greyline

Assuming you were circumcised at birth, you've also never known what it's like to experience the sexual pleasure of a foreskin.

And the option to do so was permanently taken from you, without your consent.

premjan

I think the problem of a "tight" foreskin is probably reasonably common (I think it is called "phimosis"). It can interfere partially with erection I think though I am not sure removing it entirely would be advantageous. The foreskin is also an oddly constructed thing since it attached closer to the head on one side of the penis than on the other side (not symmetrical). I remember thinking this was a little weird when I was growing up. Maybe this helps to make it retractile and put pressure on the penis head (helps erection perhaps?).

greyline

Circumcision is a very strange cure for phimosis.


Do you mean attached differently on the top and bottom of the penis? The attachment on the bottom is at the frenulum, similar to the underside of the tongue. The frenulum is highly sensitive - it's often damaged or entirely scraped off during circumcision.

The foreskin is "oddly constructed" I guess - it's a pretty complex piece of engineering, being sort of folded back on itself so that when fully retracted it turns inside-out. It's that ability of the shaft to move back and forth within its own skin that makes the experience of an uncut penis so different from one without that capability (speaking from the female perspective).

While it's true that the man attached to the penis is generally more important than the appendage itself for most of us, there *are* differences for the partner, as well as many differences for the man. I don't see how parents have the right to irreversibly determine what those experiences will be for their son and his future partners.

wonkothesane

Bottom line (for me) is that I was never given a choice in the matter, and if I had been I'd have chosen *not* to have it done. (And I really can't have it - effectivily - undone now, can I?)

Same reason I didn't have any of my kid's ears peirced as small children (as some parents do) - that should be *their* choice.

Sure, parent's make medical decisions for their children all the time, but those are about things which are medically necessary - often *immediately* medically necessary. Circumcision isn't. Period.

And if I was so inclined to becoem circumcised later in life, I would always have that option. Whereas, like I said before, there is no procedure available today - stretching and cosmetic reconstruction included - that can ever really restore what was lost. *AND* if I did chose to do it as an adult, I would at least be given some anesthetic to kill the pain...

Circumcision is a barbaric practice that is - abiet slowly - dying out.

(And don't even get me started on the dumbassed "So he will look like his daddy" excuse. That just prepetuates an unessary practice for generations. You do it so he will look like daddy, then he does it to his kids, and so on and so on and so on... My son isn't circumcised, and he doesn't complain that he doesn't look like me. On the contrary, he seems appreciative of tha fact that I *didn't* have part of his penis sliced off. And if it's ever an issue for him, he at least will have a choice about it. I respected him enough to give him that choice.)

Edited to add: My son did have a problem as a small child with a foreskin related problem called "formosa" where a small part of his foreskin adhered to the head of his penis. The doctor we had at the time - a Muslim - pushed and pushed us to have him circumcised, but we talked to a couple of other doctors and a few nurses and they all said to just wait and the foreskin would naturally detach, and that all we needed to do was keep an eye on it because very rarely it can become a problem or become painfull. We waited, and it detached all on it's own. He's fine now.

Agemegos

The incidence of phimosis is hugely exaggerated in countries where most doctors are circumcised, and therefore are unaware that the foreskin is not retractible in infants.

According to the British Medical Journal "Nearly 60 percent of males born in the US receive a non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision. Most of the 40 percent minority who escape neonatal circumcision are at grave risk of a post neonatal circumcision due to the profound ignorance of the normal development of the foreskin amongst American doctors. Most male doctors practicing today were born in the era of mass neonatal circumcision and have no personal experience of the foreskin. Normal development of the prepuce is not part of the curricula of U.S. medical schools. Most American doctors seem unaware of Kayaba and colleague's finding that 37.1 percent of 11-15 year old boys still have less than completely retractile foreskins."

The foreskin adheres to the glans penis at birth, and the attachment only gradually dissolves. The glans is rarely completely free before the age of three, and it is not reasonably considered abnormal if the last attachments do not break free until eighteen. The glans penis is properly an internal organ except during erection in the adult.

As for phimosis, it is a condition in which the opening off the foreskin is too tight to be withdrawn over the glans. Mothers and circumcised doctors (being unfamiliar with a normal foreskin) falsely diagnose phimosis when they cannot retract the patient's foreskin, though the real reason is that it is still (as it ought to be) attached.

Actual phimosis is not a problem in the infant. And the evidence I have to hand is that 7 out of eight cases resolve spontaneously by the age of eighteen. 80% of the remainder can be cured with a steroid cream. And many of the rest can be resolved by stretching. http://www.cirp.org/library/treatment/phimosis/. Lopping a little boy's foreskin because there 0.07% chance (seven chances in ten thousand) that he will require surgery to it to allow comfortable sex is grossly excessive.

Mine isn't: left and right sides are symmetrical, and have been since the last adhesion between my glans and foreskin gave way when I was about seven or eight. There is, however, a frenulum connecting the underside of my glans to the overlying foreskin.

Agemegos

I'll go.

I am a forty-year-old uncircumcised male. In twenty-three years of sexual activity I have:

* Never experienced an erectile dysfunction.
* Never experienced an STD.
* Never experienced an infection on or around my penis.

I never felt the slightest concern about the fact that I was 'different' from my father or the majority of my playmates.

My foreskin has been fully retractible since I was about seven or eight. I retract it to was my glans every time I bathe or take a shower, which is to say at least once every day.

I have never had a sunburned glans.

About half my girlfriends had not slept with an uncircumcised man before me, and were fascinated by my foreskin. All have given me head without even being asked to, though in every case except one I went down on them before they went down on me.

premjan

the frenulum (front to back asymmetry) is what I meant. I am not sure how right-to-left asymmetry would arise at all.

Corwin

It can happen as a result of circumcision.... if the skin is left shorter on one side than the other. Other than that, no, it doesn't happen natrually.

Agemegos

Or if a skin bridge forms (as a result of the skin of the shaft healing onto the raw surface of the glans where the common epithelium has been ripped off). But both of those are rather assymetries of the circumcised penis, not assymetries of the foreskin.

Corwin

Right. They're a result of circumcision, not a reason for it.