To the sock, over the shoulder, around the waist: The Uncircumcision Movement Takes On Yale
Not that I’m against people having the freedom to make choices about their own bodies. Nor am I deaf to NORM’s claim that with the foreskin goes 20,000 nerve endings and any possibility of a fulfilled life. But NORM, which was actually founded in 1989, advertises a book called The Joy of Uncircumcising. And any process that involves “a tape to capture the shaft skin [...] clipped to a suspender or similar elastic material and pulled to the sock, over the shoulder, or around the waist to produce tension” (emphasis obviously mine) is clearly not going to be fun for anyone. Seriously: stretching the penile skin to face-cringing lengths is going to improve our lives?
For anybody convinced, NORM actually has a weekly meeting in New Haven (thence, I presume, these adorable pamphlets). I, for one, will be sticking with my feeling-challenged penis and its shortcomings. At least I don’t have a device called “FOREBALLS” attached to me anywhere.
In other news, P-RAF (People for the Reviving of Aborted Fetuses), has secured a lease on Orange Street for its first New Haven branch and is currently hiring receptionists.
Tags: circumcision, foreballs, foreskin, NORM, uncircumcision
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This commentary about NORM is unworthy of The Herald. I can just imagine Gabe’s lack of empathy with other amputees trying to cope with loss.
As acknowledged, the foreskin includes about half the male sensual pleasure-receptive nerve endings and it provides important functions during intimacy.
Unfortunately it’s in the nature of infant circumcision that nobody knows how the surgery will turn out until years later. The cutter can’t know how the skin or the parts remaining would have grown, nor can the cutter even know whether at the time of cutting the organ is puffed up from handling or shriveled from being in the cold operating room. And any slight error is magnified as the victim grows. Google “circumcision damage” to see common horrid cosmetic and functional side-effects which never figure as acute complications infant circumcision.
What Gabe didn’t bother to find out before spouting off is that non-surgical foreskin restoration does NOT require applying medical tape except in cases of extremely tight circumcision. There are high-tech tapeless devices which can be worn comfortably around the clock to add about in inch of new slack skin per pear. Hundreds of thousands of men around the world find foreskin restoration well worth the modest commitment.
About 80% of the world’s men are intact. No national medical association on earth endorses routine circumcision. NORM should be commended for raising awareness to help the world’s cut men get back a measure of what was taken without consent.