That headline should get me some page-views. Anyway, an expert writes:
You wrote:
"When your most intense sexual pleasure comes from scar tissue, something has gone wrong."
However, the scientific study to which you referred investigated "sensitivity" of skin tissue. It appears to have documented nothing about pleasure. How the study was conducted is not specified in your report, but there are several types of nerve endings in the skin, each of which reacts to different types of stimuli. For example, any particular point on the skin may be sensitive specifically to such stimuli as pain, cold, heat, touch, or pressure. Sensitivity is often expressed in terms of the distance between two points of stimulation necessary for the brain to discriminate between them. For instance, would two pin pricks (excusing the phrase) touching the circumcision scar, 2 mm. apart, be perceived as one or two pains? And would that sensed pain be interpreted by the brain as unpleasant or pleasant?
To the best of my knowledge (which admittedly is not encyclopedic) there are no nerve endings in the skin that specifically register pleasure. The perception of pleasure is a subjective one made by the brain, not the penis, and, as I assume you are aware, a sensation that is pleasurable to one person may be repulsive to another.
Going one step further, scar tissue, by its nature, is sometimes hyposensitive and sometimes hypersensitive. Therefore, to find that a circumcision scar is the "most" sensitive point on a penis does not indicate that it is normative for penile skin sensitivity. It may be abnormally sensitive, that is even more sensitive than the same penile skin site before circumcision.
In short, the study referred to seems to say absolutely nothing about penile pleasure, and even without reading the original study itself I would wager that it can not do so. And incidentally, I am neither an advocate nor an opponent of elective circumcision. But I do believe the data about the protective effect of circumcision against HIV is an overwhelmingly stronger argument than data that measures something that may have nothing to do with pleasure.
I’m not convinced that the pleasure of sex, as measured by penile sensitivity, is perceived by many men to be repulsive. I can see who some men might want to blunt such sensitivity to avoid premature ejaculation or even longer masturbation sessions. But it still seems to me to be a choice that should be reserved for him – and no one else.
The Dish 