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The Centers for Disease Control is currently weighing whether to recommend the circumcision of boys and men in the United States. If the CDC finds that a circumcision recommendation would reduce the risk of HIV among American men, I think that’s swell. Providing people with information to help protect themselves from disease is a wonderful thing. But a CDC recommendation would likely come with one major adverse side-effect. For women who already find uncircumcised penises disgusting, wrong, or unfuckable, the recommendation will also provide more fuel for their ignorance.

Women who shun uncircumcised penises has always struck me as short-sighted. These are the women who will glibly deem their sex partner’s genitalia unacceptable if, several decades ago, his parents did not predict her sexual preferences and subject him to newborn penis surgery accordingly. Sound familiar? We’re women. We know what it’s like to be unfairly judged on impossible physical standards! And yet, even women who are well-informed about sex—-women who like it, talk openly about it, and even get paid to write about it—-are keeping the genital snubbing alive.

Yesterday, the Frisky’s Annika Harris wrote: “Uncircumcised penises repulse and scare me, so my sons are getting cut whether it’s PC or not.” And she writes for a sex blog.

On the Simple Life, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie laughed over catching sight of some uncircumcised dick at a nudist beach, with Richie calling uncircumcised penises “fucking disgusting.” And they’re Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.

In circumcision documentary Partly Private, a woman on a Sex and the City bus tour announced that “Ninety-nine percent of women in America would be shocked if they got in bed with someone and they were like: Oh! Huh!” (Watch her genital superiority, above, at the 1:33 mark). And she was standing outside of a sex toy shop while paying homage to a television show almost exclusively devoted to having sex with men. Note that this woman doesn’t just express her extreme dislike of uncircumcised penises—-she attempts to justify her position by extending the disgust to her entire gender. In the Sex and the City‘s circumcision episode, incidentally, the girls’ penis preferences were split about 50-50.

Whenever I’ve encountered women like this—-women who find uncircumcised penises inherently gross—-various medical statistics will doubtlessly be raised in defense of their penis discrimination. Uncircumcised penises, they’ll say, have a higher risk of contracting HPV—-plus, they look weird. Uncircumcised penises have a higher risk of contracting penile cancer—-also, what the fuck do you do with it? Uncircumcised penises have a higher risk of spreading HIV—-and none of my girlfriends would ever fuck an uncut guy. These women are interested in sexual health, but they’re more interested in protecting their own prejudice against unmodified genitalia. When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter if the guy’s clean of STDs—-to these women, he will always be unclean.

Again, facts are great. And when the CDC gets around to making a recommendation, we’ll all be better informed about just what the risks of circumcision are. But no matter what the HIV link to uncircumcised penises turns out to be, you will never be able to determine a man’s status by examining his genitals. (And in some cases, you wouldn’t notice the difference anyway). So if you’re one of those women who dislikes uncircumcised penises because you consider them to be “unclean,” you would be better served to reserve that reaction for penises that don’t have condoms on them, or any sexual conduct initiated before you and your partner undergo fresh STD tests. No matter what style of penis you prefer, those two little accessories are a lot more likely to keep you safe than an irrational repulsion to unmodified dick.