[ ARC forum 2 ]

Re: question

Written by Ivan at 17 Jan 2004 17:46:37:

As an answer to: question written by lance at 16 Jan 2004 18:47:01:

>i read a word but dont know what is. what is a circumsexual?
I have not seen a definition and it appears to be a recent coinage. I disagree with AJ that it is only for the stupid, although it probably is one of those nonce usages, like 'whassup' that will disappear quite quickly. Since we can only go by the context of usage (and what else really is the content of a word?), it would seem to be used to refer to people who derive sexual stimulation from either the act of circumcision (either viewing it or havingit done to oneself) or from the circumcised state of a penis. This last part should be differentiated from people who find penises sexy, even if they are circumcised: the circumcision for the circumsexual is a necessity and a (if not the) primary focus. I have seen people writing about how the scar is the most interesting and stimulating part of the penis (of course that would have to be a circumcised one), and this would seem to be the sort of attitude intended by the coinage.

Of course the coinage is very new and if it continues to be used it may drift. "Feminazi" was originally coined to denote anti-equality women who wanted men destroyed and who considered abortion to be akin to a sacrament for true female fulfillment. Now of course it has broadened to any extreme feminist (though if you consider feminism a push for equality, these people cannot be considered feminists. That's just as the 'civil rights movement' now stands fully opposed to civil rights because that would require equal treatment).

A worse recent coinage is metrosexual, which denotes apparently any guy who is fussy about wearing showy clothes. The idea is not to call them gay, becasue some are not. But we already had perfectly adequate words, like fop and popinjay, to cover the idea. And by appending the word sexual, it suggests that it is a question of sexuality, but in usage it is not. Oh, well. That's Ivan's essay for the day.


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