as an unnecessary sugary with slight but real risks for no certain benefit is how I would round out that introductory conversation.

I think this is a very gentile approach to introduce the topic of intactivism. A lot of people on line lay it on way too heavy and equate circumcision as equivalent to female circumcision. This overly extreme rhetoric will likely turn off someone who might be circumcised and is perfectly happy with their body. My speculation is that most men either don’t care one way or the other about their circumcision status and if they do care largely prefer their body the only way they’ve known it. Taking someone who’s perfectly happy with their body and framing the conversation in a way that make them question if they are missing something will likely shut them down and prevent them from engaging. Framing it as a cosmetic procedure that was thought to have benefit but that doesn’t seem to any more is far less likely to make someone defensive about their own body. I think adding examples of experimental bias such as Thymus/SIDS studies and wine correlations gives them examples that are unrelated to circumcision that will encourage questioning of what they were told while reinforcing that you are not questioning that they are acting in what they believe to be the best interest of the child. I’ve heard pro-circumcision parents on line reacting to being told that they were committing child abuse and I am certain that interaction only strengthened their resolve to circumcise.

Once you have them receptive to potential medical bias and the lack of a benefit, then I think you can try to gently bring up potential harm. However, be very careful not to do this in a way that may make someone who is circumcised or a female who might prefer circumcised feel defensive. A man who was circumcised likely had no say in the matter. A woman can’t control her sexual preferences any more than anyone else can. I like porn with fake looking boobs. Do I think going through the potential risk of a sugary to get bigger boobs to be a bit silly and not worth it? Yea, I wouldn’t encourage anyone to do it. Is there a contradiction between my liking to look at fake boobs and my thinking the practice of breast implants is unnecessary and silly? No, because the former is something I have no control over and the later is a conscious and deliberate thought.

dftpnk707

MrMeTheFirst You mentioning the female circumcision angle reminded me of the approach Ron Low took when I helped him run his intactivist booth at Indy Pride last year. There, in the context of pride, he chose to start with “intersex children are born all the time and doctors frequently (per him) want to align their genitals to either male or female” and that this was a human rights issue. From there, it’s a small step to then say “children born and assigned male shouldn’t have this done either.” I think that approach is softer than bringing up female circumcision that might be less common in the US while still getting across “procedures done on genitals, particularly cosmetic ones, should only be done with consent” to a general audience.

Blade69

My wife and I are expecting a son due in March. Like his father me in this case he will remain intact. If he wants it done as an adult that’s consenting that is his choice. But I will teach him that he is normal and how his foreskin functions. Wife agrees and says he will remain intact. It was an easy discussion with her since she’s experienced intact penises prior to me and educated to know that foreskin is healthy functional tissue.

MrMeTheFirst

dftpnk707 What I was getting at was the “female circumcision” is more accurately a clitoridectomy (removing the clitoris). The male equivalent would be a glansectomy (removing the head of the penis). Though the principal of someone having autonomy over there own body is a valid argument against both, telling someone who’s happy with their body that they were robbed of something in the same was that a woman without a clitoris was would make them understandably defensive and skeptical. There is however a female analogous to male circumcision, a clitoral hood reduction. Slightly less analogous, a labia reduction is another cosmetic procedure they could be used to create an equivalent to male circumcision. Both procedures are somewhat common in the adult film industry for women who want to look tidier or have their bits more visible for the camera. I think drawing an analogy between those is doable, in that we as a society have no issue performing male circumcision for aesthetic reasons but not analogous surgeries on females…however, I don’t think that’s the strongest argument because I feel like it requires a bit of explaining to get to. I think the point gets across sufficiently well by first showing the lack of medical benefit, or at least the lack of medical consensus on the topic, and then when all that’s left is cosmetics, refer to it as a cosmetic surgery on infant genitals. At that point, if someone is in favor of cosmetic surgery on newborn genitals, I think you’d have to take a more blunt approach and dive into the downsides, but I imagine it’d be very difficult to convince someone at that point.

Hansen Rogers

MrMeTheFirst The complete removal of the clitoris (known as clitoridectomy) is not the most common form of female genital cutting (FGC). The more common practice, particularly in contexts where FGC is performed at a less severe level, is the removal of the clitoral hood (referred to as Type I FGC or clitoridectomy Type 1a), which can be compared to male circumcision in that it involves the removal of external genital tissue without removing the glands.