Preface: I thought long and hard (look at me go with the puns so early!) about writing on this topic, one so charged with emotion, fear and loathing. But hey, here it is. Before you read this though, please take note that this is not an article about being pro or con. It’s not about telling you, if you are one or the other, that your ‘status’ is better or worse; or how it impacts your life, or not. And it’s not about telling you whether you should have your baby boy done, or not.
This is an article about my experience and the views that I have formed since.
That’s it.
Right then, here we go.
Circumcision.
Oooooooo. I could hear the sharp intakes of breath around the interwebs as I typed that single, simple word.
If you are not initiated with the concept, as you might not be living outside the US, Australia, or the other few Western countries where the procedure has been the norm, circumcision is the surgical removal of the penis’ foreskin. As far as anyone knows, it’s one of the oldest procedures in the world, with pictorial evidence dating back ancient Egypt; though it‘s probably older.
While Islam and Judaism practice circumcision as a religious rite of passage, as do other cultures around the world, from the early to mid 20th Century to the 1990’s, circumcision for boys living in various Western countries was almost the norm for non religious reasons.
I wrote about my experiences growing up with a foreskin in a circumcised norm, so you can read about that here if you are interested. Opting to have it done in my mid 20’s though makes me one of a relatively small number who can actually talk about life before and life after the deed has been done. Why I chose to do it had nothing to do with growing up with one, I was well beyond all that by that stage, but had everything to do with both hygiene and sex.
Now before those so inclined to do so bang on in the comments section about the previous sentence, when I say ‘hygiene’ I am not implying I had bad personal hygiene or that penis au natural is ‘unclean’, far from it; I kept my peen very clean and never had a hygiene related medical issue. Living in hot climates though and then compounding that with being very physically active meant that no matter how much I washed, a funky funk would always eventuate. I didn’t like it. Pure and simple.
Sexually speaking, for me protected sex (i.e. using a condom) pretty much dulled sensation to the point of being a non event and, let’s call it ‘vigorous’, sessions without a condom often led to uncomfortable skin tears. Fun. I won’t go into post sex funk or under skin ‘slime’ that was the norm if I did not wish directly afterwards.
So at 25 I rocked up to a doctor’s office and arranged for my circumcision.
This was just before the interwebs became a hotbed of information and ubiquitous access to it was not a thing. So with very little information other than knowing what a peen looked like with, and without, I had to drop faith in the doctor that he was actually well versed in the process, which he said he was. Knowing what I know now (I’ll get to that soon), I know he told me woefully little about anything and I should have taken up his offer to go the other surgeon who performed the procedure under local instead of general anaesthetic…
I dodged a bullet.
I am not going to go into the ins and outs of the whole thing but I will say that it was not a lot of fun, took weeks to heal up, and a few months to sort itself out 100%. Annoyingly, the doctor who did the deed seemingly was not too concerned with the aesthetics of the end result, so some sloppy sutures left two rows of small skin tags around the ‘scar’ circumference and the frenulum, the band of skin that attaches the shaft to the head on the underside of the penis (think the band of skin under your tongue), which while not removed, was ‘resolved’ in a fairly sloppy manner that left a lumpy, loose area of skin where things came together. Circumcision is a surgical procedure and the skill, a.k.a experience, of the surgeon is paramount.
It worked fine but it was not the neatest peen in the world.
So after several years, and now living with the Ex, I decided to go get things cleaned up. By now web access was the norm and this time I thoroughly researched things before going to see anyone. I became an ‘expert’ on the subject! After meetings with the right people, things got sorted in what was a very low impact way and after a month or so, my peen looked like well circumcised member should — no funny bumps , no loose flappy bits and we got on having fun with it.
While it was staring back when I was researching my ‘correction’, by the time the Ex and I had our boy and then my second years later with my Current, the wild stuff being said about foreskin, circumcision, and all that had seemed to hit fever pitch and continues to do so. To me, having done what I did and learnt what I learnt, I find much of what I read and listened to on the topic, from those against, perplexing to say the least.
<Interlude>
Before I go on, a bit of an anatomical construction for those not familiar….
Get yourself a sport sock, a tennis ball and an open tin can, slightly smaller in diameter than the tennis ball.
This will all make sense, bear with me…
Put the tennis ball in the sock and push it hard into the toe end. Now place the sock, toe end, into the opening of the tin can, so that the open end of the sock is facing forward and the toe end is sitting in the can. You now have an uncircumcised penis to play with, where the sock is the foreskin and the tennis ball the head.
Now, the foreskin has an inner and outer surface and when you retract the foreskin, the inner surface of the skin becomes exposed as it slides over the shaft and turns inside out— pull the sock back over the tennis ball and down the tin can and you’ll get the idea. The outer surface of the foreskin is simply skin (which bunches up when it’s retracted), like anywhere else on your body. As it tends to be covered by soft undergarments most of the time, it can be slightly more sensitive than say the skin on the top of your hand but that’s about it. The best approximation I can give is it’s sensitivity is somewhat similar to the skin on the underside of your wrist. The inner skin though is very thin and a lot more sensitive (it’s thinness, it’s said, could be why it may be more prone to transferring STIs). How much more sensitive, no one knows. Read that again. NO. ONE. KNOWS.
There’s all sorts of lore brandied about but for the most part there are no actual, scientifically conducted and published studies — my foreskin certainly did not make my mind explode into a state of bliss when touched. If we want to keep it simple, we could say that the protected and thin nature of the inner skin means that even if it has exactly the same amount of nerve endings as other areas of skin, it will be naturally more sensitive. From a sexual function point of view, there is very little purpose to having the foreskin, or inner skin any more, or, less sensitive to anywhere else on the body; it’s role in reaching climax is limited and as far as evolutionists can ascertain, is there to simply protect the glans, a.k.a head of the penis, from back when we ran around without clothing.
<End interlude>
OK….
The complication of anything to do with human beings though is variation — humans are put together mostly the same way but there are all sorts of variations between us; and it’s no different with penises and foreskin. Some men have very short foreskins, so when erect, the skin pulls back over the head and stays there, almost as if they are circumcised naturally. Others have very long foreskins that cover the head, even with the fullest of erections. Same with thickness — some foreskins are very thin, some are quite thick. I was closer to the latter in both cases. My foreskin would easily cover the head, even with the most iron bar of hard ons. It was also fairly thick, so while I could retract the foreskin easily, it moved around a lot when I was hard. That made using condoms a right PIA — think about a sock sliding around in a sock.
Circumcision removes the foreskin and again, variation varies the outcome. Without going into a long winded explanation of methods and ‘styles’ (as if this article is not long winded enough), the further away from the head the ‘scar’ line is, the more of the inner skin has been retained. The closer to the head, the less. As part of the circumcision process, and again, depending on the method/style, the frenulum area may or may not be removed as well. Sometimes for functional purposes, even in uncircumcised men, a frenulum that is too tight requires removal and without doing so, it may tear during sex, cause issues with foreskin retraction, or pull down on the head of the penis causing discomfort during erections. Nature is not perfect and complications are more common than you think.
When it comes to the arguments against circumcision, it’s all about how the removal of foreskin deprives men of sensation. But it’s simply not that cut and dry (boom tish!).
For myself, my foreskin actually deprived me of sensation which is why I much preferred oral to intercourse. During oral, partners always pulled the foreskin right back, meaning the head, inner skin, and frenulum area were exposed and extremely pleasurable. During intercourse though, the foreskin would mostly cover the head (especially when using a condom), and or partially slide back and forth, the motion tugging on the frenulum. If the motion was too vigorous and extended, the tugging would cause small tears in the thin inner skin, tears that effectively ended any enjoyment and took ages to heal up, as they were always covered in a warm, moist environment.
But through learning about how it all goes together though, I understand the angst. Removing the myth of the supposed millions of hyper sensitive nerve endings, rigid pleasure bands etc. etc., that as far as I could ever ascertain, do not exist (at least not in the foreskin I owned), and keeping with the simpler idea of the inner foreskin being more sensitive simply because it’s thinner and protected, removing it will reduce sensitivity. So in a circumcision where the ‘scar’ line is close to the head, then yea, an amount of sensitivity has been lost; and where the closer it is, the more lost. On the flip side though, where the line is much further up the shaft, there’s a good chance most, if not all, has been retained. I know in my case the amount left is pretty close to what was there in the first place, it’s just that now instead of being hidden on the underside of the foreskin, it’s now sitting on the outside of the shaft (the method used, if you are at all curious, I have since learnt is called the ‘sleeve reduction’ technique).
The frenulum is more difficult to quantify. I still have mine, so commenting on what’s lost is harder to say. From what I’ve read, men without frenulums say that this underside region is still very sensitive. I can pinch my frenulum quite hard and not feel much but do agree that the area is very sensitive to the right sort of touch, or motion, at the right point in time. The feeling though is deeper in the shaft and connected with the head, so not the frenulum itself but more the underlying area, which leads me to think that the sensitivity of the area has not so much to do with the actual frenulum and more to do with the structure within the shaft. I can also say this for upper side of my shaft as well — true sensation does not kick in until a certain point of arousal has been reached, at which point the head and entire region, around 1” (2.5cm) behind the head, comes to life. I don’t think this has anything to do with foreskin either, as it works the same now without, as it did with.
Having read a lot on the topic since my own circumcision (I have two boys and decisions had to be made), the one thing I have come to learn is that there is a lot of anecdotal evidence and very few truly scientific studies on the matter. Most articles revolve around how how it affects sex with many articles liking to cite a very small study, more like a survey really, in the Netherlands saying that male circumcision has a negative impact for women causing discomfort and dryness. The study by all accounts though, drew from a small sample group and was completely anecdotal, complicated by the fact that circumcision is not practiced in Europe, meaning the sample group may have been taken from ethnic groups where attitudes, hence sexual practices are regarded very differently. Another survey in Africa, with a much larger sampling, yet still anecdotal, showed the complete opposite; both men and women saying it vastly improved sex. And for every ‘study’ it’s very easy to find a counter.
In regards to the actual sensitivity, to date there has only been one study conducted with proper scientific rigour. It found that based on standardised sensitivity tests, there was little to no difference between the two but by their own admission, the sample group was small and to quantify their findings, they need a much larger group than the 60 odd participants they used. Then there is, as far as I could find, only one study that has tracked men circumcised as adults. The results, based on participants feedback, so once again anecdotal, mostly leaned towards things improving, or at very least not changing.
And that’s the problem. In a vacuum of hard scientific evidence, like so many things today, the topic of circumcision has been whipped into a frenzy of myth and internet lore. I even saw a video on YouTube, that bastion of all things medical, where a self proclaimed ‘sexologist’ (a pornstar it turns out) says that circumcision removes twenty (yes 20!) vital sexual zones of the penis; I must have missed out on that hand out when I was born! But she’s sexy AND a self proclaimed expert, so she must be right. In a society where getting into the nitty gritty of sex is still taboo for many, especially for men that repress feelings beyond the most locker room level of conversations, having a woman come along and tell you if your dick is circumcised, that is the root of all your sexual issues is a pretty powerful force to contend with. And more or less that’s what’s been happening — the mainstay of the anti movement for the past decades has been a woman and the loudest voices are still often women. While that’s fine, the issue is women don’t have a penis…
Yet as I clearly am not a woman, I can’t say that my having, or not having a foreskin has made any difference to my partner’s enjoyment of sex. Two long term relationships proved to me that vaginal ‘dryness’, apparently caused by circumcision (another of the many lores), has nothing to do with not having a foreskin and far more to do with the contraceptive pill which acts as an off tap for vaginal lubrication. I though unfortunately can not impart any first hand thoughts from a partner in regards to the before and after, but I can say that ‘O’, the French girl, one day reached down mid stroke, pulled my foreskin back and held it there as I thrust away. Her words at the time, and I quote: “That feels so good”. She hated the feeling of condoms as well, so I guess like anything human, individual variation plays a part and clearly to some women either way can make a difference, yet for others it doesn’t. In the grand scheme of things though, I imagine for most how ‘skilled’ their partner is overall has far more of an effect on their personal enjoyment than the presence, or not, of an inch long sleeve of skin at the end of their partner’s member!
But from my my experience, I can say that having been circumcised has not made my penis a blunt bludgeon, far from it, and it has shown no signs of changing. While I have to admit that there has been a slight change in the delivery of sensation, it’s not been a detraction. Perhaps the best way it’s been described is to imagine a graph (time vs. pleasure), populated by a series of ever increasing pleasure spikes that increase in size over time in the prgress to orgasm. Circumcision trims the very tip (pun city there) of the spikes. And that’s it. The spikes are still there. They still feel so freak’n good. And they still climb up and up to the grand finale. To describe it, I’d say it’s most noticeable in the first stages of oral. When I had a foreskin, that first instant when a partner would go down on me would be a sharp, jolting sensation. Not necessarily good but one where you’d tense up before relaxing, like jumping into cold water. Now it’s more subtle and to a certain degree, more relaxing — the ease in is slower but no less enjoyable. Apart from that, sex for me is far, far more enjoyable without.
But most importantly, and this I feel is something never taken into account, sex and sexual feelings have more to do with what’s between the ears than what’s between the legs. The way you feel about yourself, your partner, the time of day and a million other complex emotional matters will have a profound effect on your sexual encounters. This is no more apparent than when you have been in a long term relationship and the playing field is completely level. There simply will be times when sex is mind blowing and others where it’s, well… I should have watched the movie instead. Same people, same ‘skillsets’, same penis. Completely different outcome. The presence, or not, of a piece of skin has zero effect on that outcome, but what’s going on between the ears does. If you have, in men’s cases, a whole bunch of women telling you your dick’s broke because you’re circumcised, well that’s not a great emotional starting point…
So after all that reading you’ve got to this point and are wondering what the conclusion is? I am not saying there is one — there are too many variables to be able make a solid conclusion that’s right for everyone. What I can say is, given the right set of variables, being circumcised does not rob you of a pleasure curve some people are trying to tell you it does. My personal experience simply does not support any of the arguments being pushed. In the absence of any firm scientific studies beyond the most basic anecdotal, coupled with the fact that getting men to talk emotionally about sex, let alone their penises, means that the wash of fanciful claims and internet lore for all things foreskin will only continue to confuse the matter for many out there. Probably that’s the biggest dulling sensation right there for any circumcised man with concerns he’s lost something.
I guess though, in light of the way the world seems to be working these days, that’s only to be expected….
I’m a guy, writing about….sex (I know, right?),
