What to Restore When You’re Restoring: Masculinity and Embodiment in the Practice of Foreskin Restoration

• In Event: 195 - Section on Body and Embodiment Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. Intersectional Accounts of the Body

Abstract

Male circumcision is one of the most widely practiced surgical procedures in the U.S. Although its prevalence is declining, it is still widely considered normal, even normative in some parts of the country and among certain segments of the population. Thus, it may come as a surprise for some to learn that there is a movement of (mostly) men fighting against the surgery, and a portion of these activists who advocate methods of foreskin restoration. There are two categories of foreskin restoration: surgical and nonsurgical. Surgical restoration involves grafting skin from another part of the body to the penis as a replacement foreskin. Nonsurgical methods vary, but the basic principle to which they all conform is that by stretching whatever skin remains, one can encourage new skin growth. For men dissatisfied with their circumcised state, foreskin restoration, especially of the do-it-yourself, nonsurgical variety, offers an opportunity to reconstruct the altered body. As such, restorers have turned from wishful thinking to creative ingenuity, developing a number of products for their personal use, and marketing these devices online to others. The questions this paper tackles are: How do restorers envision the final result, the restored foreskin? In other words, is there a normative aesthetics of the foreskin operating among restorers, or is this process as autonomously driven as its proponents might think? And what does the practice of foreskin restoration say about masculinity, sexuality, and the body?

Author

• Amanda Kennedy, State University of New York-Stony Brook