Column by Kevin M. Patten.
Exclusive to STR
While appearing on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line in 1969, the already renowned linguist and anti-war critic Noam Chomsky told a nationwide audience that there was no longer any debate on the Vietnam War. [4] In his view, no question remained that the United States was the ultra-violent aggressor against an innocent people, and that our government was directly targeting civilian populations for the goal of total extermination.
Even as the New Left attempted to stop an evil war, and maybe as Voltaire and Lysander Spooner were demanding an end to slavery, and no less than feminism attempts to stop every last instance of rape today, so are we many “Intactivists” [5] who are demanding genital integrity here in America. Gender equality will see its day, we insist. An end to hypocritical lectures by people already protected under the law is at hand. A restoration of sanity for us all is approaching.
We feel an updated report of human rights [6] in the “freest” country on the planet would include those 60-70 percent of baby boys that are indeed violated against their will, and then are never told by their parents that the Right to their Anatomy simply does not matter. This is why we say: as rape is to a rape victim, as slavery to a slave, so is circumcision for those of us several times more likely to get erectile dysfunction. [7]
And so why would I spend three hours writing an “open letter” on Facebook addressed to my immediate and extended family? After all, I don’t sleep with them. However, the forum of the Internet would also receive more inputted thought, instead of given two lousy sentences in the living room during a commercial break, and then allowed there to be no misconception of the matter: as an address to the entirety of what I will refer to as the Cutlery Culture.
I would now appreciate if the dear reader would make even the slightest consideration for the following. This will be an attempt to gander into the perspective of an unhappily mutilated man. For I have a very grave concern for which I absolutely must have a resolution.
No longer regarding the differing perspectives between myself and family, and while not really intending to discuss any hypothetical children with others, I will freely admit to several recently acquired fears. In five months or so, I will have been partly responsible for bringing a little loveable creation into this world. It will get to experience a life that I have largely deplored. The gender remains unknown, but I am hoping for a boy.
And yet, in the last two or so years, finally coming to realize circumcision exactly as what it is – genital mutilation, a precursor to psychopathy, and pure unmitigated evil – I also came to see how many other people were so incredibly, unbelievably cruel and hateful upon even the slightest mention of it.
Now the question is stuck in my head. If I do have my desired boy, should I seriously have any concern that he might grow up into a community, a society, or a family, where he’ll be shamed and ridiculed and called an “anteater”? Maybe overhear a conversation one day that someone didn’t think he was listening to, talking about how disgusting they thought he really is? Superstitiously scrubbing under his foreskin – just because?
The stories of shame and ridicule against the male body are numerous these days, it seems. Much testimony exists of intact kids that are mocked and laughed at by callous people; simultaneously telling critically sorrowful men as myself that we are nothing more than psychopaths needing therapy – with the profound irony of the assertion always lost on them.
Thanks (or no thanks) to the Internet, where I do spend too much time, these same individuals occasionally enjoy expressing their sickness by engaging chatrooms, making jokes about foreskin restoration and deformed penises. Humiliating to be sure. Yet they no doubt would act something like this at home and elsewhere.
Well I say, your culture and your butcherism be damned!
Important note: It must be said that the anti-circumcision side always seems to be able to provide a fantastic amount of evidence and logic for their cause, while the Cutlery Community always seems to resort to nuclear “ad hom” bombs. By that time, the calls of “penis weights” and “child rapist” appear – and yes, from even me – the “debate” is cut apart. Why does this happen, I think?
“We all want them to look alike.”
“So he looks like his father.”
“It looks nicer.”
“It’s cleaner.”
“Better having it done at birth.”
“Our religion.” [8]
“High school showers.”
This is because at no time during these boring, incorrect, anything-but-universal statements is that crucial question asked, one by me many times, ignored just as often, and that which erects the dividing wall (I believe): can cutting off fifty percent of the penis skin [9], what many consider the most sensitive part of the male body, not be a possible cause for permanent psychological disturbances? Those who answer in the negative take a far greater leap of faith than those who would dare take the chance. Females defending the practice also acquire a psychosis in order to do so.
Is there really nobody who thinks it possible that a nine year old might fully understand what was taken from him? Might he be upset at the non-answers he would inevitably receive? And perhaps even lash out aggressively at others? Leading to a spanking that could be even more deleterious? All while everyone is confused about the causality? Never once has this situation occurred?! Parents who insist they simply won’t tell their child anything about the procedure; it makes me wonder – if not this? – what would be at the heart of Ethics?
Does nobody want to at least try for a society of lesser-aggression?
Is Stefan Molyneux [10] not correct in his thesis that the origins of all violence are to be found in child abuse?
And is circumcision not our most obvious example of this?
Like all bigotry, the one against foreskin is based on ignorant presumptions that a full eighty percent of the rest of world doesn’t participate in. [11] Perhaps nobody should be worried how mutilated children could act towards others. Or maybe we all should. Since most people seem to be worried about not only their own kids, but others, and who often want to express their bigotry when they deem appropriate, every parent who sees the practice for what it is might want to make personal secession a top priority. Appearance in the locker room is nothing compared to violence on the playground or in the street.
Listening to the guilt and shame and ridicule projected onto other people (and again, even by myself) and onto their kids has become tiring for me as well. But never as tiring as hearing those many females who were not taken a knife to, who now feel qualified to tell me that it’s the best thing ever. Talk about disturbed.
Nevertheless, I haven’t yet seen enough people sympathetic to my perspective from anywhere in the vicinity. So I shall rant. Now. Scream at the top of my lungs to ensure the call for human rights only gets louder.
On the other hand, since so many of us truly are anti-social and do have a tendency to reciprocate the hate back onto others, communication might be impossible with this one. So, since there can be no shades of grey seen between the two “camps,” maybe we should all just go our separate ways.
[12]
