With regards to differences in reported sensation, we can only really ask those that have undergone the procedure as adults, or those that willingly tape up their foreskin for a long time in order to compare.
Yeah, like I said, they are the closest approximation to an empirical answer to the question — but still far from a true answer. The lack of self-report differences between circ and uncirc men does still carry some evidential weight, though, in my opinion: from what I have read, for example, women who are “circumcised” (in Africa or wherever else that horror is happening today) do report much less sexual satisfaction compared to intact females. True, no one is arguing that the foreskin is as important to sexual pleasure for men as is the clit for women, but the point is that if there were a really big difference between circ and uncirc, it would probably show up even in samples that have never experienced anything like the other condition (i.e., those who haven’t undergone adult circ or restoration).
[everything else]
Those are two very nice counterexamples to my examples (I was hoping no one would bring up the feline vision studies ;) ). They are far from definitive, however, in my view, for a variety of reasons — as are my own examples, admittedly. I could also “go on and rant about this,” (I suspect we’d argue ad nauseam — I’m not BSing when I say I have a “variety of reasons”), as my life’s work (so far) is related to this area, but I’ll leave it at this: The point of my argument was simply to bring up the complications in making any inferences about loss of sensation from circumcision. We may have more relevant evidence someday (and the anti-circ paper I linked to suggests some useful neuroimaging studies in circ & uncirc adults), but currently the best we can do is (weak) triangulation.
We’re in agreement about circumcision itself, though. I think guys should be able to choose for themselves.
