Reports of negative reactions of men to circumcision (see Psychological Impact of Circumcision on Men) are surprising to those who assume that circumcision is a benign procedure. How can the existence of such reports be reconciled with the fact that the majority of circumcised men do not express these feelings about their circumcision? The following factors reduce the likelihood that circumcised men will express dissatisfaction with their circumcision:

• Circumcised men do not know what they are missing. They believe that the sexual sensitivity they have without a foreskin is "normal." (Similarly, a woman born in Somalia who had been subjected to a severe form of female circumcision insisted that it had no impact. "It's the same thing. There is nothing different about my sexuality.") (1) According to one man who was circumcised as an adult, sex without a foreskin is like sight without color. Those who have not seen in color cannot appreciate what is lost. See Men Circumcised as Adults.
• Young circumcised men may not notice the negative sexual effects of circumcision until they are older, because of the progressive desensitization of the exposed glans (head of the penis) from exposure and rubbing against clothes. See Functions of the Foreskin. It is possible that circumcision is an unrecognized factor in the high rates of impotence in older American men.
• Accepting circumcision beliefs and cultural assumptions prevents men from recognizing and feeling their dissatisfaction. A typical response is “When I was young I was told it was necessary for health reasons. I guess I just didn’t question that. I assumed that was so.”
• The emotions connected with circumcision that may surface are very painful. Repressing them protects men from this pain. A circumcised man recalled, “It was something I just didn’t examine. I put it away in the back of my mind like a lot of guys do.” If the feelings do become conscious, they can still be suppressed. After learning about circumcision, another man said, “I don’t want to be angry about this.”
• Those who have feelings about their circumcision are generally afraid to express them because their feelings may be dismissed or ridiculed. When asked why he had not revealed his circumcision feelings before, one man said, “I would be looked upon as strange or else people would toss it off lightly.” Another said, “It’s not something that anyone talks about. If it is talked about, it’s in a snickering, comical way which I find disturbing. People laugh about it as if there is something funny going on.”
• Verbal expression of feelings requires conscious awareness. Because early traumas are generally unconscious, associated feelings are expressed nonverbally through behavioral, emotional, and physiological forms.(2) Attitudes about people, life, and the future may also be affected. An example of an attitude resulting from childhood trauma is “You can’t count on anything or anyone to protect you.”(3)

Lack of awareness and understanding of circumcision, emotional repression, fear of disclosure, and nonverbal expression help keep circumcision feelings a secret.

When our son was born 11 years ago, it never occurred to us NOT to have him circumcized. It's just something you did, and everyone made a huge deal about how difficult it is to keep clean and infections and what not.

If I'd known then what I know now, they would have had to go through me to do it. Hey, I had an emergency c-section with him and was up and around the next day.

I was lucky to have had a doctor that was against routine circumcision and he was able to talk to me about it and it didn't take much convincing on his part to sway me toward not having my son circumcised. I think doctors are pushing for not having it done now, but it used to be that it was so routine that like you said, Kelly, no one really questioned it.

The sad fact is that it was a money grab for the health care system and in this day and age of tattoos and body piercings it was an easy sell...fact is ...women prefer to see the glans penis exposed.

Circumcision is a form of male genital mutilation that has its origins in Judaism. Unfortunately, modern medicine is guilty of fabricating post-hoc secular justifications for this religious custom possibly as a way to legitimate its continued practice. Without these secular justifications, circumcision would have appeared to be a horrific and brutal practice to subject an infant to, and might easily have been criminalized and abandoned along with spanking. Fortunately, the current consensus is that the health costs of this practice far outweigh the alleged and unsubstantiated benefits. But tradition and myth have considerable sway over our choices when we don’t have enough solid information to guide them. Why do gentiles continue to circumcise their children? Because people are comfortable with familiarity as opposed to novelty, and awareness of the negative effects has not penetrated far enough.

Many women find that a circumcized penis is visually more appealing; married to that issue is the problem that many women not only prefer that any man they're with be circumcized, but that they literally will not sleep with an uncircumsized man. I have personally known men who have grown to adulthood and not been circumcized who have, due to this preassure, become circumsized later in life in an elective procedure. If it leads to the approval of women men will continue to do it, and parents will continue to justify it under this caveat despite all we know of the damage it causes. This is an unfortunate fact and it means that as well as advertising to men and parents the problems surrounding circumcision, the negative effects, and dispelling the half-truths and lies about how it is cleaner, safer, etc. there must be time and effort invested in changing the opinions of women.

If you meet a woman who admits to prefering circumsized men, or who claims that uncircumsized men are somehow subpar; let her be informed of the cost of her choices, tell her that she is supporting the mutiliation of male children in a cruel, unnatural surgical process. I have personally met and effected the opinions of many women regarding this twisted fetish, and I choose those words deliberately to describe what it is; what it should be understood as being by all men, a disgusting and bizarre sexual kink founded in the attitude that somehow a man's genitalia is more attractive when mutilated.

I think it goes something like this. A girl sees a circumcized penis for the first time and thinks to herself. Oh, so that's what a mans penis looks like. Later on she sees a natural mans penis and thinks to herself. Eww! What the heck is that? It looks like some kind of animals penis. Or is it a trunk?

Sad

I know that there are women out there that prefer uncircumcised penises though.
Many people also have a strong preference for hairless bodies, which I think is more understandable.

When I look at Christiano Ronaldo being the "sexiest player" of the EM, I wonder since when women are interested in man looking like young boys then men? The whole meterosexuality thing....no breast hair, facial hair, not to much muscles, little ass, underweight, sexual organs multilated. Do women want to date little boys?

http://www.welt.de/multimedia/archiv...rt_545389a.jpg

linked that way is better....

So have I doomed my own son to a lifetime of rejection from women because I didn't have him circumcised when he was born? That's a horrible thought....and not one that he has ever mentioned to me (and probably won't)...but I wonder if this is true?

I've heard that men experience more sexual pleasure when they are uncircumcised, and that women experience more sexual pleasure from an uncircumcised penis.

If so then I think we need to spread awareness of this. I have a vested interest in that.

The main reason seems to be that circumcised men don't want to admit that it could have been a bad idea to have part of their penis removed, so they keep looking for reasons to justify it.

The real question is how did non-religious circumcision ever get popular in the first place. Basically, 19th century western doctors thought (wrongly) that circumcision caused all sorts of physical and mental ailments, and also thought (wrongly) that circumcision stopped masturbation. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that's what happened. Check out this link for what physicians were writing in journals of the time: http://www.noharmm.org/docswords.htm

Over hundred years later, and a physician making an incision on a girl's genitals (even without removing any tissue) can land the parents and the physician in jail, yet boys routinely have the most sensitive part of their penis cut off, and no-one seems to care. Why don't boys get the same protection that girls get?

Fortunately, the practice seems to be dying out:
drops in male circumcision:
USA: from 90% to 56%
Canada: from 47% to 14%
UK: from 35% to about 3% (less than 1% among non-Muslims)
Australia: 90% to 12.6% ("routine" circumcision has recently been banned in public hospitals in all states except one, so the rate will now be a lot lower)
New Zealand: 95% to below 3% (mostly Samoans and Tongans)
South America and Europe: never above 5%