If you're the owner of a fully grown penis in this country, chances are it's circumcised. Until fairly recently, most American penises were relieved of their turtlenecks almost as a matter of course. But then as more and more health professionals started to, er, poke holes in the hygiene argument, it seemed that the practice might be on the wane. New parents questioned whether the procedure was really necessary. Support groups for men who missed their foreskins sprung up on--where else?--the Internets. Websites claimed to teach you how to "regrow" your hoodie.

The decision seemed to come down to a matter of aesthetics: Do I want my son's willy to look just like mine? And what will cause him the least locker room grief when he grows up? Some people approached the subject with an evangelistic zeal. One friend of ours actually said, "If you have a son and 'mutilate' him, I may have to disown you." And she was only half-joking. Lo and her guy Joey were kind of relieved when they had a daughter this year, as it saved them a knock-out battle over whether to snip or not. (Joey would have wanted his son to "match"; Lo felt that it was an unnecessary and painful procedure.)

But then the news out of Africa last year, suggesting that circumcision could reduce a man's risk of infection with the AIDS virus by up to 60 percent, seemed like a no-brainer. This is right up there with the kind of efficacy you could expect from a vaccine. In other words, mass circumcision would essentially act as an AIDS vaccine. Score one for the unsheathed. Until this week: a new study just released by the CDC found that circumcision offers zero HIV protection for American men of color (the only American men involved in the study). Um, make that a tie.

Here's our feeling: even 60% is nowhere near to perfect, so you're going to have to wrap up anyway. And god forbid circumcision give a man a false sense of security. When it comes to hygiene, either way you should be washing your main man every day--it's just common sense, not to mention good manners if you're hoping to get lucky. And as for sensation? Well, we admit we've never stopped by a foreskin-recovery support group, but we have yet to meet a man who told us, "You know, sex is nice and everything, but I just wish it felt a little better on my penis."

Oh yeah, and for the record: good luck distinguishing a hoodie from a snipped specimen once they're fully erect. It's not just in matters of size that the erection is the great equalizer. Seriously, you don't exactly need a user's manual to approach the kind you're unfamiliar with. In fact, our very informal research tells us that the only sex difference between the two is that uncircumcised men tend not to use lube for handjobs. When we asked the hooded warriors about it, they were like, "Guys use lube?! Which we guess is handy if you need to rub one out on the run. Any other differences we missed out on?

On a slight tangent, we think that whatever your position on circumcision, you should buy your son a kitchen play set. How could that not turn him into a selfless provider of oral sex?