[ ARC forum 2 ]
Written by Paul B. at 22 Sep 2001 12:55:05: Shrinking Violet.
As an answer to: Re: Penis-Foreskin shrinks-phimosis? written by Jim at 22 Sep 2001 00:04:47:
> Some of you guys have some really vivid imaginations here. You have to be kidding about this question, right?
Well, Perhaps not. In context with his other enquiries, I presume Mark to be reasonably genuine on this matter.Consider the situation - that he has a phimosis at his age (we presume mid-teenage) indicates that his parents have been something less than forthcoming in regard to sexual education and by implication, health education in general. Teenagers are a little confused or should I say, awed by all the information they face, particularly in regard to threats they face, such as cancer, and it is a challenge to get it all in perspective.
You and I may realise that cancer is a disease of advancing age, a concern in the forties and a substantial risk in the fifties and beyond. We may realise that cancers in the teens are quite uncommon (though those that do occur, notably leukaemias/ lymphomas, are quite nasty) and that the odd lump here or bump there is most unlikely to be cancer.
Nevertheless, we try and impress upon them, do we not, that smoking for example is a cancer risk, though not in the next year, or the one following, even the next ten years, but that the real risk is that permitting oneself to smoke "for now" leads insidiously to addiction and those years pass so easily unnoticed.
The same thing applies to sexually transmitted disease. We do have to tell young people that they risk catching these, because we know they are so common, so we advise the wearing of condoms. But as you will recall from the other list, if you start preaching this message even to those who actually know that they have had no previous partners and therefore could not catch such a disease, then the message you give them is that these diseases are spread other than by having sex, in which case they may well rationalise that it's not so important because they now presume they are going to catch it by these implied other means anyway.
So, if he ends up wondering in the absence of a good education, whether the normal and quite fascinating function of the dartos muscle of the scrotum and penile shaft in response to cold, is some sinister sign, well, that's believable. I suspect that we, or hopefully not we personally, but many of the over-enthusiastic "advisers" actually contribute to that over-active imagination.And that's what it is, Mark. The same type of muscle which lifts your skin hairs and gives you "goosebumps" in the cold, pulls up the scrotum to keep your testicles at the correct temperature and concertinas your penis and foreskin so it doesn't get any more cold than it needs to.