In 2010, the Royal Dutch Medical Association (KNMG) in association with all the major Dutch medical colleges released a policy statement asserting that: "non-therapeutic circumcision of male minors is a violation of children's rights to autonomy and physical integrity. Contrary to popular belief, circumcision can cause complications – bleeding, infection, urethral stricture and panic attacks are particularly common. KNMG is therefore urging a strong policy of deterrence. KNMG is calling upon doctors to actively and insistently inform parents who are considering the procedure of the absence of medical benefits and the danger of complications."
In 2016 the Danish Medical Association also called for an end to male circumcision, arguing that the procedure should only ever be performed with informed consent. This follows the joint statement in 2013 by all the Scandinavian children's ombudsmen that children should be allowed to choose for themselves and that non- therapeutic childhood circumcision “violates fundamental medical-ethical principles”.
In September 2017 the Belgium federal government's Committee for Bio-Ethics ruled that bodily integrity was more important than religious faith.
In its 2018 report the Child Rights International Network (CRIN) called the ritual circumcision of infant males for non- medical reasons a "violation of bodily integrity" which "unnecessarily" exposes children to risks.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) recommends respect for the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and advises that traditional practices prejudicial to the health of
children should be abolished. In a 2013 report, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child included non-therapeutic circumcision in it the ‘harmful practices’ section.
The Committee’s 2016 report on the UK recommended: “Ensure that no one is subjected to unnecessary medical or surgical treatment during infancy or childhood, guarantee bodily integrity, autonomy and self-determination to children.”
In April 2018 a proposal to the Danish government to create a gender-neutral age of consent of 18 for all forms of non-therapeutic genital cutting stalled, despite considerable public support.
A draft bill was put before the Icelandic government in 2018 to ban non-consensual ritual circumcision for boys, which has not been progressed following heavy lobbying from religious groups.
In a 2018 YouGov survey, 62% of people in the UK said they would support a law prohibiting the circumcision of children for non-medical reasons. Only 13% would oppose it.
Isn't there a question of parental freedom here? Would it be preferable to ensure parents get informed medical advice from an M.D., and then let them decide?
That said, Anna's posts here certainly reinforce the view that having a foreskin is a natural state. If I had a choice, I'd give that some serious consideration. But I've never had any problems having been circumcised when a baby.
I agree that the decision is best left to the parents. I also believe that female circumcision is NOT the same as what was done to me. I only heard of it in the context of eliminating sexual pleasure and that it was most common in Muslim countries. Women are not property, but that is I believe a common belief in many Muslim countries.
As to the history of circumcision, all I can say is that both my maternal grandfather and my father were circumcised. This covers a time frame from the early 1900's to 1925 and then again to 1952 (me).
I do agree that parents should be given that decision and be thoroughly educated. Though I also wonder if the choice should be given to the individual when they are 18. After all without any sound medical reason should we decide for them? There is so much that children are expected to be protected from and given rights about should this not be one? It is not something that can be easily rectified. In a world where children are being prescribed medicines to block puberty and allowed to change their sexual identity at school and it is almost wrong to call a boy "he" and a girl "she" any more is it really right to circumcise them without their blessing? We wouldn't be allowed to have our children tattooed would we? Isn't it better to allow children to make decisions as adults unless a medical emergency demands differently? It is their bodies and no one else's.
When it comes to the acceptance of circumcision I think that there are several things at play here. We do go through medical trends. When my siblings were children it was common practise to remove the tonsils by the time I was a youngster just a handful of years on it had become very rare. I have read that more women opt to have caesareans now for non-medical reasons, or breasts removed to ensure they do not get breast cancer. Electric shock treatment. lobotomies and other such acts of cruelty were often used for people suffering emotional issues that did them more harm than good. A couple of centuries back a jar of leaches were seen as the doctor's best friend. When circumcision first rose to prominence we lived in a world of snake oil, cocaine, heroin and morphine being offered for various pain treatments. I am reminded of the film The Road to Wellville and of Dr Kellogg where lots of sound ideas are swimming around in some over zealous and controlling notions.
I think maybe if circumcision was performed on a part of the body that people feel more at ease talking about rather than the most singular part of the body that society hates and fears it would be more talked about and more confronted and considered. Instead we have a medical habit that is surrounded by a mystique and confusion as to why it started and why it is performed and if it does any good or not. As the human race likes to pretend the penis doesn't exist it is hard to consider how we will ever debate the issue sensibly in larger society.
The fact that it is performed on most boys during a time that they have memory of there is no feed back on pain felt, trauma or awareness of what it may have been like to have a foreskin. The children grow with no awareness as if it never existed, so they will not miss or consider something they never had. We would never understand the pleasure of living free if we are born and grow in captivity. How can we miss what we never had or remember having.
Those men who were circumcised at birth will consider it natural and harmless, and certainly not consider that their parents meant them any harm because of course their parents didn't, the parents are just following the expectations placed on them and continuing the pattern. Therefore, when they have their children most will not consider not having their children circumcised simply because it is the done thing and why consider otherwise? The pattern continues, with no harm meant from generation to generation. The idea that it is just what is done and is surely done for very good reasons seeming to make sense. Though I wonder what those original reasons were and how logical they were in the first place. The idea that penises are dirty and need to be cleansed seems to not just refer to hygiene but to the idea we as naturist fight every day. That certain parts of the body are naughtier, and encourage dirty thoughts and dirty behaviour. The idea that penises need to be censored. Ironically the removal of the foreskin actually uncovers part of the penis that would normally only be seen when the penis is in an aroused state ready for sexual activity. Removing a presentation that only a lover would see and making it common place in an attempt to take away the dirty aspect of the penis. The idea that the male can unveil himself to his partner just as she can unveil aspects of herself in part of that intimate moment is removed along with the intended deadening of the feelings of pleasure to both men and women.
The thing is male circumcision is so common place in parts of the world that the idea that it should be questioned seems to almost go against the natural order of things. Though I do wonder how many parents would fight the idea if it was introduced now rather than over a hundred years ago. Parents are often protecting of their babies having vaccines despite strong evidence and statistics that these vaccines are worth having. If medical practitioners today (who are a lot more qualified and with greater scientific resources available to them than the original promoters of circumcision) suggested the introduction of circumcision I do not believe it would be very well received, and we would certainly demand a very good reason as to why our perfect little children should have parts of them removed.
We also have to remember that the parts of our bodies exist for a reason and that reason normally makes sense. Whether we are designed by nature or by God we are an amazing design, to change that design seems somewhat foolish of us.
I have read several articles over the years that have suggested/or ranted that circumcision rose to popularity in the USA due to it being pushed as a way to prevent and discourage masturbation and sexual pleasure, similar to the main drive behind female circumcision.
This introduction from a book on the subject written in the USA may be of interest:
"THE HISTORY OF CIRCUMCISION IN THE UNITED STATES
A Physician’s Perspective by Morris L. Sorrells 1999
For most of its existence, the United States, with its overwhelmingly Protestant population of Northern-European descent, has had no tradition or history of circumcision. Medicalised circumcision did not appear until the latter part of the nineteenth century, when some members of the American medical establishment began to believe that circumcision could cure such wide-ranging real and fictitious diseases as insanity, masturbation, epilepsy, paralysis, hernia, hip-joint disease, tuberculosis, cancer, venereal disease, and headache, to name just a few. The belief in circumcision as a panacea has
continued to this day, and the list of diseases that circumcision is said to prevent and cure has increased and changed to meet evolving national anxieties. As a result of the accumulated weight of these beliefs, a programme of universal, neonatal circumcision was instituted in many American hospitals during the Cold War era.
1. SEXUAL ANXIETIES IN AMERICAN SOCIETY
The roots of the circumcision problem in the United States are deep. Following the Civil War, industrialisation, urbanisation, and immigration of large numbers of poor and uneducated people produced a tremendous strain on the social fabric of the United States. The medical profession itself was unregulated an, for most of the century, there was no licensing of medical practitioners. The more outlandish and flamboyant the practitioner and his claims, the more likely it was he would attract patients. Similarly,
popular home medical guides, promulgating outlandish explanations for diseases, strange explanations for social ills, and preposterous cures, were widely published and found a large audience in the newly urbanised population that now faced a whole new array of mental and physical diseases.
Victorian era anxieties over sexual matters and the perception that the strict
puritanical sexual mores of the eighteenth century had broken down provided fertile ground for ambitious practitioners to link a wide array of physical and emotional problems to “excessive” sexual drive, masturbation, and other forms of sexual activity. Along with the widely-held belief in the salutary effect of pain and punishment in the raising of children, these forces combined to give credence to doctors who advocated unanaesthetised circumcision to punish boys suspected of engaging in masturbation.
Circumcision of males was perceived as an effective prophylactic against “excessive lust” through the diminution of penile sensitivity. Allegedly respectable medical journals endorsed and promoted these recommendations.
At the same time, medicine itself was rapidly evolving. The discovery of germs as a cause of disease and the development of asepsis to prevent infections allowed surgery and science-based medical practice to expand. The educated and middle classes adopted these advances with relish, but, unfortunately, the division between sound and unsound medical practice was poorly drawn. The promise of quick and easy surgical cures appealed to the American trait of looking for simple and direct answers. It also appealed
to the strong American impetus to subdue and alter nature, which has been a dominant theme of American culture. The drive to subdue nature extended to the human body as well and allowed the practice of circumcision to gain increasing acceptance.
By the mid-twentieth century, the emphasis on circumcision as a punishment and as a means of decreasing sexual sensation and sexual activity was downplayed, however, even up until the latter half of the twentieth century, one could still find references in the professional and popular medical literature to circumcision as a legitimate means of achieving “moral hygiene,” which is clearly a euphemism for the perceived need to decrease sexual sensation, desire, and activity. More commonly, twentieth-century
American doctors expressed this anti-sexual concept embedded in the euphemism “hygiene” by stating that circumcision had the salutary benefit of sparing a boy, or his parents, from having to touch his penis during urination or for the purposes of cleanliness. Since Americans have regarded the penis as inherently unclean from both a physical and psychological standpoint, any measure that promised to reduce contact with the penis was touted as a medical advance. As Dr. R. W. Cockshut wrote in 1935:
I suggest that all male children should be circumcised ’this is “against nature,” but that is exactly the reason why it should be done. Nature intends that the adolescent male shall copulate as often and as promiscuously as possible, and to that end covers the sensitive glans so that it shall be ever ready to receive stimuli. Civilization, on the contrary, requires chastity, and the glans
of the circumcised rapidly assumes a leathery texture less sensitive than skin. Thus the adolescent has his attention drawn to his penis much less often. I am convinced that masturbation is much less common in the circumcised. With these considerations in view it does not seem apt to argue that “God knows best how to make little boys”
The alleged improvement in moral and physical “hygiene” afforded by circumcision was automatically assumed and claimed to prevent a whole array of genital diseases, including cervical, prostate, and penile cancer. Still, the notion that circumcision reduced masturbation continued to be promoted in the medical literature. "
at March 18, 2025 11:05 AM GMT 