Part 2
Puberty Rituals

The first symptoms of the conditions often appear with the first consciously active erection. Problems are treated following a conscious experience of pain, difficulty or tension. The easy step of monitoring previous to puberty, and preventing these problems in advance, plays little part in modern health care.

________________
PHIMOTIC RING
The rubbing action of a phimotic ring repeatedly passing over the coronal ridge of the glans causes pain and soreness, which may subsequently develop into inflammations or infections. Among my interviewed sample group, one practicing doctor described how an infection became so obvious that he was forced to tell his parents. A second, on reading this, said that his was a similar experience. The third medical doctor who I questioned had no infection, but reported masturbating painfully for five years, till he was 18.

A number of reports describe painful masturbation for several years usually until 18 when the boy is old enough to consult a doctor without fear of extra embarrassing complications. One boy who requested circumcision for painful adhesions at the age of 13 was advised to wait. Boys, and especially those with painful conditions, are quite capable of deciding for themselves at puberty if they want to be circumcised.

Rare, but significant is a paraphimosis: when the phimotic ring gets stuck behind the glans, causing the glans to swell up. This is a medical emergency and though it can be manually controlled, the usual sequence of events is Mum being horrified, rushing kid to hospital, where he is promptly circumcised.- If this isn`t a shock initiation then I dont know what is!

___________________
FRENULUM BREVE
During puberty and masturbation, the pain from a frenulum which is too short can usually be avoided e.g.13 "When masturbating, if I didn`t watch out and pulled the skin back too far, it was sometimes pretty painful around the frenulum, added to which especially to start with the frenulum skin would tear. These small wounds healed very badly, ... when I didnt really shake out all the urine, drops got under the foreskin and then it burnt even more"

e.g.14 "I often had pain when trying to fully retract my foreskin. I often wondered what to do about it but mostly ignored the problem. After all, when masturbating that didn't cause a problem, and when having sex with women I always had used condomes so far. Using condomes, the foreskin wouldn't retract that much and it caused no big problem." (RS note that during masturbation this pain was "often wondered about" and also "ignored")

	The Passages to Manhood - 4 of 12