The media officer of one of the UK’s top medical schools doesn’t realise she hasn’t muted herself as she puts me on hold.

She sniggers with her colleague as she passes on my request – to speak to an expert on male circumcision – before informing me they don’t have one.

This foreskin flippancy festers into revulsion in some areas of popular culture.

In one Sex and the City episode, Charlotte is so repelled by her lover’s foreskin, she likens it to a “shar-pei”, the analogy cementing Miranda’s resolve to circumcise her kids.

It’s written for entertainment value, but for Adam Zeldis, a 36-year-old software developer from New York, it’s no laughing matter.

Many men circumcised as babies “have an epiphany when the cultural blinders come off”, he tells the Guardian. “I was a vulnerable 16-year-old when I realised how much skin was removed and that my bodily autonomy was violated.”

Georganne Chapin, who runs Intact America, hears about foreskin degradation often. “Men call us saying their wives think it’s ‘disgusting and dirty’ not to circumcise their sons. It’s sad,” she says.

“Intactivists” (portmanteau of “intact” and “activist”) are raising their voices in increasing numbers about infant male circumcision – but are they being heard?

Not according to Zeldis. “I felt immense loss and grief that I’d never be given the chance to experience sex the way nature intended it. And nobody in society cared. It was terribly isolating.”

America is the western nation with the highest proportion of infant male circumcisions. Many do it for non-religious and non-therapeutic reasons. Due to different tracking measures and non-uniform reporting of newborn circumcisions, the prevalence is difficult to measure accurately. One American healthcare agency report in 2012 found that circumcisions had dropped from around 60% in 2000 to 54.5% in 2009.

Madison Zaliski, 26, gave birth to her son in Arkansas eight months ago. Despite not consenting, she was “asked multiple times a day” when he would be circumcised. “Most nurses thought it was a paperwork mistake,” she says.

The other notable western nations circumcising baby boys are Canada and Australia. The Canadian Paediatric Society uses the figure of 31.9%, based on research conducted in 2007. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians puts Australia and New Zealand’s figure at between 10% and 20%.

In the UK, the National Childbirth Trust estimates 8.5% of men are circumcised. The NHS stopped paying for it in the 1940s.

‘It creates trauma, pain and risk’

Why do it? The most common response is custom: because dad did. Zeldis says this is the “response people like my parents give when they don’t really know why”.

The non-religious history, at least in America, comes from the Victorian myth that masturbation was dangerous because the loss of semen would weaken a boy permanently, and threaten the moral order. It was thought that circumcision would somehow prevent masturbation. The 1960s sexual revolution debunked that.

Chapin’s passion to end infant male circumcision came from her younger brother: “I remember seeing his bloody penis and being taken back to have his urethra forcibly reopened – it sealed over as a result of his circumcision. The trauma kept returning.”

She lists her reasons against the practice like a scattergun: “You can’t go cutting the body parts of people without consent unless it’ll kill them. It creates trauma, pain and risk. It permanently alters a child’s body and their sexual function and pleasure later in life. And it’s a waste of medical resources – but American medicine is a money machine and if a procedure is refundable, it’ll happen.”

I hear these reasons repeatedly from opponents of circumcision.

Zeldis’s adult perception of his operation is echoed in many of their stories: “Someone strapped me down and cut off part of my genitals with a clamp and knife, forever changing my sex life, for no reason. If you touch leftover tissue, it’s highly sensitive – and that’s the majority of what’s cut off. There’s no ‘cut here’ mark, so men are all left with different versions of the procedure.”

Those protesting against circumcision have, as of this year, fallen into two closely related camps.

The first group is those keen to reframe vocabulary around “circumcision” into “male genital mutilation”. The same lexicon recurs for these men: violation, non-consent, maimed, rage, powerlessness.

The second group is reclaiming the foreskin by celebrating it. It’s led by people like Damien Williams, 45, from Sydney. He tells the Guardian: “We realised we don’t need to fight the battle against circumcision, and decided to lay down arms on that front. Let the circumcisers have that brand, and all the cutting, blood, fear, pain and hate for the human body that goes with it. Let them try to sell that to a public now embracing the positive-body movement and has a healthy scepticism for people in white coats selling them things they don’t need. We made a pact to push forward a new brand – foreskin!”

Part of the brand is foreskin restoration for men cut as babies. Williams realised the need to do it because of discomfort in his teens. “I was constantly irritated by my glans rubbing against clothing. I knew even from this age that I was supposed to have a protective covering,” he says.

Restoration techniques, which involve weighted tugging devices inserted on to the end of the penis, can be arduous. They didn’t work out for Zeldis. “It requires years of dedicated disciplined practice which I’ve been unable to give,” he says. “Those devices are uncomfortable to wear all day.”

But for Williams, it was revelatory: “After gaining enough restored foreskin, the main new experience for me in addition to the protection was the ‘rolling’ function, where the foreskin glides over the glans. I realised: ‘Oh, THIS is what a normal penis is supposed to do.’”

He channeled his anger at that function being “stolen” from him into the restoration process, which he finds psychologically healing.

Goals to ban the practice on minors risk accusations of Islamophobia or antisemitism. But the US Council of Muslim Organisations said it was “not an issue we’ve dealt with”.

Although not mentioned in the Qur’an, circumcision is mentioned in the Sunna – the practice of the Prophet Muhammad – and has been a religious custom since the beginning of Islam. It’s done for cleanliness; Muslims believe the removal of the foreskin makes it easier to keep the penis clean because urine and other matter can’t get trapped there.

Shimon Koffler Fogel, chief executive of Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, explains the biblical reason for circumcision: “From when God first commanded Abraham to circumcise himself and his household, this ritual has become a symbol of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. From an esoteric perspective, Jewish sages have explained that man was created imperfect – with the requirement of circumcision to achieve that perfection.”

Fogel says “opposition to it is more a device of anti-religion activists than genuine concern for what is a fabricated issue”.

When I put some of the language used by opponents to him, he says: “Clearly it’s not an ‘amputation’. Nor can it be considered in the same way as FGM [female genital mutilation]. Undertaken at birth, it neither constitutes a gross abuse of the infant, nor a significant healthcare risk.”

Medical miracle or genital mutilation?

Medical opinions differ. Cheryl Gowar from the UK’s National Aids Trust says: “Medical male circumcision reduces the possibility of HIV transmission from HIV-positive women to HIV-negative men by around 50%. Circumcision may also decrease sexual transmission of HIV in men who have sex with men (for the insertive partner), although studies on this are inconclusive.”

The NHS, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Canadian Paediatric Department agree that studies about circumcision reducing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases are inconclusive and spurious because they were carried out in African countries such as Uganda, and the higher rates of STIs there are not comparable to western countries. None of these organisations recommends the routine circumcision of newborn males.

Paediatrician Dr Paul Bauert says the Royal Australasian College of Physicians believes the frequency of diseases modifiable by circumcision (penile cancer, HIV, STIs, UTIs) and the complication rates don’t warrant routine infant circumcision in Australia and New Zealand. And, he says, “ethical and human rights concerns have been raised regarding elective infant male circumcision because it’s recognised that the foreskin has a functional role”.

That functional role includes a dispute over how many nerve endings the foreskin has to enhance sexual function and pleasure (estimates vary between 20,000 and 100,000, making it the most sensitive part of the penis and an erogenous zone). But Chapin says: “How many nerve endings would make it OK? The body is designed that way, for that sexual function.”

In addition to potential loss of sensitivity, there are stories of painful erections. A study of 5,552 people found that circumcision was associated with frequent orgasm difficulties in Danish men.

In the Netflix documentary American Circumcision, for every medical professional who makes claims about the benefits of male circumcision, there are three who will dispute the risk-to-benefit ratio.

Intactivists and foreskin reclaimers are speaking up in higher numbers, but many will not.

Zeldis has a theory as to why: “The majority of circumcised men tell themselves it was good for them. The alternative to that denial involves admitting you were harmed and sexually maimed as a child in one of your most sensitive areas.

“Many men don’t want to psychologically deal with that. It’s overwhelming.”

• This article was amended on 24 July 2019. It previously stated the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs was an American organisation when it is Canadian.