When a baby boy's normal, healthy penis is circumcised, this is what is lost - forever:
>1. Theforeskin, which comprises up to 50% (sometimes more) of the mobile skin system of the penis. This highly specialized tissue normally covers the glans and protects it from abrasion, drying, callousing (keratinisation), and contaminants of all kinds. The effect of glans keratinisation on human sexuality has never been studied.
>2. Thefrenar bandof soft ridges - the primary erogenous zone of the male body. Loss of this delicate belt of densely innervated, sexually responsive tissue reduces the fine-tuning of male sexual response.
>3. The foreskin's "gliding action" - the hallmark mechanical feature of the intact penis. This non-abrasive gliding of the penis in and out of itself within the vagina facilitates smooth, comfortable, pleasurable intercourse for both partners. Without this gliding, sealing action, the shaft of the circumcised penis functions as a leaky piston, drawing vaginal lubricants out into the drying air and often making artificial lubricants essential for comfortable intercourse.
>4. Thousands of coiled fine-touch mechanoreceptors called Meissner's corpuscles, the most important sensory component of the foreskin, encapsulated Vater-Pacinian cells, Merkel's cells, nociceptors, and branches of the dorsal nerve and perineal nerve. Altogether, between 10,000 and 20,000 specialized erotogenic nerve endings of several types, which can feel slight motion and stretch, subtle changes in temperature, and fine gradations in texture, are lost.
>5. Thefrenulum, the highly erogenous web-like tethering structure on the underside of the glans; frequently amputated along with the foreskin, which destroys its function and potential for pleasure.
>6. Approximately half of the temperature-sensitive smooth muscle sheath called thedartos fascia.
