Blender Swirl Nightmare

– One Man’s Story of Circumcision Pain and Healing

“Friends, since babies can’t speak for themselves, and since the evil forces are stepping up their lies and propaganda, I feel it is my duty to share my own experience.

It’s going to get real and personal. Reader discretion… depends, I reckon. If you have the good sense to leave any children of your own intact, you really don’t need to read this. If you don’t have the good sense, or if you’re not sure, you NEED to read this.

Paraphrase of what I hear naive mothers say every day:
“My boys are circumcised and they’re just fine. They don’t remember it.”

Here’s a reality check. My mother would have said the same thing for the first 25 years of my life. Little did she know what torment I was going through, and little did I know how circumcision had caused or contributed to my torment. Was she ever in for a rude awakening!

Having awaken and done research myself, I angrily confronted my parents by phone (multiple times until they ‘got it’), sent them literature, and let them know in no uncertain terms that I had been harmed, and that I was pissed off and incensed that this de-cision was made for me, and that I was devastated at the irreversible damage to my body and sexuality.

What torment, you ask?

For the first 25 years of my life I had recurring nightmares of losing a body part or faculty. Every time I woke up, I would thank God profusely that I (unlike my mother, who was was completely crippled from the waist down from the age of eight) had a complete, normally functioning body, and thought I would never want to live if any such thing ever happened to me…

Eventually, I learned to train myself to recognize the dream as such, and then divert my attention to more pleasant dreamworld material, thanking God for protecting me, and moving on without even waking up….

Meanwhile, as a small child, I had a strange memory. I remember my parents waving me bye-bye with stupid looking grins on their faces, as they disappeared from my sight, and as I descended into a world of white. The way I remembered it was that when I was a baby my parents put me in a giant blender, like the white one in the kitchen.

So, once I was old enough to speak, I asked my mom, “Mommy, why did you and [Daddy] put me in a blender?”

She looked at me quizzically and said, “What are you talking about, honey? We never put you in a blender.”

Me: “Oh.”

Until my adulthood, I never figured out what that memory was all about. I just figured that what I remembered was really a dream that I mistook for a real event. Clearly what I was remembering was my being carried away from my well-meaning parents on the way to the circumcision room. I probably passed out at the operation, because I only remember being whooshed away. And my mom died without ever hearing about the blender and my matured perspective of it.

I have since encountered or heard from more and more men with their own memories of infant circumcision. For example, one Jewish intactivist said he had a memory of being eaten by a goat. Why should that be any surprise?

Oh, and guess what — Psychology Today has a lot to say about circumcision and memory. Perhaps you should debate with them if you think you know so much.

Meanwhile, read up on myths you likely believe about circumcision. https://www.psychologytoday.com/…/myths-about-circumcision-…

But wait! There’s more.

The glans penis is an internal organ like your analogous counterpart, the glans clitoris, intended to be covered, protected, soft, warm, moist, and sensitive. The exposed glans, until it callousses and desensitizes, is extremely uncomfortable when it touches anything foreign, including clothing.

In my case, by the time I was in grade school, I remember reaching into my pocket to adjust my equipment every time I stood up. I was much more calloused on the left side of the glans, so by turning my penis to the right, the more sensitive side was against my body where it was most comfortable.

From now on, when you see men adjusting themselves, remember this.

In any case, I learnted to prefer bun-huggers rather than boxer shorts, because the bun-huggers minimize (but not eliminate) the uncomfortable flopping around and chaffing on the clothing.

But after high school I was naive enough to join the Marines … where in boot camp we were made to wear boxer shorts under our costumes, whether sitting, standing, jumping, running, etc. Now I had no way to adjust. I was at the mercy of the Green Machine, in step willy-nilly, and by the time I graduated boot camp, my penis was noticeably further desensitized.

At the time, I just figured that it was a design flaw on the part of God or ‘evolution’ or whatever, and that it was just ‘the way it is’. After all, we’ve been taught that loss of sensitivity to the penis is part of growing up and getting old.

The exposed glans is susceptible to cold and discomfort. On two occasions as a young man, I experienced intense pain to the glans as a result of cold — once when skiing, and once when out running. Fortunately, in both cases I was near enough civilization that it didn’t take me very long to get back inside and begin the painful process of thawing out.

I shudder to think what torture I would have endured had I not been able to quickly get indoors.

Again, at the time I figured it was a design flaw, and that I had been foolish to venture out in the cold with insufficient clothing. I learned to remedy the situation by stuffing toilet paper in my bun-huggers when I went out running in the cold.

Learning that one of the multiple functions of the foreskin is to keep the glans warm, even drawing the penis toward the body for protection, was just one of many reasons for me to be pissed off about what I was missing.

Back to early childhood.

Since the glans is an internal organ and is supposed to be highly sensitive, its rubbing on clothing or anything is uncomfortable. But over time as the pain gives way to numbness, with just the right amount of stimulation, whether intentional, the glans becomes recognized as a source of pleasure, the primary one, in fact.

A lot of erections are caused by the glans rubbing on the clothing. And minus the most pleasurable part of the penis, the glans becomes the focus of gratification. And without the moveable tissue and stretch receptors inherent to the prepuce, the best way to masturbate is: rubbing the glans directly on one’s own opposite hand, bed sheet, and — as the desensitization progresses — even a blanket! Circumcised boys are known to rub the skin right off the glans doing this. And now you know of another one. Think your boy is going to talk to you about this?

Most circumcised boys eventually learn to use artificial lubricants and other gadgetry to masturbate … and as it turns out … to even have sex, whether anal or vaginal.

Yes, women self-lubricate. So do intact men. When the woman dries out later in life, artificial lubricants become necessary, and sometimes not enough, if her partner is circumcised. Once you understand the functions of the foreskin, it all makes sense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_dzeDvx2QA

So, I thought the reason I wasn’t feeling much in the way of sexual gratification was simply because I was missing the magical touch of another human. You can’t really feel yourself, I figured, so once I got naked with another human then the sparks would fly.

As a teenager, my first sexual experience was with another boy, also circumcised. It was a disaster. I now know that the equipment failure, etc., was because of our circumcision status.

But at the time, I figured the real problem was that we’re straight. It must be the magical touch of a WOMAN that’ll finally set those sparks flying.

When I was 24, and shortly before I started researching circumcision, I finally got to experience a woman. And my, oh my, did the sparks ever fly!

For her that is.

Every little touch had her squirming, moaning, groaning, thrashing, … and ultimately screaming uncontrollably. It was her first orgasm, and she told me later in a letter that she was ‘awe struck’ by the intense wave of pleasure that swept over her entire body.

That was not much of a surprise, since my friends and I all ‘knew’ that women enjoy sex better than we do, because they’re more designed for it.

I now know that this is not true for intact men, who are perfectly capable of full body orgasms, multiple orgasms, and who are every bit as sensitive as women.

Meanwhile, I hardly felt a thing. In fact, the excitement-gratification ratio was so far off that I ended up masturbating over twenty times in the next 24 hours, desperately trying to get that ultimate satisfaction … to no avail.

I now know that circumcision had everything to do with the failed experience… but at the time, I figured that the real problem was that we didn’t go all the way. The hand job just didn’t quite get the job done.

With the mistaken belief that the magical ingredient to sexual bliss and joie de vivre was having intercourse with a woman, that became more of a priority for me, which led to my trying to rush to go all the way.

That didn’t turn out too well, not to mention that — guess what — sexual intercourse is not the magical touch when you don’t have all the equipment for it.

Meanwhile, I started becoming aware of circumcision. I didn’t even know what that word was till I was in high school.

When I asked my mom about it, she told me that it involved cutting off ‘the foreskin of the penis’, and gave some lame, “Oh, it’s something they do for hygiene or something. They said it needed to be done…”.

I don’t think I said anything more than, “Oh.”

But I was not in the least bit happy about it. It doesn’t take an education to figure out that there is something fundamentally wrong with cutting off parts of babies’ bodies, like so many farm animals, as if man weren’t made in the image and likeness of God, as I’d been taught all my life.

Besides, if it’s such a good idea, what do people do in ‘primitive’ living situations, i.e., sans hospitals and ‘proper’ equipment? Use stone flint? Doesn’t it hurt? And what if the baby doesn’t want to be cut?

I felt violated, but said nothing. But I had never seen (or noticed) an intact penis. I had no idea what this ‘foreskin’ was. Eventually, I lied to myself and figured that my mom was mistaken. Having seen only mutilated penises, that seemed the norm, and I figured I might not be missing anything after all.

Then when I was in Okinawa with the Marines in 1986, I saw an intact penis for the first time. He was a platoon mate, a farmer from Nebraska, who had apparently had forgotten his towel and came strutting out of the showers to his cubicle. I’d always liked the guy. He was easy-going, and didn’t seem bothered by much of anything. And I’ll never forget that smug, contented look on his face as his manhood, completely and neatly wrapped, swung before him.

I turned to my locker to open it. I was moving in slow motion. SO THAT’s what I’m missing! It looked so nice and comfortable, unlike my exposed, calloused, desensitized member. I felt rage. HOW DARE my parents consent to having mine cut off! I had always wanted to be whole and natural. I started wondering for the first time whether circumcision was a reason for the noticeable desensitization.

Then I stopped myself. The reality was so horrible to contemplate that, again, I lied to myself. Circumcision can’t have a detrimental affect on sexual pleasure. American doctors know better and would never do anything that would cause such harm. Besides, there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. I’ll never have that done to my son, but there’s no point in getting all bent out of shape over it.

I made a very conscious effort to stuff my rage and forget about it.

But circumcision, and general hatred of male sexuality, kept rearing its ugly head — from the laughter that so many people seem to enjoy at the sight of a man getting struck in the balls — to the snickering of my college mates when a circumcision was depicted in the movie Jesus of Nazareth — to the jokes routinely made about circumcision.

I was never laughing.

Eventually, I was interested enough to learn more and see if there might be something I could do, i.e., activism to put a stop to this nonsense. Rosemary Romberg’s book, Circumcision: The Painful Dilemma was the first exposé I read. https://circumcisionthepainfuldilemma.wordpress.com/

My suspicions were not only confirmed, but as any intactivist will tell you, the more you know the more you’re against circumcision. For one thing I learned about female genital mutilation and its striking similarities (including cultural, religious, and medical insanity and denial). And the protective functions of the foreskin were confirmed.

Back to 23 October 1990.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I found out that, while with foreskin restoration, partial recovery of sensitivity and function is possible [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreskin_restoration], the foreskin itself is LOADED with irreplaceable, highly specialized, erogenous tissue. That’s when I felt DEVASTATED, and became an intactivist. That was the moment I knew that it was my duty to protect those too helpless to defend themselves.

I was living with my maternal grandparents at the time. When I told them how I felt about what was done to me, they wasted no time empathizing. Grandma said, “I think it’s CRUEL!” Grandpa, happily intact, told me that had he had any idea my folks would do something so stupid he would have said something to intervene on my behalf. But they, all being born and raised on a farm before the circumcision craze caught on in the States, had no idea this would even be an issue.

Remember the nightmares? Well on that day, 23 October 1990, I got to experience the nightmare, complete with the grief, and unlike the nightmares of my sleep, with the horrific, sickening realization that this was not a dream out of which I could just snap….and which never goes away.

I eventually noticed that the nightmare of losing body parts or faculty has never returned since that day, 23 October 1990. I believe that the nightmares were reflective of the circumcision, and that once the horror was acknowledged, rather than denied, the dreams were no more. I guess you might say this is more fodder for Psychology Today.

Over the course of the next few days, I began the process of foreskin restoration. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreskin_restoration]. The practice has come a long way since then, but at first the only thing I could think of was using tape (any tape — masking, Scotch) to stretch the vestigial tissue over the glans, impossible to complete at first.

Until I improved my technique and equipment, I kept my penis taped up, braving painful nocturnal erections, lesions from the tape, and so on. The pain and hassle were nothing compared to the pain and hassle of having the exposed glans chaffing, sunburned, or cold.

I’ll never forget the glorious feeling of going for a run for the first time in my life with no uncomfortable chafing whatsoever, and no need to adjust. And it’s only gotten better since. There is now no longer any need for friction for sexual gratification, as I now have enough gliding tissue, as our Creator intended.

However, like many men circumcised at birth, I have pubic hair on the shaft of my penis. No amount of stretching has corrected this.

You see, when baby cutters talk about anteaters and elephants’ trunks, they are derogatorily referring to the appearance of an intact boy. What they don’t understand is that that overhanging ‘anteater’ on a boy is what the adult penis grows into. When the foreskin is amputated, there’s nothing to grow into, so skin is pulled from around the base of the shaft and scrotum onto the shaft. There’s no way to determine how big the baby is going to get, so finding the ‘right place’ to cut is nothing more than guesswork … and they guess wrong way more than you’ll ever know because most men are not willing to commit social suicide by complaining about their penises.

When I started speaking out and sharing literature and such (remember, this was pre-internet), I naively assumed that everyone, being presented with the truth, would drop to their knees, kiss my feet, and thank me up and down for WARNING them and sparing their boys what I have to live with (and what with all the complications that you usually don’t hear about, a lot of men are much worse off than I), and then protect their boys and enlighten all their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family. And then in, oh five years or so, circumcision and other genital mutilation will be on its way out.

Alas, in time my vocabulary was enhanced by such terms as ‘cognitive dissonance’, Stockholm Syndrome, ‘willful ignorance’, and ‘cultural blinders’. The truth really is that heinous. Denial is definitely the easy way to go. Denial is often expressed by victims of genital cutting to perpetuate the practice on their own children, rather than admit they’ve been harmed. This is not gender-specific.

Parents such as the ones that inspired me to write this: The jig is up. Welcome to the Age of Information. My mother caved under pressure in 1965 (1967 for my brother), when there was no internet, and not one person validated her concerns that this was painful and not necessary.

Mothers today have no excuse. With no shortage of information at one’s finger tips, only shamefully willful ignorance would lead you to consent to your child’s mutilation. Your job as mother is to protect and defend your offspring, and say NO. My mother erred, and she eventually admitted it, and apologized. That’s what made it possible for me to forgive her. I later learned from a family friend that she regretted her decision to have her boys circumcised more than anything else.

In fact, my father and brother converted as well. It’s too late for us, but the cycle of abuse is broken. That’s the important thing. Not your ego, not your stubbornness, not your sexual preference. The issue here is breaking the cycle of abuse and ending the crimes of genital mutilation — male, female, intersex. The time has come.” ~ Rich Angell