Perspectives on Boys' Circumcision
Authors: Sardi Lauren , Allan Jonathan A. , Selino Sophia 
Published: October 2019

Circumcision is a procedure in which the foreskin (prepuce) is partially or completely removed from the penis. There are a number of ways in which this is performed, and it has been done for different reasons across history and culture. In the United States of America, for example, circumcision is generally performed in infancy for nonreligious reasons, while it is often performed ceremonially among Muslim and Jewish populations in keeping with religious tenets. In societies where routine circumcision is performed in infancy, parents tend to report that the decision was made because of cultural beliefs surrounding hygiene, cleanliness, aesthetics, and “fitting in” with other boys. In societies where circumcision is performed after infancy, it is often done as part of a rite of passage from childhood or adolescence into adulthood. All mammals are born with foreskin, which is a clitoral prepuce in females and a penile prepuce in males. For those individuals with indeterminate sex status, they also have a prepuce. In the United States of America, only the penile prepuce of male infants is routinely removed; it is illegal to modify the clitoral prepuce of female infants. On penises, the foreskin naturally adheres to the glans, or head, of the penis, and over time the foreskin will retract on its own. No special cleaning is required, and as the individual gets older and the foreskin retracts naturally, it can be cleaned like any other body part. The foreskin serves a number of important functions. It protects the glans from external trauma and allows it to remain moist. It also serves to allow for a natural “gliding” mechanism during penetrative intercourse or masturbation that allows for loose skin on the penis to slide along the shaft. One of the challenges of evaluating circumcision and scholarship is that oftentimes the studies and scholars have partisan views on circumcision. Some research is anti-circumcision, some is pro-circumcision, and some is agnostic. While these debates are not new, they are ongoing and important because they reflect the complexity of the subject matter and the realization that circumcision is never “just a snip,” but rather is imbricated in a long history and a significant debate among scholars; scientists; parents; religious leaders; and regular, everyday citizens. The study of circumcision is thus an interdisciplinary one that brings together knowledge from a range of fields, including, of course, the study of childhood. Scholarship on circumcision is incredibly diverse not just because of the fields from which it is studied, but also because of the diversity of opinions about circumcision. For some it is a “biomedical imperative” to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, while for others it is “a solution looking for a problem.” In circumcising cultures, the practice is often normalized and therefore invisible to critique; as a result, much of the research and commentary surrounding the practice serves to uphold social norms and the status quo. Thus, our explicit goal here is to refocus and make visible the counter-discourse that provides a more skeptical view of a procedure that is otherwise taken for granted. The focus of this bibliography is to address more of the cultural, religious, ethical, moral, and medical arguments against the routinized practice of circumcision in secular societies. Our aim is to provide scholarly and popularized sources that critique, question, problematize, or reframe the current cultural dialogues that already maintain and uphold routinized penile circumcision performed on boys during the neonatal period.