The Five Stages of Circumcision Awareness

Over the years, I have noticed that people’s reactions to the topic of circumcision are almost entirely predictable. This led me to create what I call “The Five Stages of Circumcision Awareness”. Everyone who first learns about circumcision will have their thought on the subject progress in this order, though most never get past stage 2. It can be used to understand how people will react when confronted with the topic, and how their thought process will evolve over time. The speed in which one progresses through the stages can vary widely, but I have never seen the accuracy of it fail.

1. Ignorance

The majority of people have no idea that circumcision is an issue. When they first encounter the concept that circumcision is bad, there are a few common reactions. The most common is simple surprise, shock, and confusion. Humor or thinking it is a joke is also common since it involves genitals, and occasionally subconscious anger will arise.

2. Denial

Once someone has been exposed to enough factual information that circumcision is harmful, the next step is denial of these facts in order to maintain their ignorance. Common logical fallacies such as “X number of people are circumcised and they seem fine”, or “I don’t have any issues with being circumcised” are used to subvert the facts they just learned about how circumcision is harmful. This is a natural and normal response in order to avoid stage 3, which is the most difficult.

3. Existential Crisis

Stage 3 is the most uncomfortable and difficult to accept, and therefore most people never get to stage 3. Even when confronted with overwhelming evidence that circumcision is harmful, most people choose a state of denial to avoid the existential crisis. I wrote more about this in a previous post.

4. Anger/Resentment

Once someone has entered the existential crisis, the easiest way out of it is to transform their emotions into anger and resentment towards others. This can be towards their parents, doctors, religious institutions, society, culture, etc. While it is true that being circumcised is the fault of these groups of people, anger towards them is not productive. When this anger is channeled into shock-and-awe protesting or education onto others, it typically is ineffective.

5. Action

After realizing that holding anger and resentment is not effective at solving the problem, the person turns towards action that is. This takes place in the form of non-fanatical education. This also means accepting that while education does help to solve the problem, not everyone can be saved from the harmful effects of circumcision. Education can move someone from stage 1 to stage 2, but most will never get to stage 3. Stage 5 can also mean restoring one’s foreskin, although others decide not to and make peace with where they are at.

The 5 stages of circumcision awareness are important for foreskin restoration because most men who decide to restore typically do not fully commit to restoration until stage 5. Those who are still in stage 3 and 4 will often make excuses or find reasons to not restore, such as “you can’t regrow nerves”, “it doesn’t look exactly like an intact foreskin”, or “it would take too much time”. Part of entering stage 5 means accepting the cards you were dealt, and that foreskin restoration is not a 100% solution. Those who understand this will be consistent with restoration, and will be satisfied with the remarkable improvements.

Image: I, Satyakamk, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons