heh. about a year ago or so, a physician was subbed to the Teaching Sociology list and started posting rants about the evils of circumcision. He was pretty excised about it all. why he was posting to that particular list is beyond me. on pulp, we had an exchange about it all becuase it's increasingly being equated with female circumcision. dunk, the fellah posting below, says that some of it stems from the body fads in the gay community: influx of uncut eastern europeans.
g (my fellow mutilated male) wrote:
>[Goodness, Dunk. I had no idea you were taking it so hard. I offer the below
>as,
>if you will, a distraction from your grieving for the lost foreskin. Whence
>proceeds the statement that "certainly one intention of curcumcision" is the
>decrease of sexual pleasure? Whence such certainty?
>
>The end of one's penis is the glans. To remove the foreskin in the
>equivalent
>of slicing back the clitoral hood, not removing the clitoris. One might
>argue
>that _that_would lead to decrease in sexual pleasure in that the friction
>therefrom derived is no longer present. No such argument it would seem to me
>could be made for the foreskin, which is at best of aesthetic appeal if one
>is
>into ephebes. I do not buy the "anyone who has had. . . " Argument. How
>frequently does one encounter such? How trustworthy the testimony? One must
>presume that these testifiers somehow, bear up. I was not circumcised in a
>religious ceremony, and await the screaming terrors of the recovered memory
>with no trepidation whatsoever.]
Dunk responds:
You have a good point. hmmm. I tug my forelock (I'd tug my foreskin...but...sniff...sob...damn it! where's my sponsor's number?)
I have made the best of my perdickament as have you. When in the company of the scoffing uncut, I observe--from experience with lovers who enjoy life au naturel--that desensitization can also mean increased endurance. "I may not like it as much, but I can sure go longer!," which must seem American to them in so many ways. I shouldn't have said "certainly" but something more subjective, like "it seems certain to me." But then I'm concerned with specific case studies. "Why," I ask myself, "was God so particular about Abraham's dick and not his earlobes." Why cut something off that has a purpose, if not to do that thing that it does best, i.e., make the dick less feelsome? Indeed, why do the whole, no tattoos, no earrings thing and then demand ripped foreskins unless you're after some sexual control and redirection? I also see a pairing in non-Abrahamic traditions between circumcisions of males and females as a sexual rite of passage. Isn't there some similarity in intended effect? Perhaps not. Maybe its a simple differentiation between man and beast for a pastoral people. "How are we different from the sheep, Abba?" "Take a gander at this, kid." The death of the Master of the Hunt in favor of the Sky God? Who knows? My impression of the change in sexual enjoyment is gleaned from the males I know who, for either medical or aesthetic reasons, underwent circumcision in the midst of their sexual life. Their report, while anecdotal, was pretty unanimous. They lost quite a bit of that lovin' feeling. Of course, it probably makes one more creative, which for many males, is a good thing. Of course, it may just make some of us more angry. This is undubitably a gay thing--most straight men are unable or unwilling to remember back as far as summer camp--but I think spending time with the uncut in intimate situations will convince the unbeliever that a protected glans is a more sensitive one. Hmmm....summer camp...yea.
All yuckin' aside, I really don't see eye-to-eye with the male multilation crowd, who whine and pout a lot about the loss of something they can't remember having in the first place. At a gay political thing in NYC a member of one of these grieving glans groups approached me after asking my circumcision status. (Alas, I thought I was being cruised.) After being passed a ridiculous flyer with a atheletic detail from a greek vase as a border, I attended one meeting for the infotainment value. Much was said about female circumcision and many foolishly facile comparisons were made. I do think that male circumcision is a stupid cultural vestige that should be stopped, but I also have little patience for men's groups that, feeling some strange sense of victim envy, try to tie male infant circumcision to what's going on the girls or, worse maybe, feel that they are now appropriately disabled.
[Breath deeply when the sense of loss occurs. Sharing your state, but not your sentiments, I remain, yrs, etc.]
Oddly, I am already breathing deeply when the loss is most evident. (We're probably a lot closer in sentiments than it appears. My eyes are dry even when my memory of circumcision returns unbidden. Now the decor of the operating room is another story...)
Dunk