Imagine for a minute that you are a newborn baby; for nine, quite months, you've sat in a peaceful, warm, nourishing womb, listening intently to the sounds outside; the voices of your mother and father, their friends, their own parents, their sisters and brothers. You've felt your mothers' hands through walls of flesh caressing you; maybe you've heard music, maybe you've even been in moshpits or climbed mountains or belly-danced with your mom, you've experienced the world through her, cushioned within her uterus.
Then she and you experience labor together. Maybe you feel a bit frightened, and even experience some pain as part of this process; but you are still safely inside your mother's body, and at this point, you are used to being squished and squeezed, so a little more squeezing as you pass through your mother's cunt doesn't bother you the way it might if a grown adult was to attempt a similar passage. Besides, you have this nice collapsing skull, just for this journey! Amazing what nature comes up with hu? So birth is a little stressful, but since you've never experienced stress before, you handle it well (or most babies do.) Then, suddenly, there are bright lights and lots of action and that is all a little overstimulating; lots of hands on your little body, someone vigorously rubbing you with a towel (maybe the baby is suddenly aware of his or her skin for the first time,) lots of loud talking, and this weird "where-is-the tight-mommy body around me?" feeling. I'm sure all babies feel a strange mix of overwhelm, joy at their new freedom to move and look and experience, and shock at all the sensations and sounds rushing in at them. You'll see many newborns who cope with all of this overwhelm by closing their eyes and keeping them closed, sometimes for several hours after the birth. They aren't sleeping, they are just trying to keep some of the sensations out.
So how do we welcome these young ones in this culture? Well the first thing we do is snatch them away from mom; as soon as the baby emerges fully, often the umbilical cord is clamped and cut, baby is bundled into a towel and rushed away to be weighed and measured. No time is given to either mom or baby to integrate this miraculous separation of the two of them; those two who have been literally and figuratively the same being for nine months, now suddenly, are expected to do just fine completely separate of each other. In biodynamic births, it is interesting to see how moms, left to pick up their own babies, react to that moment that the baby finally leaves their body; they usually need a minute or two with closed eyes and gasping, and meanwhile, baby lays between their legs, doing the same thing. Blood from the placenta fills the baby as he or she lays there, still feeling some momma skin connected to his or her body, until momma inevitably starts the chant "oh baby baby baby," or "my love my love my love," or "don't cry everything is ok," and picks baby up to breast.
Not only to we separate mother and baby as thought they where machines reproducing in a factory, not living beings with feelings and needs, but we circumcise our newborn boys, or to put it into reality, we chop off pieces of newborn dicks. I watched a circumcision video at work last night, and I said "ah ha, no wonder we've got a culture of sexually confused/repressed/hurt people who associate violence with sex.." If you've never seen actual footage of a circumcision taking place, I'd encourage you to seek it out; it is one of the most brutal, horrific things you can image; next to baby harp seals being beaten to death. Lots of the penis is actually removed; I don't care what anyone says about it being "just a little bit."
I have a house-mate right now who spent the first five years of his life in Russia; because of that, he'd not been circumcised. When he got to the states, his family, who are Jewish, decided to get him circumcised. He recalls a traumatic experience with lots of pain and hallucinations. He said this about the experience "good thing it happens to most babies when they can't remember..."
But do they remember? Some people say these experiences stay in our brains, buried in our subconscious. And does that translate to our sex lives? I believe it does. If our first experience in the "outside world" with our gentiles involves traumatic pain and the brutal cutting away of part of our gentiles, surely we are affected.
Babies who are circumcised are routinely depressed after the "operation," and usually have little interest in nursing, bonding, and other newborn activities. This is so common, it is considered "normal."
Are babies able to give consent? How can their basic human rights get stripped so we can have our fun brutalizing their penises? Obviously, the parents (or maybe the doctors,) somehow derive some pleasure from this, since it isn't for the baby. Isn't there something wrong with this picture?
STOP THE BRUTALIZATION OF NEWBORN BABIES KNOWN AS CIRCUMCISION!
Love ya,
Carrot
I just ran across this article this morning and I thought it fit in this thread.
Circumcision cuts hurt country people
It sounds from the article like uncircumcised males use a lot more water in the shower then circumcised males.
So now you have to weigh the minor trauma of circumcise (and I'm very certain I don't remember mine) against the cost to society and the environment of a lifetime of wasting extra water in the shower. Carrot, for somebody like you I would think that would be a tough choice.
The article mentioned an alternative method of performing circumcisions that was perhaps less traumatic than a scalpel or that little guillotine (Maule?) thing that the Jewish folks use . I'm not too sure about it. It might be better and might not.
On our ranch we castrated our calves with a couple of flicks with a very sharp knife. One flick to remove the scrotum sack and a second to remove the testicles. Some of our neighbors used a special pliers like tool that stretched a very thick, strong and very small rubber-band and allowed it to be placed over the scrotum. I would not have wanted either to happen to me but that rubber-band looked horrifying.
then I purpose we cut the labia off of all baby girls as well; one less thing to wash, therefore each shower will be approximately 2 seconds shorter...
I've heard all sorts of arguments for circumcision which claim it is "cleaner" to be circumcised, but that is like arguing that because little kids frequently have runny noses, we should just chop the tips of their noses off so they won't be tempted to pick them or something...
At this point, studies haven't been clear about whether being circumcised prevents diseases like HIV; most of the studies where very flawed; they where performed on truck drivers in Africa who where paid to participate and many of whom where "lost" from the study before it was completed because they moved or something; those studies are not only unethical in my point of view, but very poorly done.
A little extra washing with intact genitals is, in my option, much better then less washing with mutilated genitals...
Love ya,
Carrot
but I have to interject as a woman. Granted, this observation might be pointless, if we consider how "cut off" we all are from our natural states. Still, as a woman, I find the uncircumcised penis extremely unattractive. I am very capable of using my intellectual imagination to get past most hang-ups, but this one is pretty big.
It doesn't matter to me, since my husband is circumcised, but honestly, I feel sorry for uncircumcised males in America today. I am sure that it is a cultural thing, and that if everyone stopped circumcising their boy babies women would get used to it pretty quickly. Still, as much as I can get on board with your proposition, I have to say that it would have to have some pretty fierce backing with strong efforts to educate our communities, and widespread refusal to allow the practice.
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I always feel a little baffled when ladies tell me this; I feel like the uncircumcised penis is so much prettier then a circumcised one. But this is probably largely cultural as well; if I hadn't had that long-term relationship with the French-Canadian guy with the uncut penis, I probably wouldn't feel that way.
The first time I saw his intake penis I was a little taken aback; I thought it might be broken or something. But quickly enough I learned how sexy foreskins can be...I don't know if this is the right place to write about the details, but I feel that in some ways, a foreskin makes a man's genitals more "equal" to a womans...
About half of the men I've been with have had an intact penis; the West Coast boys born starting in the early eighties mostly have intact penises it seems. I absolutely love the foreskin.
Love ya,
Carrot
this is one of the reasons I love your blogs, you are "balls out," and venture on shaky ground. If you want, you can edit this blog by adding NC-17 in the title or as a tag. I did that when i announced I would be blogging about sex, but I haven't got around to doing it yet, except in response to others' blogs.
So if you rate it, people have a clear choice to read or not, and you are less likely to get any flack.
Anyway, I am sure that individual experiences regarding exposure to any part of anatomy related to sex is very powerful and leaves strong impressions, especially of they are early or primary ones.
I have blogged about having to draw an uncircumcised penis for my CASA kid because she didn't like giving oral sex because penises smell and taste bad. That prompted the discussion, which led my illustrations, and she was enlightened. She never knew about circumcision, physically or intellectually.
Point being that anatomy differs from person to person and culture to culture, and so do personal tastes. No one way is better or worse, but I think we all benefit from being exposed to (either directly or indirectly) different kinds of genitalia, such as groomed or not, erect or not, circumcised or not, etc.
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for the reasons you describe. I have read that babies who were born in water are less likely to have issues like ADD and ADHD. Since they come from a fluid filled environment, the transition into the outside world is much less traumatic. I have also read the same (about ADD/ ADHD) thing about what I know to be called Le Boyer births, where the baby is laid on mommy's chest at birth, and the cord is not cut for some time. Mom's skin keeps baby warmer than the towel. It is important to keep newborns warm, especially since they are wet when they come out, because they take a few months before they learn how to regulate their temperature. I really don't understand all the hurry around birth.
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They sure do remember!
With my son, I do not remember the reason I was not there for when they decided to do the cutting, but when I got back he had been "fixed". The week before he would settle bundled and swaddled into our arms and gaze at us cooingly. After the surgery, he refused to be wrapped up into the blanket...he would demand in baby tones to be freed. He would lay exhausted on my shoulder and tolerate the blanket drapping... a complete change in my eyes. When talking with the nurses about this they told me that he was to big (he was born over 9lbs and this was a few wees later) to hold still with their hands like normal, so they had wound the blankets around his limbs to keep him still.
I feel really bad and a little gross for having him put through this just for stupid matching ideations and tradition. ALthough this some how seems less horrifying, I can now see why there are still areas that mutilate women in female circ.
Thank you for bringing this up.
My good friend in nursing school had just been all upset after watching a c-section and how they yank the child away and left it laying alone in the open hard box...it was actually one of those warming bed things which only made it slightly better but she had not realized that it was a warm place. I had never thought of her point till she brought it up and its the same as yours... I am vocal about kids and shorties being people too in need of love and respect, I never thought to apply it all the way to the enitre American birthing process. Anyway, If I did not know better I would think you two were one in the same.
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.~- Anais Nin