Just What Is Smegma And Why Does It Make Us Cringe?

Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2015-05-29 04:40

Article here. Excerpt:

'But smegma is far from some godforsaken curse of humanity, at least usually. First thing's first, as ticking and tocking animal bodies, we excrete oil and water from our skin all the livelong day, and for good reason. The oily byproducts, known as sebum, coat our skin against microbial invaders and keep the skin waterproof. Likewise, smegma serves its own purpose. Namely, it helps lubricates our genitals during sex. Particularly in uncircumcised men, it helps ensure that the foreskin can easily slide on and off the glans, or head, of the penis without irritation (though cut fellows still produce it). And it’s not just a human thing, all mammals make and use smegma to their heart’s content.
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As the 2006 review notes, it wasn’t just the smell that made people so dead set on finding a link between smegma and disease. It was the perception of sex as a dirty-minded hobby. In the 19th century, it was old hat to declare the very act of masturbation an abject sin, and along the way, both smegma and the foreskin were similarly demonized as unclean and degenerative to human health. That hysteria has mostly abated, but we’re still left with the idea that smegma is an unpleasant, unneeded part of our anatomy.

Nuts to that, I say! Evolutionarily speaking, we owe a great debt of gratitude (and our sex lives) to smegma. As long as we keep ourselves clean, there’s not a damn thing wrong with it. So next time you hear the word, instead of cringing in horror, you should instead mentally fist-bump the little oily secretion that could.'

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Ancient Egyptians were circumcisers. It was probably they who passed along the practice to Jews and others in the area. But it ought to come as no surprise that the practice began in a hot, dry, water-poor area of the world. This is undoubtedly where a lot of the rules around diet and what was and was not permitted to eat came from, and these rules survived as religious injunctions and even to this day in what foods non-religious people often assume are good for eating and what are not, or are appealing or not. In a water-poor place, I could see going to extremes to reduce the chance a man may pass along a bacterial infection to a female during intercourse because of his reticence to use too much water to bathe due to its scarcity. Why only men? Because it was the men who left the oases and other places with water for long periods of time to hunt, trade, etc., and they'd get into the habit of conserving water as much as possible. Once back at the town/oasis/camp/city, would these habits be easy to just turn off? Probably not.

But hey, guess what... we're not living in ancient Egypt. In fact, modern Egyptians can fully afford to spare a bit more water these days to make sure their penises are kept clean and I am sure they do just as well with it as any other modern men. Which leads me to this rather simple observation: The original perceived need (arguably not even an actual one) for circumcision is gone. So there's no further need to engage in it.

Simple enough.

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2015-05-29 04:48

Young boys must clean themselves.
In the process of cleaning themselves, they play with it.
(And learn to play without objectification or sexualized internal images: just playing with the skin for the fun of playing with the skin -- nothing to do with women and long before puberty.)

We cannot let them play with it.
So we cut it off.
And it is cleaner.
So now boys don't have to clean themselves.
But they still play with it.
Only now it is less sensitive.
So now they need stimuli to play with it.
(And learn to objectify to make it easier since the smooth skin is gone.)

But we cannot let them objectify.
So we take those images and wrap it in cellophane and say "bad boy for looking at pictures."

But the boys still play with it (only now they are starting to feel guilty and become slightly perverse and their level of objectification increases).

So we call them misogynists and punish them.
And now they are feeling very guilty and start acting out because Title9 calls them rapists.
So we put them in jails.

Meanwhile, girls can read romance novels and attend the Vagina Monoglogues and learn to play with it to their hearts content.

We never ask the boys if we can surgically amputate part of their body. So they grow up and become men who learn that a woman's body is not her body either.

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Submitted by ThomasI on Fri, 2015-05-29 08:05