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The Fox who had Lost his Tail
"If I don't have it, nobody should have it"

A FOX, caught in a trap, escaped by tearing off his brushy tail.

After that, the other animals mocked him, making him feel so ashamed that his life was a burden to him. He therefore worked out a plan to make all the other foxes the same as him, so that in their common loss he might better conceal his own deprivation.

He called a meeting of foxes. A good many came to it, and he gave a speech, advising them all to cut off their tails. He said that they would not only look much better without them, but that they would get rid of the weight of the brush, which was a very great inconvenience.

But one of them interrupted his speech.

"If you had not lost your own tail, my friend," that fox said, "you would not be giving us this advice."

- Ćsop, 6th century BCE


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The Fox and the Grapes
"If I can't have it, it can't be worth having"

ONE hot summer's day a Fox was strolling through an orchard till he
came to a bunch of Grapes just ripening on a vine which had been trained over a lofty branch.
"Just the thing to quench my thirst," he said.
Drawing back a few paces, he took a run and a jump, and just missed the bunch. Turning round again with a One, Two, Three, he jumped up, but with no greater success.
Again and again he tried after the tempting morsel, but at last had to give it up, and walked away with his nose in the air, saying: "I am sure they are sour."

It is easy to despise what you cannot get.


Angry Toddler Logic

“I'm happy with my cut-cock, and glad I got cut as a baby. If I still had my foreskin I'd get that nasty thing cut off immediately!”

This is what I have heard repeated from cut men time and time again. With absolutely no knowledge of what he is missing, he declares instead he hates foreskin. The way he is now is exactly what he would have chosen for himself, had he been given the courtesy of making such a personal choice on his own. ...

This is nothing more than angry toddler logic.

Tell him he can't use the blue crayon right now, “Fine! I HATE blue. I don't want to color with your stupid crayon anyway!” ...

It is an infantile attempt to take what little control over himself that he can. It is an imaginary argument to make himself feel powerful in the times when he is feeling completely powerless.

He retreats to an imaginary world where he has choices and control. He doesn't have to go to bed if he doesn't want to. He doesn't have to brush his teeth.

The circumcised man never had a choice. It was stolen from him when he was helpless to resist. He has lived almost his entire life with no frame of reference to formulate his “preference.” All that is left to him is all he can ever have. Desire to be whole as much as he wants, it will never happen. If he faces this truth he knows subconsciously it will lead him down a path to a great deal of hurt and anger. He'll feel powerless and weak.

But he is a “man.” Real men never feel powerless or weak... do they?

Yet, in this, that is EXACTLY what he is, and what he was at the moment his foreskin was stolen from him. Without a choice for himself he has nowhere else to go, except to declare victory in the face of defeat. His psyche demands when he looks back at what he lost and is still missing, he announce, “That's what I wanted to happen all along.”

This is why the cut man is (usually) so adamant to subject his own child to the same loss. It is the only way the cut man feels he can ever really "prove" to the world (and much more-so, to himself) that he would have chosen the genital cutting he was subjected to. By choosing it by proxy for his child he finally gets to make the choice that was denied him. But, if he chooses anything other than cutting, he risks putting the lie to all those comfortable platitudes he's been clinging to his entire life. Even now, there really is no choice he can make.

Just like Aesop's fable, 'The Fox Who Lost His Tail' [and 'The Fox and the Grapes'], rather than admit his injury and face his loss, he will cry and cry, "It's better this way."

Maybe, if he tells himself this enough, he will actually begin to believe it.

When I hear a cut man claim, “It's what I would have chosen for myself,” I am left with no choice but to pity him. He's been reduced to nothing more than a small child throwing a temper tantrum over what he cannot have. [Insisting] he hates that which he has never tried.

It is one of the saddest things a cut man can ever say.

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Some translations give "mutilation".