Not sure how badly you want it back, but it is possible to restore. Non-sugically. Basically skin under tension causes Mitosis (skin cells dividing to make more skin) - think putting on weight, gaining muscle, getting pregnant, or ear gauges. You tug the skin long enough and eventually have your hoodie back. The results are surprisingly impressive. r/restoring_foreskin has a bunch of info
bruh. I don't necessarily want it back and was just angry about the fact that it was taken from without my consent in the first place. But thanks for the info anyway, tho not sure what I'm gonna do with it.
Oh, I’ve seen that. It’s fascinating. There’s a ball with outer clamps and varying degrees of weights you can add on a dangly bit. You attach the contraption for some number of increasing minutes per day, and it stretches the skin surrounding the glans until it’s long enough to encompass the glans. After a while, the little ball will be encompassed by the new foreskin.
He says it’s not painful and I believe him, but not being the owner of a penis, it looks at least uncomfortable to me. Then again, I’ve never used gauges, either, and as you said, it’s pretty similar to that.
I don't want much just want my foreskin back again
No it's not TMI I shared it 'cause we're friends
My parents chose this road but I'll choose where it ends
Don't I deserve it all? Gonna grow it back again
Oh yeah I remember this guy. He has a good cause (anti circumcision) but had to ruin it with Bill Gates conspiracy theory nonsense. Also I love How to with John Wilson
edit: hmm actually there is some stuff about bill gates and circumcision so I should probably fact check myself here
What's even funnier to me is how people will full on rage when someone brings up female genital mutilation while in the same breath saying circumcision is fine
People will defend the most batshit insane things just because they're used to it.
But I also think there's an element of (understandable) insecurity to it.
If they concluded that mutilating the penises of babies is wrong, then that makes their penis "wrong", and society is really weird and judgemental about penises. There's a huge amount of pressure applied to men about their genitals.
We constantly talk about big dicks and "big dick" energy. Casually saying someone has a small, soft, or ugly dick is seen as a scathing insult, we constantly mock people for it, both in life and in media. Comments about their penises is something used to build up or knock down men. It's used to make them feel powerful and manly, or weak and emasculated.
It's no wonder people rally so hard against those who want to see an end to male genital mutilation. The very victims of it typically don't want to feel like their dick is "wrong", because society at large has told them that if their dick is bad, they aren't real men.
I refused circumcision for my son (25 years ago, US hospital), and had to remind the staff several times because it was just assumed it would be done. I stopped them 3 times during different shifts when they were about to take him from our room for the procedure.
Then when it came up in conversation when he was an infant, people would say to me ‘you should have done it’, because he would get infections (he never did), or he’d be bullied in gym showers (he never did to my knowledge), or whatever. My take was it should be his decision, not mine.
The pressure was really intense, though. It’s weird how interested people can be in someone else’s infant’s penis. We’ve never talked about it, but reading stories from other men, I assume he’s happy being uncut, and I’m glad I didn’t do it.
e: for anyone reading this days later, I did ask my son for his opinion prompted by this conversation, mostly because of responses I got elsewhere in this thread that made me question my decision:
Me: Hey man, so feel free not to answer this if it’s too personal, but I was having a debate about circumcision and another parent challenged me saying I’d made the wrong decision. So yes/no/I don’t want to talk about it cuz that’s weird, do you regret my decision?
Son: I don’t, and none of my partners have, either. I only get thumbs up and compliments.
I hope that wasn’t too personal.
Me: Not at all. Thank you for giving me your and your partners’ review!
So yeah, it’s not just my assumptions. And no regrets.
The main problem is that people tend to intuitively think of the least invasive form of male circumcision and the most horrific form of female genital mutilation.
That wasn't the original reason. It was to stop masturbation. The whole cleaning thing was a later rationalization when they realized how fucked up it was.
If you never got circumcised, you'd likely be saying "I prefer uncut. Looks a bit weird with a piece missing."
I'm willing to bet if you surveyed, say, Israel or Saudi Arabia, on what looks better between chopped and natural, they'll say circumcised. And if you surveyed, say, Australia or Spain, they'll say uncircumcised looks better.
If you go back to the beginning of this procedure, how(/if) people cleaned themselves looks very different from. Our modern world.
Because of that it seems it being a health issue is a lot more likely for the origin of circumscision as a regular societal practice. Even if that was not the main reason but one of the supporting reasons people allowed it to become normalized. The history of hygiene(or the lack there of) is horrifying.
I mean Lysol was developed as a feminine hygiene product... We have done some very questionable things because of snakeoil practices even in relatively modern times (which i think religion is one of the OG snakeoils)
What are we doing today that will look as crazy to the people of the future as circumcision does to many of us right now I wonder?
I've seen people lose their shit over babies with pierced ears and young children getting tattoos. There's all sorts of dental work you go through as a kid that you have functionally no control over.
Even had someone chew me out because a foster kid I was taking care of got a haircut (three years old and she'd literally never had one before).
At some point, it is the parent's duty to take care of the child, and that extends to medical decisions with profound long-term consequences. I get wanting to change the culture, but the degree to which people exaggerate the harm of circumcision struggles to eclipse the degree to which it is defended.
Cutting off your legs also makes them easier to clean.
There is some substantive utility to legs that doesn't extend to the bit of flesh around the tip of your dick.
Foster kid is a different situation but in general seriously don’t bring someone else’s kid to their first haircut. Thats an important moment for parents. It’s a major milestone, especially with girls. That original in-utero hair behaves different.
Three years isn’t that weird. I know a girl who was 4 for her first. She had the most gorgeous, long curls. It was really hard for her mom to get rid of those.
Know a couple boys who were each three too. They look like totally different kids once they lost all their baby curls.
I don't really care. My dick works great, I wouldn't do this to my kids but my parents trusted the doctor. I still love my parents anyway.
E: also, this illustrated girl looks really weird, and this is a really weird conversation. Real women do not look like this, and I wouldn't get naked in front of a girl who looked like this. Eeesh.
I don't hate the doctor either. It was a long time ago, and intent matters. I don't think the doctor wanted to hurt me, they likely bought into the studies and groupthink that were prevalent at the time.
The result is unfortunate, but it happened, and we all strive to do better with our own kids, especially now that we have things like the internet.
Yeah, my parents didn’t do it, and I ended up getting phimosis in my early twenties and having to get it done then.
On the one hand I do appreciate that they left it up to me, but on the other hand it was intense pain for a couple of weeks and at the time I was really wishing that they had just gotten it out of the way.
For me, it’s a wash. That may or may not be typical but it’s probably slightly better that they left me the choice? Can’t put the foreskin back on the penis I guess.
My son was born with hypospadias, so I didn’t really have a choice with him. Had to get it done or he would be peeing out of the bottom of his dick forever, which saved me and my wife a difficult decision.
All of this said though, I personally prefer being circumcised. Cleaning is way way easier, and in my own personal experience I have a lot more sensitivity when doing anything fun with my hog. My partners have also preferred it, and some of them shared with me that they had previously gotten UTIs from uncircumcised partners.
Like I said, I appreciate that my parents left it up to me, but at the same time I think the genital mutilation trope is way overblown in the majority of cases. Not all of course.
It's certainly close enough that we shouldn't be trying to butt into other people's lives over it.
You should need a strong reason to have the state invade people's lives. This ain't it. I wouldn't pierce my baby's ears either, but I'm not looking to put anyone in prison over it.
“I love my parents , even though they were too ignorant to think for themselves,” is how genital mutilation perpetuates. People need to be held accountable for not questioning inane rituals and traditions. Education, not mutilation.
Always weird to be reminded that the World’s eminent superpower is obsessed with cutting bits off babies’ dicks. But then, maybe that’s the secret behind their economic strength?
After all, the Romans did some pretty wild stuff, like making their horses generals.
I love when this topic comes up because people definitely don't have a weird fixation on foreskin and totally have balanced discussions that calmly hears both sides.
If you intentionally do not recognize it as a legitimate medical procedure with lots of science backed behind it, then you're purposefully spreading misinfo. That's just a fact. Just like how some people in this thread are saying it reduces sexual pleasure, scientific evidence states this is not true. It's also significantly safer and less risk when they're a baby. These are just peer-reviewed objective facts that have been extensively tested and confirmed.
I think part of the problem with this discussion is that a lot of us who were circumcised without consent spend most of our early years thinking it's normal and there is nothing to be upset about. So when people point out the practice is generally very harmful, it is upsetting. It can be hard to process at first, and I think, unfortunately, some people double down on traditional rationalizations as a defense mechanism.
That being said, I am not a fan of people referring to my genitalia as mutilated/mangled or to me as damaged. It is completely valid to be upset about having your foreskin removed without your consent, but I feel sometimes people veer a little too far in projecting their own hurt onto others. Many people live fulfilling lives with circumcised penises, and some even do it by choice, so, speaking strictly for myself, I generally am glass half-full about it.
Yeah, I think since the practice is based on organized religion and there's no consent when circumcised, the validity of circumcision is quite questionable.
But, medically speaking, is circumcision harmful?
That's a genuine question and I see a lot of uncircumcised people complain about phimosis and the skin flap getting tighter and more uncomfortable as they grow older, being cut sounds better.
Why is this a both sides thing? Circumcision is a Jewish rite that became a larger thing because of a couple mentions in the Christian New Testament. It also has some medical application for individuals with certain conditions.
Doing it to all male babies doesn’t make rational sense unless you are a specific type of religious.
While circumcision has been a Jewish tradition historically, it has come a long way since then. There are decades of medical research and studies that prove that it is a safe procedure for newborns and bring numerous benefits later in life. Please trust the science and not the religious rhetoric.
Mine was at 16 because my foreskin stopped growing. I honestly would have preferred to have it done at birth before I could remember the pain (like my brothers).
I never learned to roll back my foreskin when I was a wee lad and so once when I was 8 it got infected and I had to apply ointment to it and keep gradually peeling it back from its swollen and cemented position like trying to squeeze a tennis ball out of a tight gym sock. it hurt to pee for a week. Still, Im glad to have my foreskin.
I'm uncircumcised and after fapping when my head is still exposed i cannot wear underwear or pants omfg it's so fucking uncomfortable touching anything dry, IDK how circumcised people live, it's like constant pain.
oh my god, too real 😂 except I was there, my scar is more brutal and I'm all the more stupid for letting it happen. I'll explain, and I'm going to do so in more detail than I ever have before.
I was living in China in 2017 and I got an infection on my guy. In hindsight because I had a new girlfriend, was having a lot of sex, and wasn't cleaning very much. My girlfriend takes me to the local hospital in this "small town" (different meaning in China), and I sit down in front of this miserable looking bloke with a fat, fancy golden wristwatch who says: "你有两个选择 。。。either take this medication and the infection will probably return, or 'peel skin' and be free of it forever."
I looked at my girlfriend with a grin and asked what she thought would be best. How bad could it be anyway if they do it to babies. Probably like getting your ears pierced.
She drags her thumb across her throat and screams "off with his head!" or more likely she calmly says "peel skin." All I remember is that she said it without hesitation. The slimy looking doctor slithers upstairs to the operating room and I get on the table where there's a large light above my head which, turned off, is acting as a mirror. I can see everything as his assistant passes him the syringe to knock out my guy and then the scalpel to begin the scalping. All I could see was a bloody mess when his phone rang in his pocket. I could smell the blood as his assistant removed the phone from his pocket and answered the call. "They want to speak to you" she said. So the doctor puts the phone between his ear and his shoulder and continues cutting and chatting away. "That's my dick you prick!"
The next day my guy is bandaged from head to toe. I tell my girlfriend to stop visiting because every time I get an erection I drop to the floor in writhing pain. Limping along the pavement a group of 80-somethings breeze past me. The pedestrian light goes green and I barely make it to the island in the middle of the road before it goes red again. I lie awake every night, plagued by spontaneous erections and excruciating pain. As the wound healed a grotesque scar formed as a reminder that the body is sacred.
Sure; it's absolutely awful and I hope somebody intervenes soon. It's also embarrassing that as an American our money goes in part to fund it. What else would you like to say about it?
Oh right, you're just once again being a disingenuous douchebag who is trying to equate real world harm reduction voting strategy with implicit endorsement of a genocide as if the alternative wouldn't only exacerbate the situation, still refusing to actually use your own words but rather relying on the better words of others, only now in this totally unrelated thread.
Good job falsely assuming I have pro-zionist opinions just because I believe in practical application of real world policies and strategies though! I had to unblock you and the other dude from that thread temporarily so I could restore a removed comment; I appreciate the reminder to block you again.
Finally to your other point in the previous thread, I don't block opposition discourse, I block disingenuous bad faith actors. You know, like you.
I'm in the minority here but I got it done to me as a kid (no choice, barely aware etc) and I'm grateful for it. Just way cleaner overall and no discernible difference - there's the rumor that it affects sensitivity but I'm just as horny as the rest of the damn men are. Also because I was so young (or maybe the docs at the hospital were skilled), the only scar is a tiny scab on the under side that doesn't affect anything. I wouldn't endorse it for children but I can't argue it was terrible either.
It affecting sensitivity is not a rumour, it's a fact. There are nerve endings in the foreskin. Ergo, it must remove sensitivity. And this can be corroborated by many who get the procedure done as adults.
And the "way cleaner" thing makes zero sense unless you don't have access to running water. The world outside of the US + Middle East aren't walking around with dirty dicks, and if you don't have running water, all of you will be dirty regardless.
There are babies in the US that die each year from circumcision complications. It causes pain. It reduces sensitivity. Plenty of them are done "traditionally' - i.e. without any pain relief or sterilisation. It leaves scars. 5% of circumcisions are botched, sometimes causing pain and discomfort - particularly during sex - for the man's whole lifetime.
It's completely unnecessary, and barbaric.
The fact that we're in 2024 and there's still places out there cutting parts of the dick off of babies as a religious or quasi-religious (in the case of the US) ceremony is crazy.
the reason he mentioned the horny bit was ironically the exact reason this was started in the first place, because the man who tried to make a cereal so boring it would kill morning wood, said it would make people less horny (well not just Kellogg but many others as well)
I'm not saying cleanliness is a problem, it's just easier to clean. If you exercise often, it's easier to maintain a short hairstyle clean than a long one for example.
'Horny' may have not been the best term to use but I hope the message got across. If I was more sensitive before getting cc'd, then I must have had one hell of a hair trigger
Lol how is it cleaner? You just wash your dick and it is clean anyways. You are juat trying to justify it because you dont want to blame your parents for cutting pieces off you to fit their aesthetic.
I've had a foreskin all my life and it's just another part of your body that you learn to care for, like ears.
Also like ears, it takes a little bit of extra work to care for your foreskin, but it's worth it because not-unlike ears, foreskin heightens your sensitivity to stimuli.
Also, like ears, the idea of lopping it off is barbaric on its face. We in the west are happy to use the descriptive, and more emotionally resonant term 'genital mutilation' when we talk about the equally barbaric practice that is forced on females in other cultures, but we still hide behind euphemism and branding when talking about mutilating perfectly good penises.
Also, this is intelligent design? You leave at least two defects in the V1 production push, refuse to release a day 1 patch, and your hot fix for one defect is just to cut if off - eventually, meanwhile the appendix is just left to lurk.
Just to offer a correction to this for you, it is not a "rumor" but physiological fact. Circumcision removes the frenar band, which is very densely innervated and a principal errogenous zone for those that are uncircumcised, additonally, the Meissner's corpuscles, which contain thousands of touch receptors and tens of thousands of endings that are biologically specialized for sexual pleasure are amputated.
I can't, personally, attest to the effect as being cut is all that I've ever known but, the evidence is undeniable about the fact that circumcision diminishes the male sexual experience.
You're probably correct. All of this non-consensual body mod shit, for men and women, sucks.
What's done is done, but I won't repeat the mistakes. I also harbor no Ill will about it either, I'm living life with the hand I've been dealt, and having fun too.
Getting it done as an adult is fine. You consented. I'm also fine with piercings or tattoos on adults but not on babies for the same reason. Though that's a bit of a false equivalence as genital mutilation is more dangerous and less reversible than those other two, so I guess I find them less objectionable, though still fucked up.
Getting it done out of medical necessity is also fine, for pretty obvious reasons.
Because he's A) talking nonsense, and B) making genital mutilation of babies sound like it's not that bad.
You want part of your dick cut off? Cool. Do it when you're old enough to consent to it. Genuinely. If that's what floats your boat, then do it. People should have the right to body autonomy. Slice your ear off as well if that's what you're into. Anything.
If this were about tattooing babies, or piercing them, or cutting off their earlobes, everyone would rightly be against it (even though all of these are less dangerous and less likely to have complications).
It's only because Americans, Jews, and Muslims are used to this practice that they accept it. If it were a new thing, it would be seen as the barbaric practice that it truly is.
I believe there's also the element of "well if I admit that circumcision of babies is wrong, that means there's something wrong with my penis. And I don't want there to be something wrong with my penis. Therefore I'm on the side of genital mutilation being ok."