As the circumcision debate rolls on and on in parenting forums on the Interwebs, there is one realm in which many women seem to absolutely favor the snip: the bedroom. Yes, I am sorry to say that no matter what the parenting forums say, little Johnny is much more likely to have a girl want to go down if the area is clean and cut, especially if she is American.

How do I know this? In the past couple weeks, I have conducted a highly unscientific poll among close to 50 women I know, all of whom have been with circumcised and uncircumcised men. And the results were a bit surprising.

I will admit when it came time to make this decision for my own child, we asked around and got a lot of answers from women who had been traumatized by uncircumcised penises that were, to put it nicely, "unclean."

Now, of course, a woman can ask the dude to shower and take care of that little stank issue, but the truth is: "It's common for the partner(s) of uncircumcised men to notice a distinct odor or taste when coming in close contact with the penis and foreskin," according to Go Ask Alice. It isn't an insurmountable issue for most couples, of course. And once it's inside, most women can't feel a difference. Still, the overwhelming consensus from women seemed to be that it was just less clean and grossed them out. 

"It was ugly," one friend who asked to remain anonymous said of her uncircumcised former boyfriend. "It looked like a Shar-Pei puppy," said another. You get the drift.

Now, of course, most parents don't make the decision to snip based on the likelihood of future blow jobs for their baby boy. As circumcision rates decline more and more in the States, it likely will be the "norm" to have sexual encounters with uncut men. Still, the women who have been with both seem to prefer the cleaner look of a cut penis.

Of course, some women said that there were benefits to the uncut male, too. One woman whose husband is uncircumcised and who asked to remain anonymous (natch) said her husband could last a much longer time and he had the sense, from college conversations, that this was due to his intact penis. Several also said that the penis felt no different in the dark. The revulsion was really more of a sensory thing -- taste, smell, and sight -- than it was a sexual thing.

Times are changing and maybe in 30 years, women will look with disgust on a cut head and wonder why on Earth anyone would do such a thing. But that time isn't now and for most of the roughly 50 women I heard from, aesthetically speaking, a cut penis wins every time.

Have you had sex with both? Do you have a preference?


Image via James Bowe/Flickr