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I think there are two separate issues here: why the practice of circumcision began, and why it is still continued. They're not the same, and they're completely different for male circumcision and FGM. A fairly simple theory I've heard as to why male circumcision began in Judaism and Islam is that it was of practical value to nomadic desert tribes in avoiding physical discomfort. I understand that sand in the foreskin is really, really unpleasant. This would also account for soldiers posted in desert countries opting for circumcision. Once the practice has got into a culture and become the norm, it's hard to backtrack. If you admit that it's wrong and/or unnecessary, you're admitting that the majority of people of whichever gender we're talking about, the ones who've been circumcised, have genitals that are undesirable (which I don't mean in the sexual sense, although that's one element of this). Who wants to get up and say, "We don't like the state of most American penises?"
It's also about a sense of belonging to a community, and I know as a Jew that this sense is a very strong one. The highest risk attached to male circumcision, after all, was for males in Europe between 1939 and 1945. All someone had to do to see whether you were due to be killed was to pull your pants down. People can get very emotional about issues that people in their community have died for, it strengthens the sense of identity.
Anyway, once something is customary all sorts of ideas will spring up to justify it with hindsight, much as there are various theories as to the reasoning behind kashrut but no hard proof. (Personally I like the anthropologists' idea that it's about maintaining cultural differences, that concepts of holiness are linked to concepts of separation.) Something could start because of sexual ideology and later be ascribed to hygiene, for example.
One of the hygiene myths that I've heard is that male circumcision lowers the risk of cervical cancer because it lowers the transmission of HPV, because there's a lower rate of cervical cancer amongst Jews. Actually, what was happening was that HPV simply happened to be lower amongst Jews. Relatively closed communities generally have different levels of prevalence of various conditions, some will be higher while some are lower. When the communities become less closed and the proportion of mixed relationships rises, as has happened with Jews, the prevalence of medical conditions gets closer to the norm of the larger society they are assimilating into, and this is what has been happening with HPV and cervical cancer.
I've always been bewildered by arguments as to whether circumcised or uncircumcised penises "look prettier" and I suspect that it's a transference of other values. For instance, my great-grandmother apparently told my mother that sleeping with an uncircumcised man was like sleeping with a pig, presumably as a means of putting her off having non-Jewish boyfriends. We'll assume she hadn't actually tried sleeping with pigs, and refrain from pointing out that it's a horrible, prejudiced thing to say since that's obvious. I'd put that down to fear of assimilation and loss of Jewishness (bear in mind that my great-grandmother was alive during WW2) as well as sexual prudery (bear in mind that my great-grandmother was born in, er, I'd estimate 1900 or earlier, and was famed for her prudishness amongst her descendents). I find it significant that she chose the pig, the archetypal non-kosher animal and thus a symbol of ultimate bestiality in this context. A marker of physical difference at the genital level is a profound one, and I've a feeling that anti-Semites in Europe used to focus on this quite a lot, with much disgust. I don't know if it's ever been mentioned as part of Islamophobia, but since what I know of that is mostly the modern phenomenon of Islamophobia in the US, where male circumcision is the norm anyway, it's hardly going to crop up as an issue of difference in that context. From dim memories of reading articles about the circumcision bit in Othello, I think the case would have been the same as with Judaism in, for example, early modern Europe.
Personally, if I ever have a son I would refuse to have him circumcised, just as I'd tell the doctors to leave the hell alone were I to have an intersex child, rather than the current norm of "fixing" the baby's genitalia to be one gender or the other. I imagine I'd have to argue a bit with my parents, and that the arguments would be as insane as they were when I chose to start wearing a kippa [skullcap] and tallit [prayer shawl] for synagogue (at one point I had to say, "How can wearing a small round object on my head be penis envy?"). My parents would cope, and my community (Liberal Jewish) would respect my decision. If I want Jewish kids, I'd do it by giving them a Jewish upbringing, not by lopping bits off them. Judaism for me is principally a matter of belief and practice, not a matter of bloodlines or penis configuration.
I'm torn about the HIV issue, because there actually may be a good reason there. I tend to get stuck in disbelief at the point where the proposed solution to the problem of HIV being spread by widespread refusal to use condoms, rape and complications arising from FGM, is to mutilate male genitalia. |
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