Re: Why do you hate circumcision?
I have no idea what kind of trauma you must have experienced to be so mentally scarred by your circumcision. The vast majority of circumcised men just don't care, and most adults who get circumcised report increased sensitivity and pleasure. More nerve endings =/= more pleasure; bigger people don't "feel more" because they have more nerves, that's just a stupid thought.
And you have no way to compare what sex would be like if you were uncircumcised, since at no point in your life were you even uncircumcised. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this issue probably springs from a greater psychological issue you haven't dealt with; no mentally healthy individual experiences so much mental trauma over something that they never even experienced in life. You can't "miss" something you never had, and while it's certainly possible to wistfully imagine life with a foreskin, such ridiculous depressive imagery and emotion is not normal.
You answered the question in the first sentence when you said you don't know what sort of trauma I went through to be traumatized by circumcision. It was the circumcision. Every research study I have seen examining the circumcised versus non-circumcised child shows infants respond negatively to circumcision psychologically, especially during the phallic period (3-6 years of age), whether they were circumcised at birth or during that period. I can recall as a toddler trying to push the head of my penis back into the penis to cover it. The studies show children who were circumcised have a far greater pain response to injections of vaccines even six months after the circumcision. It's only very recently that anesthetic is used during circumcisions, and it still is not required.
When you say that vast majority of circumcised men don't care, do you know that to be true? And when you say the vast majority of of adults who are circumcised feel increased pleasure and sensitivity, do you know that to be true? Even if you knew that to be true, do you think that is an appropriate counterargument to me saying I have no problem with adults who choose to circumcise themselvs? And do you understand that some of the harm of circumcision is not only in the choicelesness but also in the toll time takes on the circumcised penis? Have you ever wondered why people start wrinkling on their face first in their late 20s? It's because UV sun exposure doesn't immediately cause wrinkles. It causes it over a long period of time and the accumulation reaches critical mass around that time. The same is true with the glans penis and the amount of time it is without its sheath.
I'm not sure where you thought I said bigger people feel more because they have more nerves. You then called me stupid for saying that, even though I didn't. I'm not even sure if the premise of that is true. Fat people for example have larger fat cells in addition to more fat cells. The equivalent analogy would be that if you cut off a person's arm he wouldn't feel anything in his non-existent arm. The foreskin is not extra of something. It is something in and of itself with different types of nerve receptors. It also provides extra shaft mobility. The physical mechanics of sex for a circumcised versus uncircumcised person are completely different in addition to the loss of the foreskin and its nerves.
You also said that in no point in my life was I uncircumcised. I was uncircumcised until the day after I was born. I have all of my birth records and know the precise time of the procedure and the equipment used and the doctor who did it.
I'd like to expand past your misinformation. When you say that my emotions are not normal, I wonder if you would say the same thing to a person who had her clitoris or its hood forcibly removed as an infant? What do you tell people you know who are victims of rape? Do you tell them something is wrong with them if they feel violated?
Humans have the capability to judge something through both a cultural and personal lens. We don't always agree with our culture's way of doing things. Obviously not everyone in the US culture agrees with the right to circumcise a child against his will. The US circumcised females commonly until the 1930s, and female circumcision was only made illegal in 1997 in the US. So, there was obviously disagreement about what used to be an accepted medical practice in the US. Would you dare tell a woman living today who was circumcised in the 1930s how she should feel about that? Why do you dare tell me how I should feel?
People felt strongly enough about the sin of sexuality to tear flesh off of boys and girls and pour carbolic acid on their genitals. Some people feel strongly that they were wrong, including their victims Is that a surprise? Are the victims of that mentality not allowed to feel? Or would I be more normal to you if I felt absolutely nothing?
You come from a cultural view where circumcision is a given because it exists. Maybe you don't even think it's good, but it doesn't bother you that much, and you think it shouldn't bother me. Maybe you haven't studied the topic. Maybe you haven't lived in other cultures that are utterly confused by why the US does this to its infants.
Try this: you are an alien coming to Earth and you witness a baby with a perfectly normal foreskin and then you see a doctor use metal utensils to tear the adhesion between the foreskin and glans, create a dorsal slit with scissors, place a bell on the penis, pull up all the foreskin through a clamping device, crush the foreskin and then slice it off. You see the baby crying so hard it stops breathing. It's strapped down.
You see what is left of the penis now looks dramatically different. Internal organs are external. The glans looks like raw chicken and it's bandaged up.
Is it just a given? Does it seem like the self evident thing to do?
Please don't ever tell me what to feel about a harm that was done to me. I don't have my foreskin or an unscarred penis, but I own my reaction to what happened to me.
