March 2003

EDITORIAL OPINION by JIM W.

he other day I was on the phone, talking with my friend Mark about his "type" and my "type", and my ex-boyfriend Rob happened to be sitting nearby. "Cut or uncut?" I asked, repeating Mark's question to me. "I like 'em both. I guess I have a small preference for uncut, but it doesn't really matter."

Rob had lifted his head when he heard the word "uncut". A moment after I'd finished with "doesn't really matter," he practically fell off his chair laughing. "I don't THINK so!" he said, smiling. "Hon, you are adDICKTED to us uncut boys!"

Hmmm... I thought. Is it that obvious? And that got me thinking... how much do I prefer uncut dicks? Am I obsessed with them? What the hell is going on here?

Rob's Dick

Rob's dick is uncut. He had probably noticed that my interest in his dick and his foreskin was -- how shall I put this? -- at a higher level than that of other guys he's dated. I'm getting just a bit hard just by typing that sentence, so I guess he must have been right.

I still remember the first time Rob and I had sex. We had had a couple of dates, and after one of them we finally got back to my place. Stepping inside and closing the front door behind us, we hugged and started kissing. It took about two seconds for the word "Daddy" to slip out of his mouth, almost too softly to hear. Much to my surprise, it was only moments before he was calling me Daddy in every sentence and I was calling him my boy. That had never happened to me before, so it was a bit surprising.

Now I hadn't chosen Rob on the basis of his foreskin, because I didn't know that he had one. I knew that he was born and raised in the U.S., so there was a good chance that he had been circumcised. But his parents were

both Latino, and that meant that uncircumcised was also likely.

So it was also a nice surprise when I slipped my hand inside his pants, found his dick pointing in an uncomfortable direction, pointed it the right way, felt the foreskin, and got hard. Instantly hard. ROCK fucking hard.

Instinctively I grabbed it tightly. I didn't know it yet, but I was about to discover that tight is exactly the way Rob likes his dick to be grabbed. So he was rock fucking hard very quickly, too.

Rob liked to lie face up, then have his daddy straddle him while he strokes Rob's dick and holds the shaft tightly. VERY tightly -- the tighter the better. If I relaxed my grip even a little bit, Rob would quickly take my hand and squeeze it harder to show me how.

And so I discovered that jerking your boy off is about 500 percent easier if he's uncut. Ever notice that?

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Lubes and Tubes

Excuse me for pointing this out, but jerking off a circumcised guy is sometimes a royal pain. You've gotta do it just right. It can take forever. You probably need to add some lube. Then your arm gets tired and you have to lube some more. "Is it too fast?" you ask. "Too tight?" He shows you how to do it; you try to copy him. But then you've gotta shift back to the first hand because the other one is just too tired. You can just as easily irritate the hell out of a cut guy as you can pleasure him.

An uncut guy is soooo much easier. Just grab the shaft a bit beneath the head, and slide the skin up and down -- making sure that the foreskin (if it's long enough) is sliding back and forth over the head of the dick, and making sure that only foreskin slips over the corona. (The corona is the reddish ridge, about a quarter inch wide, that is the edge of the dickhead. I think it's the friction of the jerking hand on a cut guy's corona that makes it irritating.) With an uncut guy, make sure that his corona gets rubbed over only by foreskin... and soon you'll have a wonderful mess to clean up all over your fingers.

With a cut guy, I have to use lube about 2/3 of the time. With an uncut guy, never! Using lube is difficult for me, because I jerk myself off with dry hands. I don't have good instincts on how to do it; when I see a cut guy jerking off with lube I feel sorry for him.

Of course, if I'm interested in the owner of

that circumcised stick, I'll learn! Over my lifespan most of my boyfriends have been cut, and sex with them was just fine. But had they been uncut -- had I been uncut -- it would have been even more fun.

Who Invented Circumcision?

So how did circumcision get started? The Old Testament God told Jews to circumcise their baby boys, of course (Jesus canceled the requirement for Christians); thereby the Jews could show their faith and set themselves apart from the other biblical peoples. (I'm less familiar with Islam.)

But the history of circumcision can't go back forever, right? Chimpanzees don't circumcise their baby boys, nor do baboons. Dolphins? No. Bonobos? Nope. Lions and tigers and bears? Negative.

So there must have been a first time that the practice was practiced. Someone invented it. Someone thought quite a long time and decided it would be a good thing to trim all those dicks.

I want to know: Who was that person? I want to go back in a time machine, find him, and kill him. Then I could return to a world full of foreskins! Just a fantasy? Well maybe. Maybe not. Take a side trip to read my Psychiatric Fantasy -- or continue below.

Go to
Who Invented Circumcision?
A Psychiatric Fantasy

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Genesis 17:14 And any male who does not undergo circumcision will be cut off from his people: my agreement has been broken by him.

Are They Nuts, or What?

Well, I think you get my point. Someone was the first person to think up circumcision, and with all due respect to the religious beliefs of the Jews and the Muslims, I don't think it was the All-Powerful Guy Who Lives in the Sky.

No... circumcision was first thought up by one particular person. And that person was mentally ill.

Talk to any psychotherapist you know. As them: if someone came into your office and told you that he thought it would be cool for an entire culture to cut off parts of their genitalia so that you could tell if they believed in God or not, wouldn't you think they were nuts? Wouldn't you hypothesize that they had strong, unresolved hostility and a pathological desire to inflict misery in return? That they had pathological hostility directed at men? Or something else suitably psychiatric?

I'm not saying that Jews and Muslims TODAY are crazy to perform circumcision. Nor are they crazy to follow the orders of that crazy guy (gal?) who thought it up. Nowadays, I'm sure, we do many things invented by nutty deviants and think nothing of it:

• Kellogg's Corn Flakes were invented by a guy who thought they would help prevent masturbation.
• Graham crackers -- same thing.
• Women spray their hair with a lacquer that will go up in flames in an instant (it's called "hairspray").

I could go on and on. I would like to say that parents who circumcise their boys are mentally ill. Of course, they're not. (Necessarily.) But that's still no excuse for adults not to look at the origins of the custom and to wonder about continuing a practice which must have originated in a deep-seated, pathological, erotic hatred.

Oh, It's Just a Little Flap of Skin

"What's the big deal?" some people say. "It's just a little flap of skin." Other excuses are: Most men don't miss it... Only a few weirdos complain... Most circumcised men don't give it a second thought... They have excellent sex lives... What a trivial little thing to complain about... Forget about circumcision -- your time is better spent fighting war, fighting crime, discovering truth... What he doesn't know, won't hurt him...

The truth is that most circumcised straight men don't know what they're missing. Literally. They were trimmed as infants. They have no idea that their sex lives would be better had they not been cut. Their wives won't tell them because they don't know, either.

What he doesn't know, won't hurt him? Sorry -- if you steal money from a guy's bank account and he never notices the missing funds, you're still a thief.

And what a duplicitous, malicious, and dangerous thing to do! Dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of infant boys have had their penises *burnt off* or *cut off* by incompetent circumcising surgeons. (Don't fuck with me on this one, folks -- I used to work professionally in that area and I know a hell of a lot about those unfortunate souls.) How many consent forms signed by the parents mention this? Even if something probably won't happen, don't people have the right to know that it might?

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Disfigurement

Less extremely -- but still reprehensibly -- thousands of boys get a bad job done on them, making their dicks ugly or not as functional as they could be. Even a competently performed circumcision disfigures a dick esthetically with a scar and (usually) a discoloration, as shown in this photograph:

Members: click to enlarge most photos

The scar can be fairly subtle. Usually the part of the penis's shaft nearer the body is a bit darker, and the part beyond the scar (which would, without circumcision, have been covered by the foreskin) is just a bit lighter.

However, this is not always the case. The scar itself is usually a dark brown, about a quarter-inch wide, and it can be quite prominent:

Moreover, the different coloration on each side of the scar can be quite obvious. I have seen some grotesque examples of this -- usually on very dark-skinned men, where the color contrast is extreme -- or on men who sun naked and thus discover that the two halves of their dick tan at different rates.

Really awful examples of this discoloration are difficult to find in photographs. (But not impossible, alas, as you can see on the right.) Why? Because most people think they're ugly. And of course their owners don't want to be known as having ugly dicks!

With an uncut dick, in contrast, the entire shaft is covered with the same layer of skin, and thus has the same coloration. Black, white, or brown, it's all smooth and uniform -- and, in my opinion, exquisitely beautiful.

Even when the uncut dick is hard, there is no discoloration along the shaft. Sometimes the glans underneath is a different color than the skin on top, but for some reason that doesn't bother me (when it occurs). That's probably because the glans is popping in and out of view as I stroke.

And an uncut dick is, I feel, just a bit mysterious! The corona is covered, but you can see its location because the foreskin bumps up a little there. And the tip of the head peeks out -- as if it's a bit shy -- from the end of the foreskin... that's so cuuuute it drives me nuts!

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Here's another one full of mystery. This guy is long and thin, and his foreskin seems to be squared off after it passes over the tip of the glans. Even though the overlying skin is square-ish, look closely to can see the outline of the glans and the corona just fine. And that's in spite of the sharply defined blood vessel pattern on top of it all.

This hefty uncut item is distinctive because its foreskin is ultra-thin (not narrow but thin). It's as if the shaft and tip are covered not with a condom but with a perfectly fitted tube of tissue paper. Even though your eye can figure out just about every detail of what's underneath it, it still is just begging to be slid back gently to reveal its actual body.

And then there's the kind of foreskin that stops just about exactly at the tip of the glans, but doesn't quite close up at the end. Peekaboo! Take a look at this ultra close-up. Isn't it sweeet? It's so adorable!

Now imagine what happens when the foreskin is just a little bit longer still: It closes over the tip of the glans and makes a little point, like this:

Here the overlying skin is a bit thicker, but you can still see the form of what's underneath. (Members have a particularly good view in the enlargement.)

Back to Rob -- Remember Rob?

Remember Rob? He's my daddy-loving ex. As you recall, Rob is lying face up on the couch, and I'm straddling him over his thighs. He's looking at my hairy daddybear chest and likes what he sees, so it's easy for him to get hard. I'm looking at his smooth boyish body and I like what I see, so I take his gorgeous erection in my hand and squeeze tightly. As I slide his skin up and down, the head of his dick pops out, then disappears, then pops out again, then disappears.

Sigh! It's endlessly fascinating. I sure wish mine worked like that!

Fans of the Cut

There are, of course, lots of gay guys who prefer the circumcised version of a penis. That's fine with me! -- for two reasons.

Adorable

Adorable

With an erection, the foreskin often pulls back somewhat. But when it doesn't, it's even MORE adorable!

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First, to each his own -- some guys like trimmed pubic hair, some like natural; some guys prefer beards, some like clean-shaven -- so it's only natural that some of us would like cut and others uncut.

Second, the more guys who prefer cut dicks, the more uncut dicks are left over for me to go after!

Click on over to Jim's Dick of the Week and read interviews with cut guys and uncut guys about their dicks. You'll find every combination:

• Uncut who look for a cut partner
• Uncut who prefer uncut
• Cut who prefer cut
• Cut who prefer uncut
• Cut and uncut who like 'em all

Most guys are willing to live and let live when it comes to foreskin preferences. But there's one group out there that actively promotes circumcision because -- allegedly -- it helps to prevent HIV. These advocates claim that increasing circumcision would cut down on AIDS.

Now although I am not an expert in this particular area, I have been a biologist doing AIDS research, and I think I know fact from fiction here. This cutting-stops-AIDS campaign starts from a true observation but reaches an outrageous, completely unwarranted conclusion.

It's a half-truth, and half truths are especially dangerous.

Yes, in some regions of the world, AIDS transmission to men with foreskins seems to be higher than transmission to men without them. But that's what hygiene, safer sex, and condoms are all about! Cutting off a foreskin to prevent it from transmitting HIV is about as logical as cutting off your balls to prevent testicular cancer.* When a girl hits puberty should we remove one of her breasts because she only will need the second one, and thus cut breast cancer in half?!?

Plus, there are diseases other than AIDS -- and some are transmitted more easily if you're circumcised -- genital warts, for example. Some diseases are more likely if you're cut, others more likely if you're uncut. And some diseases are more likely to be passed on to your partner(s) if you're cut, others more likely if you're uncut. Which ones? Which are more important? How does it all balance out?

* Prevent, not cure, of course. If an organ is diseased it may need removal -- no argument there.

Important questions, but there's not enough space to go into details here. There's an excellent, unbiased assessment of this question in one of NetDoctor's articles.

In contrast, most circumcisions in the United States take place with almost NO thought at all: "Just sign here, ma'am, so one of our Ob/Gyn interns can earn a couple hundred extra bucks."

When All is Said and Done

So why, after all is said and done, do I still go nuts when I see an uncut dick? Why, when I design one of my website logos or buttons, do I make the dick uncut about 2/3 of the time? Why did I bother to write all this stuff??

If you're still here, reading all this, it's probably because you and I agree on several points:

• It's OK to look at penises
• It's OK to photograph penises
• It's OK to think about penises
• It's OK to play with penises
• It's OK to be obsessed with penises

-- to the same extent that it is OK to be obsessed with any other part of the body (or topic). Part of our duty as intelligent, moral penis consumers is to do all of the above without shame or harm.

And let's face it: There's more to look at, photograph, think about, play with, and be obsessed by with an uncut dick than with a cut one. Everything that's in a cut dick is also in an uncut dick -- but not vice versa. To put it mathematically:

penis with foreskin > penis without foreskin

My interest in foreskins kinda crept up on me. When I first came out as gay, for several years I had only played sexually with one uncut guy, and he had phimosis (an overly tight foreskin), so he wasn't a fully functioning example of the type. I didn't have a boyfriend who was uncut until I was about 40, and starting with him my seriously-dating partners have been: uncut, cut, uncut, cut, uncut, uncut. As you can see, it took me awhile to realize that the jerking-off advantages of a foreskin were the rule and not the exception. So in my case, I think the most likely explanation is that my life's erotic experiences finally added up and reached a pro-foreskin conclusion.

Ah, but who cares? Here at penis-central.com we welcome ALL penises and ALL penis consumers. Enjoy!

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