An interesting question that’s come up in recent times about sex between men and women is whether or not male circumcision affects women’s sexual pleasure.
Interestingly enough, many American women will never have seen or had sex with an uncircumcised penis. Even so, they tend to rate the appearance of circumcised penises as preferable to the appearance of uncircumcised penises. This is hardly surprising, because of course familiarity breeds a kind of expectation with the established status quo.
Women who have enjoyed lovemaking with both circumcised and uncircumcised penises have a different opinion, as we shall now see.
Let’s start with a particular aspect of female sexual pleasure – how comfortable sex is for a woman.
One medical survey found that women who had sex with uncircumcised men experience better lubrication. They also experience greater persistence of lubrication. On a comparative scale of 0 to 10, they rated men as sexual partners. And those who had not been circumcised were rated as 8, and circumcised men were rated at 2. This is a massive difference.
And there’s more. With an uncircumcised partner, women were much more likely to experience vaginal orgasm. To make things even worse, it seems circumcised men are also more likely to suffer from premature ejaculation.
So again, we see that both male and female sexual pleasure, and in particular a man’s ability to please a woman during lovemaking, is reduced by circumcision.
On the face of it, this is compelling evidence that circumcision is a disadvantage not only to men but also to women. This is an extraordinary finding, bearing in mind that circumcision has been routine and commonplace for so many years.
Of course, the cut is dying out in America and other westernized countries. Even so, it’s fascinating that the medical establishment has managed to medicalize the act of circumcision for so long.
They have portrayed circumcision as “a good thing”, when the human body is perfectly designed for perfect sex as it is.
So why would circumcision make such difference to pleasure that men and women feel during lovemaking?
Well…. it’s actually not difficult to understand this. The foreskin is a movable double-layered sleeve. During intercourse it can move up and down over the head of the penis, and up and down the penile shaft. This lets it act like a return valve to prevent female lubrication leaving the vagina during intercourse. And as we all know, lubricated sex is pleasurable sex!
Researchers have shown that in cut, or circumcised, men the skin of the penile shaft moves directly against the vaginal wall. This increases friction and produces an increased need for artificial lubrication.
Male Sexual Pleasure
What of male sexual pleasure? It’s certainly possible that circumcised men have less sensitivity in the penile glans, due to the keratinization of the glans.
Some men undergo foreskin restoration. When restored, they all speak of a better level of satisfaction and pleasure, as well as more comfort with their newly-moist glans.
They say this feels better.
So it would seem that sex is not improved by years of exposure of the circumcised penis head to clothing and to the drying nature of the atmosphere. Unsurprisingly.
Finally, sexually experienced women with experience of both circumcised men and uncircumcised men have an opinion that matters. They say that when their partner is circumcised, they are less likely to feel appreciated, and more likely to feel frustrated and discontented with sex.
Circumcision is bad for men too!
One of the biggest misconceptions about circumcision is that it simply removes the skin covering the head of the penis – this is completely false.
In fact male circumcision removes between a third and half of all the penile skin. It also removes most of the fine nervous cell receptors in the penile skin covering the glans.
And this seems even more astounding when we learn that historically, circumcision of the male penis was introduced as a method of preventing masturbation!
This means that a measure originally designed to reduce male sexual pleasure now has the perverse effect of reducing both male and female sexual pleasure!
In this day and age there is no justifiable reason for circumcision. Even the classic explanation for this mutilation of the male body – that it’s hygienic and can prevent penile cancer – is nonsense. Penile cancer is extremely rare anyway.
The tip of the foreskin and frenulum, which are routinely removed during circumcision, contain a high concentration of nerve endings known as fine touch receptors. These provide a lot of the pleasure men receive during sex.
And indeed we also know that when a penis has been circumcised, the surface of the glans thickens and keratinizes. This reduces pleasure and makes self-pleasuring difficult without lube.
Previous researchers only looked at the sensitivity of the penile glans before and after circumcision. So it’s possible they missed the role of the foreskin in providing pleasure. This anomaly seems to have misled people about the effects of circumcision because only the sensitivity of the glans was being compared before and after circumcision.
But now we know there are many fine touch receptors in the foreskin. They are responsible for much of a man’s sexual pleasure. They are also responsible for triggering ejaculation.
Sidebar: Previous work which has claimed that women prefer to have sexual intercourse with circumcised man has been discredited. This is because very few of the women in the study had actually had experience of sexual intercourse with both circumcised and uncircumcised men! As you can imagine, this completely invalidates the research.
One study revealed that 6 out of every 7 women preferred intact, uncircumcised men as their sexual partners. Reference.
And it turns out that women are more likely to have vaginal orgasms with men who are uncircumcised. This is hardly surprising. Stimulation of the G spot from the movement of the foreskin on the penile head can provide a woman with enough stimulation to bring her to orgasm during intercourse.
Indeed, it turns out that women who prefer uncircumcised male partners for sexual intercourse are actually more likely to have their first orgasm with an uncircumcised man. Clearly this is suggestive of much greater sexual pleasure for women: pleasure is greater with an uncircumcised penis.
There is little or no doubt that women prefer vaginal intercourse with an anatomically complete penis. This is both a matter of greater comfort and natural stimulation of the internal G spot. And for a man, too, intercourse is undoubtedly more pleasurable when he has a foreskin.