Legalize Foreskin

life-intact:

There is a great deal of activity going on in this tag right now.

There are people who defend circumcision because either they intend on carrying it out, have done it before, or are themselves circumcised.

There are people who speak out against, because they think that the concept of “My body, my choice” should apply to men and boys too.  They speak out because circumcision removes the most sensitive parts of the penis (click link to read).  They speak out because they consider it a concern of human rights and ethics.

I’ll level with you all, right here, right now.

I’m 22 now.

I’m a guy.

And I’m not circumcised.

This may come as a shock to you.  It really shouldn’t.

The strangest part of all of this is that my parents wanted me to be circumcised, really, really badly, but they could not due to the danger it represented to me as someone with congenital lung problems.

They wanted me to be circumcised because they thought it was cleaner, and because they wanted my genitals to meet the standards of their god.

To this date, I have never had a problem or an infection or any other issue with my foreskin, except with other silly people having a problem with the fact that I have a foreskin. 

Hygiene isn’t a problem (because let’s face it, what guy in the US actually has a problem with NOT touching his penis enough in the shower?).

I have never had an STD.  The spread of STDs is primarily a function of poor human life choices and behavior.  For me to actually get one, I would have to have unprotected sex with someone who was carrying an STD.

Truth be told, if you are circumcised or not, if you have sex with someone who has an STD, you probably are going to get that STD.

Circumcision (without pressing medical need) does nothing to improve the urogenital health.

I’ve heard it all.  I’ve heard it often.  I’ve heard it a lot.

Bacteria.  Doesn’t it get trapped there?

I study medicine.  I’m a few years out from obtaining my doctorate, but let me just tell you that bacteria are everywhere.

EVERYWHERE.

It has been estimated that every square inch of human skin is covered in about 500,000,000 microbes.  There are about 200 trillion cells in the human body.  10 trillion of these cells actually belong to you.  The other 190 trillion are microbes.

But on your skin, 500 million of these little benign guys cover every square inch of your skin.  We refer to this class of bacterial as “commensal microflora.”  They take up space on the skin, which is actually quite useful, because they compete with the harmful 2% or so of bacteria out there that can cause infection and disease.

But the idea that somehow slightly lowering the microbial count of the body is “healthier” from a microbiological standpoint is utterly laughable.  Assuming that the foreskin comprises about 12-15 square inches of tissue, circumcision only changes the number of bacteria on the surface of the body (via removal of the foreskin) by less than 0.05%, and the total full-body microbial count by less than 0.0001%.

Never mind that this so-called “hygienic” measure creates an open wound on the penis in the environment of the diaper, which makes little practical sense.

The idea of circumcision somehow making the penis cleaner is laughable.

In terms of sex, having a foreskin is awesome.  It is the most sensitive part of my penis, and I would not give it up for anything.  If anyone ever told you that the foreskin was a useless piece of skin, chances are that they don’t have one, or that they have one and they never had anyone properly “stimulate it.”

The sensations from that piece of anatomy alone are enough to make my entire body shake and writhe in ecstasy.  I hear what the majority of my circumcised friends describe as orgasm, and it sounds disappointing to me, at times. 

I get the feeling that they are missing out on what sex was meant to be like.

But I digress.

My parents didn’t want me to have a foreskin.

I want to keep having one, and there is nothing they can do about it.

And they should not have ever had any say in it in the first place, because it is my body, not theirs. 

I’ll be perfectly honest: I will say that I DO resent them for even trying.

My penis is mine, and not theirs.  I will have to live with my genitals for the rest of my life.  They will not.

This is why infant genital cutting is not a legitimate parental choice.

What it comes down to is “my body, my choice.”

My body, my choice.

That’s all there is to it.