Pedantic terms: "Uncircumcised" versus "Not Circumcised"

needsastickynote

Okay, like the title says, this is super pedantic, but I had a thought and it actually made me a bit mad:

It seems really dumb that the terms referring to whether you cut the end of your penis off are: Circumcised, meaning cut penis And Uncircumcised, meaning penis intact

Has this ever bothered anyone else? If being uncircumcised is our natural state, why would we prefix an “un” to it? Shouldn’t it just be circumcised that is a status, so if someone asks, I would state: “I am not circumcised.”

I don’t say I have an unamputated leg, unpierced ears, or unshaved body hair.

It’s a little thing, but I’m going to change the way I talk about it.

drat

Totally your logic is correct. If anything there shouldn’t even be any ‘un’ included in the word ‘circumcised’ because it’s a procedure that you can’t undo. It’s either a penis is circumcised or not circumcised /in the natural state/form. Like breasts, you can have augmented ones or natural but not unaugmented.

intact

Intactivists started using the term “intact” decades ago. It has not caught on except among intactivists.

I’ve found it useful to speak to people in terms they already understand.

It puts them off when they’re curious about something, and the first thing they hear is “Your language is wrong.”

cflubbs

It shouldn’t even have a descriptor honestly. There are dicks and circumcised dicks. Like mitch hedberg said about corn on the cob and cutting his arm off and calling his arm Mitch and Mitch with his arm Mitch all together. You don’t call earlobes, unpierced earlobes.

Bonemail666

cflubbs Always loved that Hedberg joke. Honestly I’m about as annoyed by ‘uncircumcised’ as I am ‘cob on the corn’. I’m generally ambivalent about efforts to change people’s minds on substantive questions by tinkering with language. It just seems sociologically naive.

intact

In the U.S., circumcision is normative.

It’s not normal, but normative.

So, people generally view the non-normative as befitting its own descriptor.

mikemiker

Language governs much of how people think. Lots of examples you can see in other parts of life.

Construction and traffic engineers companies came up with the term “street improvements” a long time ago as a code word for meaning they are widening the street, cutting down trees, shrinking sidewalks. Those aren’t improvements for most people. But in planning language they use the term “improvements” to describe those changes.

Another good term “jaywalking.” invented by car companies to describe what from before then just walking normally in a city. The root word “jay” essentially means the same thing as redneck. The car companies were so succesful that the term “jaywalking” is actually a legal term now.

Medical professionals everywhere should give up the term “uncircumcised”. Not circumcised is fine. Intact or “normal” is often great.

gavinb

I’m pretty sure the word comes from religion, ie non-Jews.

I get what you are saying, but for some reason this word turns me on so much so I don’t care.