I’m a woman with a lot of sexual sensation which i attribute in part to being blessed with rather large dangly labia which i love to have manipulated by my partner in lots of different ways. You can’t help but notice though that people who are less comfortable with themselves or with sex itself find large labia dirty and ugly (many women in the US and UK are now having them cut off and plastic surgery specialists are using their websites to encourage a view of the labia as dirty ugly and prone to infection – google labiaplasty or labia trimming if you want to check this.) I do make a point of going to the bathroom to wash (although i shower each morning) before anyone gets near them but i feel that’s enough just as it’s enough to wash a foreskin regularly.

Lou in the comments points out that foreskin is delicate tissue that can be damaged in rough sex providing an entry point to HIV and that its sensitive mucous membrane can also provide an easier entry for HIV. He/she suggests damaging the male parts by exising the bits which are most delicate. Well that’s one option Lou, but if it’s such an exciting development to find that making the genitals smoother and more leathery, more like the skin on your arm and less like sexual bits, protects against HIV, why not push for an investigation of the benefits of a parallel degree of damage on female genitals? After all male circ, whatever you think of it, protects women not at all, and in some cases puts them more at risk.

As for the general value of foreskins to sex, as a woman i just want to say, they are great. I don’t experience orgasms with circumcised men, but with my intact partner (as with intact others) i have a simultaneous orgasm almost every single time. This makes biological sense as the dorsal ridges of his retracted foreskin rub on the ridges of my gspot. I can’t believe that nature DIDN’T intend the most sensitive part of the penis and vagina to collide in this way.

When i encounter a man who has been circumcised without reason or informed consent (this includes most medical circs) I feel sorry for him, because he’s lost something really special. And when i read of men who feel freaky because they’ve grown up with a foreskin in a puritanical society bent on its excision i feel enraged.

With a foreskin you can experience magical sensations that a circ’d man will never have. Such as having someone run their tongue around the underside of the foreskin while it’s pulled up over the glans in erection…

My final comment is in relation to one by Jack – he thinks if a child’s foreskin hasn’t retracted by 8 it should be forced or cut off. WHAAAT? The mean age of first foreskin retraction in societies with a normal healthy attitude to the male body is 10.4. Many young men experience a normal happy first retraction much later – just as many girls have their periods start at ages ranging from 10 to late teens. No one thinks, oh my 12 year old hasn’t started yet i must have a fiddle around down there and then subject her to surgery.

It’s a pretty sad state of affairs that after millenia of enjoying foreskins, thanks to a few nutty Victorian doctors many people now haven’t a clue how to deal with them or why they are there and in the absence of knowledge they become fearful and choose pre-emptive assault….

Unlike most boys, I dutifully looked at classic painting and sculpture, with its many male nudes sporting the tapered look. Why did I look like the little boys in the Amazon jungle, like Michaelangelo’s David, like the infant Jesus in Renaissance depictions of the Madonna and Child? Why was I embarrassingly different from the flesh and blood males around me, my father and brothers, my schoolmates and playmates around me? Why did I encounter a tiny number of exceptions? My parents went to their graves without ever saying anything to me about why I was intact. I was too embarrassed to ask a doctor, and no doctor who examined me volunteered any information. For years, I dreaded the prospect of having to undress and shower in front of other boys after high school gym. I was never teased after age 8 or so, when I learned to pull my foreskin back before urinating and while undressing.

I was deeply shocked to discover in my teens that every boy was born with a foreskin, and that nearly all males around me had had it cut off at birth. The resulting confusion in my mind lifted only when I started reading 20 years ago about the movement to stop routine infant circumcision in American maternity wards.

Very recently, I chanced on a webpage, put together by a pro-circ group, that included a number of testimonials by men and medics who had been in the Service in their youth. These testimonials made clear that many Army docs during the Cold War were blatantly hostile to the foreskin. The page reproduced an extract from a medical journal article, written by Army docs, claiming that inflamation under the foreskin was rampant among soldiers, especially under combat conditions. The authors were of the opinion that their experience fully supported making infant circ routine. This could explain why it indeed became routine in the 1940s and 50s, when the prestige of the US military was much higher than it was post-Vietnam. But I also have trouble making sense of this claim. If a soldier has a canteen with drinking water, he can wash under his foreskin 1-2 times a day, easy as pie. To unzip a fly, pull the tool out, skin it back, and rinse off the end in clean water is really no big deal at all. (For a woman to rinse off her labia requires that she undress below the waist and towel off afterwards.) Also, I know of no other national military that concluded that the foreskin reduced one’s effectiveness as a soldier.

what your anxieties about it are,
* Not size! Because only the first inch or so of the vagina is rich in feeling. My other does not like it all when I get a little carried away on my glans touches her cervix. Not performance. I get hard often and easily, like a 20 year old.

what you like about it,
* I, unlike nearly all men of my age, have a foreskin.

how you feel about the way that your society treats penises in general.
* Except for circumcision, I do not see how the penis gets a raw deal.

Do you like them in general?
* I worship pussy.

Do they make you uneasy?
* Only to the extent that they cause unwanted pregnancy and spread disease.

What do you think of uncircumcised penises?
* They are more than a bit feminine. It must be so easy to come on to an uncut man: simply slide his foreskin gently up and down. Massage his foreskin and frenulum between thumb and index finger. Kiss and suck on the very sensitive tip. I sympathize with women and gay men who are foreskin fetishists. I do not see how an intact man can remain impotent when he is in the hands of a foreskin friendly woman. However, wash under the foreskin before attempting any intimate acts.

Circumcised ones?
* They do NOT look mutilated. In fact, the many cut penises I’ve seen in locker rooms, summer camp, etc., all looked quite normal to me. Have never seen a circ scar in the flesh.

Do you ever think about the similarities between male and female genital organs?
* The clitoris is like a very small uncut penis. The inner lips are like the foreskin. There is one difference. Contemporary porn suggests that women take more pride in their pink bits than men do. If men were polite enough to refrain from oggling and perving (dream on!), I think that millions of women would do their summer recreation in the nude. Betty Dodson’s genital pride message has made a lot of headway.

When I first read up on circumcision and learned how much was taken from me, I was very angry and sad. I felt as if my life was suddenly worthless, and that I was cheated out of the best thing that was my right to have. I have learned about foreskin restoration, which, while not restoring the rigid band or frenulum, it still covers the head of the penis; restoring it’s full sensitivity and providing the added sexual feelings for women that only a circumcised man can provide.

To make myself feel better about the circumcision, I’ve decided to look at it as a rights of passage. I bare my scar proudly, to show what has been taken from me, but that I am still strong and persevering and pleasurable. Men who were not circumcised have the incredible luxury of an intact penis, and never knowing what it’s like to have the head completely exposed to the elements 24/7. Men without their foreskins have endured this, and I think that makes them stronger.

All of my girlfriends have been very pleased with my penis, and I have always pleasured them immensely. I have however noticed a lack of sensitivity, which although allows me to last longer, is also annoying (this problem is most severe when I am wearing a condom).

I do not condone circumcision at all, but for those of us who are, I think we should look at it as something that makes us stronger.

Religion and the father/son relationship
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Personally I am an uncircumcised male, and my views towards circumcision are that it should not be performed without consent (which you cannot get from an newborn boy). However, I am also a Christian and as such are familiar with its roots in the Jewish faith and as such I must respect the practice among that faith as it was an instruction from the same God that I worship.

The subject of religion then got me thinking about this topic and the fact that most children are raised in the faith of that of their fathers/mothers, and therefore the same beliefs are often held between the generations. Therefore on a topic such as this I get the feeling that it MAY seem to many to be disrespectful or some kind of betrayal not to raise your children the same as you may be raised (i.e. either circumcising or not circumcising your baby son). If you were not doing to your baby son what was done to you you are making a statement, if only to yourself, that you disagree with your parents and the way you were raised. Coupled with the fact that grandparents are often around when many babies are born, and actively take part in raising them then it could become an area of conflict between father and son as to why the infant was/wasn’t circumcised and a direct criticism.

Women in the circumcision decision
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Moving on from this first thought, I was then intrigued by the female thoughts on the topic. I believe that both husband and wife should share the decision of whether to circumcise their baby son or not, however I believe this decision should be led by the information and experiences of the father. Why? Because women do not have penises. I am not saying that to provoke a reaction from the women reading this topic, but without a penis a woman can only comment on three aspects: aesthetics, hygiene, how it feels.

Aesthetics
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Regarding aesthetics, everyones genitalia is different, if you love someone this should not be an issue, but in todays society sex has to many become a pasttime rather than an act of love. Unfortunately we live in a vain world where many become obsessed with appearance. My personal opinion is that no genitals, male or female, look particularly nice, but jsut because something does not look nice doesn’t mean im going to get surgery to remove whatever it may be, nor would I dream of asking anyone else to remove anything. I would be deeply offended if someone asked me to be circumcised because they thought it would look better.

Hygiene
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So many talk about hygiene – men and women. I can tell you first hand, just like many uncircumcised men, that it is not hard to keep clean. The foreskin is very similar to the clitoral hood if you look at genital development in the womb. Men and women should clean these folds of skin regularly and are both just as subject to smegma as each other. I have read many posts where men and women have encountered members of the opposite sex with genital hygiene issues, therefore using this as a reason for circumcision seems ridiculous. The benefit is that it makes it easier to clean but so marginally it is not worth mentioning.

Feelings
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Many posts online talk about how foreskin feels in sexual activity from male and female perspectives. Some women prefer the feeling of a circumcised penis, others an uncircumcised penis. On the other side, many men say that their way is the better way, but again i believe this a preference issue that can ONLY be studied among the experiences of men that have undergone circumcision later in life experiencing sex with and without the foreskin, but again what I have read points to a preference issue. However the feeling, or sexual gratification, should not be a reason for circumcision of a baby boy because there is no sexual function of a penis until later development supporting the balanced approach to defer the decision until later when they can decide themselves.

Female Genital Mutilation
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This is a very concerning topic but i believe directly parallels male circumcision. I don’t think anyone in this discussion here would agree with that, which i believe is jsut as unnecessary as male circumcision for exactly the same reasons as above. However, I have noted that my views on circumcision in the Jewish faith so I accept that I am not the best person to comment on FGM as often it is for religious pruposes too. BUT I still believe that male and female circumcision are wrong.

My conclusion
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This will always be a debate, people will agree with me and disagree with me on certain aspects. On the topic of infant circumcision I believe this is a decision for the parents that should be considered carefully viewing the various viewpoints found in discussions such as there. Regarding adult circumcision, both men and women should consider whether it is really a subject that is so important…if as a man you want to be circumcised then by all means it is your body…but men and women should have no expectation over the other to remove parts of their body for them.

You are awesome, Man! I think you are a beautiful person, cut or uncut. Your courage to address these issues and talk about them openly is really touching. I almost cried when I read your posting. As with all injuries, we form around them and what you have formed is a really beautiful and poignant person. Maybe this injury has contributed to your courageous compassionate character although, I am sure, you would have these characteristics to begin with. You don’t get to hear about these things from men very often and I am so thankful to be able to read this.

I maintain that if we did this same genital operation to girls in the US, there would be an incredible scandal. But because we do it to boys, it is acceptable. Men have a bad deal, if you ask me.

A close friend of mine, a man, was so upset about not having a foreskin that he tried to cultivate one by stretching his penis skin. I just think this is so sad. Such an emotional scar as well as a physical one. If I knew my parents did that to me on purpose (if I were a man), I’m not sure how I’d feel about that and if it might cause me to question their love. That surely WOULD have happened to me had I been a boy so I am grateful I never had to think about this.

That said, I have heard that the rate of cervical cancer is higher in women with partners who are uncircumsized. I do not know if this is true and – if it is – I do not know what the reason might be. However, it it worth it to me to go to the Dr once a year and get a full workup (which is neccessary anyway) if it means that whoever I am having sex with (who, ostensibly I love or at least like) did not have to have their genitals mutilated. I am US born, Californian. So this is not coming from someone who is in a country where this practice is not normal. But I still think it is wrong.

Help to stop routine infanct circumcision and let individuals decide for themselves whether to alter their bodies.

I noticed that TLC Tugger is sponsoring a ProIntact poetry/video/song contest! Applications are being accepted for 2008! Be creative and come up with an entry to share!

http://tlctugger.com/Song_Contest_Gallery_2007.htm