An article in the Libertarian magazine The Objective Standard takes a hard look at American circumcision practices and finds them an unacceptable violation of the autonomy and rights of the individual, no different from female genital mutilation and. This the second libertarian critique of circumcision, following on from an earlier paper by Testa and Block, which argued that circumcision violated a person’s natural right to self-ownership. It is a significant development, as libertarianism is a large and growing movement in the United States, and you would expect that defence of the integrity of the individual body would be their Number 1 principle. We are not sure how comfortably the call to ban circumcision (presumably by government legislation and sanctions) sits with their libertarian principles, but it could be justified on the basis that governments have a legitimate role in preventing persons from harming others, as John Stuart Mill allowed. The author’s conclusion follows:

Female genital mutilation is a horrifying, barbaric, and evil practice. The routine circumcision of infant boys in the United States is in principle and in practice no different. Far from a legitimate medical procedure conceived of to treat or prevent an actual illness, infant male circumcision emerged in the United States in the late 19th century as a blatant resurrection of Jewish circumcision in its most barbaric form.

Although there may be in certain circumstances legitimate medical reasons for a teenage or adult male to consent to some form of circumcision, the choice should be his to make. Neither his parents nor his doctors have a moral right to rob him of that choice by mutilating him in infancy. It is time for all Americans — circumcised and not circumcised — to see the practice of routine infant circumcision for what it is: a barbaric, uncivilized, rights-violating ritual that should be prohibited by law. Of course, the fact that most American men were circumcised in infancy, and the fact that their parents approved of the procedure, may make many people feel awkward about taking a public stand against neonatal circumcision. A similar obstacle stands in the way of outlawing female genital mutilation in other parts of the world. Yet the fact remains that the practice is barbaric and immoral — even if most parents innocently erred in approving the procedure for their children based on the unprofessional and frankly cowardly advice of their physicians. Until Americans are willing to admit that many of them and many of their parents made a mistake, the practice of male genital mutilation in the United States is unlikely to end.

Parents should arm themselves with the facts and proudly refuse to circumcise their sons, just as they would refuse to mutilate their daughters. And physicians should end their nonsensical and immoral deference to barbaric cultural and religious practices, stop promoting the quack science used to rationalize the practice, properly educate parents about circumcision, and righteously refuse to perform routine infant circumcisions. Genital mutilation is wrong. It is as wrong for boys as it is for girls. And everyone who cares about the rights of American boys must take a stand against it.

Source: Joseph England. Circumcision in America. The Objective Standard 10 (1), February 2015.

Links to other sources

Science journalist Matthew Tontonoz wonders why the United States is so obsessed with circumcision

American doctor and medical ethicist explains why promoting circumcision of infants is not the right way to combat HIV-AIDS

Science journalist Spoony Quine wonders why the foreskin is such a secret in North America

Parallels between female genital mutilation and male circumcision recognised

A recent series of articles in the quality magazine The Atlantic shows that American are waking up to the fact that there are more similarities and differences between female genital mutilation and male circumcision - or female and male genital cutting, as they would be called if we were using gender-neutral language. This is an astounding development. Ten or even five years ago it would have been all but inconceivable that a mainstream, middlebrow American magazine would run a discussion comparing male and female genital cutting, and even less likely that so many of the comments would have been in favour of their equivalence or at least their comparability. The comments do reveal a surprising level of US insularity and unawareness of what happens (or does not happen) in the rest of the developed world, but at the same time provide proof that a critical attitude to non-therapeutic circumcision of boys is no longer confined to an eccentric fringe. The survey of readers’ opinions concludes with a comment from leading bioethics analyst Brian Earp:

Because every group that practices female genital alteration also practices male genital alteration (but not vice versa), usually under similar conditions and for similar reasons, the two forms of cutting are, as the anthropologist Zachary Androus notes, closely linked in the practitioner's minds. Therefore many scholars think that it will be impossible to get rid of FGM without also addressing male circumcision at the same time, since to eliminate exactly one half of a community's initiation rites is perplexing to those who see the customs as mirror images of each other. (I go into that last point in greater detail here.)

The upshot is that, even from a purely strategic perspective, there is good reason to think that treating this as a child's rights issue (where the undeniable power imbalance can be discerned, i.e., between adults and children) rather than as a sex-based issue (because the diversity of these practices and their close affiliation in the minds of practitioners makes that a fundamentally problematic approach) will be more successful in the long run in eliminating both.

How Similar is Female Genital Mutilation to Male Circumcision? Your Thoughts.  Atlantic Magazine, 13 May 2015.