For those readers outside the United States, Thanksgiving is a holiday celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November. The typical fare is turkey. But, the neck on the turkey for dinner isn't really what I want to talk about here.

One common side effect of routine infant circumcision is turkey neck or penoscrotal webbing. Turkey neck occurs when too much skin is removed during a circumcision and scrotal skin is pulled up to accommodate the enlarged penis during an erection.

With an infant, it is impossible to judge the size of his penis when the infant is an adult. So, typically, the doctor removes what he thinks is enough skin. If too much shaft skin is removed during circumcision, then when the adult has an erection, scrotal skin is pulled away from the body. This is typically more pronounced at the ventral side. The scrotal skin forms a web from the bottom of the scrotal sack to the circumcision scar for the most extreme case.

The picture below the break is NSFW because it shows an example of a turkey neck on a man. Read more . . .

I often wonder why some men strongly advocate for circumcision. I mean, if you are circumcised and happy about it, why would you go out of your way to advocate circumcising baby boys?

I understand why a circumcised man who is unhappy would advocate against circumcision. After all, he recognizes that a part of him was removed without his consent. If he is like me, he is unhappy that he has less than all the body parts he was born with. I think my sex organ is a pretty important part of my body. I would have preferred to keep it all. People that feel wronged often become advocates to stop what they perceive as an injustice. But, what is it with these other guys that preach incessantly about circumcision and advocate circumcising babies? Read more . . .

Blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists and Foreskin Restorers that were published in the past week. Here are the ones I found interesting.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Marketing by Permission: The tremendous fuss about circumcision
One man describes the troubles he has had with his penis and the multiple surgeries. He questions what motivates the pro-circumcision advocates. Read more . . .

I had my laser (HoLAP) surgery 15 months ago for my enlarged prostate after I was diagnosed with acute bacterial BPH.  A lot has happened to my body in those 15 months. As told elsewhere on the site, my foreskin restoration is progressing. Now it is time to report on the state of my prostate.

My immediate recovery from surgery was uneventful. There was very little lingering pain. When I urinated, my stream was mostly normal colored. But, there were a few times the first few days when small blood clots came out with my urine. Five days after my HoLAP prostate surgery I had the surgery catheter removed. I have been urinating on my own ever since. Read more . . .

I really don't like cold weather. One nice thing about living in Knoxville, Tennessee is that the weather is moderate. It gets hot in summer, but not unbearably so. Wintertime will often see temperatures bouncing between freezing to t-shirt weather. It is about this time of the year, mid-November, that the temperature transitions to being more generally cool than warm. And, along with the cooler temperature comes PUCKER!

With cooler weather, my restored foreskin puckers tightly around my glans, just like my scrotum contracts and pulls my testicles toward my body. The pucker is so tight, that sometimes it takes a bit of force to retract my foreskin to urinate. Read more . . .

This is a new feature for me. Every week I will post blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists. Many are writing about routine infant circumcision and why they are not choosing it for their sons. It is often hard to keep track of them all, or to even find them. Here are the ones I like. Read more . . .

I just realized that I am blogging about foreskin restoration as if everyone knows what I am talking about. I am sure many visitors to the site wonder what I am talking about. Well, let me tell you about foreskin restoration.

Foreskin restoration is a process for creating a reasonable facsimile of the natural foreskin. To understand what that means, we need to know what an intact foreskin is. Because the United States has a circumcising culture, many people in the United States have no idea what a foreskin or an intact penis looks like or how it works. And, without knowing anything about the intact penis, people do not understand what is missing by being circumcised. Until I discovered foreskin restoration I had no idea what the differences were. Read more . . .

As of today, I have been restoring my foreskin for 15 months. I went from having tight erections to having enough slack skin that I can cover my glans when erect (if I pull the skin forward). If I don't pull the skin forward, my skin bunches behind my corona.

Even though it has been a long time, I don't feel like I have spent a lot of time working at restoring. My preferred method of restoring is to manual tug. When I started tugging, I spent up to two hours a day tugging. I spend less than an hour now. It does not feel like much because I multitask. I tug when I am waking up in the morning and have my morning wood. I tug in the shower. I tug for a minute or so every time I go to the bathroom. I tug when I am watching television or surfing the 'net. The minutes add up and I don't really feel like I am taking time out of the day to tug.

After a year and quarter of tugging, it does not feel right if I don't tug. I have been doing it long enough that it is a habit. One that I don't even think about. Read more . . .

I have noticed lots of benefits with having a foreskin instead of being circumcised. I wrote previously about the joys of masturbation with a foreskin. Now I want to tell everyone about another benefit of foreskin restoration, and it has nothing to do with sex or my penis.

I am very body aware. I have lifted weights since high school. At one time I had aspirations of being a body builder. I have long practiced yoga. I have studied some of the more philosophical or mystical avenues of life. All this has given me an awareness and understanding of my body. That includes the physical aspects, as well as the mental and emotional aspects. In other words, I believe it important to know yourself. These are the reasons that I am able to notice the more subtle, but important, changes and benefits of restoring.

I remember in my teenage years and when I was in my 20s. I did not like physical contact with others. Even though I was married, I did not like to be touched. It was a struggle to allow my wife to touch me. When she tried running her fingers through my hair I would move my head out of the way. Not only was I physically separated from others, I was emotionally distant. In my mid-thirties I divorced my wife and my emotional and mental well-being was in turmoil. I passed through that phase of my life by becoming more accessible physically and emotionally. As I entered my 50s, my life had settled down again. I was no longer physically and emotionally separate from others. Although, I still had close boundaries. Read more . . .

The World Health Organization has taken up the banner for circumcising men for the sake of reducing HIV infections. The WHO's position is that there is compelling evidence that male circumcision reduces the risk of HIV infection. That evidence includes the African circumcision trials.

Tim Trent has written a very insightful blog: Do I trust The World Health Organisation? He starts out discussing how the WHO seems to be gaming the system in order to declare H1N1 Swine Flu a pandemic. Displaying distrust of their actions, Tim then presents male circumcision as an example of why the WHO is not easy to trust. There is no reason to repeat more. Read Tim's blog here for yourself. Read more . . .