How little our society knows about this unique structure of the penis! It is a jack of all trades but does each exceedingly well – at least two dozen functions. I’ll focus on sexual pleasure only, for brevity. As the primary organ of sexual touch and endowed with a denser supply of fine-touch receptors than anywhere on the male body (anywhere even on the rest of the penis), it is THE primary source of sexual pleasure in the male. Please see http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/sorrells_2007/. This sentence sounds absurd to an American nation of cripples (59% infant circ rate, higher for current male population, 15% globally) who have hardly had contact with a whole man, but is true. Cold and Taylor ‘boldy went where no man has gone before” in their histological study which helped elaborate science’s understanding on what nature has taken millions of years to perfect – the tremendous and varied nerves gracing this structure, capable of transmitting the most exquisite and delicate sensations of touch, heat, and pressure. Please see http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/ Actually, at least 8 prior scientific authors dating back to the mid 1800’s have elaborated on the types of nerves found within the prepuce, but it seems modern science, and American science in particular, does not celebrate sexual pleasure and has hidden this information, unconsciously perhaps. Spoken more succinctly than I could, Paul M. Fleiss, M.D. in What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Circumcision says

“The primary zones of erotogenous sensitivity are the frenulum, ridged band, and preputial orifice, and the external fold of the foreskin. Continuous and gentle stimulation of any one of these areas can elicit pleasure, orgasm, and ejaculation. “

Each component of our sexual anatomy contributes to the complex interplay and symphony of sensations, collected by the organ, and transmitted to the brain whose development perfectly matches and decodes that tactile experience, solely for the pleasure of its owner, and taking any part away is like hearing a beautiful Mozart symphony…without the string section. Who would suggest reducing the labia minora or clitoris even one little bit? Why do we consider penile reduction surgery 'ok' in this country? Bodily integrity against a background of cultural value placed on obviously essential body parts makes cutting on non-consenting humans for any reason other than dire medical emergency seem like a heinous crime. Denmark is considering nonconsensual circumcision just that. So should we, as we already have a 1970’s law banning FGM, including for reasons of religion, it is important to note. That law sits right now, in our books, and yes, U.S. doctors engaged in cutting women for the same reasons (please look it up if you are doubtful) in this very country in which we are living, right up to the year in which this law took place.

I’ll list a few other functions of the foreskin and every one of these functions, including those of sexual pleasure (not a phrase we like to associate with science, but I dare say within the realm of human experience, and so *should be given equal status) have studies to back it up. But I’d like to suggest people here consider that there are two groups of areas where studies are not necessary; shared similar experience and experience of body functioning.

1. Immediate experience. A hammer is dropped on my toe. Studies aren’t needed to convince others that pain is the result. We’ve all experienced something similar.
2. Indirect experience. A hammer is dropped on another person’s toe. Again, we’ve experienced something similar.
3. Direct body experience. Cutting out the front of one’s tongue. Studies aren’t needed to convince the person that the sense of sweetness will be gone. They will not experience sweetness.
4. Indirect body experience. Cutting out the front of another’s tongue. We all have that sweet sense capability in the front of our tongues and can figure out that removing that unique part of the tongue will reduce our pleasure in eating substantially.

This partly explains why we have so few studies documenting the sensitivity of female genitalia – we all know that cutting genitalia means a bleaker sexual experience (this reason of sexual sensation adds to our prior reason – bodily integrity – to fight for genital integrity for females), and given the lack of personal understanding around basic male sexual anatomy, why some people have published poorly designed studies that don’t even measure what the specific anatomy can detect. For example, the glans is endowed with deep pressure receptors, and very few fine touch receptors, yet Master and Johnson tested glans of intact vs cut men in a way that would not elicit any difference because they were ignorant of the specific sensitivity of the glans. It’s not so amazing that being sexual ‘experts’ their knowledge is often re-quoted as fact (without even a full disclosure of their methodological approach), when in reality, they might as well have been testing the eyes of color-blind vs color-capable individuals with black and white images, and concluded that there’s no difference in vision between the two!

The reason that we lack studies on male sexual experience is because funding is not available for controversial sexual studies in a foreskin-phobic society, and because we devalue the sexual experience of men, trivialize it, and maybe reaching into (for others) uncharted emotional territory, subtly shame and blame men around their sexuality, just as we do for women. In males, we take that sexual shame into the area of male genital disfigurement. Being a nation comprised of mostly disfigured men, we call this ‘normal’ and ‘attractive’, like a nation of war vets missing their left ears since birth, and judging a biologically normal two-eared person as unattractive.

It is important to note that circumcision was originally promoted as a cure for what was considered dangerously unhealthy in the latter part of the 1800’s – masturbation. It gave the struggling new field of medicine some serious traction and credibility, since it could not solve many of the diseases of the day, but at least it knew by ‘borrowing’ from the Jewish tradition, how to cut pieces of anatomy off. It did not have any knowledge of this anatomy beyond what was needed to do ensure the survival of the patient, did not, in fact, wish to know. It was, with the help of many devotes such as Kellog (the cereal guy), successful in convincing the public - amist social discomfort around sexuality and its negative impact on spirituality - of it's moral and physical benefit. People were eager to take any steps necessary to assisting in their moral cleanliness. Conflating cleanliness with morality degraded into the current myth that cut men are unclean.

Funding in the rest of the world for studies on the male structure are completely unnecessary, exactly because their men posses that body part and do not need elaborate studies, in-depth nerve knowledge, and counter-studies to combat the biased and often blatantly false medical studies, to show that yes, we’ll be keeping what nature has blessed us with, thank you very much.

My last point – what other body part can you think of that is dangerous to its owner, contributes to medical risks, and whose value in its function is superseded by its risks? I can think of none, except when it comes to the uniquely United States perception of the prepuce. We’re the only country in the world cutting the majority of our males for non-religious reasons, basing our moral superiority over countries that practice FGM partly on highly selective and biased medical claims. Again, current global circumcision rates are around 15%. We take our children to the doc to help eradicate an ear infection. We don’t ask him to cut out his ear in an operation in which that same child as an infant would be fully conscious! If you think 5-20 minutes of pain on a helpless infant who has no say, should be considered an acceptable proactive medical practice, I invite you - male or female - to consider the situation where a mandatory law requires you have your intact genitals cut without anesthesia. The analogy breaks down a little here on a number of points, but is only meant to illustrate the complete lack of power and autonomy given around the decision to remove someone else’s body parts, for whatever reason. Only when there is a dire and imminent medical situation that could result in death or greater physical damage, and where that person is unconscious or incapable of making their own decisions, should we be allowed to amputate unhealthy body parts. Ethically, we cannot condone cutting healthy body parts that pose no immediate danger.

Nature doesn’t birth every mammal on this planet (except bats) with a foreskin because she’s made a mistake or because she hasn’t selected it out of the gene pool yet and has politely asked *us to finish the job for her. Foreskins are not a congenital birth defect, nor are they vestigial! A female secretes smegma (Greek for soap, since that’s *exactly what it is - there is scientific information about this), have more UTI’s, are equally at risk for AIDS, as compared with their male counterparts.

So, here briefly, are some other reasons for a prepuce:

Provides for smooth intercourse by reducing friction for both partners. The penis is more like a sleeve than a static ram-rod or dowel. Artificial lubricants are rarely needed during sex between an intact man and an intact woman.

Encourages the male to make gentle deep thrusting motions during vaginal sex so that he is in contact with the clitoral hood and clitoris, making it more likely for the female to experience orgasm during intercourse.

Produces smegma, a healthy natural skin emollient, which helps lubricate the skin and allows for effortless insertion during intercourse and greatly facilitates masturbation.

Provides immunological defense during infancy and childhood, when it is tightly fused to the glans via synechia – the same bond that holds your fingernail to it’s bed (imagine a toothpick being pushed underneath to destroy that bond and you may have a flavor for the pain experienced by an infant, and yes, sadly there are studies on infant pain during circumcision – please see http://www.cirp.org/library/pain/lander/. Human vivisection comes to mind after reading that study.)

Provides further immunological defense throughout life through specialized immune cells and activity found only in the foreskin of the penis.

Exposes the primary erotogenic sexual tissue during erection so that a male’s most highly sexually sensitive apparatus via his mucosa may come in contact with the female’s sexual mucosa.

Produces pheromones and releases these powerful sexual attractants more copiously during arousal.

Protects the glans and keeps it moist.

Please see CIRP.ORG and CIRCUMSTITIONS.COM for more information.

Andre Maranhao