Stuff Gay People Like: Having strong opinions about circumcision

A gay man may say he has overcome being limited by class, nationality, religion, race, age, or even HIV status when choosing a long-term partner. Those things – in exactly that order – are the stages of sexual enlightenment gay people go through as they pass through their young adulthood; it is an extended phase marked by events including: “choosing a graduate program,” “venturing briefly into Eastern religion,” “doing an underpaid odd job for an art nonprofit” and finally “moving to Seattle or Chicago.” But in the midst of these stages of shedding dating taboos, a gay man comes to care more and more about one thing, which is the amount of slack skin you have on your dick.

The amount of slack skin you have on your dick, or more plainly, your circumcision status, is extremely important to gay men. That’s because gay men who have had their foreskins removed cannot escape the thought that they are missing out on a big thing in life – an experience. It is easy to imagine something you have being missing: close one eye, and now you know what it’s like to only have the other one. It’s much harder to imagine what it would be like to have something you lost before you can remember (imagine having antennae, or gills), which drives gay men into horrible cognitive dissonance.

Such men will choose one of two routes: to become totally grossed out by uncircumcised men so as to never be confronted with it (aka sour grapes), or to become totally fixated on uncircumcised men so that they can live vicariously through their partners. They will also probably consider joining a support group or political cause against circumcision, and eventually have an awkward confrontation with their parents in which they force them to apologize.

Stuff Gay People Like (SGPL) is a satirical/cultural column. Visit the Facebook Page.