The rights and wrongs, the culture of Male Circumcision

A scarred penis, whether in photographs, porn, or IRL, just sticks out like a gaping wound and turns me off immediately. It’s like this horrible scar is the only thing I can see. Some cut dicks have different colors and skin tones above and below the scar that look so unnatural that they just don’t even look like real dicks to me. It also turns me off when I see hair on the shaft of an erect penis or stretched scrotal skin pulled forward to make a web under the shaft. Both of those are considered to be signs of a botched circumcision where a doctor - who cannot really judge how little or how much skin is correct to cut on an infant - has cut more shaft skin off than intended. I’ve seen articles and books suggesting that as many as 60% of circumcised men are walking around showing off their botched circumcisions and they don’t even know it. What we don’t see are the men who lost their glans or their entire penis in the procedure (apparently, nothing to show off) or the few who actually die soon after the procedure from exsanguination or the handful of men who cannot live with their cut state and take their own lives. Occasionally in the medical literature we’ll see penises badly bent or with torn skin from painfully tight erections.

If only I lived in a world where the only penises were natural penises.

A scarred penis ......

Never thought of it in this way; interesting.

turns me off when I see hair on the shaft

I agree with you

True fact...there are more uncircumcised males in the world than circumcised males throughout history, so obviously most of the world seems to prefer an uncircumcised penis. However, that being said, it seems logical that in the areas of the world where either circumcision or noncircumcision is practiced more frequently that the males and even females from those areas would prefer the penis status that they are most familiar with. So it really is no surprise to see more people living in the U.S. seeming to prefer a circumcised penis and those living in other countries seeming to prefer an uncircumcised penis.

True fact...there are more uncircumcised males in the world than circumcised males throughout history, so obviously most of the world seems to prefer an uncircumcised penis. However, that being said, it seems logical that in the areas of the world where either circumcision or noncircumcision is practiced more frequently that the males and even females from those areas would prefer the penis status that they are most familiar with. So it really is no surprise to see more people living in the U.S. seeming to prefer a circumcised penis and those living in other countries seeming to prefer an uncircumcised penis.

That is indeed logical and the way societies work. People prefer the familiar.

But then, instead of thinking up religious or medical excuses to justify the procedure, just admit it might come down to a physical fashion statement or social conformity expectations.

That is indeed logical and the way societies work. People prefer the familiar.

But then, instead of thinking up religious or medical excuses to justify the procedure, just admit it might come down to a physical fashion statement or social conformity expectations

True, but aren’t those social conformity expectations derived from religious, medical excuses, or other reasons? Circular argument or chicken and egg dilemma?

but aren’t those social conformity expectations derived from religious, medical excuses, or other reasons?

Hucksters have understood from the start how to sell this “miracle cure” to the public, and the public were easily duped. It’s a straightforward example of the fable, The Emperor’s New Clothes. All you have to do is look at the list of ailments supposedly remedied by circumcision over the years: alcoholism, asthma, epilepsy, enuresis, hernia, gout, rectal prolapse, rheumatism and kidney disease. Don’t forget how circumcision cures masturbation, also. It’s quick, it’s permanent, your friend did his already, the women will love you, you’ll be healthier, you’ll live longer and be prosperous. Tomorrow we’ll learn that circumcision completely eliminates teenage acne, so sign up now! No one wants to admit they were wrong about something this important, so they find the next reason to keep doing it: HIV/AIDS, STIs, bacteria, hygiene, sand under your foreskin, etc., etc., etc. It’s not hard to see the pattern.

I would sign up to participate in a study to compare sensitivity between circumcised vs not circumcised

I would sign up to participate in a study to compare sensitivity between circumcised vs not circumcised

Wouldn’t that mean you would have to be intact to join the study and depending which research arm you’re assigned to (control or intervention) you have an even chance of coming out of the study without your foreskin? What if the results of the study is a resounding “yes” and they find something like a 50% reduction in sensitivity? Could anyone actually get that study past a human subjects review board?

All the studies I’m aware of recruit cut men who were cut as adults, so the sensitivity results are self-reported by men who were biased toward being cut.

I see what you mean,

I was thinking more along the lines of myself as circumcised, bieng compared to another guy that is not circumcised

I was thinking more along the lines of myself as circumcised, bieng compared to another guy that is not circumcised

There are some older studies like that, but they are controversial. The researchers used various instruments to stimulate the man while recording the impulses of various nerve receptors. The results showed confirmation bias, and a huge criticism of the study was how you could stimulate nerve endings the same way in an intact man and a cut man when the nerve endings in the cut man had been destroyed. There is also a question of what role scar tissue plays in mitigating sensitivity. I am unaware of any recent attempts to repeat that research.

I want to add this, also. An erroneous assumption in some of those studies was that innervation of the foreskin was similar to any other area of sensitive skin. But they didn’t account for the muscle and vascular structures in the foreskin that also transmit sensations (especially movement) to the man’s brain. So, it’s not enough to test, say, fine touch receptors, and compare the results because there is more happening in the intact man that isn’t accounted for.

Wouldn’t that mean you would have to be intact to join the study and depending which research arm you’re assigned to (control or intervention) you have an even chance of coming out of the study without your foreskin? What if the results of the study is a resounding “yes” and they find something like a 50% reduction in sensitivity?

If you are not circumcised and someone wished to study/determine if any sensitivity loss occurs from circumcision, then it is easy enough to design a small rubber (or whatever) device that fits over the penis and keeps the foreskin retracted for as long as one wants.

You can also do this yourself in a somewhat clunky but still effective way by finding the right size of cloth covered hairband and putting it into place behind the corona of the glans and if the right size is chosen, it will keep the foreskin retracted. I've been doing this for years and years with these cheap things you find in the women's sections of accessories and such in drugstores and such.

There are also devices you can buy online that do the same, but are better designed and specifically made fror this purpose.

https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B09Q16WCCF/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A2BLQU6Y3LZPP&psc=1

https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B0742C3RLK/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_2?smid=A2BLQU6Y3LZPP&psc=1

So, if a study were ever done, I am certain a very specific small rubber/silicon or whatever devices could be designed for participants to wear, with no need to ever really circumcise a participant.

No need for any fancy readings of skin receptors. Just slip on a foreskin retractor and wait for a passage of time. The drawback might be that results will result from self-reporting and this is not always honestly reported. And researchers will have to trust the participants not to remove the retractor during the test. Believe me, the first few days with a newly retracted foreskin is pretty intense sensitivity-wise. It is hard to stay the course.

Then again, if researchers still wanted to do the electrical testing etc, they could do it on the same person.

I’d be curious if that “extra skin” on an uncut penis would enhance my anal sensations as it slid in/out of my butthole! Would love to find out!

I’d be curious if that “extra skin” on an uncut penis...

It's not 'extra', it's standard equipment for the species.

I’d be curious if that “extra skin” on an uncut penis would enhance my anal sensations as it slid in/out of my butthole! Would love to find out!

Check out this video. They guy demonstrates how sex is different for an intact man: https://www.xvideos.com/video38142021/how_a_natural_uncircumcised_penis_works

So, if a study were ever done, I am certain a very specific small rubber/silicon or whatever devices could be designed for participants to wear, with no need to ever really circumcise a participant.

No need for any fancy readings of skin receptors. Just slip on a foreskin retractor and wait for a passage of time. The drawback might be that results will result from self-reporting and this is not always honestly reported. And researchers will have to trust the participants not to remove the retractor during the test. Believe me, the first few days with a newly retracted foreskin is pretty intense sensitivity-wise. It is hard to stay the course.

Then again, if researchers still wanted to do the electrical testing etc, they could do it on the same person.

I strongly disagree, and here’s why: Within the intact man’s foreskin there is a muscle, some blood vessels, some membranous surfaces, and nerves that just simply are not there in a circumcised man. You cannot simply turn those off by wrapping something around the retracted foreskin. Those parts are still connected to the brain and sending signals, even if it’s a signal about your pig-in-a-blanket idea. So how about anesthetizing the parts? The only way to actually do that is with a dorsal penile nerve block which would anesthetize the whole penis and scrotum. Also, an uncovered glans in an intact man is very different from the glans of a circumcised man. In a circumcised man, the surface of the glans dries out, keratinizes, and develops a thin protective layer akin to a callous. The dehooded intact man is subjecting a mucous membrane that is supposed to be inside the body to the outside of the environment. Of course it would be incredibly sensitive. That would be like pulling your eyelid away from you eye and holding it there for an hour.

That would be like pulling your eyelid away from you eye and holding it there for an hour.

I haven't been doing this kind of retracting for merely an hour or hours, but for months at a time without interruption. More than enough time to become desensitized enough to tell the difference.

It is a simple enough test to do. But the first few days are incredibly sensitive and you'd have to be able to verify compliance.

It's not 'extra', it's standard equipment for the species.

Well said @DrZ 🌹

I’d be curious if that “extra skin” on an uncut penis

It's not 'extra', it's standard equipment for the species.

Thinking in terms of 'extra' skin is what make circumcision so insidious as a social phenomenon. After a while, people/society doesn't even reflect what is actually being done. It is inverted thinking.

After a while, people/society doesn't even reflect what is actually being done

that is true of a lot of what happens in society today,

it is what I find rather erotically fascinating regarding the normality of circumcision in the USA

it is what I find rather erotically fascinating regarding the normality of circumcision in the USA

I find the unspoken reason why it was done in the US so disquieting and disturbing - to curb masturbation. It was in the back of every parent's mind no doubt, but then desperately using a medical/hygienic excuse so as not to talk about it openly ...

I find the unspoken reason why it was done in the US so disquieting and disturbing - to curb masturbation.

The first I heard that one reason for circumcison was to curb masturbation was here on Zity. Never occurred to me nor do I see it as a practical method to keep a guy from masturbating. Is masturbation percieved to be more pleasurable for an uncircumcised guy?

As a sin against nature, it has no parallel except in sodomy (see Gen. 19:5; Judges 19:22). It is the most dangerous of all sexual abuses because the most extensively practiced. The vice consists in an excitement of the genital organs produced otherwise than in the natural way. It is known by the terms, selfpollution, self-abuse, masturbation, onanism, manustupration, voluntary pollution, and solitary or secret vice. The vice is the more extensive because there are almost no bounds to its indulgence. Its frequent repetition fastens it upon the victim with a fascination almost irresistible, It may be begun in earliest infancy, and may continue through life.

A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed

John Harvey Kellogg, Plain Facts for Old and Young

The first I heard that one reason for circumcison was to curb masturbation was here on Zity. Never occurred to me nor do I see it as a practical method to keep a guy from masturbating. Is masturbation percieved to be more pleasurable for an uncircumcised guy?

That is one of the oddities of the whole anti-masturbation aspect of circumcision. The procedure was indeed (partially) touted to curb/stop masturbation (starting with Dr. Tissot, a Swiss physician in the late 18th century), but anyone who'd been cut still played with themselves. So you'd think when they grew up to be head of a household or perhaps a doctor or whatever, they'd compare their own youthful experiences with the given reasons.

But, apparently cognitive dissonance is a very real and much occurring mental phenomenon ...

Here's a link to more about the person who started linking masturbation to circumcision in order to prevent all manner of illnesses and mental disorders.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel-Auguste_Tissot

He probably drew the same wrong conclusions that researchers did in the late 19th and early 20th century, when they discovered that virtually all prisoners in jails, admitted to masturbating when young. Ergo, they thought, masturbation must therefore be a precursor to criminal behavior and to be prevented at all cost.

Tissot probably found out from treating the mentally ill and those with debilitating diseases, that they had all masturbated when young. Therefore, his conclusion was that such disorders/diseases were caused by masturbation, since they all had masturbating youngsters in common.

And what is even odder from a cognitive point of view, is that all these people, learned doctors and all, considered rubbing a penis with a hand, to be entirely different from rubbing a penis against the vaginal walls of a woman. As if rubbing wasn't rubbing. Did they think that vaginal secretions gave the act some sort of magical infusion of health perhaps?

There was also a war of ideologies raging in the medical profession from the 18th to 19th century over the very novel idea that disease was caused by invisible bugs and not the moral character of the patient. The microscope was new, and no one quite knew what they were looking at. Pasteur and others proposed germ theory which undermined civil and religious thinking of the time that illness was the wages of sin. This came to head in a Paris syphilis ward where doctors noticed a milky discharge from men afflicted with the disease. One camp (pathologists) said the discharge was puss and evidence of microbes infecting the patient, and another camp said the discharge was clear evidence that the men were practicing self-pollution, a sin that caused their affliction. Each side was pushing for government and public affirmation of their position, so circumcisions were marked down to half-off and entered vict…patients into a drawing for a used 2004 Honda Odyssey. At least that’s what I heard.

Actually the question, as posed, is irrelevant, for how would anyone be able to make a comparison?

Actually the question, as posed, is irrelevant, for how would anyone be able to make a comparison?

Yes, the decision is usually made very early in a males life to ease the pain of the procedure in later life.

@agracier Well, depending on how circumcision was done, some men, including myself, have to be careful masturbating or receiving handjobs… rubbing without lubricant may be uncomfortable.

rubbing without lubricant may be uncomfortable.

isnt that rather the point

Well, depending on how circumcision was done, some men, including myself, have to be careful masturbating or receiving handjobs… rubbing without lubricant may be uncomfortable.

There you go, see? Drs Tissot and Kellogg got it right it seems. Done as they saw circumcision properly done, it was indeed meant to make masturbation as unpleasurable as possible. Preferably without any anesthesia, just to reinforce their point and make it even more clear ...

There you go, see? Drs Tissot and Kellogg got it right it seems. Done as they saw circumcision properly done, it was indeed meant to make masturbation as unpleasurable as possible. Preferably without any anesthesia, just to reinforce their point and make it even more clear ...

Perhaps, by Kellogg’s logic, if applied today, removing an eye would cut viewing porn in half! 😄😄