In the U.S. it's common procedure to have some insane doctor strap your baby down to a table and crush their foreskin off without anasthesia, for dubious reasons varying from irrational health concerns to athseticism. The effects that this has on a child at immediate and lasting--yet society writes off this great injustice with excuses such as, "You don't even remember." -- "It was just a little piece of skin."
Sound familiar? That's right--Freud's Seduction Theory, where he posited at women experiencing hysteria commonly exhibited symptoms of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. His colleagues discredited his ideas, and he changed his theory to suggest that hysteric women were actually having neurotic fantasies of being sexually abused as a child. Now it's commonly accepted that memories of sexual abuse are repressed and often surface at a later time in life.
Circumcision is the most prominent form of male demonization, particularly demonization of male genitalia, in our culture--and as evidence suggests, high rates of circumcision are consistent with male on female violence.
Think about it, right after you're born, you're tortured in your most sensitive and private of places. This is betrayal immediately following birth, and leads to distrust of your mother in particular. Try to talk about this pretty much anywhere, and you'll be shut down by all sorts of victim blaming excuses. The truth is that men are the most prominent targets of sexual abuse in our country, and most other men are complicit in enabling circumcision to happen.
Sound familiar? That's right--Freud's Seduction Theory, where he posited at women experiencing hysteria commonly exhibited symptoms of repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. His colleagues discredited his ideas, and he changed his theory to suggest that hysteric women were actually having neurotic fantasies of being sexually abused as a child. Now it's commonly accepted that memories of sexual abuse are repressed and often surface at a later time in life.
Circumcision is the most prominent form of male demonization, particularly demonization of male genitalia, in our culture--and as evidence suggests, high rates of circumcision are consistent with male on female violence.
Think about it, right after you're born, you're tortured in your most sensitive and private of places. This is betrayal immediately following birth, and leads to distrust of your mother in particular. Try to talk about this pretty much anywhere, and you'll be shut down by all sorts of victim blaming excuses. The truth is that men are the most prominent targets of sexual abuse in our country, and most other men are complicit in enabling circumcision to happen.
