[ ARC forum 2 ]
Written by Anonymous at 16 May 2003 04:35:25: Re: Russia Case 2
As an answer to: Re: Russia Case 2 written by Rood at 16 May 2003 04:28:31:
>>...let's say it's just something "built in" inside his brain, regardless of the society he lives in? Clearly, evolution says that circumcision is a bad idea, but what if that same evolution equips some people with a brain that gets satisfied only after performing such bizarre actions.
>>To put it short: what if the drive behind some circ-hungry people is not a perversion, but a rather quite natural quality that evolution gave us humans?
>Evolution only allows the brain to be susceptible to influence, it doesn't predispose an individual to self-harm. The perversion of genital mutilation results from a personality disorder which is imposed on the brain after birth. In this sense, a perversion is "built-in", but only after environmental factors caused the deviation from a normal, healthy self-image.
>Integral to every perversion may be an eroticized childhood trauma that the person is attempting to master. There is the wish to harm the object...an act of revenge, perhaps, converting a childhood trauma into adult triumph. Common features are an eroticization of pain, suffering, and humiliation. Perversions are fixed and urgent sexual behaviours deviating in object choice from accepted adult norms. They are an erotic form of self-hatred.
>Self-mutilation is meant to have an impact on others, and this helps explain why members of Circlist, PROCIRC, and other pro-genital-mutilation groups immediately publish photos and stories of their circumcisions. The influence of the peer group...the friendships of self-mutilators is viewed as more intense and meaningful than others, which makes mutilation attractive, lowering resistance to participation. Failure to self-mutilate appears, to these men, deviant behaviour.That is how I see it too.