Circumcision and the socially imagined sexual body.

ABSTRACT

In a generation, Australia has changed from a country where most boys are circumcised in infancy to one where circumcision is the minority experience. Proponents argue that routine circumcision is desirable because it protects against a number of conditions. Yet circumcision can be seen rather as a sociocultural intervention with post hoc medical justification. As a form of body modification, it serves to exaggerate the visual difference between male and female. Reducing the ambiguity and untidiness of the penis turns it into a neat phallus more specifically fitted for what is seen as its purpose in a gendered sexual culture focused on coitus. Does circumcision reduce penile sensitivity? Applying the methods of evidence-based medicine to this question has problems, centrally that of how 'sensitivity' is to be measured. The nature of the loss is in a sense 'unspeakable' and for many people unimaginable, because the reception of delicate sensation is not part of their notion of masculine sexuality.

KEY WORDS

circumcision, sexuality, masculinity, sexual dimorphism, social constructionism, sociology

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Circumcision is the removal of the male foreskin. It has been traditionally practised by some cultures especially in Africa and the Middle East. In the English-speaking world the procedure has been medicalised and is carried out by surgeons or other doctors, usually on newborn babies, and is popularly regarded as a healthy or medically protective procedure, probably to a greater degree than it is seen as a mark of belonging to a certain religious or ethnic group. In Australia neonatal circumcision became routine after hospital birth during the 20th century.

In recent decades medical opinion has turned against routine circumcision for a range of reasons including the rare surgical accidents, issues about pain experienced by the child during and after the procedure, and the difficulties with giving general anaesthesia to newborns. New babies cannot give informed consent, yet it is questionable whether a parent's consent to the procedure made in the absence of expert consensus that it was medically necessary would be legally valid if challenged. Because of such doubts and difficulties, circumcision has not been routine in the United Kingdom and has declined frequency since the 1970s in Australia (though remains common in the United States). Circumcision is no longer covered by Medicare except where there are medical indications. This has apparently led to a dramatic rise in the reported incidence of such indications (Spilsbury et al. 2003a). An analysis of who gets circumcised under this system suggests that people at the top and bottom of the socioeconomic scale are less likely to have their sons circumcised than those in the middle (Spilsbury et al. 2003b).