Writing my Thirteen Things post for Flickr the other day set me thinking …

I made the comment that I am glad my parents didn’t have me circumcised. I won’t say that their decision was great foresight: from my observations the rate of male circumcision of my generation in the UK is somewhere around 30-40% (amongst Americans it is more like 80%), and moreover my father was also entire so probably didn’t feel there was any “precedent” to follow. So my parents weren’t exactly bucking a trend (medical or otherwise). But I’m still glad that I’m entire; I like being entire; I’m comfortable with my “male apparatus” and I would never have inflicted circumcision on any son I might have had.

But there is one thing I do not understand about our western culture. Female circumcision, as still practiced in many parts of Africa especially, is considered barbarous, a violation of a woman and abuse. And I have to agree; it is all of these. And yet, male circumcision is considered much more (though not universally) acceptable; even those who are against male circumcision don’t generally have “screaming fits” about it the way they do over female circumcision. It is even being advocated as a way of constraining the spread of HIV, as I’ve blogged before. Why is this? I do not understand how one can be considered barbarous and the other acceptable.

OK, so before anyone screams at me let’s be clear. Male circumcision (at least as we practice it in the western world) is generally performed on the very young, by a surgeon, often with anaesthetic, in a sterile surgical environment; hence immediately post-operative complications are rare, although no-one seems to agree about the long-term effects on sexual function. Even if performed later in life male circumcision is a proper medical procedure. This contrasts with the vast majority of female circumcision in the developing world, where the operation is mostly performed by the medically unskilled, without a sterile environment, seldom any anaesthetic and mostly against the will of the female concerned who often has to be physically restrained. Needless to say post-operative complications appear to be the norm rather than the exception and death is not uncommon. The UN and WHO now use the term Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) when referring to female circumcision, but make no comment on male circumcision

But I still don’t see how it is acceptable for parents to have an infant boy routinely circumcised without any immediate medical necessity – as is still widely practiced in the USA. And I include in that the religious practices of both Judaism and Islam – albeit I can understand how male circumcision may have originally arisen in an ancient, hygienically-challenged, desert community, even if this was based on a false premise.

Having started writing this I found a good couple of paragraphs at the History of Circumcision which sum up my dilemma:

Given the similarities between the male and female genitals, the nature of the surgery and the justifications offered, it is surprising that male and female circumcision enjoy such strikingly different reputations, at least in Anglophone societies: the first, a mild and harmless adjustment which should be tolerated, if not actively promoted; the second, a cruel abomination which must be stopped by law, no matter how culturally significant to its practitioners. If you call circumcision of boys male genital mutilation, you are accused of emotionalism; if you fail to call circumcision of women or girls female genital mutilation you are accused of trivialising the offence. While the United Nations, Amnesty International and other international agencies spend millions on programs to eradicate FGM, they have never uttered a word against circumcision of boys.

It might be thought that the reason for this double standard lies in the greater physical severity of female circumcision, but this is to confuse cause with effect. On the contrary, it is the tolerant or positive attitude towards male circumcision and the rarity of female circumcision in western societies which promote the illusion that the operation is necessarily more sexually disabling, and without benefit to health, when performed on girls or women. It is, of course, also true that the term female circumcision is vague, referring to any one or more of a number of surgical procedures.
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But it should be remembered that the most extreme forms of FGM are rare, and that male circumcision in general is far more common on a world scale than female: about 13 million boys, compared with two million girls annually.
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Given the respective numbers of victims involved and the fact that some circumcisions are worse than some instances of FGM, there is no justification for perpetuating the gender discrimination which has characterised discussion of these issues.
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To compare female and male circumcision is not to trivialize the enormity of the first, as some feminists seem to fear, but to recognise that the physical and moral similarities between the two are very real.

So here we have it. The two “procedures” while different are the same. So why is it OK for males to be circumcised but not females? Even after reading a number of worthy websites on the subject I still do not understand.

PS. Anyone who wishes to delve a little deeper might like to start with:

• Wikipedia: Circumcision
• Wikipedia: Female Genital Cutting
• History of Circumcision
• Notes on Circumcision
• NOHARMM: Male & Female Circumcision Links