Laws, Sausages and Circumcision Videos

“If you want to respect sausage or law, don't watch either being made."


A common scare tactic from intactivists is that you should watch a video of a circumcision in order to be properly horrified by the procedure.

To prove their point they usually recommend a video where some poor, wailing infant is being circumcised decades ago when people were morons [1], and they believed that newborns could not feel pain thus they were not given anesthesia (not even for major surgery, not just circumcisions). It is never a clean surgery with only a few drops of blood and a calm and comfortable patient -- even though recordings of such procedures are just as readily available.

It is also irrelevant if you are getting it done as an adult.

On the other hand almost any surgical procedure can look gruesome to someone not used to seeing such things. If you are the type who passes out when you nick your finger in your kitchen and you see a drop of blood, you definitely should not watch videos of any surgical procedure.

Do you think a face lift or liposuction looks more appetizing than a circumcision?
Yet people don't demand that you watch videos of them before going under the knife.

Notes

[1] For a while there was a belief that newborns could not feel pain, and they were operated on without anesthetics -- like a regular horror movie:  

[1.a] Why Are So Many Newborns Still Being Denied Pain Relief? 

[1.b] Infants' Sense of Pain Is Recognized, Finally 

[1.c] Babies Don't Feel Pain: A Century of Denial in Medicine 

[1.d] Why Infant Surgery Without Anesthesia Went Unchallenged