intercourse, circumcisionA lot of discussions revolving around circumcision concentrate around the effects on the male in question - in regards to sexual health, nerve endings, the function of the foreskin etc - it’s an ongoing discussion with many loud voices from both sides, and that’s ok.
But how does sex differ with someone who is circumcised, compared to natural? Does it feel different? Are there any complications to consider for one vs the other?
To reinforce the above as it doesn’t seem clear enough: I am not looking for answers or analyses that describe the differences from the (un)circumcised male’s perspective - This question deals with what their partner (male or female) experiences when having sex with intact or circumcised males.
According to a Danish study, these are the findings:
... and women with circumcised spouses more often reported incomplete sexual needs fulfilment (38 vs 28%, ORadj = 2.09; 95% CI 1.05–4.16) and frequent sexual function difficulties overall (31 vs 22%, ORadj = 3.26; 95% CI 1.15–9.27), notably orgasm difficulties (19 vs 14%, ORadj = 2.66; 95% CI 1.07–6.66) and dyspareunia (12 vs 3%, ORadj = 8.45; 95% CI 3.01–23.74). Findings were stable in several robustness analyses, including one restricted to non-Jews and non-Moslems.
Personally, I don't think it makes any difference in terms of sexual satisfaction, and none of the women I know or have interviewed who have tried both think it matters.
The balance of evidence so far concerning male circumcision in infancy is that there is a small but significant health advantage (mainly fewer UTIs when young and fewer STDs later), with no credible evidence of sexual dysfunction as a result. The problem is that the anti-circumcision (or "intactivist") lobby has turned into a radicalized extremist movement that has specialized in producing propaganda and falsified research studies, so the noise:signal ratio is getting extremely high. So it will be very hard or impossible to get unbiased answers to your question.
The fundamental difficulty in answering your question is that it depends on subjective answers to survey data. There is no objective way to measure sexual satisfaction, so we simply have to ask people. Normally that's a relatively minor problem unless you are comparing answers across cultures. However, when one side of an issue is passionate and politicized, you are unlikely to get objective responses.
If a woman believes strongly that circumcision is genital mutilation, that it is cruel and unnatural, how likely is it that she will report equal satisfaction with circumcised and uncircumcised lovers? In the first place her satisfaction will be influenced by her feelings about circumcision, and her answers will be further biased by her desire to promote the anti-circumcision cause. In addition, it is a safe bet that she will be far more willing to fill out a questionnaire or answer an online survey than someone with no strong feelings on the subject.
A second problem with research on both male and female satisfaction with circumcision is the geographic and cultural bias inherent in selecting a survey population. For example, in many European countries few men are circumcised. Those that are are typically Muslims, Jews, or men with medical problems that required circumcision. This means that a study that does a naive statistical comparison of, e.g., "circumcised and uncircumcised Belgian men," is ignoring huge confounding factors.
There is simply no way to avoid substantial bias of some kind in a world in which circumcision is strongly associated with certain cultures, nationalities, and religions and not others. If a woman says she prefers circumcised to uncircumcised men, and it turns out that the only uncircumcised men she's had sex with are Danes and the only circumcised men she's had sex with are Israeli, it is impossible to determine how much of her preference is based on a piece of skin and how much it is based on national and cultural preference.
The World Health Organization has accumulated substantial evidence that circumcision reduces the transmission of HIV and other STDs. A few years ago, as evidence on the STD question accumulated, the American Association of Pediatricians moved from a neutral stance to a mildly pro-circumcision stance. This slight shift was vehemently attacked by the intactivists in the media using an arsenal of deceptive arguments and false claims. If you're interested, there's an account of the events and a rundown of the attacks at: the Science-Based Medicine website. The AAP policy statement, the technical appendix, and the rebuttal of the intactivist attacks are also worth a look.
I'm no expert and I haven't got time to wade through the claims and counterclaims. Pediatricians may not have a direct stake in encouraging circumcisions, but obstetricians do, and it wouldn't surprise me if pediatricians tended to support their colleagues, so I'm not going to automatically accept the AAP's verdict. On the other hand, most pediatricians are strongly aligned emotionally as well as professionally toward protecting the welfare of children, so I am not going to automatically dismiss what they say, either.
However, I do know enough science to recognize specious and dishonest statistics and arguments, and to be offended by them, and that's what I'm seeing from the intactivists. So for now, it's my policy to assume that anti-circumcision "studies" are bogus unless they have ironclad scientific credentials.
Just as one example, another answer to this question cites a Danish study. The lead author of that study, Morten Frisch, is also the leading intactivist who wrote the attack on the AAP policy. A followup analysis in the same journal cites serious discrepancies in the data and the methods used in that paper. This is a typical pattern.
One reason I am so skeptical of the intactivist propaganda is that they routinely claim that large percentages of all circumcised men have a variety of serious sexual dysfunctions. Yet in my own in-depth survey of 60 men who are in long-term heterosexual relationships, the vast majority were circumcised and none had any of these supposedly "common" disorders.
I first became aware of the movement behind this BS as a result of an article in Popular Psychology that made claims like this one:
In a landmark study of US women, 85% who had experienced both circumcised and intact men preferred sex with intact men. Sex with a circumcised man was associated with pain, dryness and difficulty reaching orgasm (O'Hara 1999).
And further down:
The function of the foreskin for women in intercourse is to seal the natural lubrication inside the vagina and provide a gentle internal massaging action. The intact penis moves in and out of its foreskin, which provides a frictionless, rolling, gliding sensation. Intact men tend to make shorter strokes that keep their bodies in contact with the clitoris more, thus aiding female orgasm (O’Hara 1999). On the other hand, the circumcised penis functions like a piston during intercourse – the head of the penis actually scrapes the lubrication out of the vagina with each stroke. As the man thrusts, his skin rubs against the vaginal entrance, causing discomfort, and sometimes pain (O’Hara 1999, Bensley 2001). Far from making sex better for women, circumcision decreases female satisfaction.
So I tracked down this "landmark study" and it consists of preliminary findings from a survey that consists of heavily loaded leading questions. The respondents were all recruited through ads and notices placed in radical leftist magazines, including the newsletter of an anti-circumcision organization.
It has been 15 years since it was published, with no "final" paper. So why rely on a very sketchy preliminary report?
And the answer becomes clear when you actually read it: the second part of the quote above isn't even based on anything in the survey questions. It is purely the opinion of the authors, unsupported by any research, even the phony kind. The authors are speculating about why the women in the survey have a preference for "intact" men, trying to imagine some physical mechanism to explain it, even though the obvious explanation is that they solicited participation in a way that would get mostly anti-circumcision respondents.
This "landmark study" is about as far from real, honest science as it is possible to get. Ditto for the article in Psychology Today. These people started with the goal of "proving" that something they don't like is bad and, to no one's surprise, they succeeded. That's not science.
I have no dog in this fight. I don't have a penis and I don't have a son. I just don't like junk propaganda masquerading as science.
I suspect that the circumcised man might have problems orgasming and thus taking too long to get off. This can be either a positive thing for the other partner, or negative, if it take really too long and turns into an ordeal for the other partner.
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