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The Foreskin, Circumcision and Sexuality

No good scientific work has been done on the effect of circumcision on sexual function, but it is repeatedly stated that

For example in "Babywatching", Desmond Morris says circumcision "has no effect, one way or the other, on the sexual performance of the adult male." Books for young people, especially, protest too much, such at the British Family Planning Association's "How Sex Works": "Whether you have a foreskin or not will not affect your sexual health in the future."

This claim flies in the face of common sense. The foreskin is ideally placed to both give and receive sexual stimulation, and it would be extraordinary if it did not. It has been known since antiquity that the foreskin gives pleasure, only forgotten in the US in the last century or so.

This study shows that the foreskin is the most touch-sensitive part of the penis:

Fine-touch pressure thresholds in the adult penis Morris L. Sorrells, James L. Snyder, Mark D. Reiss, Christopher Eden, Marilyn F. Milos, Norma Wilcox, Robert S. Van Howe BJU International 99 (4), 864-869 (British Journal of Urology International, Volume 99 Issue 4 Page 864 - April 2007) Circumcision removes the most sensitive part of a man's penis. Sorrells and others enlisted 159 men from the San Francisco Bay area, 91 of them circumcised, and conducted touch-sensitivity tests, using instruments that press with calibrated hairs, on 11 or 17 different places on their penises. The men could not see where they were being touched. Larger image They found that the most sensitive part of a circumcised penis is on the scar in the middle underneath (19). But several places on the foreskin (3, 4, 13, 14) are more sensitive than that. The glans (8, 9, 10 11) is the least sensitive part of the penis, contrary to a common claim, but where it is covered by the foreskin (8, 9,11), the glans of the intact penis is more sensitive than the circumcised. Larger image Larger image The experimenters took into account the men's age, type of underwear worn, time since last ejaculation, ethnicity, country of birth, and level of education.

This study will doubtless be criticised because its authors are Intactivists, but carrying out such studies take considerable dedication, so few who conduct them can be completely without involvement, and the data is there to be checked for accuracy. (Just getting ethical approval is a major hurdle, even though circumcision itself has never had ethical approval.) "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof," but this study only demonstrates what should be obvious. The value of this study is that it is much more thorough and less biased in its design toward circumcision than the ones below. More studies are needed to establish the link between touch-sensitivity and sexual pleasure, but it should be obvious to most men.

One of the circumcised experimental subjects reports on the experience.

A presentation was given at the World Association of Sexuality Congress in Sydney in April 2007, contrasting the Sorrells study with the Masters & Johnson study that follows. A large poster accompanying the presentation can be downloaded (pdf, 3.2MB).

The entire basis of the claim that circumcision has no effect on sexuality was until recently an "experiment" performed over 40 years ago by William H. Masters MD and Virginia E. Johnson and reported in their 1966 best-seller, "Human Sexual Response". Their bias toward circumcision and their ignorance of the intact penis are manifest.

Their first picture, of the "normal" anatomy, shows no sign of a foreskin. FIGURE 12-1 The penis: normal anatomy (lateral view). (p 177) What is labelled "coronal ridge" looks more like a circumcision scar. The corona (glandis) is actually the high point to the left of that. Their next picture shows the foreskin but does not identify it. FIGURE 12-3 Male pelvis: normal anatomy (lateral view). (p 180) The corona glandis is misidentified. The next four drawings are similar to this one: FIGURE 12-4 Male pelvis: excitement phase. (p 182) They look as though someone unfamiliar with the foreskin added it to a diagram of a circumcised penis, but it is still not identified. None of the pictures of erections show that the foreskin can retract, or how. Thank heaven an erection is (usually) "Reversible"! This is actually a picture of a dissected penis (from below) with all skin removed: FIGURE 12-8 The penis: erect (ventral view). (p 187) Masters and Johnson's bias towards circumcision is further shown by their table 2-6 Reproductive Organ Pathology in Male Study Subjects Pathology  Benign prostatic hypertophies  Unilateral testicular atrophies  Undescended testicle  Inguinal hernia (non-symptomatic)  Inguinal hernia (symptomatic)  Varicocele (symptomatic) Additional Data  Uncircumcised penises p 17 and table 2-8 Surgical History of Male Study Subjects Major pelivic surgery  Prostatectomy   Transurethral   Perineal  Inguinal herniorrhaphy  [but not circumcision]. p 18 This belies any claim to objectivity. Their discussion of circumcision (pp 189-190) begins with a claim that because only 16 (actually 9 according to their own table) of the 231 men aged 21-40 were intact (compared to 26 of the 81 older men), there was "a medical trend toward urging routine circumcision of the newborn male infant." This ignores males under 21, and hence the most recent 21 years of medical history. They also assume their sample of 315 volunteers (who were comfortable having sex in front of the experimenters) was representative of the whole population of the US, and the 35 intact ones representative of all intact men. They continue (in prose famous for its obscurity and ugliness): The phallic fallacy that the uncircumcised male can establish ejaculatory control more effectively than his circumcised counterpart was accepted almost universally as biologic fact by both circumcised and uncircumcised male study subjects. [The popular press at the time was widely claiming the reverse. Magazines like Penthouse were suggesting that intact men with premature ejaculation might get circumcised to prevent it.] This concept was founded on the widespread misconception that the circumcised penile glans is more sensitive to the exteroceptive [ie, from outside] stimuli of coition or masturbation than is the glans protected by the residual foreskin. [A misconception indeed! "Residual" is a prejudiced way of saying "intact". All involved in this fallacy seem to have been unaware that the foreskin can retract. Masters and Johnson ignore the possiblity that the foreskin itself is involved in sexual sensation.] Therefore, the circumcised male has been presumed to have more difficulty with ejaculatory control and (as many study subjects believed) a greater tendency towards impotence. A limited number of the male study-subject population was exposed to a brief clinical experiment designed to disprove [Real scientists aim to test, not prove or disprove] the false premise [If it had not yet been disproved, how did they know it was false?] of excessive sensitivity of the circumcised glans. The 35 uncircumcised males were matched at random with circumcised study subjects of similar ages. Routine neurologic testing for both exteroceptive and light tactile discrimination were conducted on the ventral and dorsal surfaces of the penile body, with particular attention directed toward the glans. [No further details are given as to the nature of these tests and it has proved impossible to find out. It is unclear what "particular attention" means. It goes without saying that no attention was given to the foreskin, nor could it be with the circumcised "male study subjects".] No clinically significant difference could be established between the circumcised and the uncircumcised glans during these examinations. [Surprise! Masters and Johnson didn't find what they weren't looking for. NB: this testing was purely for the sense of touch. It had nothing to do with sex.] An elaborate explanation of this "finding" follows, based on Masters and Johnson's observation that 29 out of the 35 "uncircumcised male study subjects" had foreskins that retracted during intercourse. They were apparently previously unaware that foreskins usually retract. This is linked to a later (p197) discussion of "automanipulation" (masturbation): Uncircumcised males have not been observed to concentrate specifically on the glans area of the penis. [Of course not! They were playing with their much more sensitive foreskins but Masters and Johnson failed to notice that.] Normally they follow the usual pattern of confining manipulative activity entirely to the penile shaft [of which the foreskin is an integral part]. Stroking techniques rarely move sufficiently distal on the shaft of the penis to encounter more than the coronal ridge of the glans even late in plateau phase just before ejaculation. [The coronal ridge is quite sufficient, forming an anvil on which to rub the foreskin.] Masters and Johnson conspicuously fail to notice a common technique of intact men, of using only one or two fingers and the thumb to move the foreskin on and off the glans - which contrasts sharply with the furious grasping, squeezing and grinding of the shaft and glans by circumcised men. Masters and Johnson's only interest in the foreskin in intercourse is whether it covers the glans: This is obviously a different picture from that occasioned by active intercourse. With full vaginal containment the foreskin not tightly attached to subjacent tissue usually retracts freely from a major portion of the glans during active male coital thrusting before ejaculation.

On this is based the whole of the case that "circumcision has no effect on sexual function."

In "Dear Dr HIPPocrates", Dr Eugene Schoenfeld elaborates it to

In "Healthy Sex" by Miriam Stoppard (Dorling Kindersley), the claim about a myth of greater control by intact men, and the alleged reason for it, is paraphrased almost verbatim, without acknowledgement.

The claim of "no effect" was quoted as recently as February 2002 in the American Association of Family Physicians' Policy Statement.

A more recent study makes the same mistake, perhaps more glaringly. Abstract of a paper presented at a meeting of the American Urological Association in Chicago on April 29, 2003.

And again:

J Sex Med. 2007 Apr 6; [Epub ahead of print] Sensation and Sexual Arousal in Circumcised and Uncircumcised Men. Payne K, Thaler L, Kukkonen T, Carrier S, Binik Y. Riverside Professional Center, Ottawa, Canada Introduction. Research, theory, and popular belief all suggest that penile sensation is greater in the uncircumcised as compared with the circumcised man. However, research involving direct measurement of penile sensation has been undertaken only in sexually functional and dysfunctional groups, and as a correlate of sexual behavior. There are no reports of penile sensation in sexually aroused subjects, and it is not known how arousal affects sensation. In principle, this should be more closely related to actual sexual function. Aim. This study therefore compared genital and nongenital sensation as a function of sexual arousal in circumcised and uncircumcised men. Methods. Twenty uncircumcised men and an equal number of age-matched circumcised participants underwent genital and nongenital sensory testing at baseline and in response to erotic and control stimulus films. Touch and pain thresholds were assessed on the penile shaft, the glans penis, [but not the foreskin] and the volar surface of the forearm. [volar = of the palm - meaning upper when the palm is up?] Sexual arousal was assessed via thermal imaging [of one small region] of the penis. Results. In response to the erotic stimulus, both groups evidenced a significant increase in penile temperature, which correlated highly with subjective reports of sexual arousal. Uncircumcised men had significantly lower penile temperature than circumcised men, and evidenced a larger increase in penile temperature with sexual arousal. [This is news, suggesting the foreskin functions as a radiator - but the surface of the one small region of the penis they measured, "just below {proximal to?} the glans penis, adjacent to the coronal ridge on the lateral right surface of the penile shaft" is skin on the intact man, but may be mucosa on the circumcised. Since they ignore the foreskin, they also ignore the fact that the foreskin rolls back on arousal, so that mucosa is exposed on both.] No differences in genital sensitivity were found between the uncircumcised and circumcised groups. Uncircumcised men were less sensitive to touch on the forearm than circumcised men [Suggesting overall hypersensitivity is a long-term consequence of circumcision?]. A decrease in overall touch sensitivity was observed in both groups with exposure to the erotic film as compared with either baseline or control stimulus film conditions. No significant effect was found for pain sensitivity. Conclusion. These results do not support the hypothesized penile sensory differences associated with circumcision [so long as you ignore the foreskin]. However, group differences in penile temperature and sexual response were found. PMID: 17419812 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] In the full text, it says : Discussion ... It is possible that the uncircumcised penis is more sensitive due to the presence of additional sensory receptors on the prepuce and frenulum, [Possible? It should be blindingly obvious. The receptors a baby is born with are not "additional"] but this cannot be compared with the absence of such structures on the circumcised penis. [Something cannot be compared with nothing, but that doesn't mean something doesn't exist or is irrelevant. They could have compared the senstivitities of the prepuce and intact frenulum with those of the glans and shaft.] This notwithstanding, the present data do cast doubt on the notion that the glans penis is more sensitive in the uncircumcised man due to the protective function of the prepuce. [Doubt perhaps, but this begs the question that glans sensitivity is all that matters. Note also that this perfectly reasonable supposition is demoted to a "notion".] Possible explanations for the origin of such a belief may date back to historical traditions, whereby circumcision was performed in order to reduce sexual gratification [22], or to prevent masturbation [23]. This may have led to the general notion that circumcised men were somehow "less sexual" and therefore less "sexually sensitive" than uncircumcised men. [Got that? "People got the false idea that circumcision reduces sensitivity because they circumcised with that purpose." Or could they possibly have done it because it does? These pages consider other effects of glans exposure.] Conclusion ... In light of these findings, the examination of penile sensory diffrences between uncircumcised and circumcised men warrants further study via a replication with a larger sample size [Sorrells et al. had this] including the measurement of multiple sensory modalities over multiple penile locations (comprising those believed to be directly affected by circumcision [i.e. the foreskin, and Sorrells et al. did this]).... 22 Maimünides [sic] M. The guide for the perplexed. Shlomo P, tr. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press; 1963. 23 Moscucci O. Clitoridectomy, circumcision, and the politics of sexual pleasure. In: Miller AH, Adams JE, eds. Sexualities in Victorian Britain. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press; 1996:60-78. [Conspicious by their absence from these citations are Sorrells et al. and Taylor et al.]

So what effect does the foreskin have?
Central to Intactivist claims about foreskin function in sex is the work of Taylor et al., demonstrating that the foreskin itself is richly innervated with Meissner corpuscles, which are sensitive to light touch. They make the foreskin's sensitivity comparable to that of the fingertips or the lips (but probably less than that of the tip of the tongue or the eyelashes)

The ridged band now has its own website, hosted by its discoverer, Dr John Taylor.

Contrary to Masters and Johnson's thoroughly confused and confusing discussion, removal of the foreskin does affect the surface of the glans. It becomes keratanised, covered in a hardened coating. This shields the nerves of the glans from stimulation.

These two effects together combine to change the quality, and reduce the quantity, of sensitivity of circumcised men. The neurology has not been studied in detail, but other work suggests that when nerves are severed in infancy they reconfigure themselves, so that men circumcised in infancy find pleasure in stimulation of the glans (for which it was not designed/did not evolve) that intact men do not. This suggests that men circumcised in adulthood react differently from men circumcised as babies:

• When a man is circumcised in adulthood, his loss of sensation has been well documented elsewhere. It has been compared to sight without colour, seeing with one eye or hearing with one ear. It includes both the immediate loss of sensation from the foreskin itself, and the progressive desensitisation of the glans as the surface keratinises.

  Immediately after circumcision, the nerves of the glans bombard the brain with the new sense impressions they are constantly receiving, which the brain interprets as pain. (Newly circumcised men are advised to wear loose clothing - none if this is practicable.) This fades over time. One reason will be that the brain learns to disregard these signals, like any other constant sensation. They have been called "false alarms".

• In the case of infant circumcision, the position is rather more complicated. The boy develops his sexuality with what he has left. We may speculate that the portion of the sensory region of the brain that was expecting signals from the foreskin is colonised by nerves from adjacent areas, such as the glans, with the result that the glans of an infant-circumcised man becomes erogenous in a way that the glans of an intact man does not. There is anecdotal evidence for this.

That explains why infant-circumcised (but not adult-circumcised) men commonly say

- most recently Larry David, former co-author of Seinfeld, to Dustin Hoffman, in connection with the proposed circumcision of Hoffman's grandson.

This also suggests a mechanism for what has often been noted informally, that circumcised men are more goal-oriented about sex. Getting to orgasm is more important than any pleasures to be had on the way. The nervous connection between stimulation and arousal is so thin (the "bandwidth" is so low, if you like) that the level of stimulation has to be high and uninterrupted to reach orgasm at all. Thus circumcised men can only relax and enjoy sex when orgasm has been reached, and orgasm is something that has to be achieved, it may not be pleasurably delayed. (A sex manual of 1961, "The Marriage Art" by John D. Eichenlaub, nowhere mentions the foreskin, but recommends that a woman apply ice to her partner's perineum for a special thrill.)

Circumcised men commonly find their frenulum (that is, whatever remnant of their ridged band was left on them) to be the most sensitive part of their penis. Many sex manuals assume this is true for all men. None has questioned why sexual sensitivity should be so concentrated.

So what is the role of the foreskin in intercourse?
The movement of the foreskin is unique. On the in-stroke of intercourse, considered from the point of view of its stationary outer layer, the inner layer rolls outward and applies itself to the vagina. The ridged band engages with the internal ridges of the vagina. On the out-stroke, that movement reverses. Depending on the various dimensions and techniques used, there is considerable variation from that basic pattern and the two sets of ridges may then rub over each other like clothes on an old-fashioned washboard. That might be painful for women if the foreskin were dry like the circumcised penis. Instead, the effect is pleasurable.

An intact man comments on this:

Moderate stretching of the foreskin may also be pleasurable for the man. This gives rise to the "balloon job" - inflating the foreskin - possible only for an intact man. (Air should not be forced down the urethra, and on no account should high-pressure air supplies be used.)

Men cut as adults:

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Which do women prefer?

Two studies have addressed this question, and come to opposite conclusions. Both were flawed.

• The O'Hara and O'Hara study in the UK was a self-selected, voluntary survey. Some of its subjects were recruited from anti-circumcision sources, tending to bias results away from circumcision, but it had two strikes in its favour.
  • All the women who took part had experienced sex with both intact and circumcised men.
  • They described in detail what they experienced, and sometimes found favourable attributes in spite of their preferences

    "[The] women [who] preferred circumcised partners ... still found unaltered partners to evoke more vaginal fluid production, a lower vaginal discomfort rating and fewer complaints ... during intercourse than their circumcised partners." "Respondents overwhelmingly concurred that the mechanics of coitus was different for the two groups of men. Of the women, 73% reported that circumcised men tend to thrust harder and deeper, using elongated strokes, while unaltered men by comparison tended to thrust more gently, to have shorter thrusts, and tended to be in contact with the mons pubis and clitoris more, according to 71% of the respondents."

    So its results have qualitative if not quantitative merit.

  The O'Hara study - like these pages - is written from the point of view that intactness is normal, which may look like an anti-circumcision bias in the prevailing pro-circumcision climate. The authors have developed their findings into a book, Sex As Nature Intended It.
  
  

• The Williamson and Williamson study in Iowa was a cohort study, but it had a very high (46%) non-response rate, tending to bias the results in an unknown way. The women had all just delivered sons, further biassing the study away from the entire female population. Its faults are serious:
  • Only 16.5% of those who answered had experienced sex with both intact and circumcised men.
  • Some of their responses were irrational, suggesting they didn't know what they were talking about:
    • 77% said circumcised penises "seemed more natural"
    • 54% said circumcised penises "stayed softer"
  Predictibly, a majority of the women preferred circumcised penises for sex, but interestingly, that majority (71% for vaginal intercourse) was lower than the proportion (78%) who had never known anything else.
  
  The Williamsons' study is written with a clear pro-circumcision bias. It assumes that a mother's sexual preference is a reasonable basis on which to decide whether to cut part off her son's genitals. (Consider if the sexes were reversed!)

Here is one woman's story.

The underlying fact is that women prefer what they are familiar with. But regardless of what a woman prefers, this should not be a consideration for circumcising a baby boy because

• He might grow up to be celibate
• He might grow up to be gay
• The majority preference might have changed by the time he grows up
• His future partner might not share the majority preference
• Forcibly cutting part off one person to suit another (hypothetical, unknown) person is unethical
• His preference should be overriding. (Imagine trying to justify circumcision of girls to suit men's preferences in the Western world today...)

If a man chooses to be circumcised to please his wife, that's his decision - but read on.

Who can compare them?
It is impossible for any man to both have been circumcised in infancy and left intact; any studies must compare different men. Two groups of men have some experience of both having and not having a foreskin, though:

• Men circumcised in adulthood
  Their reactions vary widely. One problem is that some of the most vocal proponents of circumcision from this group chose to be circumcised for sexual reasons - they already had a sexual investment in having a circumcised penis. Others had physical problems with their foreskins that were solved by circumcision. In general, reports from those who were circumcised in adulthood for non-sexual reasons take a negative view of the outcome.
  

  Back in 1964, ... I was serving a tool and die apprenticeship in a machine shop with several men that had served in the military during WWII. They shared their experiences with having been circumcised as adults. They were both circumcised when they found themselves in military hospitals during the war. One thought of it as a really good thing before it was done, (It would be a status symbol because both men came from a small coal mining town, and only the wealthy were born in hospitals, and even then, only some of them were circumcised), but he felt very much differently about it afterwards. The second man would not have wanted it done, but he was too sick to give his view on it before the operation. ... Both commented that their losses were very significant (one said he experienced a 70% loss of feeling, and the other said he had lost about 3/4 of his). You have to realize that this was only their opinions, and not the result of some measurement. Still, I find the similarities in numbers very interesting. The man that would have objected tossed in one other insight. He mentioned that masturbation was almost a complete loss. He commented that you could still do it of course, but that it had been stripped of its main pleasures. He said you could do it "to scratch an itch", but it was mostly work until he would orgasm, which he said was pretty much the same as before. The other thing that he mentioned was that now he needed either a pinup picture, or a "girly" magazine to get it to work, where he never had to use any props before. ... - John Soemer December 11, 2005

  As mentioned above, the effects on the nervous system of adult circumcision are different from those of infant circumcision. The circumcised boy also experiences the whole development of his sexuality with a circumcised penis - he learns to use what he's got. A man circumcised in adulthood has to relearn, and may be unable to do so.

   

  J Urol 2002 May;167(5):2113-2116 Adult Circumcision Outcomes Study: Effect on Erectile Function, Penile Sensitivity, Sexual Activity and Satisfaction Fink KS, Carson CC, DeVELLIS RF. Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program and Division of Urology, School of Medicine, and the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. PURPOSE: Evidence concerning the effect of circumcision on sexual function is lacking. Men circumcised as adults are potentially in a unique position to comment on the effect of a prepuce on sexual intercourse. We examine sexual function outcomes in men who have experienced sexual intercourse in the uncircumcised and circumcised states. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Men 18 years old or older when circumcised were identified by billing records during a 5-year period at an academic medical center. Medical charts were reviewed for confirmation of the procedure and to identify the indication(s). These men were surveyed to assess erectile function, penile sensitivity, sexual activity and overall satisfaction. Data were analyzed using paired t tests to compare category scores before and after circumcision. RESULTS: A total of 123 men were circumcised as adults. Indications for circumcision included phimosis in 64% of cases, balanitis in 17%, condyloma in 10%, redundant foreskin in 9% and elective in 7%. The response rate was 44% among potential responders. Mean age of responders was 42 years at circumcision and 46 years at survey. Adult circumcision appears to result in worsened erectile function (p = 0.01), decreased penile sensitivity (p = 0.08), no change in sexual activity (p = 0.22) and improved satisfaction (p = 0.04). Of the men 50% reported benefits and 38% reported harm. Overall, 62% of men were satisfied with having been circumcised. [Presumably this means 12% reported no change, and they were counted among the satisfied. Considering that the 64% who were circumcised for phimosis would have expected sexual benefits, this is a remarkably poor success rate.] CONCLUSIONS: Our findings may help urologists better counsel men undergoing circumcision as adults.[Notice how circumcision is taken as a given. What these findings should do is encourage urologists to seek alternatives to circumcision.] Prospective studies are needed to better understand the relationship between circumcision and sexual function. [And before they do that, studies are needed to better understand the relationship between the foreskin and sexual function, but this is something they don't seem to want to think about.] PMID: 11956453 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]

   

  A small survey of men circumcised as adults finds detriment

  	09 Does circumcision improve couple's sexual life? I. Solinis, A. Yiannaki
  I. Solinis Department of Urology, General Hospital of Didimoticho, Didimoticho, Greece A. Yiannaki Department of Urology, General Hospital of Didimoticho, Didimoticho, Greece	Background: The aim of the study was to compare sexual life and enjoyment of men (and their partner) that were circumcised as adults before and after their circumcision. Methods: The study included 123 sexually active men that were circumcised two years before or more. [The effect of circumcision on a man's sex life depends on why he was circumcised. If it was for a sex-related problem, an improvement is to be expected.] The mean age was 36 years (22- 64). All the men filled a questionnaire about the quality of their sexual life and the sexual enjoyment before and after circumcision. Also, there were questions about partner's sexual life improvement. The results are presented below. Results: 16% answered that their sex life was improved, while 35% reported a worse sex life after circumcision. There were no significant differences in erection and ejaculation.	65% reported that the ejaculation latency time increased significantly after circumcision but only 10% of them reported that this fact improved sexual life. 46% of men reported that their partner's sexual life worsened after circumcision, 33% reported that their partner's sexual life improved and 21% reported no significant difference. [Men's reporting of women's sexual satisfaction is notoriously inaccurate.] Conclusion: There was a decrease in couple's sexual life after circumcision indicating that adult circumcision adversely affects sexual function in many men or/and their partners, possibly because of complications of surgery and loss of nerve endings. The results support the view that physicians and parents should be informed of the potential benefits and risks before newborns are circumcised. [The results support the view that newborns should not be circumcised.] journal of men's health & gender Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 357-378, September 2007 361


 
• Men who have restored their foreskins
  The same objection can be made, that men who restore do so for sexual reasons (though some do so more as a political statement, to get back what they feel was taken unjustly, and find new sexual pleasures to be a bonus). Further, non-surgical restoration is time-consuming and requires dedication, so those who complete the process are strongly motivated. Even then, restoration can never hope to replace all that was lost. In spite of this, there are clear differences in quality: restored men report good sensations from the movement of their secondary foreskins, and increased sensitivity from their covered, de-keratinised glanses.

• Gay men
  Gay men are in a unique position to compare intact and circumcised penises, being likely to have experience of both kinds, and first hand experience of one kind or the other. (Intact men are especially likely to notice the difference.) No consensus has emerged, but some magazines cater especially to a taste for intact men, and erotic fiction - presumably market-driven - almost invariably includes them. A growing genre of gay erotic videos is made in Central Europe, featuring all-intact casts. This has been badmouthed as a "fetish", but it is the preference for an amputation over the whole body part that is in every other case considered the fetish, and a rather bizarre one.

  Intact gay men typically report that their circumcised partners are "too rough" and circumcised gay men that their intact partners are "too gentle" (untill they are taught), strongly confirming the suggestion that circumcision reduces sensitivity.

  Docking
  One practice, "docking", "snoodling" or "frontage" (one man's glans inside another's foreskin), is only possible between men, at least one of whom is intact. "Double docking" (one foreskin inside another) is only possible when both are intact. While few parents would choose to leave their son intact just in case he grows up to want to dock, he is hardly going to thank them for removing that option if he does. Circumcising him will not of course prevent him from growing up gay, nor prevent him from docking if he does - he will just have to find intact men do to it with. (Heterosexual couples - if the man is intact - may enjoy foreskin-nipple-, foreskin-clitoris-, foreskin-tongue- or just foreskin-finger-play, too.)

  Sex manuals for gay men written by circumcised men have a hard time coping with docking: they can't deny that at least one foreskin is essential, so they downplay the whole thing, saying such things as "the pleasure is more psychological than physical" - whatever that might mean.

  A Docking Aid Topco Sales manufacture "The Docker", a cylinder of gel-plastic for two men to insert their penises from opposite ends: "Whether you're cut or uncut, you can enjoy the sensation of docking with your partner!" "Smooth, soft, realistic Cyberskin® feels like real foreskin." Like the Manhood, the existence of such a toy underlines what is lost by circumcision.

Work in progress

Some experiments are underway, using anaesthetics to remove sensation from the foreskin but not the glans, or the glans but not the foreskin:

Other measurements of tactile sensitivity - those that Masters and Johnson and Melman et al. ought to have done - are now being made. They may further clarify the role of the foreskin in sex.

Evidence is growing that intact men's arousal is more graduated - that orgasm comes less suddenly and hence is more controllable. This can be predicted from the possession of more nerve endings - a volume control, not just a switch, for sexual feelings.

Resources
One of the few sex guides available in the US that assumes the male to be intact is The Guide to Getting It On! (The Universe's Coolest and Most Informative Book About Sex) by Paul Joannides, illustrated by Daerick Gross, available from Amazon.com, where the first eight reviews have all rated it five stars

An instant classic when it first came out in 1972, "The Joy of Sex" by Alex Comfort, illustrated with drawings by Charles Raymond and Christopher Foss, Modset Securities Ltd/Quartet Books Ltd (London), was more or less pro-foreskin

and illustrated mainly with intact men. The latest edition, The New Joy of Sex (The Joy of Sex Series) by Alex Comfort, edited by Julie Rubenstein, photographs by Clare Park. now attracts mainly negative reviews at Amazon.com for its old-fashioned attitudes.

Offsite: an intact Briton with a US wife has written a page for women about how to please an intact man. He generalises from himself, is a bit shaky on his anatomy, and presents a rather alarming metallic analogy, but has a detailed chart of what gives pleasure.

Related pages:

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