Nathan Emmerich

The debate regarding infant male circumcision kicked-off once again last week as the American Academy of Paediatrics issued a policy statement suggesting that circumcision had minimal, but nevertheless real, health benefits and that, therefore, they would not oppose the practice. Writing on the Oxford Practical Ethics Blog Brian Earp tackled the claims and such was the weight of interest the traffic it attracted apparently crashed the servers. Catarina Dutilh Novaes noted Earp’s post on the NewApps blog and, titling her brief post Circumcision, aka male genital mutilation, sparked a debate over whether male circumcision was comparable to female circumcision AKA female genital mutilation. Well, I say she sparked it but I think Brian Leiter can be credited with blowing that spark into life! 

In a previous post I suggested that male and female circumcision are not exactly comparable and I still think so. Following her post and the ensuing debate Novaes, however, has come to the opposite conclusion. She now frames her discussion in terms of ‘genital alteration’ and ‘genital cutting.’ Her argument runs along the following lines: Both male and female circumcision have been used to ‘control’ male and female sexuality and both men and women who have been circumcised variously think they both have and have not lost any sexual function or sensation they cannot be distinguished on these grounds.[1] Agreeing with Earp that male circumcision has no clear health benefits she concludes: “it remains difficult to maintain coherently that male genital alteration is acceptable while female genital alteration is not.”