Porn Studies

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The lost inches: circumcision debates in gay men’s

magazines

Jonathan A. Allan

To cite this article: Jonathan A. Allan (2019): The lost inches: circumcision debates in gay men’s
magazines, Porn Studies, DOI: 10.1080/23268743.2019.1590226

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PORN STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2019.1590226

The lost inches: circumcision debates in gay men’s magazines

Jonathan A. Allan
Department of English and Creative Writing, Brandon University, Brandon, MB, Canada

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article explores the circumcision debates as they unfolded in Received 18 October 2018
gay men’s magazines from the 1980s to the new millennium. The Accepted 28 February 2019
article focuses on the ways the debates shifted and changed in
KEYWORDS
the light of health and medicine, notably the HIV/AIDS crisis. Anti-circumcision activism;
Circumcision and the foreskin were hotly debated in gay men’s circumcision; foreskin;
magazines during this period, and as such they present an foreskin restoration; Honcho:
important and interesting site of analysis. Articles about The Magazine for the Macho
circumcision and the foreskin appeared in a wide range of Male; Machismo; Stallion: The
magazines, including those under consideration in this article: Magazine of an Alternate
Honcho, Machismo, Stallion, and Unzipped Monthly. This article Lifestyle; Unzipped Monthly
seeks to expand the scope of analysis for circumcision debates,
including intactivism, to include the pornographic.

It seems obvious enough that ‘penises are the symbolic and literal essence of male sexu-
ality’, and yet ‘relative to the amount of social science research which has been conducted
on vaginas, there is surprisingly little analysis of penises’ (Owen and Campbell 2018, 332).
In their article, Owen and Campbell provide a discursive analysis of articles about the penis
in four men’s magazines: Loaded, Men’s Health, GQ, and Attitude. Like Owen and Campbell,
I will limit my analysis to men’s magazines, but unlike Owen and Campbell I am interested
in a very specific concern found in men’s magazines; namely, circumcision. This article thus
builds on my earlier ‘The First Rip-Off: Anti-circumcision Activism in Men’s Magazines’
(Allan 2018a), in which I draw attention to the ways in which circumcision – the
removal of the foreskin from the penis – was debated in the pages of men’s magazines,
particularly Hustler magazine in the 1970s. As I say there, ‘much remains to be said
about gay male publications, which attended to the foreskin and circumcision controversy’
(2018a, 315). In this spirit, then, the present article studies some of those materials, and
demonstrates the ways in which gay men’s magazines thought about the politics of cir-
cumcision and the foreskin.
Circumcision debates have appeared in men’s magazines since at least the 1960s, if not
earlier (Allan 2018a), and in gay men’s magazines since at least the 1980s. For example, in
the February 1995 issue of Honcho: The Magazine for the Macho Male, Chuck Thompson
published an article titled ‘The Circumcision Controversy’ which set out to study the ‘con-
troversy’. He begins:

CONTACT Jonathan A. Allan allanj@brandonu.ca Canada Research Chair in Queer Theory, Gender and Women’s
Studies and English and Creative Writing, Brandon University, 270-18th Street, Brandon, MB, Canada R7A 6A9.
© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 J. A. ALLAN

As a result of considerable study begun seventy-two years ago and involving thousands of
interested men, I have concluded that the battle between anti- and pro-circumcision advo-
cates persists with no end in sight. The fight takes place on talk shows, in the press, and
more recently on the bulletin boards of computer services. Though circumcision has been
described as ‘a big issue over a small tissue,’ the subject continues to draw strong emotional
reactions. (1995, 69)

Truth be told, 25 years later, we can agree that ‘the subject continues to draw strong
emotional reactions’ and that, indeed, there is no ‘end in sight’ to the debate over the fore-
skin and circumcision. The only difference, perhaps, is how the debate unfolds today: we
have continued discussions on bulletin boards, but the debate has moved to social media
sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms, and the anti-circumcision or ‘intacti-
vist’ movement has become a presence at protests and parades (Sardi 2011; Kennedy and
Sardi 2016).
In this article, I focus on four articles that appeared in the pages of gay men’s maga-
zines. The July 1982 issue of Stallion: The Magazine of an Alternate Lifestyle included an
article titled ‘Prime Cut: Circumcision the Unkindest Cut of All’ by Bob Ward, which intro-
duced its readers to the topic of circumcision. The following article, ‘The Circumcision Con-
troversy’ by Chuck Thompson, which appeared in Honcho in February 1995, introduces the
‘controversy’ but then considers the ‘molecular politics of risk’ (Norton 2017) in the light of
HIV/AIDS. Following this article, I turn to the August 1997 issue of Machismo, which
included Mitchell Anderson’s article ‘Circumcision, What Does it Really Mean?’ This
article is a curious one because it seems to be written for a heterosexual audience,
rather than a gay audience. Finally, I consider Tim Evans’ article ‘Restoration Hardware’
from the July 2001 issue of Unzipped Monthly, in which readers learn about ‘foreskin
restoration’.
Each of these articles is part of a growing social debate about circumcision that
unfolded in the pages of gay male pornographic magazines beginning in the 1980s,
which is when we also see the rise of anti-circumcision activism, as noted by Lauren
M. Sardi, who observes that it is a ‘movement that began in the early 1980s’ (2014, 94).
Moreover, these articles all seem to be interested in the ongoing medical debates
about circumcision, particularly the decisions made by the American Academy of Pedi-
atrics (AAP), which routinely amended and revised its statements. The AAP released state-
ments in 1971 and 1975 that called into question the need for routine neonatal
circumcision, then in 1989 the AAP changed its opinion and suggested that there were
medical benefits to routine neonatal circumcision, and then in 1999 the AAP decided,
again, that there was no medical reason for routine neonatal circumcision. Importantly,
these articles cover a range of topics related to the ‘circumcision controversy’ and thus rep-
resent an important archive in the study of the foreskin and circumcision.

A note about terminology

Throughout this article, I use the term ‘uncircumcised’ or ‘uncut’ to refer to the penis that
has not been circumcised. I recognize, however, that this terminology is problematic for
some, especially within the anti-circumcision community. William G. Wallace has proposed
that we ought to use three distinct terms to refer to different types of penises: ‘intact
(those in the natural state), circumcised (those with the prepuce removed), and
 PORN STUDIES 3

uncircumcised (those with a restored prepuce or pseudo-prepuce’ (2015, 564; original

emphases). I recognize that for Wallace these distinctions are important, and he is not
alone. In an article published in Australian Forum, one man explains: ‘I really resent the
calling of a man who has a natural penis with a foreskin … ‘uncircumcised’ as if it was
something that had to be done!’ (Badger 1989, 12). Likewise, Mervyn M. Lander explains
that using the term ‘uncircumcised’ is ‘irrational’ because it requires that one ‘define[s]
the normal as “not operated upon,”’ and thus argues that ‘the normal male should be
addressed as such, or referred to as “intact”’ (1997, 77). However, it seems to me that ‘uncir-
cumcised’ is still the commonly accepted terminology for a penis that has retained its fore-
skin, even if there are a growing number of men who prefer a term like ‘intact’ or ‘natural’.
Moreover, what is missing from Wallace’s typologies, as well as those that prefer a term like
‘normal’ or ‘natural’, is the case of aposthia, in which the neonate is born without a
foreskin.
Additionally, in all of the articles under consideration, the authors are speaking about
cisgender men, and thus the language used is about men and males. The intactivist move-
ment or anti-circumcision movement has increasingly embraced a more inclusive
language to speak about genital integrity and to focus less on the people and more on
the parts that are modified. The intactivist movement has shown and developed a
growing interest in intersex bodies, particularly those of children, which are often operated
upon long before they are able to consent.

Studying men’s magazines

Men’s magazines provide an important avenue for research, particularly since they are
‘unique in their format’ and are ‘snapshots of a complex and contradictory landscape,
pulling together a number of ideas from a variety of spaces into one, neatly packaged
format’ (Waling et al. 2018, 10). Studies have tended to focus on what might be called
‘mainstream’ men’s magazines; for instance, in Owen and Campbell’s article ‘How do
Men’s Magazines Talk about Penises?’ the discussion focuses on four magazines, three
of which are heterosexual – Loaded, Men’s Health, and GQ – and one of which is aimed
at gay men – Attitude – and all of which ‘are the UK market leading titles’ (2018, 334). Like-
wise, in her article ‘Chaos to Control: Men’s Magazines and the Mastering of Intimacy’,
Anna Rogers focuses on six issues of For Him Magazine (2005), which we are told was
‘immense[ly] popular’ (2005, 180). In another study, Federico Boni focuses on the Italian
edition of Men’s Health, which, as the abstract notes, was ‘the most important men’s life-
style magazine in Italy’ (2002, 465). So what, then, we might ask, happens to the titles that
are not mainstream, not sold at the local newsstand? Accordingly, this article sets out to
study pornographic and erotic men’s magazines, which are explicitly interested in and
committed to the sexual. The study of pornographic men’s magazines, less the idea and
more the actual content, remains something of an under-studied area of research,
especially when we move beyond ‘mainstream’ pornographic magazines, such as
Playboy or Hustler. Indeed, even then, it seems we are less interested in the content of
these magazines than the idea of the magazine; thus, we find content analysis and
opinions about the magazines wholesale (Hall 1982; Bogaert, Turkovich and Hafer 1993;
Dines and Perea 2003), or we find legal debates and opinions about the magazine (Post
1990). I am interested, then, in thinking about particular issues, and, within that, a given
4 J. A. ALLAN

article. These magazines, unlike mainstream men’s magazines, which often relied on
vagueness and innuendo when discussing sex, were spaces in which sexuality could be
discussed and represented in frank and explicit terms. As such, it is unsurprising that
men’s magazines would have been a site in which circumcision was debated, and
perhaps even less surprising that gay men’s magazines were invested in the topic from
the 1980s to the beginning of the new millennium.

The unkindest cut of all?

In the July 1982 issue of Stallion: The Magazine of the Alternate Lifestyle, readers are intro-
duced to what was at the time a nascent and growing debate surrounding the foreskin
and the politics of circumcision. Medical associations in Canada and Australia had
begun to recommend against routine neonatal circumcision in the 1970s. Likewise, the
AAP had begun to call into question the value and need for routine neonatal circumcision.
Finally, in 1980, Edward Wallerstein published his polemic and controversial Circumcision:
An American Health Fallacy (1980), in which he argued vehemently against circumcision. As
such, circumcision was being debated at the level of policy as well, and increasingly
amongst a general public.
In his 1982 article ‘Prime Cut: Circumcision or the Unkindest Cut of All?’,1 published
in Stallion, Bob Ward begins with a series of binaries: ‘Barbaric or hygienic? Tradition or
unnecessary surgery?’ He subsequently asks: ‘Who’s penis is it, anyway: baby’s, mother’s,
father’s, or does it belong to the doctor?’ (Ward 1982, 59). In many ways, these opening
sentences set up both the dynamic of the article and the ongoing debates about cir-
cumcision, even for those who may have never given any serious thought to the
matter. The opening paragraph consists of 13 different questions. Some of these are
fairly innocuous – for instance, ‘does Blue Cross pay for it?’ – while others seem
more ideologically inclined – for instance, ‘does circumcision create a taste for sado-
masochism when the first real pain in life is felt in the penis?’ This opening paragraph
is almost hysterical in its persistent questioning not only of the procedure, but also of
the effects of the surgery. But in asking so many questions, the paragraph also high-
lights the growing anxieties surrounding circumcision during the early part of the
1980s, and, truthfully, it must be admitted that many of these same questions can
be found in circumcision debates today.
The article provides readers with an understanding of the current state of circumcision,
noting that:
the United States enjoys the distinction of being the world’s largest ‘circumcised’ country, in
terms of the total number of men without foreskins; however the largest region in the world
with the greatest number of circumcised men are the Islamic countries in the Middle East and
Northern Africa. (Ward 1982, 59)

This leads the author to quip, ‘not only does the U.S. share a common interest in the
price and availability of oil with the Arabs but also a concern for removing the foreskin
from penises’ (1982, 59).
In this opening section of the article, readers are provided with general information
about elective circumcision in Japan and some southeast Asian countries because
‘some of these people try to ‘look” like Americans’ (Ward 1982, 59), a phenomenon that
 PORN STUDIES 5

has been well documented by Genaro Castro-Vásquez (2015) in his book Male Circumcision
in Japan. Ward explains the impetus for the article:
Today, more than ever before in history, the wisdom of the practice of routine circumcision on
infant males is being seriously questioned all over the world. It is clear that outside of the U.S.
the tide of public opinion is clearly running against such circumcision. (1982, 60)

Admittedly, there is a curious slippage here between ‘all over the world’ wherein the
vast majority are not circumcised, and thus likely less invested in the debate, and the
United States, where circumcision, up until this point, would seem to have been a norm
in the twentieth century.
The remainder of the article considers three ‘concerns’ about circumcision – namely,
circumcision as prophylaxis, the problem of phimosis, and smegma. All of these concerns
are fairly regular concerns in the debates about circumcision. Today, we continue to
debate the prophylactic values of circumcision. With regards to phimosis, the author
notes that ‘only as a last resort is a partial or complete circumcision required’ (Ward
1982, 60). Finally, with regards to smegma, the author notes that while for many
smegma may be a site of disgust, for others it may be a site of arousal: ‘Many European
men (as well as women) insist on some ‘natural aromas’ as part of their sexual lives.
Smegma as an aphrodisiac is a matter of personal taste’ (1982, 60). From here, Ward
moves to a historical analysis of circumcision, which notes that circumcision begins ‘as
far back as the Fifth Century B.C.’ and moves through the Greeks, who ‘thought the
uncut penis was a work of art and celebrated its beauty in their art’, as well as the Jews
and the Christians, for whom ‘circumcision has always been controversial’ (1982, 60).
Finally, the author turns to questions of aesthetics, particularly the idea of the uncut
penis as a ‘stigma’ or as a ‘turn-on’, ultimately noting that ‘penis envy takes many
forms’, and leading the author to ask: ‘So what is better: cut or uncut?’ (1982, 61). In his
summary and concluding remarks, Ward explains that ‘the purpose of this essay is to
pique the reader’s interest, so that he may further explore the subject on his own’
(1982, 61).
This article is a kind of ‘archetypal’ approach to the circumcision controversy and
follows the general forms of the debate. I suggest that the themes it highlights will
appear in many of the articles that follow this one. Perhaps we might even speak
here of the beginnings of a ‘genre’. We have the introduction of the question, a
series of remarks about the context in which it is written, a few reasons for circumci-
sion, and a conclusion that speaks to the question of autonomy. Ward concludes:
‘Again the question has to be asked: whose body is it, anyway?’ (1982, 61).2 This
article certainly flirts with an ‘intactivist’ politic, after all it discusses common ‘talking
points’. Ultimately, however, the article does not articulate a specific argument
against circumcision. Instead, as the author notes, the goal was to get people
talking, and perhaps to open the possibility for future discussions about circumcision.
Indeed, the August 1984 issue of Stallion included an article called ‘Clean-Cut Cocks:
The Circumcision Controversy’ by Phillip Brents, which drew heavily on commentary
from men and their thoughts about circumcision, and ultimately concluded that
‘Unless outlawed by Congress, it appears that male circumcision in America is here
to stay’ (Brents 1984, 59). For Brents, then, unless there is a legal change, rather than
a cultural change, circumcision is seemingly here to stay. Ward’s (1982) article thus
6 J. A. ALLAN

becomes an early text in the debates surrounding circumcision and the foreskin to
appear in gay men’s magazines.

Risky foreskins: circumcision and HIV/AIDS

With the rise of HIV/AIDS in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the discussion about circumci-
sion shifted and so too did the discussions in gay men’s magazines, especially in light of
revised medical opinions. In the February 1995 issue of Honcho, readers found an article
about ‘The Circumcision Controversy’ by Chuck Thompson, who had a significant interest
in the foreskin and circumcision. The Advocate reports that Thompson ‘compiles and edits
“Celebrity Circumcision Survey,” an extensive tally of cock styles of the rich and famous’
and notes that the ‘list currently names 1,800 stars’ (Mallinger 1990, 44). In his article,
Thompson sets the stage by noting that, ‘in 1971, despite contrary views on the part of
urologists, the American Academy of Pediatrics determined that there were no valid
medical reasons for routine circumcision of the newborn’, a position that was
‘reaffirmed in 1975’ (1995, 70). However, ‘in 1989, with much more research available,
and with the growing concern over sexually-transmitted diseases, especially AIDS, the
AAP Task Force on Circumcision changed its position’ (1995, 70–71). In this article, then,
the focus of the circumcision controversy is about the ‘prophylactic’ values of the circum-
cision, an argument which has continued to have significant sway through to the present
day, and the ‘health’ of the foreskin. For instance, a block quotation reads: ‘The major
health risks for the uncut male are due to the moist, warm space between the foreskin
and the head of the penis, which offers microbes a natural harbor where they can multiply,
fed by smegma’ (1995, 70). As such, Thompson’s article is one that thinks about what
Aaron T. Norton has called the ‘foreskin’s biomolecular susceptibility’ (2017, 658). Accord-
ingly, Norton argues, ‘rhetorically framing the foreskin as inherently susceptible to HIV has
served to construct lack of circumcision as a new risk category’ (2017, 658), which is pre-
cisely what is happening in Thompson’s article. Is the uncut penis, and by extension the
man whose penis is uncircumcised, a ‘new risk category’?
In considering the remedicalization of routine neonatal circumcision (see Carpenter
2010), Thompson explains that:
The members [of the AAP Task Force on Circumcision] concluded that there were in fact
medical benefits conferred by circumcision, including the prevention of phimosis (the foreskin
being too tight to be drawn back over the glans), [sic] paraphimosos, and balanitis (infection).
They also found strong evidence associating circumcision with much lower incidence of
urinary tract infection. (1995, 71; original emphasis)

From this vantage, readers are provided with a brief history and an explanation of how
many Americans are circumcised, noting that the agreed-upon numbers vary, only to con-
clude that ‘about 80 percent [are circumcised] today’ (Thompson 1995, 71). Much of this
article, then, focuses on what Thompson calls ‘the major health risks for the uncut male’
(1995, 71). For instance, readers learn that ‘studies in Africa have shown that uncut
males are eight times more likely to acquire the HIV virus than cut males’, and, further,
they learn that ‘studies in this country also support that belief that AIDS and other sexu-
ally-transmitted diseases are a greater problem for the uncut man’ (1995, 72). Clearly, then,
we have the ‘rhetorical framing’ that Norton highlights. The foreskin, and by extension the
 PORN STUDIES 7

man with a foreskin, is a ‘new risk category’ (Norton 2017, 658) because he is, it would
seem, ‘eight times more likely to acquire HIV virus than cut males’ (Thompson 1995, 72).
Much of the article, then, is informed by this idea of the ‘foreskin’s biomolecular suscep-
tibility’ (Norton 2017, 658). Readers learn of another doctor who ‘discovered a twentyfold
increase in urinary tract infections during the first year of life among uncut boys’ (Thomp-
son 1995, 72). As if this is not concerning enough, readers are told ‘the alarming fact is that
10 percent to 15 percent of those infected males end up with permanently scarred
kidneys, and 10 percent of this damaged group later develop high blood pressure’
(1995, 72). Thompson seems to compound each and every one of these ‘risks’: for instance,
he explains that ‘of the sixty thousand cases of penile caner which have been recorded in
the United States since 1930, only ten have been reported to have occurred in circumcised
men’ (1995, 72). If one thing is clear, then, the uncircumcised penis is indeed a ‘risk cat-
egory’ (Norton 2017, 658). By the article’s close, Thompson writes:
In conclusion, when considering infant circumcision, one should carefully weigh all the facts.
Certainly the intact penis may provide its owner with a wider range of sexual pleasures,
because of the foreskin. One should also consider the advantages of circumcision, which
would include: reduced need for more frequent genital cleansing; the greatly reduced risk
of sexually transmitted and other diseases; elimination of any need for later circumcision;
and in some areas of the country, the higher chance of conformity to the status of other
boys, with the reduced risk of a boy’s feeling different. (1995, 73)

In this instance, then, the ‘risk category’ rhetoric extends beyond the epidemiological towards
the ‘risk of a boy’s feeling different’ (Thompson 1995, 73). Throughout this article the foreskin is
almost always framed as a kind of risk, even though it may provide more pleasure. There are,
to be certain, important questions to be asked here then of the construction of a risk category
based on the foreskin. In my chapter ‘Is the Foreskin a Grave?’ (Allan forthcoming [2019]), I
have explored some of these by attending to the ways in which the foreskin is framed and
represented, for instance, as a ‘sponge for the virus’. The foreskin, in Thompson’s reading,
becomes a site of ‘paranoid reading’ (Sedgwick 2003) in which it is always suspect, always
potentially ‘risky’. In many ways, then, this article is asking questions about the significance
of the foreskin as a ‘risky’ site. The question readers are left with is: is the foreskin worth it?

The lost inches: heteronormativity and circumcision

The cover of the August 1997 issue of Machismo reads ‘What they never told you about
circumcision. The Lost Inches!’ (original emphasis), and inside readers find a lengthy
article titled ‘Circumcision, What Does it Really Mean?’ by Mitchell Anderson. This is a
strange article because it is remarkably heteronormative in focus despite appearing in a
gay men’s magazine. Unlike the articles discussed earlier, this article seems oblivious to
its assumed or intended readership. Perhaps this speaks to the publication’s desire to
provide information and pays little attention to the readership of the issue. Why Machismo
published the article is unknown, and we can only speculate on possible reasons. Perhaps
there was a desire for an article on circumcision – especially as other periodicals were pub-
lishing on the issue. Nonetheless, in Anderson’s article there are no mentions, for instance,
of race, heritage, or culture that would likely be germane to the readership, not even cir-
cumcision statistics for Latino men. All in all, the article could have been placed in nearly
any magazine, and yet it appears in Machismo.
8 J. A. ALLAN

The opening paragraph of the article asks readers to think about circumcision and the
‘often forgotten foreskin’:
Circumcision, what does it really mean? It is a question which is seldom considered by men or
women around the world. It’s actually quite an interesting question to ask. In so doing we
come to a better understanding of the male penis, particularly the often forgotten foreskin,
and by virtue of the question, the penis which has had the foreskin removed – the procedure
commonly referred to as circumcision. (Anderson 1997, 33)

Given that Machismo is aimed at men, it is perhaps surprising to see an approach to the
question that is, in a sense, decidedly heterosexual: indeed, on the following page we
read: ‘the penis is important to both men and women in terms of sexual enjoyment
and experience’ (Anderson 1997, 34). One wonders what happens to those for whom
the penis is unimportant to sexual enjoyment and experience. At another point in the
article, the author explains that ‘many wives have commented on the positive aspect of
their husband’s [foreskin] restoration, not just in terms of seeing that their partner is
pleased, but that they find sexual interaction more enjoyable’ (1997, 90).
While it is certainly possible, perhaps even likely, that more than a few husbands were
reading Machismo, there is a decided tension running throughout the article between its
presumed gay audience and the heterosexually informed article. The article contains
numerous photographs of penises, most of which are flaccid or in states of limited tumes-
cence. These images are almost, but not quite, clinical in nature: close-ups of the penis,
limited representations of the bodies to which they are attached. However, there is an
image (that is printed twice) that would seem to embody what Hal Fischer calls a ‘gay
semiotic’, which is a ‘method to communicate sexual preferences’ (2015, 15). In this
image, we find a man with a moustache, on either side of his face is another man and
his uncut penis. Within the images, then, even if we were to remove the seemingly porno-
graphic elements, we still find something of a gay semiotic, the moustache. Consider
Justin Stubbings, who remembers:
When I went to San Francisco I just loved the way everyone looked. It was recognizable. You
knew. You knew that was a gay man because of the jeans and the checked shirt and the mous-
tache and the short hair. (Quoted in Cole 2000, 130)

The moustache, a kind of ‘Zapata moustache’ (Clarke 2013, 98), thus becomes a sign of this
‘gay semiotic’. Thus, even though the article itself could appear in nearly any magazine, the
images that accompany the article are read as gay – even without the pornographic
elements. That is, these images are doing the heavy-lifting of eroticizing the topic despite
the heterosexual lens through which Anderson reads circumcision and the foreskin.
Anderson’s article is a strange one in that it is deeply heterosexual in nature and finds
itself in a gay men’s magazine, but it does demonstrate that there was a continued desire
for articles on circumcision and the foreskin – even if they did not really fit the magazine.
There is nothing ‘new’ about this article. It is a summary of the ongoing circumcision
debates, and at the end of the article Anderson encourages his reader ‘to learn more
about the intact or circumcised penis’ and directs readers to ‘look through books, maga-
zines and journals, or point your browser to GEPPS.com which hosts Circumcision Facts
On-Line; a site which provides extensive material on the various issues related to circumci-
sion’ (1997, 90).
 PORN STUDIES 9

What remains unknown, unfortunately, is why this article appeared in Machismo, and
not, say, Hustler or Penthouse, which both had featured similar articles in their magazines.
This article feels out of place in Machismo, and leaves the reader wondering why it was
included, especially since other gay men’s magazines were discussing not only circumci-
sion, but also foreskin restoration, which is alluded to in this article. One possible answer,
then, is that there was a desire for a discussion of circumcision and the foreskin and any
article could work – sort of.

Missing out: foreskin restoration

Given all of the discussions about circumcision and foreskin in these magazines, it is hardly
surprising, then, that questions would turn to whether one can ‘restore’ a foreskin and
whether or not the uncut penis feels more or is more sensitive than the cut penis. A
letter writer, Close-cut from Little Rock, Arkansas, in the November 1997 issue of Honcho
asks: ‘Is it true that a man who has been circumcised can grow a new foreskin by stretching
the penile skin?’ (Close-cut 1997, 18). Perhaps this letter writer had heard of, or even read,
John Money’s (1991) Clinical Note ‘Sexology, Body Image, Foreskin Restoration, and Bisexual
Status’, in which Money discusses foreskin restoration, or the earlier studies noted by Money,
dating back to Aulus Cornelius Celsus, who ‘described two surgical methods of foreskin res-
toration’ (1991, 145). Likewise, this discussion was taking place in gay magazines that were
not pornographic in nature; for instance, The Guide, a magazine for gay travel, entertainment,
politics, and sex, published an article called ‘Lost & Found’ by Scott Richards (1999, 16–19),
which, according to the Contents section of the magazine, ‘examines ways to recover from
the unkindest cut’ (1999, 5). This growing interest in foreskin restoration is the subject of an
article in the July 2001 issue of Unzipped Monthly. When readers received their copy of
Unzipped Monthly, they found a headline ‘Boys and their Hoods: How to Restore your Fore-
skin’ across the cover, and within they found Tim Evans’ (2001) ‘Restoration Hardware’.
Evans’ article introduces readers to foreskin restoration, a procedure whereby the circum-
cised penis is able to regain its foreskin, or at least a part of its foreskin.
This article, like all of the other articles discussed, is concerned with questions of embo-
diment and masculinity. To date, little scholarship exists on the experience of restoring the
foreskin; however, Amanda Kennedy’s article (2015) ‘Masculinity and Embodiment in the
Practice of Foreskin Restoration’ does begin the important work of thinking through fore-
skin restoration. She notes that the men in her study ‘have collectively imagined the ideal
foreskin – one which is long and full, with redundant length beyond the tip of the penis –
and this is the body they hope to attain’ (2015, 45). Moreover, Kennedy notes that beyond
the body there are sexual expectations attached to the restored foreskin: ‘the sex which
they imagine will follow restoration is deeply connected to cultural imagery and masculine
norms’ (2015, 45). For Kennedy, then, foreskin restoration is deeply tied to both the body
and sexuality.
Evans’ article was not the first article in men’s magazines to explore foreskin restoration,
as noted earlier. Moreover, niche publications like Foreskin Quarterly and Uncut regularly
included the topic in their issues. However, unlike Foreskin Quarterly and Uncut, this
article was not aimed at an audience already familiar with the subject matter; instead, it
sought to introduce the idea of foreskin restoration because, as Evans notes, ‘with the
growing popularity of uncut porn models, and with fewer Americans being circumcised
10 J. A. ALLAN

at birth, foreskin restoration is all the rage’ (2001, 26). Interestingly, within the article,
readers would have seen a full-page advertisement for Bel Ami & Freshman Presents, in
which readers found ‘the most beautiful young men in the world [who] will make your
summer even hotter!’ (2001, 29) All of these men have uncircumcised penises, which, in
some ways, proves the point about the erotics of the foreskin, which is a genuine shift
from earlier ideas about the ugliness of the foreskin (Allan 2018b). While the advertisement
is not a part of Evans’ article, it does important paratextual work precisely because these
‘most beautiful young men’ all have one thing in common, the uncut penis. The reading of
Evans’ article is interrupted by this advertisement.
Early in the article, Evans explains ‘Doctors used to advocate circumcision for health and
hygiene reasons. However, in 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that
there is no medical rationale for routine circumcision’ (2001, 26). The remedicalization
and demedicalization debates over routine circumcision, as we can see, played out in
these magazines. Consequently, these debates provoke an interesting set of questions
for the circumcised: if circumcised for health reasons that are seemingly no longer valid,
what then has been lost? Certainly, in earlier articles, we saw discussions of ‘lost inches’,
but this article imagines much more is happening. In one curious moment, the article
quotes Marilyn Milos, ‘a nurse who runs the National Organization of Circumcision Infor-
mation Resource Centers (NOCIRC)’, who explains that ‘if a woman has a mastectomy,
no one thinks it’s odd or peculiar that she would then want to have a prosthesis, but if
men want to restore their bodies to the way they were born, people find it peculiar’
(2001, 28). In this argument, Milos imagines that a mastectomy and circumcision are
similar – and there is certainly much to debate about this analogy – but what remains
interesting for our purposes is that there is a notion of ‘loss’ for the circumcised male.
Men have lost ‘over 1,000 nerve endings’ and thus, the author declares, ‘Imagine what
losing all that pleasure-giving skin does to a man!’ (2001, 28). Again, the next page is a
full-page advertisement for the ‘most beautiful young men in the world’, all of whom
are uncut. The reader is being asked to ‘imagine’ quite a bit! The reason for foreskin res-
toration, then, is not necessarily about the aesthetics of the foreskin, but rather about
what the circumcised are ‘missing out’ on. R. Wayne Griffiths, for instance, explains: ‘I
felt like a part of me was missing. I wanted to get it back’ (Evans 2001, 28) as his motivation
for foreskin restoration. As such, foreskin restoration is about a return to an original form, a
desire for something that was lost but can now, seemingly, be found.
Foreskin restoration, Evans explains, as a movement is not new: ‘In 1982, the Brothers
United for Future Foreskins (BUFF) was founded and began advocating stretching the skin
of the penis to recreate the foreskin’ (2001, 28). Readers also learn of the founding of the
National Organization of Restoring Men and the UNCircumcising Information and Resources
Center that was founded by Jim Bigelow, author of The Joy of Uncircumcising! Exploring Cir-
cumcision: History, Myths, Psychology, Sexual Pleasure, and Human Rights (1998). While there
may have been organizations devoted to the topic, one might wonder about how many
men are uncircumcising or restoring their foreskins. Evans explains:
And a lot guys are doing it. Billy Ray Boyd, a lecturer at the City College of San Francisco, and
author of the book Circumcision Exposed, estimates that 7,000 to 10,000 men are tugging
today. NORM boasts a mailing list of over 3,000 tuggers and more than a dozen chapters
across the United States. And Paul Russo says his website gets 11,000 hits every six months.
With numbers like those, we’ve left ‘weird’ behind and gone mainstream! (2001, 28)
 PORN STUDIES 11

In this article, then, perhaps unlike earlier discussions, there is a desire to ‘normalize’, or at
least make ‘unweird’, foreskin restoration.
Now that the reader’s curiosity has undoubtedly been piqued, Evans asks ‘So, how does one
go about restoring his foreskin?’ and then explains ‘Before we explain, here’s a disclaimer: This
is not medical advice. Consult with your physician before attempting anything on your own’
(2001, 28). The remainder of the article will focus on how one goes about ‘tugging’, noting that
it ‘occurs in three stages’. The first of these requires the use of ‘surgical tape’ which ‘stretch[es]
the skin as far as possible over the head’ (2001, 28). The second stage requires that the ‘the skin
is bunched at the tip of the penis, and surgical tape is wrapped around the loose skin to hold it
closed. Weights may also be taped to the skin to hasten the stretching process’ (2001, 28 and
30). Finally, in the third stage, ‘an object is placed over the head of the penis and under the new
foreskin. The emerging foreskin is taped to or over the object to further stretch the new skin.
Weights may be used at this stage too’ (2001, 30). Included in the article is a 26-month-long
spread of a foreskin restoration by way of tugging, which shows the progress in various
stages (two months of tugging, six months, etc.).
While the article advised its readers to speak to doctors, readers are also told that
‘there’s also tremendous resistance in the medical community’ (Evans 2001, 30). As
such, readers learn that ‘experts feel men should satisfy their curiosity about the restor-
ation process even if their doctor is not supportive’ (2001, 30). In this article, then, we
also see a critical discussion of the medical profession, which is often subject to intactivist
critiques, and its responsibilities to the patient/client. Foreskin restoration is certainly a
taboo topic, and likely remains, to this day, something of a taboo topic even if it has see-
mingly gone ‘mainstream’ (2001, 28). After all, even if there is a growing movement around
foreskin restoration, the procedure remains largely unknown by the general public.
Evans’ article introduces its readers to foreskin restoration, a topic that was clearly of
some interest to readers not only of Unzipped, but also other men’s magazines. Readers
are thus encouraged to ‘imagine’ (Evans 2001, 28) the possibilities of the restored foreskin,
and shows them just how long the procedure will take. Moreover, the article is yet another
example that encourages readers to think about embodiment and sexuality.

Conclusion
Discussions of masculinity, sexuality, and embodiment have been a concern for scholars
for some time, especially with regards to erectile dysfunction (Potts 2000; Loe 2004), for
instance, or ejaculation (Aydemir 2007; Moore 2007), but what of the foreskin? If the
penis is central to conceptions of masculinity, then how do scholars account for the
variety beyond just size and girth? This article has sought to expand the analysis and dis-
cussion of masculinity, sexuality, and embodiment to consider the ways in which circum-
cision and the foreskin were being debated in gay men’s magazines.
Since the early 1980s, gay men’s magazines have explored the foreskin and the circum-
cision controversy. This article sought to introduce a range of texts that explored the con-
troversy and to show how the discourse has shifted, from initially being a mere curiosity to
a discussion that is aware of ongoing medical debates, through to foreskin restoration.
Interestingly, and importantly, the discussion surrounding the foreskin and circumcision
controversy was often aligned with the positions of the AAP, and its policies on routine
neonatal circumcision. Likewise, following the rise of HIV/AIDS, we witness something of
12 J. A. ALLAN

a ‘molecular politics of risk’ (Norton 2017) attached to the foreskin, and seemingly as the
crisis dissipates so too does the anxiety about the foreskin, and we witness an interest in
‘foreskin restoration’.
None of the articles studied were explicitly ‘intactivist’ in nature, which is to say they do
not identify themselves in this fashion, although they undoubtedly contribute to that
history. Foreskin Quarterly and Uncut would both qualify as ‘intactivist’ publications in
that they both were explicitly interested in the foreskin and it was part of the editorial
agenda. Likewise, in 1982, Drummer included three issues (numbers 54, 55, and 56) that
explored the ‘history of the foreskin’ written by Bud Berkeley, the founding editor of Fore-
skin Quarterly and author of Foreskin: A Closer Look (1993). The magazines explored here
merely contained articles within their publications about the circumcision controversy.
The point in highlighting and studying these articles is to show the range of magazines that
were considering the foreskin and the circumcision controversy. Undoubtedly, more work
remains to be done. Little has been written, so far as I can tell, on circumcision debates in por-
nography for women; for example, how was circumcision discussed in Playgirl, Viva, or For
Women? Likewise, there is no comparative study of how the discourses unfolded across maga-
zines for varying sexual desires and cultures; for instance, Hommes in Autumn 1985 includes a
brief note called ‘Circoncision contre racisme?’ in which ‘superman blue-boy Eric Stryker’
explains: ‘si tous les mâles étaient circoncis, dit-il, on ne reconnaîtrait plus les Juifs des
Arabes musulmans ou des chrétiens’ [‘if all men were circumcised, he said, it would be imposs-
ible to recognize the Jews from the Arab Muslims or Christians’] (Unknown 1985, 8). This is a
small example, to be certain, and at the bottom much remains to be studied, not just histori-
cally, but also with an eye to the future. As we continue to debate circumcision and the fore-
skin, with countries like Germany, Denmark, and Iceland debating banning circumcision, it
seems necessary to study the history of circumcision and anti-circumcision alike.

Notes
1. The motif or theme of ‘kindness’ and ‘unkindness’ has appeared in a range of articles on the
foreskin and circumcision, for instance ‘The Unkindest Cut of All’ (Unknown 1991) and ‘The
Unkindest Cut’ (Parra 1978). Scholarly articles have also made use of this motif or theme,
for instance ‘The Un-kindest Cut: Feminism, Judaism, and My Son’s Foreskin’ (Kimmel 2001),
‘Unkind Cuts’ (Radford 2010), and ‘The Kindest Cut: Circumcision and Queer Kinship in The
Merchant of Venice’ (Greenstadt 2013) Moreover, this theme of ‘kindness’ appears in some
articles in favour of female circumcision, a phenomenon that played out in some pornographic
publications in the 1970s (see Allan 2018a, n. 2); for instance, ‘Circumcision for Women – The
Kindest Cut of All’ (Kellison 1973).
2. Genital integrity and autonomy is a significant concern for those arguing against circumcision
(see, for instance, Earp and Darby 2019).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This work was supported by Canada Research Chairs [Grant Number 950-230022]; Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Grant Number 430-2016-00059].
 PORN STUDIES 13

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