I'm uncomfortable with this whole debate (not here on BetterMost; I mean out in the world). My sons are both circumcised. My husband is circumcised, wanted his sons to be circumcised, and considered the decision pretty automatic. I didn't argue.
I don't have strong feelings one way or another about this issue, in general. Or rather, I can see both sides. Research seems to indicate it's healthier, but not doing it is obviously more "natural" and less painful for the infant.
But what I really care about is my sons' feelings. I really don't want them to grow up thinking they've been mutilated, or that there's something wrong with them (so far, thank God, at 11 and 13, they've never mentioned it). If nobody makes a big deal about it, everything will be fine. So whenever I hear anyone loudly opposing circumcision, I just want to tell them to shut up. (Clarification: I don't mean people on this thread, who've been asked to share their opinions.)
Here's a story from Slate containing a pretty neutral examination of all the issues:
http://www.slate.com/id/2124770/Here, from a different story in Slate, are some data about the HIV study:
Four years ago, an analysis of 38 studies by the U.S. Agency for International Development, mostly in Africa, concluded that circumcised men were less than half as likely as uncircumcised men to get HIV, apparently because of the susceptibility of foreskin. Last fall, reporting on a randomized controlled trial in South Africa, scientists found that circumcision reduced female-to-male transmission by 60 percent. "Male circumcision provides a degree of protection against acquiring HIV infection, equivalent to what a vaccine of high efficacy would have achieved," they wrote. It was, they observed, "the first experimental study demonstrating that surgery can be used to prevent an infectious disease."
BTW, I was wondering how on earth there was any way to figure out how circumcision affected sexual satisfaction. But here, again from Slate, is a story about an informal poll of men who'd been circumcised as adults. The results suggested (though with numerous caveats) that circumcision improved sex.
http://www.slate.com/id/2136062/Excerpt:
Of the 79 men who'd experienced sex snipped and unsnipped, 43 said sex improved (55 percent) after their circumcisions, 23 said it went downhill (29 percent), and 13 said there was no change or a mix of pros and cons (16 percent). Click here to read women and gay men compare sex with snipped and unsnipped partners.
My numbers don't differ much from the latest research: Based on a sample of 84 men who'd been circumcised as adults for medical reasons, a 2005 article in Urologia Internationalis found a 61 percent satisfaction rate, with 38 percent saying that penile sensation improved after the procedure, 18 percent saying it got worse, and the rest reporting no change. "No consensus exists regarding the role of the foreskin in sexual performance and satisfaction," the article's urologist authors wrote.
Nor, I think, is a consensus likely to emerge. A couple of readers wrote in to argue that my survey and others like it inevitably tilt positive, because anyone snipped as an adult would want to think the ordeal had a purpose. Maybe so. On the other hand, as Australian doctor and circumcision researcher Robin Willcourt pointed out to me, men who decide they've suffered a loss may be all the more vocal.
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about bias. My own sense is that as much as nerve endings, friction, or any other physical factor, what matters for feelings about sex are the reasons a man decides to undergo circumcision, his attitude toward his penis before the procedure, and the reaction of his partners afterward. I'm not sure how much light data can shed on this personal realm.
