These men want their foreskins back

Seeking pleasure
Of course, it's impossible to truly restore foreskin and restorers admit results are partial at best. Certain specialized nerve endings simply won't return. For example, researchers have described a "ridged band" just inside a natural foreskin's tip of specialized nerve endings known as Meissner's corpuscles, which help detect light touch.

Instead, restorers focus on what they can bring back: revived friction on the penis shaft and what some claim is the "dekeratinization" of the glans -- thicker skin peels off and leaves a tender layer beneath.

Nonetheless, restorers speak with quiet joy about their new foreskins. They describe heightened sexual sensation -- increased sensitivity for a man, less friction for his partner. They insist that the newly covered glans can become more sensitive.

Before he was restored, Griffiths says, those qualities made him envious. "I had to just absolutely beat myself to death, so to speak, to get feeling, to get some pleasure," says Griffiths. "The intact man just goes on forever. He enjoys the trip."

But the real value, restorers insist, is a new sense of dignity. Language used by restorers and other anticircumcision activists at times resembles that used to describe the healing process for female rape victims or women whose clitorises were cut off in "female circumcision" procedures.

The rhetorical similarities are clearly intentional. Milos starkly describes male circumcision as "the torture and mutilation of infants."

As such, advocates of foreskin restoration like to frame the subject as primal empowerment, mirrored in flesh.

Exact numbers are a mystery, but NORM holds regular meetings around the San Francisco Bay area -- part how-to sessions and part support group.

Says Griffiths: "There's emotional healing that goes on for many, many men that says, 'I'm finally taking charge of my body ... I'm finally taking back what was taken from me without my consent.'"

'Don't go near them'
If restorers urge men to share the experience with loved ones, they are equally fervent when they argue it be done without a doctor's help. Most insist the medical community will be dismissive, if not outright hostile. On this point in particular, restorers reinforce the views of the broader anticircumcision movement.

"Patients do call me and they want a doctor and I say: Don’t go near them," says Dr. George Denniston, president of Doctors Opposing Circumcision. "They’ll tell you you're crazy and you need psychiatric evaluation."

Denniston and Milos both decry their experiences with medical circumcision, the training for which they describe as little more than an afterthought in obstetrics. The procedure, they argue, amounts to a violation of the "first, do no harm" precepts of modern medicine; its popularity in the medical community means parents can't possibly make informed decisions.

A medical puzzle
Data on the medical value of circumcision largely remains inconclusive. Some studies suggest it improves hygiene and reduces incidence of STDs; other studies have found health problems associated with the procedure.

In the past several years, medical groups have equivocated. Notably, the American Academy of Pediatrics reevaluated the practice in 1998 and essentially refused to endorse it. The American Medical Association came to the same conclusion a year later, noting circumcision was a choice often made "on social and cultural rather than medical concerns."

Both groups underscored ethical precepts surrounding circumcision: anesthesia is essential, parents should take an active role in deciding whether to have it done and doctors need to accurately state the medical logic on either side.

Circumcision has its own fervent advocates. Dr. Edgar Schoen, a longtime pediatrician and researcher in Oakland, Calif., not only remains unswayed about the procedure's benefits but also serves as a foil of sorts to the anticircumcisers. As author of the AAP's previous position on circumcision in 1989, which largely praised its benefits, he remains what could charitably be called dismissive of restoration.

"It's not a serious medical procedure," he says. "The people who are involved in this have a lot of problems that are not related to the foreskin."

As for the stretching process, few medical concerns are raised since it mimics well-tested methods to grow skin. "But you’ve got to spend a lot of time on stretching," says Dr. Ira Sharlip, a San Francisco urologist and spokesman for the American Urological Association. "It's not a very practical thing to do."

Sharlip says a patient may occasionally inquire about surgical restoration -- which really amounts to cosmetic surgery -- but few urologists have regularly dealt with the issue. "The great majority of men have no problems with having been circumcised," he says, even if fewer parents are now choosing it for their children.

Foreskin restorers see it differently. They believe most men are simply too afraid to address an unquestionably awkward topic.

"Most men who do suffer, who are troubled by what was done to them, suffer in silence," says Bigelow. "If we didn’t have what is this foolish tradition in our culture, we wouldn’t have to do this."

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