Circumcision controversies

Male circumcision has been a subject of controversy for a number of reasons including religious, ethical, sexual, legal and medical.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in a rapidly changing medical and surgical world, circumcision rose in popularity as a means of prophylaxis in the Anglosphere. Its primary justification was to promote cleanliness, as well as reducing and preventing the incidence of disease. Many medical professionals and advocates of the procedure also believed that it would reduce pleasure and the urge to masturbate, which was considered a social ill of the era, although their belief is considered false in modern times.

Circumcision proponents say that circumcision reduces the risks of a range of infections and diseases and confers sexual benefits. By contrast, the majority of modern opponents, particularly of routine neonatal circumcision, question its preventive efficacy and object to subjecting non-consenting newborn males to a procedure that is potentially harmful with little to no benefit, as well as violating their human rights and possibly negatively impacting their sex life.

In Classical and Hellenistic civilization, Ancient Greeks and Romans posed great value on the beauty of nature, physical integrity, aesthetics, harmonious bodies and nudity, including the foreskin (see also Ancient Greek art), and were opposed to circumcision, an opposition inherited by the canon and secular legal systems of the Christian West and East that lasted at least through to the Middle Ages, according to Frederick Hodges.

Judaism, Islam, Coptic Christianity, and the Eritrean Orthodox Church still advocate male circumcision as a religious obligation. It is common in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as a cultural practice despite the liturgy recommending against it.

Religious and cultural conflicts

Ancient Levant

The Book of Genesis explains circumcision as a covenant with God given to Abraham, In Judaism it "symbolizes the promise of lineage and fruitfulness of a great nation," the "seal of ownership and the guarantee of relationship between peoples and their god." Some scholars look elsewhere for the origin of Jewish circumcision.