If you are a young man, and jewish, and roughly my age,

you may be among the few remaining American men whose mothers did not spend much time thinking about your penis. At least, you may be amoungh the few American men with plausible deniability on that topic.

You can gaze down at your wanker, and sigh contentedly, knowing that your mother never stroked her pregnant belly and gazed winsomely out the window, picturing the day that her beloved son would get his first blowjob.

You know why you don't have a foreskin. Tradition and all that.

It's not, as many young, circumsised, presbymethodist episcoversalist men will come to realize, because their mother didn't want some trembling, confused teen girl on some moonlit night in a Wendy's parking lot to hesitate before optimistically gnawing their member.

There's a rather, um, earnest account of a couple's decision to circumcise their son in Salon today. Bullying, crying, religious agnosticism; between the article and the letters following, every corner of the circumcision debate is already covered, and the article's only been up a half hour. I have my own stance on circumcision, however, as I don't plan to have children, and currently do not have a penis, it is somewhat irrelevant.

What is interesting to me is the unspoken undercurrent of the circumcision debate: How much do we own our children's future sex lives? How much did our parents own ours? A lot of time is spent, in both therapy and feminist theory, detaching women's sexuality, as adults, from the implied sexual expectations of her parents.* There is still a knee-jerk presumption that when a woman is mal-used, sexually, there has been some collateral damage to her male relatives.** The circumcision debate finally offers a chance to take a long, creepy look at parental expectations concerning male sexuality.

On the no-circ side, there are people defending the future sexual pleasure of children whose gonads are still refusing to drop. The possible loss of sensation by keratinization of the glans penis of unborn baby boys is of deep concern, not only to activists, but to their parents. If you have a foreskin, and you enjoy it, and you were born in America, be advised: It was a gift from your mother.+

On the pro-circ side, the projected sexual preferences of unborn children's presumably also unborn sexual partners are being defended. If you are a woman***, and you find yourself fellating some charming young man this long weekend, and are relieved to find a sheathless shlong, thank his mother. She was thinking of you. ++

*Possible communicated expectations: It's fine when you're married. It's fine when you're in college. It's fine as long as you don't enjoy it. It's fine as long as you're in love. It's fine as long as we don't find out.

**Don't believe me? Watch an episode of Law and Order, SVU.
Or, try this(you have to be a man): Next time you're at a party, wait until someone is obviously checking out a girl. Even better if he says something. Then say "Hey, man, that's my SISTER." Observe the effects.

***I do recognize that men do also perform fellatio. However, as men also have penises, they can contemplate how theirs got that way.

+Yes, yes, there are other reasons not to circumcise. But, really, loss of sexual sensation is a big factor. And it means that your parents thought about your sexual experience. Creepy.

++I'm sure there are other reasons to circumcise. AIDs, perhaps. But if you're giving a blowjob this weekend, the person getting it would not have been circumcised on those grounds. However, they were probably circumcised for "appearance" and "cleanliness", which all come down to "For her pleasure".