This is part two of my discussion on foreskin. You can read the first post here, which covers the topic of restoring the foreskin.

I’ve found over the years that foreskin can be a controversial topic no matter who you ask - men, women, gay, straight. I do find that gay men in general are more accepting of it, perhaps because foreskin is considered a fetish in our community. Even with that being said, I’ve come across many gay men who won’t go anywhere near a foreskin.

I was surprised to find that it’s a topic almost as sensitive as religion or politics. When you find someone who dislikes foreskins, he or she will go off on a very passionate speech about how disgusting foreskins are and how they should be cut right off as soon as a baby boy enters the world. I even remember an episode of Sex and the City where a man with a foreskin was part of the storyline. The women responded with offense, wanting nothing to do with the situation.

I could say a lot about how all the myths of foreskins are untrue. I could go into great detail about how foreskins allow men to experience more pleasure, more sensitivity, and overall more satisfaction with their penis and their sex life. I could even point out the numerous statistics of men whose penises have been permanently damaged by having their foreskins cut off. Ugly scarring, dried up skin on the head of the penis, decreased sensitivity and problems achieving orgasm because of lost sensation. Need I even mention the men who had too much skin cut off, and erections are painful as a result?

Regardless of whether or not you like foreskins, there is one thing I hope all people can agree on— every man deserves to make a decision about his foreskin when he is an adult. Our current practice of lopping off the body part of a newborn child is insane. I think the person who is going to be attached to the penis for the rest of his life should be the one to make that choice. If he decides he’d like to be circumcised, I think that’s just fine. That’s his choice to make.

Hmmm, I think if most men had the foreskins intact, I seriously doubt they would undergo circumcision later in life.

However, I knew a young man who came from Kenya to the U.S. to live and began going to my old church. After about a year, he started an awkward conversation with the pastor’s wife about circumcision! He meant no disrespect but he was trying to find out how to be circumcised. Seems he wanted to “fit in” with all the American guys (seriously, how much dick was he seeing?). As far as I know, he went through with it. Who knows, maybe someone made him self-conscious.

Your heading should be “circumcision = mutilation” shouldn’t it? Lots of people will argue with that, and it’s an argument without much point, so I try to avoid the word, but “foreskin = mutilation” is the reverse of the case.

Yes, Riverwolf, conformity is the main reason, lacking real medical need, for men to get circumcised. Except where it’s already customary (the Muslim world, the US, the Philippines, South Korea, sub-Saharan Africa, Israel, eastern Polynesia) it’s very rare, and it’s well on its way out in the rest of the English-speaking world.

You are right, Nathan, about how prejudice against the whole penis is promulgated in US mass media. A paper presented at the 9th Intenational Symposium on Genital Integrity in Seattle in 2006 found that of 64 programmes that referenced circumcision, 14 (22%) implied that the foreskin is disgusting, including high-profile programmes like Sex and the City and Seinfeld. (Seinfeld’s made-up comment about an intact penis “having no personality” and “looking like a martian” [like we know what a martian looks like?] has even been seriously cited as a reason for cutting babies.)

You’re correct, the title was supposed to be Circumcision = Mutilation. Thanks for pointing it out.

Sometimes I get so worked up on the topic, I can’t even produce the correct sentences.

anything is possible

I like what you mention about the /sex and the city/ plot-line. Most men [in the world, citizens of the U.S. like to think of them selves as a majority and normality] are intact.