One day at work, a coworker was freaking out about a sexual encounter she had had with a man the night before.
“You have to hear this story,” another girl said to me when I walked into their office.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Oh my god,” she said, visibly shaken, eyes wide, as she closed the office door. “He was uncircumcised.”
Huh?
“I’m not inexperienced,” she continued. “But I’ve never seen that before. It was alarming.”
All I could think was, what the hell is the problem?
Though I am currently committed to a man who is circumcised, I spent a year in a serious relationship with a man who was not. While I do remember that this was something I talked to my friends about and that it was unusual (all other men I had had sexual relationships with were circumcised) I do not remember having a visceral reaction of OMG WTF CANNOT DO THIS. What I remember most of all was that I was so attracted to him that I just did not care. So his equipment was a little different? It in no way affected how hot he was or how great the sex we had was. And guess what, girls? Statistics suggest fewer men are getting circumcised, so you're increasingly likely to encounter an uncircumcised penis if you haven't yet.
Here’s the difference between an uncircumcised penis and a circumcised one: a circumcised penis has had its foreskin removed, and uncircumcised one hasn’t. So an uncircumcised penis has what looks like a cylinder of skin enveloping the head. To access the head — the most sensitive part of the penis — you simply roll the skin down. Voila: there you have the penis most American women are used to working with.
Sex with an uncircumcised penis is as awkward as you make it. If you see one, freak out, recoil in horror, halt all sexual activity, and scuttle your office friends into a room the next day so you can confirm that you should, in fact, be freaked out by it, of course you’re going to feel uncomfortable about uncircumcised penises. If you can resist possibly insulting your sexual partner by freaking out, remember why you’re having sex with him in the first place (presumably, you find him hot enough to want to bone). If you feel really confused by his foreskin, ask him what feels good. Chances are once he tells you, it won’t feel like a discussion topic and the sex won’t go from, well, sex to Uncircumcised Sex I Have to Tell Everyone About.
Ultimately, sex with an uncircumcised man does not taste or feel or smell any different for a woman. Let me disabuse you of the notion that uncircumcised penises are smellier or dirtier than circumcised ones (if they are at all, that says more about the dude's bathing habits than presence or lack of foreskin). You (or your partner) just need to push that little bit of skin back. I fail to see why this is so scary. If you truly love a person and find him sexy, you won’t care if he has a little extra skin around his penis where your previous sexual partners have not.
The sex I had with my uncircumcised boyfriend was some of the best I had ever had. Nowhere in my memories of our sexual experiences do I think, “Well, if he was circumcised that would have all been a lot better.” Ladies, I’m here to tell you: it really does not matter whether a guy is circumcised or not. If you like him and want to do it with him, you will not care about the presence of foreskin. The sex will be hot with it or without it.
Let me give you an example: my uncircumcised ex is from a foreign country. We ended up traveling through his home country together for ten days. When I was listening to him speak in his native language (the accent and foreign-ness was always a huge turn-on), spending day after day touring beautiful places with him and not being able to wait to get home to get it on basically all the time, I thought about his foreskin not at all. When we got back to his apartment one day and ended up having sex in the living room, him on the couch, me propped up on the coffee table, and all I could think about was how I’d never been more attracted to anyone ever than in that moment, I was not repulsed by or even remotely thinking about his foreskin.
We’re doing each other a disservice by acting terrified of uncircumcised penises. All you do when you freak out about foreskin in front of your friends is encourage them to freak out about foreskin when they encounter it. And if it’s attached to a man you’re crazy about (or just wildly attracted to), you’re not going to even think about it, much less mind it.
A penis is a penis. If it has a foreskin, get over it. Remember: the most important part of any foreskin is who it’s attracted to.
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