[ ARC forum 2 ]
Written by Paul B. at 28 Sep 2002 16:23:40: Side Splitting clowning!
As an answer to: Re: Skin Spliting Help!! written by AJ at 28 Sep 2002 15:00:26:
> Perhaps this excerpt from International Circumcision Information Reference Centre will help explain.
Perhaps it will help explain various things, but only if you realise (and it is by no means difficult from the general tone of the page cited) that this is an unashamedly pro-mutilation page, produced by a fetish lobby called "the Gilgal Society" (Gilgal is a bible reference to circumcision).
> "Stretching the foreskin may work where there is only very slight phimosis. However if too much stretching is done minute tears are caused and these heal to tiny scars which are even less elastic than the skin around them - thus the phimosis actually gets worse and circumcision is eventually necessary."
That's a pretty worrying medical argument, isn't it? Well, it certainly sounds like a medical argument as it is surely intended to.
Hah! Trouble is, it's totally bogus! A wolf in sheep's clothing; a collection of medical buzzwords and flim-flam.
Fact is, that one characteristic of the skin's repair process is that the smaller the defect, the more easily it repairs by "first intent" - direct growth of the adjacent covering skin cells, and the less is the scarring that results. So "minute" tears heal without a trace and the skin is as good as ever, though perhaps a bit larger than before.
But you really can see these people get quite a "kick" from fantasising that "circumcision is eventually necessary".
Actually, Jim is fond of posting the explanation on this (and other) forum, that the process of stretching is just that - the "opening up" of tiny gaps between cells which are then filled by duplication of the (same) cells producing new ones to fill these gaps. Whilst I would put the process a little different myself, it is quite a good explanation of how growth occurs in response to constant tension (over a certain threshold).
> All the best.
Yes, that sly little jibe again. Ironic isn't it?
In fact, we have only just discussed with Patrick, his problem with skin splitting and we seem to have found the answer, so I venture to say that if your skin was splitting, then it was not just the stretching at cause.