You don’t remember it.
You were too young—just days old, maybe a week. The room was bright. The air cold. You couldn’t speak. You couldn’t run. You couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
But your body felt it.
The sudden pain. The confusion. The absence of comfort. No one explained it to you. They couldn’t. You wouldn’t have understood.
And so your nervous system did the only thing it could:
It adapted. It learned something. That touch is not always safe. That connection might come with pain. That vulnerability has a cost. Years later, you wouldn’t remember the moment.
But maybe you’d find yourself pulling away in relationships. Struggling to feel during sex. Looking for something—anything—to help you connect, or to numb out completely.
And maybe no one ever told you: It could be because your very first experience of physical intimacy… was betrayal.
Today, we’re asking a question that’s almost never asked.
What if circumcision… was trauma?
Listen to the podcast episode here.
The Science of Infant Pain
For much of the 20th century, doctors believed that newborns couldn’t really feel pain. Their nervous systems were “too immature,” they said. Their brains weren’t developed enough.
In fact, until the mid-1980s, it was standard practice to perform surgery on newborns—including open-heart surgery—without anesthesia. They were given muscle relaxants to keep them still. But nothing for the pain.
Circumcision was no different.
The prevailing belief was that the baby wouldn’t remember, so it didn’t really matter. But that belief turned out to be dangerously, tragically wrong.
In the last few decades, researchers have learned that infants not only feel pain—they feel it more acutely than adults. Their pain receptors are fully functional. Their ability to regulate that pain? Not yet developed.
Which means that for a newborn, pain is not just intense—it’s overwhelming.
And when that pain is experienced without explanation, without comfort, without consent… it leaves a mark.
Not necessarily a visible one. But something deeper.
In neuroscience, it’s called imprinting. In trauma studies, it’s called dysregulation. In plain language? It’s pain without a name.
The body remembers what the mind cannot.
And so while a baby may never consciously recall their circumcision, their nervous system may be shaped by it forever. In the absence of safety, the body builds defenses. In the absence of comfort, it learns to self-soothe—sometimes in ways that look like control, addiction, or numbness.
And what happens to a culture that begins life that way, generation after generation?
We’re not just talking about a single moment. We’re talking about a pattern. A ritual so common, so accepted, that few people have ever asked:
What does it mean to begin life this way?
No Words, No Consent, No Escape
To understand why circumcision might be traumatic, we have to understand what trauma actually is. Trauma isn’t just about what happens to you. It’s about what happens inside you when your nervous system is overwhelmed—and there’s no way out.
It’s not the knife. It’s the helplessness. It’s the betrayal. It’s the silence.
And circumcision, for many babies, checks every box. A painful, invasive procedure. Administered without consent. In a body too young to fight, too fragile to flee.
The baby can’t understand what’s happening. He can’t say no. He can’t escape. And often, no one soothes him afterward.
This is what trauma therapists call the perfect storm:
high threat, zero control, no comfort.
And that kind of experience doesn’t just fade away. The nervous system remembers. It forms survival strategies. And they don’t go away just because the child grows up. They become embedded patterns—ways of being in the world. Disconnection. Hyper-independence. Fear of intimacy.
Or sometimes, the opposite: a desperate craving for closeness. For comfort. For touch. But always on terms that feel safe. Controlled. Predictable.
Because deep in the nervous system, there’s a rule that was written long before language: Touch can betray you.
And the mind may forget. But the body doesn’t.
So what happens when a society builds itself around this pattern? When entire generations of men carry a wound they never had words for?
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They become boys who grow into men who don’t know how to ask for comfort. Who don’t know why they flinch at softness. Who can’t name the grief inside them—but feel it just the same.
And maybe—just maybe—that wound didn’t begin in adolescence, or in school, or in heartbreak. Maybe it began the moment someone told their body: This isn’t yours.
And then took something from them… before they ever had a chance to say no.
The Long Echo—What Trauma Leaves Behind
If trauma is pain that never had a witness, then circumcision may be one of the most widespread, unwitnessed traumas in modern Western medicine. And just because it happened before we had language… doesn’t mean it didn’t leave a message.
In fact, it may have written the first chapter of the nervous system’s story.
Trauma researchers now understand that early, unresolved stress imprints deeply into the brain and body. Infants who experience pain without comfort show long-term changes in cortisol production, altered brain development, and heightened startle responses.
One study found that male infants who experienced circumcision without anesthesia showed increased pain responses to routine vaccinations months later.
Their bodies remembered what their minds could not.
“Circumcised male infants exhibited significantly stronger pain
responses to routine vaccinations at 4 and 6 months of age
than those who were not circumcised.”
- Taddio, Katz, Ilersich & Koren, The Lancet, 1997
Chronic early pain has also been linked to dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis—the stress response system that governs how we respond to fear, threat, and even human connection.
And it doesn’t just stay in the background.
Men who were circumcised as infants are statistically more likely to experience:
Sexual dysfunction
Difficulty achieving orgasm
Delayed ejaculation
Erectile challenges that are not linked to age or vascular health
In neuropsychological terms, what we’re describing is compensatory behavior—when the body overcorrects for lost sensation or unacknowledged injury.
For many, that might mean pursuing more intense stimulation—porn, roughness, novelty. For others, it may show up as emotional detachment—a quiet, numb sort of distance that’s hard to explain.
Not because they’re cold. But because their nervous system learned long ago:
Connection is dangerous.
We like to think that modern men are struggling because of new problems—technology, loneliness, attention spans. But maybe it started before all of that.
Maybe we’re watching an entire generation live out a pain they don’t remember… but that their bodies never stopped preparing for.
Modern Masculinity and the Cost of Numbness
Something’s happening to American men. They’re pulling away. From relationships. From emotions. From themselves.
Rates of depression in men have skyrocketed—but so has emotional suppression. Male suicide remains four times higher than female suicide. Now, to be clear—suicide is complex. There’s no single cause. But in cultures like the U.S., where circumcision is widespread and emotional vulnerability in boys is often discouraged, we have to ask: what’s shaping how men feel—and what they believe they’re allowed to feel?
And nearly 1 in 4 men under 40 now reports regular difficulty with sexual function. We see the surface symptoms: Addiction. Hopelessness. Erectile dysfunction. Rage. Isolation.
But what if these aren’t the problem? What if they’re strategies? Survival mechanisms learned in the absence of emotional safety?
Because when a man grows up with a nervous system shaped by pain, touched without consent, disconnected from comfort, he doesn't stop needing intimacy. He just stops trusting it.
And instead of softness, he learns performance. Instead of connection, he learns control. Instead of vulnerability, he learns how to numb. Some of that numbing looks like porn. Some of it looks like perfectionism. Some of it looks like “I’m fine.”
But beneath it all is a wound. A wound that may have started long before puberty. Long before sex.
A wound that may have been wrapped in gauze before he ever had the words to ask: Why did this happen to me?
In trauma studies, we talk about “adaptive behaviors.” They’re the things you do to survive a world that doesn’t feel safe. But over time, those adaptations can become prisons.
You don’t just forget how to feel. You begin to fear it.
And if enough men are raised in this silent, stoic survival mode… Then maybe the crisis in modern masculinity isn’t about a lack of strength. Maybe it’s about too much unprocessed pain.
Because when your first experience of your body is shame or hurt…
That body becomes something to manage. Not something to live in. And that disconnection doesn’t just stay private. It ripples. Through families. Through relationships. Through culture itself.
Until you’re left with an entire generation of men who can perform—but not feel. Who can climax—but not connect.
And who quietly wonder, behind closed doors: Is something wrong with me?
The Question No One Thought to Ask
Most people don’t question circumcision. Not because they’ve thought it through—but because they’ve never thought to think about it.
It’s just there. Like fluoride in the water. Like sitcom laugh tracks. Like the idea that a man should be fine even when he isn’t.
But what happens when we finally ask the question that’s been hiding in plain sight? What if this… was trauma?
Not a religious ritual. Not a cosmetic choice. Not just a “snip.”
But a formative, unacknowledged wound. One that comes at the moment when we are most vulnerable—
And leaves no words, only echoes.
The echo of a nervous system that doesn’t know why it’s on guard. The echo of a body that flinches from connection. The echo of a man who’s never been told it’s okay to feel what he lost.
When trauma goes unnamed, it doesn’t disappear. It disguises itself.
As performance. As numbness. As silence.
But once it’s seen, once it’s spoken aloud, even just as a question—the spell breaks.
That’s what this episode is about. Not blame. Not outrage. Not a demand to relive the pain.
Just a moment of permission.
To wonder. To grieve. To ask:
What if the first thing taken from you… wasn’t just a piece of skin?
What if it was your earliest experience of safety?
What if it was your right to choose?
What if it was the moment your body learned that love… might come with pain?
What if this was trauma?
And what if healing starts… by finally asking?
You don’t need to remember it for it to have mattered. You don’t need to be sure it was trauma to explore what it left behind. And you don’t need to carry it alone.
In the next episode, we’ll ask what happens when the machine starts to break—and the pills stop working.
Until then, I’m Lisa. And this… is The Hidden Cut—a series about what’s been removed, revised, and left on history’s cutting room floor.
Further Reading & Receipts
The following sources support and expand on the science, trauma research, and cultural framing explored in “Trauma in Plain Sight.” These studies and testimonies illuminate how the body remembers what society has tried to forget.
🧠 Neuroscience, Pain, and Infant Memory
“Babies Don't Feel Pain: A Century of Denial in Medicine”
Journal of Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology & Health, Vol. 14, No. 1/2 (Fall 1999), pp. 145–168
By David B. Chamberlain, PhD
https://birthpsychology.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/I1TBCg2g-1.pdf
Explores how medical professionals systematically denied infant pain perception throughout the 20th century—shaping harmful practices based on outdated assumptions.“Reconsidering Fetal Pain”
Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 46, No. 1 (January 2020), pp. 3–6
By Stuart W.G. Derbyshire and John C. Bockmann
https://jme.bmj.com/content/46/1/3
Challenges the prevailing view that fetal pain is impossible before 24 weeks gestation, arguing that emerging neuroscience suggests the capacity for pain may develop earlier, which has significant ethical implications for abortion practices.“Long-Term Effects of Neonatal Pain”
PubMed
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30987942/
Research showing altered stress responses and behavioral outcomes following early pain exposure.Taddio et al., 1997 – Effect of Neonatal Circumcision on Pain Response During Vaccination
PubMed
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9057731/
Peer-reviewed study demonstrating increased pain response in circumcised male infants.
Trauma Theory & Somatic Memory
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score (2014)
https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score
Seminal text on how trauma lives in the body long after the mind has forgotten.Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (2008)
https://drgabormate.com/book/in-the-realm-of-hungry-ghosts/
Links early childhood trauma with addiction and adult behavioral patterns.Peter Levine, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/384924.Waking_the_Tiger
Introduces somatic experiencing and explains how unresolved trauma can shape lifelong nervous system responses.
✂️ Circumcision as Medicalized Trauma
“Circumcision of Male Infants as a Human Rights Violation”
Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 39, No. 7 (July 2013), pp. 469–474
By J. Steven Svoboda
https://jme.bmj.com/content/39/7/469
This article argues that non-therapeutic infant male circumcision violates fundamental human rights, emphasizing the child's right to bodily integrity and questioning the validity of parental proxy consent.“The Foreskin: Anatomy and Function”
Circumcision Information Resource Pages (CIRP)
https://www.cirp.org/pages/anatomy/
Detailed exploration of foreskin nerve structure and function.“Circumcision and Trauma”
Beyond the Bris (Archived Blog)
https://www.beyondthebris.com/brit-milah-a-shameful-and-traumatic-practice/
Testimonials and essays from those questioning the practice from a cultural and trauma-informed lens.
Masculinity, Mental Health, and Emotional Suppression
“Suicide”
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide
U.S. male suicide data contextualized with social stigma around emotional expression.“Why Do So Many Men Avoid Mental Healthcare?”
Psychology Today (2025)
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pop-culture-mental-health/202503/why-do-so-many-men-avoid-mental-healthcare
Discusses how emotional repression, early trauma, and cultural expectations of masculinity are linked.“What is Causing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and How Can We Fix It?”
Harvard Graduate School of Education (2024)
https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing-our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it
A look into loneliness, trauma, and why young men are feeling more disconnected than ever.
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