I Know What You Mean, Margaret

• Responses to First Learning about Affect Theory by Jim Duffy a.k.a. J.C.D., 2/28/97
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    • Men and shame by Margaret Blakely, 3/28/97
      
      

Margaret, until I saw a movie with sound of an actual circumcision without anesthesia I thought very little of the subject myself. Like almost every one of the ways that men are or have been mistreated, circumcision is typically ignored, made invisible, part of the ho-hum background of everyday life, or trivialized with amused disregard. It's this aspect of circumcision, as a paradigm for the disregard of male suffering, that made me want to use it as an example. Thus, what bothers me about circumcision is not so much that is was routinely done without anesthesia, for science progresses. Affect Theory and a new understanding of pain physiology and neonatal psychology teach us to no longer disregard our empathic resonance by failing to respond sympathetically to an infant's immensely loud and anguishing screams--espcially if flesh is being torn and cut! There is, I bleieve, shame and a huge amount of backed-up affect (falsely believed to be authentic affect) of every sort that provide affective scaffolding for the cultural norms of silence and sturdy inhibition of vocalized affect--espcially vocalization of distress-anguish about male mistreatment!

Margaret, you really made my day with both your thoroughly congenial agreement with a personal example about Chauncey's observation of female anger toward men and your favorable reaction supporting the view that circumcision indeed is not a trivial matter. Your support is most appreciated.

Incidentally, I believe in my posting in which I write about circumcision there is also a link to my very humble web site where one can find a link to Lloyd de Mause's scholarly essay on the history of child abuse. The link to my web site does not work becasue I put a period at the end of it. If anyone is interested, just enter the address of my web site in the URL Location box of your web browser it should work if you omit the periods at the end. Just in case, here it is again, without the period at the end: http://www/geocities.com/Athens/3162

• Woops, I Goofed Again on My Web Page Address by Jim Duffy, 3/29/97