The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

The Snip Series: Reprised for Valentine's Day

A couple of years ago, for reasons that I can't remember, if they ever existed, I decided to do an unscientific research project on circumcision. I asked men who'd been circumcised as adults and experienced sex both ways, to write in about which they liked better. My findings, two Valentine's Days ago: 

Of the 79 men who'd experienced sex snipped and unsnipped, 43 said sex improved (55 percent) after their circumcisions, 23 said it went downhill (29 percent), and 13 said there was no change or a mix of pros and cons (16 percent). My numbers don't differ much from the latest research: Based on a sample of 84 men who'd been circumcised as adults for medical reasons, a 2005 article in Urologia Internationalis found a 61 percent satisfaction rate, with 38 percent saying that penile sensation improved after the procedure, 18 percent saying it got worse, and the rest reporting no change. (Read more if you really want to.)

In the meantime, to my surprise the topic has become unfrivolous. Studies have shown that circumcision helps prevent the transmission of HIV and AIDS. In the absence of a vaccine, it looks like the next best thing. (Though apparently only for men--no evidence that it decreases the risk for women.) A South African study found that men who thought that circumcised men enjoy sex more than uncircumcised one were seven times more likely to have the procedure. And so a research team in Uganda conducted a large-scale study: 2,210 men were randomly chosen for the snip; 2,246 served as a control group. They were followed for two years. Results: A sexual satisfaction rate of more than 98 percent for both groups.This is so high that it seems incredible. But Ronald Grey, one of the lead researchers and a Johns Hopkins professor, defends it. He pointed out to me that in know-nothing studies like mine, people who feel strongly are inevitably over-represented, and that could bring the anti-snip folk out in droves. The Urologia study has a different problem: The men in it were circumcised for medical reasons, which means their experiences may not reflect other men's. The Uganda research, Grey thinks, is the first and only effort to track thousands of men who were perfectly healthy etc, before and after. So for the moment, at least, the question seems to be settled: circumcised men shouldn't worry about what their missing. Except there's just one thing: The researchers didn't ask them the relative question--whether sex got better or worse after the snip. Next study. Or maybe there are some things we're better off being left to wonder.