Penis Pressure: Foreskin and Weenxiety

Jezebel posted the most adorably bizarre video of a penis doing its best Teletubbie impersonation (NSFW). I immediately reposted onto my Facebook because, you know, sharing is caring. And I care enough to subject my friends to my strange sense of humor.

While I get that not everyone finds a penis playing peek-a-boo with its own foreskin as funny as I do I did not anticipate the response left by a male friend:

Surgically altering babies should be outlawed. That is an adult decision. Otherwise it’s mutilation. Period.

The issue of circumcision is always one I avoid. I do not have a penis and will not have children so I get to steer clear of this hot-button sexual values issue. But, as I repeatedly read his comment, I realized what was bothering me about it: I prefer a foreskin-free penis.

Typing that sentence makes me wince. Who am I to have a preference for cut cock? Is it shallow? Destructive to men? I try to rationalize my desire via the freedom of personal choice.

Then I realize that this choice is not as personal as I would like to believe. I live in a culture that regularly circumcises boy babies. Nearly every penis I have seen up close has been sans-foreskin. The penis in its given state looks as alien to me as the unmodified female form looks to so many guys raised in a Maxim world.

So why do I so love the sight of a circumcised penis? William Street from the movie Chameleon Street said it best:

I’m a victim brother. I’m a victim of 400 years of conditioning. The man has programmed my conditioning. Even my conditioning has been conditioned!

Several male lovers/boyfriends have made bitter remarks about their circumcision. There is no going back, no way to know what it would be like if that little peice of skin had been left alone. They must feel helpless, a taboo emotion for men.

Everyone experiences, at some point, a sense of anxiety about their genitals. Females can willfully ignore what sits between their legs while transgender and intersex individuals often silently sit with horrific anxieties about feeling outside of the body definitions. Men are constantly in contact with their own junk and exist in a culture of open cock dialogue. Whether big, small, crooked, cut or foreskin adorned, most men experience some level of what I call weenxiety.

A student once asked me, “Sometimes I see pictures of girls, uh, genitals and some of them weird me out. What if- what if a girl I like thinks that about mine?” This is a perfect example of weenxiety. Does it look right? Is it normal? Is my manstick manly enough?

This isn’t limited to guys lacking pornstar level dicks. My most well-endowed ex was obsessed with proving himself through sex. He had to be the best, his dick had to be the biggest most perfect thing ever. He clung to his big dick like a rescue raft in the stormy social ocean.

To a certain extent, I think guys measure themselves sexually with their weens. During a discussion with teens about object oriented sexual attraction and one young man said, “But girls are different! There’s only one thing they want from us.”

“What?,” I asked.  He simply pointed to his crotch.

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