u/inredditorbit

I’m eating in my local Chipotle right now. Came in with my partner for this great Show Your School Colors promo where entrees are BOGO today when you wear apparel with a school name or colors.

At the register the cashier said, “I gave you guys the discount”. We said thanks, and I asked if she could scan my Chipotle Rewards QR code so I could earn points for the one meal. She said no, her managers told all the employees that today is an either/or day: get the BOGO discount OR earn Chipotle points. Is this correct?

I asked for a receipt so maybe I could put in for points later tonight. She declined to give a receipt, saying people have been trying to get Chipotle points with it.

It all seemed strange. Food is good, though.

I was a high school exchange student in Nuremberg just 30 years after WWII. It was a learning experience in many ways and really opened my eyes to the stark contrast in the way Americans and Europeans approach health and human rights and, in particular, circumcision. We showered after PE in both countries, but in Germany every boy in my class was intact (and probably oblivious to what circumcision is) while 80% or so of my classmates back in America were cut from birth.

I don’t want to alienate anyone, but in 50+ years of dealing with circumcision and related topics I honestly believe that most parents who circumcise have the good interests of their sons in mind. They’ve been taught that foreskin removal aids in hygiene and health, and is psychologically good for boys to feel like they fit in with their friends. Putting that circular logic aside for a minute, all of that is garbage on its own. If no one circumcised their sons, boys would still fit in. Bullying is rare and is learned behavior, which should be shut down.

The main culprit in the USA is our medical profession, which is tasked with knowing better. Nevertheless, doctors and nurses continue to solicit circumcision on nearly every newborn boy and in some cases actually badger parents or even try to make them feel guilty for opting out.

Parents are told: It won’t hurt, risk is near zero, your boy won’t miss what he grew up without, he’ll thank you, hygiene will be a breeze, infection risk will be almost eliminated and it will look so much prettier and more normal. Plus, he’ll probably match dad, brothers and friends.

Parents aren’t told: None of this is guaranteed and there’s an entire armory of downsides to circumcision, especially in infancy. You’re wrecking a normal and remarkable structure of the body that performs a myriad of beneficial functions.

In other words, in trying to do good they’re making things so much worse. I remember that German has a word for exactly this scenario:

Verschlimmbessern — to end up making something worse in the process of trying to improve it or do the right thing.

Every time I hear that word I think of the example of infant circumcision. It inevitably takes a healthy boy and diminishes, damages, harms him. I don’t care what the altruistic motivations are… simple common sense should scream that it’s wrong. We don’t do this to girls. We don’t do this to any body part but the penis. Generally we don’t do this involuntarily to anyone but infants. It’s not compelling; it is a human rights violation on a billboard with marquee lights. And everyone doing it agrees that it’s ultimately not necessary. It’s presented as a parental choice, where one doesn’t actually exist.

I wish English had such a concise word to convey “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — because you’ll likely fuck it up.” I hate what circumcision has done physically and mentally to so many fine boys and men in this country.

Screw good intentions on someone else’s body.

Routine and religious circumcision is a prime example of verschlimmbessern.

I’ve been doing this a long time, for more than 50 years. I’ve given presentations all over the world and done interviews with major news outlets (newspapers, radio and TV stations, podcasts and online forums). The vocabulary of intactivism should be well-known, but I still see people struggling.

Here’s part 1 of a primer that can be cut-and-pasted.

Glans ▪️ The head of the penis is the glans. Not glan (which isn’t a word), gland or glands. It is singular and pronounced glanz. We say “the glans is”, not “the glans are”. The plural is glandes. In languages other than English it is sometimes called the glande, gland or acorn (Eichel). But in English it is always the glans. All come from the Latin root meaning a body part that grows and recedes.

Ridged band ▪️ Never, ever, the “rigid band”. Not only do ridged and rigid have very different meanings in English, but they are pronounced differently from one another.

This is an anatomical formation primarily on the dorsal side of the penis that results from the frenulum restricting the retraction of the inner foreskin mucosa when pulled back (manually or from an erection). It is thought to enhance friction during intercourse and was posited as the primary site of the ejaculatory reflex by Dr John Taylor in 1996 (published in the BJU).

Prepuce ▪️ Latin-derived name for the foreskin. Foreskin and prepuce are interchangeable. It is properly pronounced PREEpyuce or PREPyuce.

Frenulum ▪️ This is the band of mucosal tissue that runs from the meatus (see below) to the frenular delta on the ventral side of the penis. Sometimes colloquially called the banjo string because it gets pulled taut before the rest of the shaft skin does. The frenulum serves to govern the range of retraction of the foreskin and to help form the ridged band. It is sometimes called the frenum. Spanish: frenillo.

Etymologically it means “little bridle”. It is related to Romance language names for brakes (French: freins, and Spanish: frenos).

The frenulum is the distal terminus of the raphe (see below) in the penis. We have examples of frenum or frenulum in other areas of our bodies. You have a dental frenulum between the top of your top two front teeth and your upper lip. (And a smaller one below.) You can feel them with the tip of your tongue. The flesh between your thumb and forefinger is a frenulum.

A condition called frenulum breve (BREV-ay) is an atypically short frenulum, usually strongly attached at the meatus, that makes it difficult to retract the foreskin and can cause bowing of the glans downward during manual retraction. Frenulum breve is sometimes misdiagnosed as phimosis (see below), which technically is a tight or inelastic mucocutaneous junction (where the inner and outer foreskin tissues meet up at the tip of the foreskin).

Raphe ▪️ Pronunciation: ray-fee, RAF-ee, RAF-ay or sometimes RAFF.

This is a flesh seam that runs from the anus, across the perineum, up the ventral side of the penis, and terminates at the meatus. Every male has one. It is a result of sex differentiation in the womb. Some men mistakenly think it is a scar from surgery. Often after infant circumcision the raphe gets misaligned with the frenulum.

Meatus ▪️ Pronunciation: mee-AY-təs or mee-AT-əs. Never “meet us”. It is related to Spanish “mear” (may-AR), which means to pee.

The opening through which urine is passed. Most Americans call it the pee slit or pee hole. What it should never be called is the urethra. It may correctly be called the urethral opening or the urethral distal terminus. The male urethra is an 8-inch tube (on average) that runs from the bladder to the meatus. The shape of the pendulous urethra is generally visible in most men as a bulge along the length of the ventral side of the penis.

The meatus has natural lips that tack shut when urine or semen are not being passed through it. Most neonatally circumcised men have lost all or most of these lips through abrasion and lack of blood flow to the area, and are left with a generally open hole at the urethral terminus. When this hole begins to scar over and get small, it is called meatal stenosis (mee-AY-təl ste-NO-sis) and may require surgery to enlarge.

Phimosis ▪️ Phimosis is a condition in which the foreskin does not let the glans emerge easily or fully. Pronunciation: fy-MO-sis or fim-MO-sis. Sometimes incorrectly spelled phismosis.

Smegma ▪️ The accumulation, as its base, of sloughed skin cells and transudated moisture. As there are no glands in the foreskin or in the sulcus or on the glans, the sebaceous nature of smegma derives from the sebum present in the skin cells. Brazilian: sebo. I have seen it misspelled in English as schmegma, shmekma, shmickma, etc.

The name smegma comes from the Greek word for soap. The male foreskin retains smegma to maintain the pH environment of the preputial biome as a base for healthy bacteria and proteins. To prevent other substances mixing with smegma and pathogens possibly thriving in the biome, regular rinsing of the preputial space and glans with clean water is good hygiene and keeps the correct pH.

Dorsal ▪️ Upper side Ventral ▪️ Underside

All intactivists should be familiar with these terms and their correct pronunciation and usage, as it shows erudition and confers credibility.

I filed for bankruptcy in Dec 2015 and the trustee fully discharged it in January 2019. American Express was out almost $50,000 on 2 cards.

I began getting credit card offers almost immediately, but held off at first. Eventually I got a VISA card and a MasterCard. Within a year my credit had shot back up from 650 to 840. Credit Karma and Experian keep sending me notices about cards I’m “highly” likely to get approved for, all with soft pulls.

Every time I apply for a Delta AmEx card there (I really want the free checked bag benefit), I get instantly turned down. Like, neck-snappingly fast. Some have said AmEx would still turn me down from the grave, and I believe it.

Today I got a credit card offer from Bread AmEx/Comenity Bank in my USPS mail. It said I was pre-approved. On a whim I scanned the QR code, entered the offer number, reviewed my pre-filled data, and hit “Submit”. I was immediately approved for a $10K limit card.

Does this mean I’m back in American Express’s good graces? Something tells me they’re going to realize tomorrow what they’ve done and cancel the card. If that doesn’t happen, have my odds improved for applying for a Delta Airlines AmEX card? I still can’t believe my eyes.

I’m new to Allegiant and flying tomorrow night. I just checked in online and was assigned a seat. It’s at the very back of the plane, by the bathrooms.

The flight looks pretty light. Currently 104 of the 168 seats are unassigned, including many entire rows. When I go to “Manage my flight” in the app, it shows my assigned seat as still available (for $19) and all the seats in my section, last 8 rows, are $18 or $19. Further forward go for $22-34.

If I’m in a “$19” seat, why can’t I change to another for free? Or pay $3-15 to move forward? I guess I just don’t understand how this works. I have a hunch the flight is going to go out at least half empty and now that I have been assigned a seat it would be nice to exchange this window seat for an aisle seat of equal value. Is that against Allegiant’s rules?

Thank you