[ ARC forum 2 ]

Unwind Tara

Written by Gomoco at 06 Nov 2002 17:09:38:

As an answer to: Why Jim is DANGEROUS! written by Tara at 05 Nov 2002 19:59:10:

Let’s presume your aim is to stop kids taking advice you think is bad rather than to antagonise Jim. This is a bit of a stretch, I know. But stretching always works, especially if you try hard enough. Sometimes you have to think a bit harder too.

How is a kid going to damage himself with surgical tape? Wouldn’t he have to be spectacularly stupid? If you managed to do this yourself, please explain how, so kids will know what sorts of things NOT to do. Like not to wrap the tape so tight it cuts off circulation.

Foreskin restoration is remarkable. It just doesn’t seem possible, but it works. Go figure. Of course, it’s slightly political too. A guy is not condemned to live with all the results of a circumcision he does not like. Great. It has been discovered that there is at least some degree of self-determination even here. Of course, this foreskin restoration business gets many guys thinking about whether or not they are happy they were circumcised as infants. Dangerous, this. Circumcisers do not like it. People have some degree of choice here after all. Yikes. Wasn’t RIC supposed to do away with that? If opposition to RIC continues to grow – as it seems it will - then soon you and I will both be pretty much redundant.

The effect of your advice not to consider restoration seems roughly this: circumcision is irreversible so you’d better get to like it. Then maybe you’ll get your baby sons done too. Something like that.

Of course, it could be the politics of RIC doesn’t interest you at all and your real worry is that some sixteen-year-old boy will succeed in hurting his willy with tape, while Jim, you imagine, will perv over the results - captured on web cam perhaps. This seems very unlikely. Human flesh is resilient stuff, and amazingly trainable. It is so trainable that circumcision can be largely reversed, and the conditions it was in the past used to treat can be treated in other ways. Wow.

Circumcisers do not like it much when these alternatives are publicised. If they concede anything at all here, they tend to say things like “Stretching works for some, but not for all,” often going on to suggest that anyone who thinks he might have a problem here should go and see a real, in-the-flesh doctor, because stretching might be risky.

As if. This is like suggesting that anyone about to start an exercise program should go and see a doctor first. Or anyone who is thinking of venturing out into that dangerous, threatening, non-cyber world – where people, strangely, tend to be far more polite – should get a medical check up even if they’re only going to the supermarket, or down the pub. Yes indeed. Life is a desperate medical condition. Thank goodness for doctors.

Fortunately, the fashion for such crazy reliance on medical authority seems to be easing, and people seem more in tune with the idea that health is largely something one does for oneself. I for one am looking forward to an indefinite retirement. Of course, I don’t deserve it. It wasn’t well earned at all.

Gomoco



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