My website www.trainsinkaos.net will be going down on (I think) December 23rd. It's up for renewal then, and I've neither the funds nor motivation to renew. Perhaps one day I'll have another site, and it may host some of those stories, but not for a long time, and certainly not with the same address.

On the one hand, it's quite unfortunate and I feel sad, but on the other hand I know there's little to no interest in me or my writing, so there's no point in paying $150 bucks a year for it. Especially since they got rid of the html "builder" I used (I entered the code, and then uploaded it) to an FTP manager which I've never figured out how to use, thus the website hasn't been updated in years as a result.

So, yeah, feel free to save what you like to your computer if you care to. My stories are not located on any other sites besides livejournal.

(What I planned to expand upon when saying that men see babies as less than or equal to women, before being told elsewhere that since male babies are male and will grow up to be men, they don't count and therefore I need to shut up about it, because women are the only victims!) *Bolding mine.

Rosemary Romberg - Anchorage, AK

With so many volatile issues surrounding women's health, why should women be involved in the growing concern against routine circumcision of males? Invectives have been hurled in every direction. "Males have a responsibility to sacrifice their foreskins to preserve women's future health!"* Trivialization: "Why should men worry about a simple little procedure removing a little bit of skin, when atrocities such as clitoridectomy and infibulation take place in third world countries?"** And, most astonishingly, in 1965 a doctor writing in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association accused:

"Perhaps not the least of the reasons why American mothers seem to endorse the operation with such enthusiasm is the fact that it is one way an intensely matriarchal society can permanently influence the physical characteristics of its males." (1.)

Meanwhile, amidst overpowering labor contractions, the birthing mother arrives at the hospital. Facing excitement, confusion, and perhaps fear and pain, she signs admission forms and permissions slips. "Circumcision? Why now, when we don't know if the baby is a boy or girl?" But her attention is quickly distracted by pelvic exams, the bleeping monitor screen, and a flurry of other hospital rituals.

The baby is born, perhaps through panting and focusing, fervently recalling her Lamaze instructions. Or she may be woozy or numb from medication, or even out cold. Later, in recovery the baby is brought to her - a bundled up cocoon. Her room fills with cards, gifts, and excited relatives. The first days pass in a blur, sore episiotomy or Cesarean incision, adjustments to breastfeeding or preparing formula and bottles, physical exhaustion, sleep caught however furtively cut short by infant wails. The baby - strange little creature, skinny arms and legs on a round belly and head. Brown umbilical cord stump shriveling and drying up. And, if a boy, end of penis red and raw, or tied with plastic clamp. All new, strange, the experience is all somehow sore, raw-edged, linked together in pain, warmth, and upheaval. We survive together.

What "matriarchal society?" What conscious decision of any kind?

Before men, as a collective voice, spoke out against male circumcision, it took a birth experience at home (my own), with a lay midwife in attendance, stripped free of all other questionable medical ritual, to convey infant circumcision in all its glaring absurdity. It took a mother unusually knowledgeable as a childbirth educator, to recognize this horrendous "blind spot" in our awareness. It took maternal protective instinct, cruelly violated to the core, mixed with writer's inspiration and a researcher's determination to give birth to the movement.

Added to this was Marilyn Milos' behind-the-scenes view as a nursing student, of the infant writhing in fear and pain on the Circumstraint board, her horror as a mother - "Was this done to my babies years ago?" - to give the movement its shape and momentum.

I like learning how things actually work. Knowledge is much more appealing than being willfully mystified.

Been reading a great book on human attachments, how it's formed (specifically during infancy) and how the people who raised us (specifically our primary caregiver) affect us for our entire lives.

It's called Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love by Robert Karen, Ph.d. Here's a block I felt like sharing today.

Quote:

---

The securely attached child did not allow themselves to be bullied or even pulled into a relationship that had hurtful dynamics. They either found a way to make the relationship positive, withdrew, or met the aggression with just enough force to discourage it. It was as if such behavior was foreign to them and they would have nothing to do with it. The anxious children who became victims, on the other hand, seemed at times to facilitate their own exploitation. [...]

To Sroufe it was self-evident that such piteous behavior patterns had their origins in the rebuffs the children had suffered when they'd taken their needs to their mothers. These children must have experienced emotional unavailability, rejection, or physical abuse at home such that it only seemed natural to experience or inflict it in other relationships. [...]

The behavior of securely attached children who reacted sensitively to their playmates and supported their more vulnerable friends also must have derived from their home experience. "If you're in a relationship, the relationship is part of you, there's no getting around it," Sroufe said. "How do you get an empathetic child? You get an empathetic child not by trying to teach the child and admonish the child to be empathetic, you get an empathetic child by being empathetic with the child. The child's understanding of relationships can only be from the relationships he's experienced."

---

It really bothers me that most of the people who are anti-circ, are anti-vaccination, too. The two are not in the same boat. Pro-circumcision and anti-vax use the same type of idiocy to support their claims. They lack scientific evidence, and are mostly supported by ignorance and the desire to support one's own will and biases. Vaccinations and have saved millions of lives, and were developed for that purpose. Circumcision was started as a blood-letting ritual/human sacrifice amongst the ancient Egyptians, and absorbed/copied by various religions and cultures since then (it has also never saved a life, and killed thousands; if not more). In the U.S. it was not developed for any sort of legitimate medical purpose (and still isn't), although it was claimed as such. However, these days we are aware that, indeed, circumcision does not cure boys and girls (yes, circumcision began in the US without a gender bias) of masturbation; nor bedwetting, paralysis, blindness, and a whole absolutely insane list of other "ailments" that began the scramble to circumcise in the late 1800s.

Since then, such things as social status, male insecurity, and the American obsession with "hygiene" and the new American state of denial, have caused it to continue; but, fortunately, since the 1970's, have not let it grow. Circumcision is dwindling, and hovers around 50% quite fortunately (in the U.S. only--virtually all other countries without religious rule think it's absolutely nuts), but the number of people refusing to vaccinate their children is rising. And it is for the same reasons that people continue to circ, yet the majority of these people don't! They see the actual, rational evidence against circumcision, and see the baseless conjecture by nutty fanatics against vaccinations as just as justified when it's about as 'scientific' as the pro-circ claims. There is no link between autism and vaccinations. Mercury hasn't been in vaccinations for the past decade. Evidence and genuine, falsifiable research proves this. The foreskin is beneficial, protective, sensitive, and aids in sexual function. Evidence and research prove this, too.

I just so want to think that the anti-circ folks are smart enough to realize why it's so bad based on evidence and reasoning, but they abandon it when it comes to vaccinations. They hurt their own case. Well, my case. It's, to say the least, dismaying.

However, with vaccinations so popular, unquestioned, and routine, like circumcision, I can understand the skepticism. And skepticism and questioning are great (people should know about vaccinations, and what's going into their child's body--but not when the info they're getting is crap). But coming to the conclusion that simply because something is so unquestioned, it must be wrong, is just as wrong. People need to open their eyes just as much to the proponents against vax as they do to the ones supporting circ. Vaccinations protect against diseases that are still around, and actually kill, with side-effects that are usually minor, with the major being extremely rare. Circumcision's only claim is to 'protect' against ailments that are extremely unlikely to ever actually occur, and rarely ever kill; while the side-effects are very significant (including the risk of death to 'save' infants from things that won't kill them) and affect the person, and their sexual partner[s]), for the rest of their life. I also understand that with people claiming that circ' is as harmless and 'essential' as a vaccination (which, again, it is so *not*), that it's easy to put the two in the same boat when dismissing one, they are really far from the same. Perhaps most concerning, though, is how it tends to work the other way around--people see vaccines as justified and rational (and those against vaccines as unjustified and irrational) and think circumcision must be, too.

I really want to see this.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_a7jkcMVp5Vg/SqLrIymt3aI/AAAAAAAAJv0/4lF6uyg_dn8/s1600-h/foreskin.jpg
(From Post Secret)

From Intact America:

No medical society in the world recommends male circumcision – yet newborn male circumcision is the most common surgical procedure in the U.S. This painful and risky procedure deprives over a million boys each year of healthy, functional tissue, while increasing medical costs by an average of $678 per baby.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is developing public health recommendations for the U.S. on male circumcision that could ignore the serious risks of this non-therapeutic surgery, such as hemorrhage, infection, surgical mishap, and death.

The CDC is the foremost expert on public health in our country and, as such, has a responsibility to share the truth about circumcision. Sign our petition to the CDC below and demand a truthful statement on the risks and harms of newborn male circumcision.

Sign It