Males and females have different anatomy: is this relevant to circumcision? A reply to ‘The prosecution of Dawoodi Bohra women’ by Richard Shweder

Abstract

Procedural safety is one of the determinants of whether parents ought to be able to authorise ritual circumcision (foreskin removal) for their minor children. The penis and clitoris differ greatly in anatomy. Their homology is irrelevant to whether boys and girls should be treated differently regarding circumcision. The infantile male foreskin is easily separable from the penile head for safe removal. It is large enough that circumcision is technically easy but small enough not to be highly vascularised. In contrast, the prepubertal clitoris is tightly bound to the clitoral hood, and both are tightly bound to adjacent non-clitoral tissue. This, and the tiny size of the clitoris, make infantile circumcision dangerous. Circumcision increases in safety with age in girls, for whom the procedure is probably safest after sexual maturation. The opposite is true in boys. Circumcision is safest in infancy but becomes more dangerous as the penis enlarges and its blood supply increases. I argue that religion has sufficiently powerful positive effects within a society, and is sufficiently important to its adherents, as to warrant some deference by the state. In a liberal society, rituals should be prohibited only if likely to create serious physical and psychological harm. Male infant circumcision fails to meet this bar; however, it is uncertain whether this is the case for prepubertal female circumcision.