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Originally Posted by Tuna
I'm confused, I thought the foreskin retracts during erections so that it doesn't even come into play during sex?  |
The foreskin can move back and forth over the glans during sexual activity. The inner surface of the foreskin is a mucus membrane (like the inner surface of your lip) and includes a sensitive "ridged band" that lies flat against the glans when it is unerect. Touch-sensitive nerve endings, called Meissner's corpuscles, are found in the ridges. The ridged band provides sexual stimulation when rolling over the corona of the glans.
Foreskin Curriculum
Quote:
Originally Posted by lucifer_sam
These two are bullshit.
First, correlation =/= causation; don't try to establish baseline similarities between FGM and HIV incidence. How many partners do you think devout Muslim women have in their lifetimes? See what the incidence of HIV is in married Muslim women vs. unmarried. There's your cause.
Second, you really must be confused if you think that about circumcised men. The glans is the most sensitive part of the penis, you aren't aware that its increased exposure amounts to more unusual forms of stimulation? There are more accessible ways to bring circumcised men to climax than uncircumcised, I imagine.
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Confused? I don't think so. See the following article about penis sensitivity:
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Sorrells, M.L., et al. (2007) Fine-touch pressure thresholds in the adult penis, BJU International, 99: 864 - 869
http://www.foreskinrestoration.info/...20Test-BJU.pdf:
"Circumcision removes the most sensitive parts of the penis. The most sensitive regions in the uncircumcised penis are those parts ablated by circumcision. When compared to the most sensitive area of the circumcised penis, several locations on the uncircumcised penis (the rim of the preputial orifice, dorsal and ventral, the frenulum near the ridged band, and the frenulum at the muco-cutaneous junction) that are missing from the circumcised penis were significantly more sensitive."
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Yes, I am aware that circumcising men as infants does appear to change their sexual activities as adults, increasing their frequency of masturbation, oral sex, and anal sex (Laumann
et al. (1997) Circumcision in the United States: Prevalence, Prophylactic Effects, and Sexual Practice, J. of the American Medical Assoc, Volume 277, Number 13: Pages 1052-1057,
Circumcision in the United States).
However, I have read that this change may be due not to increased sensitivity of the circumcised penis, but rather to social reasons and
decreased sensitivity caused by loss of the foreskin.
Yes, correlation does not equal causation. The Tanzanian study of women looked at a variety of factors, including number of partners, and found that women who had experienced female genital mutilation still had lower HIV infection rates even when the number of sex partners was taken into account.
You seem to be assuming that only devout Muslim women are circumcised and that marriage status causes different HIV rates among Muslim women. You state this as fact. What is your source?
The point in this discussion of female genital mutilation (FGM), though, was to show that proponents of FGM have their arguments in favor of it and will use claims of reduced HIV rates and improved hygiene to argue that genital cutting of girls should be allowed, ignoring the human rights violations of children and the less invasive ways to achieve the same effects of improved health.
Supporters of male genital cutting do the same thing.
One example is that U.S. proponents of circumcision of baby boys cite as support the reduced HIV rate among African men who have been circumcised as adults, even though the effects of circumcision of men should
not be assumed to be the same as the effects of circumcision on infants, since an infant's foreskin structure is very different than that of an adult's, the procedures differ, and the rates of complications and risks differ, as well.
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Originally Posted by Pedestrian
Do you think that female circumcision decreases likelihood of HIV, in that it decreases a woman's overall desire for sex?
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I don't know if women whose genitals have been cut have a decreased desire for sex. If they do, and if a circumcised woman's decreased desire for sex translates into a decreased rate of actual sex, then this could reduce HIV infection rates.