The Schmuck Debate

I'm sitting here on a Sunday listening to old Dan Savage podcasts instead of going to the gym,* and he just fielded a call from a gay man who is not attracted to uncircumcised penises. I realized I'd not yet weighed in on the topic myself. The topic, of course, has three subheadings:

1) The Attractiveness Debate

Dan's caller is the evidence here--some people find uncircumcised penises unattractive, particularly in cultures where circumcision is the norm. It is, of course, the norm in MY culture, so it was only very occasionally that I've encountered a penis that was fully intact. And frankly, you don't always notice: it's dark, or there's a condom on it, or it's erect (in which case they mostly look the same anyway). So I never had a conscious opinion either way. It was only in my recent adulthood that I got a good, lights-on look at an uncut version, and I have to say...it was ADORABLE. It's true that I really liked this guy, which Dan says is key to getting over whatever you genital prejudices are, but it looked rather sweet and mysterious, as though it needed undressing. I developed a crush on it.** So to my cock-sucking friends out there, I hope you can view the presence or absence of a foreskin as but one other facet to find endearing about your sexual partner.

2) The Health Debate

Here we get more tricky. There are very recent studies that show circumcision reducing the transmission of HIV by as much as 50%...in Africa. It's unclear why, and there are a lot of other factors that could be at play here, given that the public health landscape of Africa is pretty different from our own. (And condoms are better anyway! So use those whatever your status.) Most previous research shows that there's no hygienic difference between a circumcised penis and an uncircumcised penis, provided the penis-bearer has been taught the relatively simple art of Keeping It Clean.

3) The Penile Rights Debate

For me, this is what it comes down to. There is the argument that removing the foreskin decreases sexual sensation.*** Furthermore, sometimes the mohel or the doctor screws up, and your child is left with severely decreased, or nonexistent, sexual functioning.**** And then there's the simple fact that we as a society are saying, for no actually good reason, "Your genitals are bad. There is something inherently wrong with them which we must fix, painfully, as soon as possible." I have no opinion as to whether the pain of circumcision saddles guys with a life-long neurosis, but I wouldn't let someone shave off part of my daughter's clitoris just because the bible said so.

Obviously, most circumcised guys come out just fine. There are a lot of them out there, apparently not crippled either physically or emotionally. There's no judgment here--I suppose if I have a son, and there is a father in the picture, I would leave the decision up to him. (The baby's father would, after all, have far more experience having a penis than I.) But if the decision were left up to me, I don't think I could go through with it, not with an easy mind. I'm a Jew, but obviously not one who does things solely because my religion demands it. And since I don't know entirely which side of the debate is right, I expect I would err on the side of caution.

What do you guys think?


*Obvi.
**Of course, things went WAY south, and a few months later I would tell a friend that I hoped this dude's new girlfriend "was reluctant to suck his uncircumcised dick." Which a) sounds sort of like a gypsy curse and b) was not very mature, but heartache requires only public maturity, not private.
***In my unrelated research into the evolution of monotheism, I discovered that followers of Asherah, a pre-YHWH fertility goddess, who honored her by fucking. These worshippers (Semites, aka future Jews) believed an uncircumcised penis was blasphemous, as the lessened sensation of circumcision allowed men to last longer, and thus worship more. So there's that.
****Then there were those mohalim who were giving 8-day-old boys Herpes because, traditionally, they would put the babies' penises in their mouths after the cut as an analgesic. But let's not blame that on circumcision as a whole.