Male genital mutilation! AKA circumcision

I never put my oar in, in these arguments. They're always hideous flamewars with people foaming at the mouth over RUINING MEN'S LIVES!!!!!!!!!!! Raaaaaaarrghhhh!!!

I do not have a penis, and I am not going to have children. So, I don't need to comment on this stuff. However -- this is my blog! And thus, here are my thoughts on PENIS DESTRUCTION!!!!!!!

I have been involved in some capacity with approximately 16-17 penises. Something like that (no, I don't really know anymore; some aren't worth remembering).

Of those, about a third were intact wangs. In that subsection, all but a couple had minor or worse issues with their foreskins (mostly various kinds of difficulty with retraction).

Out of the rest, two had been circumsized as adults because their foreskin problems were severe. And it's unsurprisingly not a lot of fun, I was told, and takes quite a while to heal up. You're not supposed to masturbate for a while, as well. Extra sucky, for an adult.

In my experience, a high percentage of men have some issues with their foreskins. I haven't done any research on this, but one of my sex partners told me that his doctor said about a third of men have issues. That sounds pretty likely to me. Though it could also be wrong, I don't know.

In any case, if that's correct and a lot of men have problems -- does that mean I think men should be circumcised? Not exactly. I don't quite think circumcision is the worst thing ever, but at the same time it is something that changes a penis. And it can change them for much worse.

I just really hate the attitude that says men who have been circumcised are less-than, or doomed to terrible sex, or just sex that isn't as good as it could have been, or are mutilated. That is such a shitty thing! Do men really need to be told they don't measure up, or are really missing out, when it's something they can't do anything about? Being resentful about what you have, and stuck forever thinking about what-if is so not cool. It sort of smacks of the kind of things women are told; if you can't have a vaginal orgasm/orgasm like X, you are not good enough.

Of the circumcised men I've been with, none had any particular problems from it. Sure, sometimes they're less sensitive.

Anyhoo, I don't have a conclusion to this. I just wanted to note that it's not so black-and-white as the flamewars will have it. I don't particularly want babies to be blanket circumcised, but I also think being circumcised as an adult sucks a lot harder, and I suspect quite a hefty percentage of men would have to do so anyway.

Couch potato feminist

Through the joy that is Netflix, we're over halfway through the TV series Angel. It's all new to me; I'd never watched it before. I haven't watched Buffy, either.

So, for nobody's edification or interest (I know my audience!) but my own, here's a short list of what I like and don't like about it, in terms of gender/race/sexuality/whatever else I think of, so far:

The Not-Bad

1. Ladies with their own sexualities! Although they're all hetero, it's still nice to see women who want sex and aren't passive. And, in the case of Cordelia, not even necessarily in the context of a relationship. Bonus: no slut-shaming. Cordelia has tended to be pretty up-front about her sexuality.
2. The women of Angel don't tend to just stand and scream. Sometimes they can be a bit passive, but generally they are more useful than that.
3. Daniel Dae Kim! An Asian man in a role where a white dude could have very easily been chosen? Yay! It's sad how pleased I was by this when he appeared. But of course there are mostly only white people, of course. The cast isn't all that diverse or anything. Still, that's better than a whole lot of shows.

The Bad

1. Is Lorne gay? I don't know. Lorne doesn't get any romance. Maybe he will, for all I know, but so far...nope (I imagine he doesn't ever). So, nothin' but hets as far as the eye can see.
2. Of course, that general lack of diversity again, in regards to sexuality, gender (other than cis), colour, whatever. I almost didn't bother mentioning it, because it's so expected. Which is sad.
   
3. Rape/impregnation. Cordelia got it a couple of times, Fred once. Oh, and Fred also got a slug in her as well. Hey, and that episode where Wesley stalked Fred...the number of times women have been impregnated/assaulted: too many. Gross.
   
4. Related to 3, there's a lot of violence against women. Yes, there's a lot of violence in general, but it feels disproportionate. Maybe it's just because the violence against women tends to be sexualized, or at least often worse. The dudes are less often kidnapped and assaulted, I think. They tend to be more often injured fighting. Cordelia's been tortured twice.
   
5. Now that I think about it, Lorne also gets assaulted a lot.
6. Wesley and Lilah. Nice Guy becomes the Bad Boy to get women. Blech. The BDSM vibe could be done in a so much better way. One that wasn't the same old rapist culture style relationship.
   

The president is asking for your help!

US-centrism gets so grating on the internet sometimes. It's just tiring! I'm fairly sure I'm not the only non-American on the internet.

Not to pick on Skepchick (well a little), since almost everyone does it*, but Save 4 Million Children Today! At least in Skepchick itself it references "developing countries", and not just "around the world", which suggests that maybe Canadian children are going to be saved by President Obama as well (and Sweden too, one would suppose).

I know you can more generously interpret "around the world", but it still just adds up to feel like AMERICA! and the rest of the world.


* Barring Shakesville, who try to be really awesome about this.

Same old same old in the skeptic/atheist community

http://www.blaghag.com/2011/05/were-not-here-for-eye-candy.html

Yeah; that's bad. But what about us non-pretty women? Where do we come in? Oh yeah, we don't.

Celebrating Death

Obama's dead; I remember Saddam too.

I still can't feel any joy in this. It saddens me that people make the choice to be reprehensible monsters. I wish desperately that no one "deserved" to be murdered. And I can't celebrate it.

I'm not sorry they're gone. I'm sorry for those they destroyed, and I'm sorry they lived like that.

But I can't be happy they're dead.

Thinking...thinking my thoughts

I was ruminating on ableism and disability issues last night for some reason (well, there's a reason to think about it, of course).

Part of it was about the point of this article; that it's not wheelchair-bound. A wheelchair is simply a tool -- and a good one. I realized that wheelchairs are rather like shoes.

People need shoes. I need shoes if I want to do a lot of things. Shoes give me the freedom to go places. Shoes don't mean I'm broken because I can't walk through snow or on pointy rocks without them. They're just a thing people use to make their lives easier.

Same with wheelchairs. Just like shoes, they give people freedom.

The second bit from last night was something that turned out to be a really helpful way to realize my own privilege. It was really invisible to me, the way that I can get into any building without having to think or worry about it. Or it was invisible until I pictured buildings with no stairs and what that would be like. I wouldn't be able to get into my own apartment (and most of the places I've lived would be similarly unreachable).

Thinking about it that way made it a lot more obvious how shitty and asinine it is to routinely block out PWD. It's not catering to anyone; no one thinks it's catering to abled people to have stairs. It's just access, and damn well anybody should get it!

Shitty aphorisms

A "friend" on Facebook just put this up as her status:

"Single is not a status.
It is a word that describes a person who is strong enough to live and enjoy life without depending on others."

I cannot stand this sort of thing. It's the "Real women have curves" syndrome. Humans seem to have a horrible tendency to decide that something is jerky, then swing all the way around and be jerky in the opposite direction.

There should be no problem being single, and no one should shame you or bother you about it. Period. But is implying that anyone in a relationship is a sad little co-dependent slug really the way to go about this?

Not to mention, that very few single people are completely independent of anyone. Last I heard, most of them have friends and/or family.

I defriended her for this; actually more for the "meh" answer when I noted the assiness. I feel like I'm making a big deal out of something small, but I get truly upset when I see this attitude.

I think it's probably this syndrome is the reason so many people think feminism is about destroying men.