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>>>>>>>Sooo, having taken your advice and made the investigation as you suggested, I find this just proves again that the Internet is a source of varying reports and other topics.
>>>>>>>[If you've read this far, please note this: I am NOT pro-circ (not anti-circ), only PRO-FACT! And , but this just serves well to make my point: all these stories (including the 5 I found under www.norm.org at your suggestion, are anecdotal [from ANECDOTE: 'A usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing or curious incident often biographical and generally categorized by human interest' so defined in Webster's Third New International Dictionary], in marked contrast to the carefully researched publications, supported by statistics, presented by Laumann et al. and Masters & Johnson; also don't forget Shere Hite's report.
>>>>>To repeat, I'm not pro- or anti-circ, just pro-fact, unadorned. Your statement that 'by the time they were forty there was no more sensation' was what I felt could not go unchallenged, and so I challenged it. No, I'm not ashamed.
>>>>>The Internet is a source of much jollity, including your contributions (and perh. mine, if you have a strange sense of what's funny).
>>>>You'd gain a lot more respect if you did your homework first. My original statement stands regardless of your flimsy attempt at discrediting it.
>I only say it's anecdotal, make no effort to discredit it but to put it in the proper perspective.
>Norm is a good place to start, but you failed to investigate further. Did you think of taking the time to contact anyone at norm to see what some of their subscribers have experienced? I have. I have also, over the last twenty years heard the same story told over and over by victims of mutilation, that their sensitivity was gone. Through restoration, it is restored.
>Not the tip of the foreskin, however, which as somebody said has gone down the toilet and can't be restored. And you know this, Jim!
>Your experience appears to be that of your own only.
>Of course it's mine only, and thus is anecdotal. That's one reason I'm not out to circumcise the world. I don't claim to have all the answers, only one that worked for me. It was my decision, and I'm totally pleased with it. But it emphatically is not my right to tell some kid with a problem, 'Go and do likewise' (any more than it is your right to insist that the ONLY thing for him to do is to go on stretching, stretching, and stretching on into the forseeable future). Because what I say here on the Internet is anecdotal (not false, just anecdotal; note the definition of the word given above), the confidence can't be placed in it that can be placed in what the authorities I've cited published, after having sampled large numbers of people.
>Are you trying to say that if a person simply states that his sensitivity is gone it doesn't count for something because that is considered anecdotal?
>Of course it counts for something, as your opinion and mine does, but the difference is that it isn't supported by statistical data, as are the findings of Laumann et al. and of Masters & Johnson (among others); thus more confidence can be (and is) placed in their studies.
>By the same token, your own account would be dismissable then also, wouldn't it? Strangely, doctors, when examing a patient ask about symptons, don't they. Perception must be an important part of analysis or they wouldn't ask questions, would they? While there are certainly machines of sort which can measure to a certain degree the amount of sensitivity than one feels, most tests of this nature still rely upon the perception of the one measured, don't they?
>>>>So, it boils down to this situation. You chose not to believe me or the statement you found at norm's website. Is it because they don't agree with your own opinion or experience? You seem to have believed James Badger who didn't use any scientific means to gather his information, didn't you? RJK, you really need to get yourself together before going off like you do.
>>>Put a sock in it, Jim; you're turning into a big fat bore (boor? boar? all of the above).
>>Getting a bit testy aren't you old girl?
>Not a bit of it, just BORED! But, since you continue to rave on, you obviously appear in the mood for more interchange, so, here goes. . .
>I accept that you sincerely believe what you say about loss of penile sensitivity after 40, and that the 'thousands of guys' you refer to also feel from their own experience that they do not have adequate sensitivity.
>You seem to want me to concede that you are 'right' and I am 'wrong', but as with many other questions a simplistic answer just won't cut it (no pun intended!) Human beings are complex in their individual makeup, and they don't all respond in the same way to a given set of conditions. If you take as a given the reasonably well established estimate that there are 90-million circumcised males in North America, then a small sample from this population could still amount to thousands, and these could account for your sensation-deprived group, a minority of the enormous whole. But we also have the sample from Laumann et al. who reported less sexual dysfunction in circumcised men over 40 than in the uncircumcised men they studied. Were the men who reported to Laumann et al. lying? In all probablility, not. Were your 'thousands of guys' lying? You say no, and I can accept your statement. One indisputable fact that bears on all of this, however, is the fact that the brain is importantly involved in human sexual attitudes and functions (e.g. one aspect of dysfunction was a man's lack of interest in sex). If one honestly believes that one has lost penile sensitivity as a result of circumcision, or that such loss is inevitable, this can in all likelihood color one's attitudes and sexual capabilities; I don't know this (nor do you!) but it seems a reasonable supposition. Another possiblity is that their circumcisions traumatized the nerves in these guys' penises, but the fact that they didn't report loss of feeling until age 40 makes such an idea questionable. A third possibility is that they (your guys) might have a genetic tendency for neural function in the glans to deteriorate after 40, which is well past the time of life at which early mankind was reproductively active, and therefore wouldn't necessarily be selected against in evolution. As late as the Roman Empire few men lived to age 40 and just 100 years ago the average American man died at age 42, so this is not just idle supposition on my part. (I know an otherwise perfectly normal woman who went through the menopause, practically overnight, at the age of 35. On the other hand, Tony Randall, a 'circumcised celebrity', recently became a father -- they say without help -- at the age of 80. Homo sapiens is a variable species.)
>If on the other hand a man has had an active sex life and continues to have it as he ages, circumcision would seem no handicap judging from the findings of Laumann and his colleagues.
>Masters & Johnson did extensive research on sex, publishing their epochal HUMAN SEXUAL RESPONSE in 1966. It's still in print, available on Amazon.Com, and costs a lot more now than I paid for it some years ago. I've seen nothing in that book to support the idea of neural degeneration in circumcised men. They (M&J) later published a second book, HUMAN SEXUALITY. I haven't read this one, but it should be well worth a look.
>To summarize, then, what you say may well be factual, as I know the published material I have cited is. And I firmly believe that neither you nor I (nor anybody else!) has a right to interfere in the lives of young men beyond answering such questions as they may ask to the best of our abilities. And I repeat, and firmly believe, that whether a man is, or is not circumcised is of legitimate concern to, at most, two people in the world: himself and his significant other. AND NOBODY ELSE!
For someone who believes it is none of his business, you have spent a whole lot of time meddling in others now haven't you, you old bag of wind. Flautlence? LOL