(Photo: The Granger Collection )

“The first time I saw an uncircumcised penis, I was turned off by it. I was young, like 21. It didn’t look like it was clean. It’s totally different with my husband. The first guy had a lot of foreskin— even with an erection it was still hooded— whereas my husband is never hooded. The skin moves. I didn’t even know he was uncut until he told me. There are varying degrees of foreskin, I now realize.”
— 32-year-old woman, married to an uncut Englishman

“Oral sex is more interesting with uncircumcised. There’s just more there; you get to engage with it. Every other girl I’ve talked to about it said she thought uncut penises were gross, but to me it’s just a little turtleneck. What’s the big deal?”
— 28-year-old single woman

“Circumcised penises are definitely more attractive. Uncircumcised tends to look like there’s been a lot of wear and tear on them after a while, because the foreskin stretches. Not that that hurts the sex.”
—50-year-old woman, divorced from an uncut man, dating a cut man

“The first time I saw an uncircumcised penis, I was 21. It was my first trip to Europe alone, and I hooked up with a French guy for a week. I was fascinated by it, because I didn’t have the same equipment. It’s fetishized in the gay community, I think, for that reason. You want what you don’t have. I also feel like uncircumcised men have more intense orgasms than I have.”
— 42-year-old circumcised gay man

“My husband, who is circumcised, is impossible to get off. Like, impossible! The only other person I have been with wasn’t circumcised. To get him aroused, I could just take the outer casing and peel it back, and I could tell by his face that the feeling was like, holy shit, that is good. You never get that with circumcised.”
—32-year-old married woman

“The thing about having sex with an uncircumcised guy is you don’t get dry. There’s not as much friction involved, so you can go on for a lot longer. I absolutely prefer uncircumcised. Only thing is, guys with foreskins really don’t like having a condom on, because it’s more suffocating. And that can be a problem.”
—26-year-old single woman

“I’ve had sex with sixteen guys, eight circumcised and eight not. In general, the cleanliness thing was an issue for me. I’d rather have circumcised, just because you never have to worry about that.”
—31-year-old married woman

Related:

• Articles by Sarah Bernard
• Table of Contents: Oct 26, 2009 issue of New York | Subscribe!