My friend, he's married too, he told me that he used to have this white stuff, then cracks and an itch, just like me. Then he got circumcised and it all stopped (34 years old, married).

If you're circumcised, then diseases like syphilis also don't have a place to stay, they just dry off (32 years old, married).

I met a girl named Alice [who later became his fiancée]. She's the one who enticed me to do it. She came with a brochure [Morris?] and said, ‘You know honey, there's something we can do to make our love more enjoyable.’

It was widely publicized, and I was like, ‘Wow, this thing is serious.’ What can I say? I was just, like, overwhelmed (21 years old, never-married).

In 26 of the interviews men described explicit social pressure to become circumcised that pushed them to decide to go for it themselves. One form of social pressure derived from individuals' perceptions that circumcision was the new norm:

This is an honest opinion, everyone around me has gone for it so I feel different. I was being neglected. Now I just feel like I'm doing what a man is supposed to do (21 years old, never married).

When I heard that MC prevents cervical cancer, this touched me a lot because my late wife died of cancer. It was a tumor on the neck. This made me feel guilty that maybe it happened because I wasn't circumcised (40 years old, widowed).

Programming for this stage should push men...
...increased social pressures to become circumcised.

From a social marketing perspective, therefore, appealing to men's individuality and to their sense of self as clean, free, sexually appealing, responsible, in control, and safe men

The study was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation