Lousy Sex

In a new “listicle” posted on its website this week, The Huffington Post outlines Eight Things America Gets Wrong About Sex. From health care to homophobia, the piece covers a range of historical and sociological reasons for America’s sexual dilemmas. It speaks to just about everything, except anatomy. And what’s one thing about American sexual organs that’s unique compared to much of the rest of the world? That’s right—routine male circumcision.

It astonishes me that in talking about sex, pretty much nobody mentions that most adult men in the United States today have been deprived of the most pleasurable, sensitive part of their penises. Without a foreskin and its sensory feedback, a man has difficulty controlling the timing of his orgasm. Also, because he’s missing the very organ that serves a gliding and lubricating function—and because he has a scar where his foreskin used to be—his penis is calloused and dry, when compared to that of an intact man; this creates a friction during intercourse and compromises the pleasure of both sexual partners.

Don’t believe me? Then explain the uniquely American proliferation of lubricants and masturbation creams, the existence of which many Europeans—most of whom are intact—find strange. CIRCUMserum is available for those who want to combat what it calls “Dullness Syndrome” by restoring “natural feeling for more intense sex”; Stroke 29, Wicked Cream, and others are designed to help circumcised men seeking solitary pleasure, who find the after-effects of circumcision to stand in the way of sensory pleasure.

Understanding the history of American circumcision helps to explain all of this. In fact, when doctors began promoting circumcision in the Victorian era (late 1800s), the purpose was precisely to reduce pleasure and cause pain–to dissuade men from the “immoral” and “unhygienic” practice of masturbation. Among those who pushed the circumcision solution to masturbation were American physicians Abraham Jacobi (the organizer of the American Pediatric Society) and J.J. Moses (then-head of the New York State Medical Society and president of the Association of American Physicians).

Just as Jewish physician and philosopher Maimonides had recognized 800 years earlier, these fathers of American medicalized circumcision believed that its physiological and psychological effects–aversive pain memory and loss of sensory tissue–would help to diminish sexual gratification, whether self-sought or through genital contact with a partner.

Should we be surprised, then, with findings such as those from Denmark, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology in 2011, showing that circumcised men have greater difficulty reaching orgasm, and that female partners of circumcised men are less likely to feel sexually satisfied?

What is astonishing is that American doctors persist in a practice designed to ruin the natural pleasures of sex, and then deny that it in fact does so. Meanwhile, the vast majority of adult American men are living with scars instead of foreskins. Half of the couple is missing a most basic, sensual part of his anatomy, and we wonder why Americans find sex less than fulfilling.

Georganne Chapin