Cut or uncut?

For those of us who feasted—or starved—on a diet of circumcised penises, the first taste of uncut dick could be, well, quite a mouthful. And depending on your own personal appetite for flesh, that extra bit could either horrible or heavenly.

All dicks are not created equal. Actually, discounting the obvious factors as length and girth, all dicks are, in fact, created equal. Some just choose to slice the foreskin off, as dictated by religion, culture or personal choice.

Muslims and Jews are almost always circumcised, as are many Africans, with the procedure often performed as a ritual. Among the Zulus and the Xhosas of South Africa, for instance, circumcision was traditionally a rite of passage lasting as long as three months, something young males had to go through in order to become men, emerging from the bushes foreskin-free and often scarred, physically and psychologically.

Americans—and Filipinos by extension—snip that bit of skin with clinical precision at the hospital soon after childbirth. None of that “this will turn you into a man” nonsense—they have guns for that. Instead, it’s all about hygiene, ostensibly because the foreskin, the loose fold of skin that covers the head of the penis, also called the prepuce, has no real purpose, harbors all sorts of bacteria (smegma alert!) and is aesthetically unappealing.

That last point is debatable, of course.

Once upon a puritanical and catastrophically ignorant time, circumcision in America was touted as a way to prevent masturbation because masturbation led to insanity. As if a flap of skin or the specter of lunacy ever stopped a man from spanking the monkey. Fortunately, as science has proven, masturbation does not lead to insanity. But it could be argued that prolonged abstinence from wanking could be detrimental to a man’s health, unless he was a star football player or a boxing champion, in which case it is believed that, um, preserving the fluids could lead to enhanced physical performance on the field or in the boxing ring.

Now it’s believed that a cut penis is less likely to transmit HIV/AIDS, which is why the practice of ritual male circumcision being encouraged once again among the Xhosa and Zulu communities, notwithstanding the fact an improperly performed circumcisions by a “traditional surgeon.” In reality, he is a village elder with perceived shamanistic qualities and real rustic and rusting implements—have led to truly horrific side effects such “as rotting penises, septicemia and inadvertent castrations,” according to a South African health spokesperson quoted by The Guardian. And ironically, HIV can be transmitted during the circumcision ritual itself, since the same knife is used to a large group of boys.

Moral of the story: Get it cut in the hospital, as soon as possible after birth, by a proper doctor. While I know women (and men) who are virulently opposed to sleeping with uncut men, there are those who love the sensation of an uncut penis inside them. Smegma, they claim, is a matter of hygiene. An uncut man who keeps his privates clean won’t have any of that icky, smelly white stuff buried in his foreskin (news flash—smegma can also appear around the clitoris). The prepuce is said to be extremely sensitive, so the pleasure is apparently heightened for both parties.

Europeans tend to be uncut, as a friend of mine recently discovered when she traded in her Chinese husband for a strapping specimen of Anglo-Saxon hotness, blue eyes, blond hair and prime uncut dick.

She swears there is a difference, apart from the obvious, in the way sex feels when enhanced by foreskin. She also believes she has definitely traded up and is now a convert to the pleasures of the uncircumcised penis.

Another girlfriend went Italian Catholic for her first husband, uncut, naturally. She divorced him and married an American Jew, cut by a rabbi no less, the same day he was born. She is adamant that there is a difference, and cut feels infinitely better.

So can you really feel the difference between cut or uncut once it’s inside you?

There is a short story in Bernard Schlink’s book, Flights of Love, that features a Jewish girl and her German (Gentile) boyfriend. She tells him how much she would love it if he converted to Judaism. He is not quite ready to take that step but nevertheless secretly undergoes circumcision, hoping to surprise and impress her with the seriousness of his commitment to her.

Alas, she doesn’t even notice there’s a flap of skin missing from his member.

Moral of the story: It doesn’t matter if he’s cut or uncut. If a man knows what he’s doing, you’ll love the dick that’s in.

B. Wiser is the author of Making Love in Spanish, a novel published earlier this year by Anvil Publishing and available in National Bookstore and Powerbooks, as well as online. When not assuming her Sasha Fierce alter-ego, she takes on the role of serious journalist and media consultant. She will be speaking at the Philippine Literary Festival which takes place from Aug. 28 to 30 at the Raffles Hotel in Makati.

For comments and questions, e-mail [email protected].

Art by Dorothy Guya