Critiquing circumcision: in search of a new paradigm for conceptualizing genital modification

Abstract

In this article, I advance two separate but related critiques of current approaches to classifying and analyzing culturally, socially, and medically motivated genital modifications: first that the widely employed categories of female circumcision and male circumcision separate these practices in gendered terms that are inconsistent with both the reality of these practices and fundamental social scientific principles, and second that the practice of neonatal male circumcision that emerged from Anglophone medical practice to become an entrenched social norm in the United States merits a critical evaluation beyond that which it has heretofore been subjected. These critiques lead me to propose an alternative approach to the conceptual classification of genital modification practices, one in which the extent of the modification, the meanings of the practice to those involved, whether it is motivated by a group or individual desire, and the developmental stage of the individual form a framework for analysis, rather than the geographically and gender-based approaches that have resulted in the profoundly ethnocentric exceptionalism that characterizes most current research, writing, and activism on the matter. The differential attention paid to male and female circumcision fails to reflect the cultural sensibilities of those whose practices are in question and creates a de facto exceptionalism by which US practices are exempted from the same scrutiny afforded by others. I address specifically the gendered approach to African circumcision practices, including the recent attention that male circumcision has received as a potential anti-HIV intervention, and I argue the need for a much more vigorously critical scholarly attention to US circumcision practices. My approach is influenced by critical medical anthropology, which frames its inquiries around a focus on the human body and which does not accept biomedical knowledge as factual a priori, but rather seeks to contextualize it within the socially and culturally relevant system of knowledge that has produced it. I draw also on the history of circumcision, campaigns for both its promulgation and elimination, and my own ethnographic work with US parents on how they make the decision whether to circumcise their newborn sons.

Keywords:

• male circumcision
• female circumcision
• cross-cultural

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zachary T. Androus

Zachary T. Androus is a US anthropologist based in Florence, Italy where he conducts independent research and teaches for international higher education programs.