I’d never heard the word intactivism until after I’d written “The Uncut Wood.”
My proofreader mentioned it in her email when she sent the story back to me.
Sidebar:
In the late 1980s, I’d worked with a filmmaker who produced a public service announcement arguing against circumcision. I don’t recall the term having existed back then.
TMI:
I was born in the American South in the late sixties at a Baptist hospital, and even though my parents weren’t religious, circumcision was pretty much automatic. Certainly the norm.
If I could go back in time, I’d definitely tell my parents, “Please don’t.”
But cut/uncut status was never exactly a fetish for me. It is for some people. That’s cool. I encountered uncut men here and there in my adventures, and I envied them their sensitivity, but I didn’t have a preference. It just so happened my forever partner arrived in my life intact.
He’s younger than me, and the practice has declined over the years.
Writing this story, I got to torture him with questions about his experiences and feelings growing up.
Did you feel self-conscious about being uncircumcised?
Are you glad you’re uncircumcised?
Did any lovers ever reject you because of it?
Did anybody objectify you because they had a fetish for it?
Do you feel any kind of particular connection to other uncut men?
I say “torture” because listening to me talk through my stories is one thing, but interviewing him about his feelings as a therapist might is not his favorite kind of conversation. He’s a stoic country boy.
But I need to inhabit characters to give them depth, and being uncut is not my personal lived experience.
I had to drag the answers out of him, but they were meaningful.
There was substance behind the pun.
Hopefully it gives the story something special — something that affects Hank’s and Gunner’s bond — without overt intactivism.
“The Uncut Wood” was nominated for Best Short Story in Goodreads M/M Romance Members’ Choice Awards 2021.
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Read the Bear Camp series by Slade James.