Fitting In and Getting Off Elective Adult Male Circumcision in the United States and Britain

The majority of male circumcisions in the United States are performed on infants upon parental request. Most scholarly attention towards American circumcision focuses on the neonatal practice; however, significant numbers of adult American men elect circumcision for themselves, and many men circumcised as infants elect further surgical adjustment of their penises as adults to meet their preference or standard for what they perceive to be a desirable penis. Illuminating insights into the American cultural values that underlie the persistence of non-therapeutic infant circumcision can be found in the expressions of desire for circumcision or re-circumcision offered by adult men who elect the surgery for themselves. Using primary ethnographic data, this paper surveys those justifications, which include the preference of sexual partners for circumcision (or re-circumcision); social conformity; aesthetic appeal of the circumcised penis; and sexual fetishization of the circumcised penis, the act of circumcision, or the experience of being circumcised.