As of 2021, only sixteen of the US’ fifty states have laws requiring the sex education
taught in schools to be medically accurate.
Comprehensive sex education is sadly lacking across the United States, and frankly, a lot
of other nations could also stand to do better when it comes to sex ed.
After all, it isn’t all about the birds and the bees - it’s also about better understanding
yourself and your body.
That’s why we’re here today, discussing a part of the body that rarely feels welcome
in average discussion: The foreskin.
We’re going to discuss everything you’ve ever wanted to know about foreskin but were
afraid to ask - including its composition, purpose, and any other miscellaneous questions
that may be troubling you.
Let’s start with what exactly a foreskin is.
Foreskins are present on the penises of all mammals, though for some species they’re
referred to as “penile sheaths”, when the penis retracts all the way into the body
while flaccid.
Technically speaking, foreskins are part of a larger organ family known as the prepuce
- which, in layman’s terms, is basically skin that covers a sensitive sexual organ.
The clitoral hood of the vagina also falls under the prepuce umbrella.
But let’s get back to the foreskin.
This often-misunderstood organ is deceptively complex in a structural sense; while it’s
superficially a continuation of the skin on the shaft of the penis, it’s actually a
double-layered amalgamation of skin, neurons, smooth muscle tissue, blood vessels, and mucosal
membrane, developed over millions of years of evolution.
It’s what evolutionary biologists call a “complex penile morphology.”
And if you ask some researchers, the importance of the foreskin in an evolutionary sense can’t
be oversold.
According to a group of Dutch Sexologists from the Royal Dutch Medical Association in
2010, the foreskin is a, quote, “complex, erotogenic structure that plays an important
role in the mechanical function of the penis during sexual acts, such as penetrative intercourse
and masturbation."
The inside of the foreskin houses the all-important mucus membranes, similar to the inside of
the mouth or the eyelid - this contains the glans penis, colloquially known as the head.
It also serves to protect the urinary meatus - which is the opening at the end of the urethra,
sometimes colloquially called the “peehole.”
The inner and outer foreskin is connected by tissue known as the mucocutaneous zone.
When a child is first born, the foreskin is tightly connected to the glans, but typically
loosens up and gains mobility over the glans when you mature, normally during puberty.
The piece of highly vascularized - meaning, featuring a large number of blood vessels
- tissue that first connects the foreskin to the glans is known as the frenulum.
But that’s not all that the frenulum does.
It also connects the two layers of the foreskin together, and when the penis isn’t erect,
the frenulum tightens to narrow the opening of the foreskin.
It’s all a very delicate process.
It’s important to note that, as with anything involving the human body, while it’s easy
to speak in broad generalities about the nature and behaviour of the foreskin, you’ll find
there’s a lot of variance between individuals.
For example, as an adult, the foreskin will remain over the glans while the penis is flaccid.
However, when an adult gets an erection, it’s possible that the foreskin may retract back
over the glans.
The degree to which this happens tends to vary a lot between individuals - some may
notice very little visible retraction at all, and some may retract entirely, leaving the
glans fully uncovered.
Finally, on the subject of the foreskin’s physical composition, it contains a thin sheath
of muscle tissue known as the dartos fascia.
This muscle tissue exists within the foreskin, the penile shaft, and the scrotum.
Crucially for the foreskin in particular, though, the dartos fascia contains elastic
fibers that form what is known as a whorl at the opening of the foreskin.
In infants, this can be used as a kind of sphincter that prevents urine from leaking
out of the aforementioned urinary meatus at inappropriate times.
That’s probably everything you needed to know about what exactly a foreskin is, but
the beauty of evolution is that every enduring biological feature is there for a reason - well,
mostly, but we’ll get to that later.
Let’s talk about why people have foreskins.
The exact nature of the foreskin’s benefits are a surprisingly controversial subject.
Like everything, it’s a question of weighing the advantages against the costs.
The World Health Organization says that possible purposes include keeping the glans moist,
protecting the developing penis in utero, or enhancing sexual pleasure due to the presence
of nerve receptors.
If you’re at the legal age of consent, it’s likely that you found the last one on that
list particularly appealing.
The science behind this is equally as intriguing.
Due to its highly concentrated cluster of sensory neurons, the foreskin is incredibly
sensitive to touch.
It contains as many as 20,000 sensory receptors, and some studies have even shown that the
least sensitive part of the foreskin is often more sensitive than the rest of the penis.
To be more specific, the foreskin contains a special kind of sensory receptor known as
Meissner’s Corpuscles, involved in fine-touch sensitivity.
However, Meissner’s Corpuscles are pretty much irrelevant in adults, as their concentration
decreases following adolescence.
And the concentration of Meissner’s Corpuscles in the foreskin is actually lower than the
concentration in the fingertips.
It may actually surprise you to know that there isn’t a broad consensus on the benefits
of foreskin in adulthood.
A number of studies have provided evidence contrary to the idea that keeping your foreskin
provides increased sexual sensitivity.
A 1998 study from scientists Moses and Bailey said, “it has not been demonstrated that
[the foreskin] is associated with increased male sexual pleasure.”
Even more damningly, in 2017, a study by researchers Morris and Krieger concluded, quote, “Thus,
speculation and outdated opinion pieces claiming special properties of the foreskin, such as
in penile function and masturbation, should be viewed with skepticism.”
None of this is good news for people with foreskins.
While some will swear by the sexually advantageous properties of foreskin, others argue that
its function is actually vestigial.
What does vestigial mean, exactly?
To keep it simple, it basically means that it’s a physical quality that was once evolutionary
advantageous, but no longer has any real function.
It just hasn’t been bred out by natural selection just yet.
In the words of the father of evolution, Charles Darwin, “An organ, when rendered useless,
may well be variable, for its variations cannot be checked by natural selection.”
As we discussed earlier, variation is extensive in foreskins.
Our friends Morris and Krieger return for what could be the death blow, stating, “The
variability in foreskin size is consistent with the foreskin being a vestigial structure.”
But it’s one thing to be useless, quite another to be potentially harmful.
Before we proceed, it’s worth discussing some of the potential downsides of having
a foreskin into adulthood.
Foreskins increase the risk of urinary tract infections across the board, which can result
in painful inflammation and extreme discomfort for the sufferer.
But that’s actually the more mild end of the spectrum.
A lot of people suffer from foreskin that’s too tight to retract, a condition known as
phimosis.
This can make the penis more difficult to clean, and lead to the accumulation of smegma,
an unpleasant, cheese-like substance that is secreted by the penis.
If unchecked, this can lead to a further condition known as balanitis, an uncomfortable and persistent
inflammation of the glans.
In extreme cases, this can even increase the risk of penile cancer.
Keeping your foreskin can also put you at risk of frenulum breve.
This condition results from the frenulum being too short to allow the foreskin to fully retract,
leading to discomfort and pain during sexual intercourse.
But it’s not just that.
While many have - possibly erroneously - claimed that keeping your foreskin can offer sexual
benefits, it also offers a huge drawback: Increased transmission of sexually-transmitted
diseases, or STDs.
It puts people at particular risk of contracting HIV, due to the larger surface area of inner
foreskin and the high concentration of Langerhans cells giving the virus numerous opportunities
to infect its victims.
Of course, not everybody watching this video will have a foreskin.
Some of you won’t even have penises, but having a penis doesn’t necessarily mean
you have a foreskin.
Some people have their foreskin removed for medical reasons, like the factors we just
discussed, but a decent portion of the population were circumcised during their infancy.
This is likely because they’re part of a group which practices religious or cultural
circumcision.
The faiths that most commonly practice this are Judaism, Islam, and even some denominations
of Christianity - including the Eritrean Orthodox Church, the Ethiopon Orthodox Church, and
the Coptic Orthodox Church.
If we can shift briefly from a biology lesson to a history lesson, this tradition is truly
ancient.
A 4400-year-old Egyptian bas-relief from 2400 B.C. depicts someone receiving a flint-knife
circumcision, which is believed to be the oldest historical depiction of a circumcision.
Though to be fair, the love of foreskin is also an ancient tradition.
The Romans were great admirers of foreskin, with a roman consul even having been put to
death for getting a circumcision - though antisemitism may have been at play there,
too.
Some ancient Greeks also tied up their foreskins during the olympics, believing it was uncouth
to show their glans.
Circumcision is a topic that’s so loaded it’s difficult to discuss in its totality
in this video.
While circumcision can avert some of the disadvantages of foreskin we mentioned earlier, it can come
with its own risks.
Circumcised people have been known to experience higher degrees of erectile dysfunction than
those who still have foreskins, according to some studies, and losing your foreskin
is even said to increase your chance of developing a psychological disorder known as alexithymia
by sixty percent.
Alexithymia stunts a person’s ability to recognise and express emotions, often lowering
their quality of life as a result.
But there are also considerably heavier risks on rarer occasions.
It’s estimated that a hundred infants die due to circumcision-related complications
every single year, largely thanks to issues involving blood loss and infection from botched
surgeries.
There’s even a movement of people circumcised shortly after birth that resent being given
the surgery without their consent - this cause calls itself the Intactivist Movement, and
they decry penile circumcision as barbaric, on par with female genital mutilation.
We don’t personally intend to take a side on this particular topic.
And finally, we’d be doing you a disservice if we didn’t share some strange, miscellaneous
facts about foreskin and circumcision with you.
You’re probably wondering what actually happens to all the foreskins removed during
circumcisions, and you may be surprised to know that some of it gets repurposed for use
in medical procedures or commercial products.
Scientists can use baby foreskins to produce acres of skin for use in transplants and skin
grafts for people like severe burn patients.
Baby foreskin also produces fibroblast cells, which in turn produce collagen, elastin, and
hyaluronic acid, all skin-affirming proteins.
As such, baby foreskins are a common ingredient in anti-aging cosmetic skin creams, even some
endorsed by the queen of television herself, Oprah.
One study in the US also found that, despite the sexual benefits offered by foreskin being
called into scientific question, 85% of the women reviewed preferred uncircumcised men
in the bedroom.
For clarity, everyone questioned said that they had sexual experiences with both circumcised
and uncircumcised men.
Of course, with any individual study like this, it’s always worth taking the results
with a pinch of salt.
Now check out “Does Size Matter - Why Size Differs By Species?” and “What Happens
To Your Body While You Are Having Sex?” for more sex education from the Infographics
Show!