Many in America and Canada are shocked to discover that those outside the cultural region regard male circumcision as a strange and fascinating Abrahamic religious practice. Neonatal Male circumcision rates vary between twenty percent to in excess of ninety percent among American states, and between four percent and near fifty percent in Canada, with the latter being found in the predominately ethnically British Anglo-Saxon provinces of Ontario and Alberta. This custom represents a strange means by which the enlightenment divide between “secular” and “religious”, or “sacred” and “profane” in Victorian society created orthopraxic customs more akin to early Christianity's Semitic origins than western European Christian traditions. I spent a large portion of my life in Southern Alberta where I rather awkwardly discovered from the local girls that remarkably secular male circumcision is near universal there, and that there’s a surprising depth of symbolism surrounding it. Practitioners are often unaware of the history surrounding this, quite harmless and arbitrary, custom that stems from a fascinating discourse in Victorian medical history that also spawned the mostly forgotten female circumcision customs common in England and Anglo-America just prior to the turn of the twentieth century.
Anybody reading this blog is presumably aware of the Judeo-Christian and Judeo-Islamic religious basis for male circumcision, but for posterities sake I’ll rehash it (You fine sexy readers who already know can skip this paragraph.). Male circumcision as it’s practiced amongst the Abrahamic faithful involves the partial or usually total removal of the penile foreskin, and in rare circumstances also the partial excision of the head of the penis itself, though this version has no legal basis in the Talmud and other Jewish texts, New Testament, or Qur’an and Hadiths. Jewish canon states that Abraham entered into a covenant with God, and circumcision was a mark of this covenant that should be borne by all Hebrews as a sort of visible ‘stamp on the contract’ if you will.
Abram was 99 years old. God appeared to him and said, 'I am God Almighty. Walk before Me and be perfect. I will make a covenant between Me and you, and I will increase your numbers very much.' [...] This is My covenant between Me, and between you and your offspring that you must keep: You must circumcise every male. You shall be circumcised through the flesh of your foreskin. This shall be the mark of the covenant between Me and you. 'Throughout all generations, every male shall be circumcised when he is eight days old. [This shall include] those born in your house, as well as [slaves] bought with cash from an outsider, who is not your descendant. [All slaves,] both houseborn and purchased with your money must be circumcised. This shall be My covenant in your flesh, an eternal covenant. The uncircumcised male whose foreskin has not been circumcised, shall have his soul cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant. (Genesis 17:1-14)
The ritual is called the brit milah in Hebrew or the bris milôh in Yiddish, and either way it translates to "covenant of circumcision". This is also the basis for the common Islamic and oriental orthodox Christian male circumcision practice, as well as the less common practice within other Christian denominations.
The main difference between the Judeo-Islamic practice and the Christian practice is that Judaism and Islam are both far more legalistic traditions that focus on ritual and law, with theology an occasionally useful supplement to that end, than is the more theological orthodoxy concerned Christian tradition. This is why the British legalistic secularism combining with a normally theologically oriented Christian tradition is fascinating. British secular male circumcision superficially appears to have introduced almost Semitic orthopraxy into ritual ideological expression, oddly enough breaking from the last 1600 years of Western European Christian tradition. It would be easy to dismiss this as a weird coincidence because broadly similar circumcision customs develop separately in many diverse cultural contexts, but the context and justification used for it origin suggests this novel interpretation may have some merit.
Male circumcision came into vogue in England in the mid nineteenth century where it quickly enjoyed widespread religious and secular medical support. The germ theory of disease provided a secular basis for the imposition of circumcision, and medical literature from the time is quick to point out the additional benefits to cultivating normative ethical behaviour. Roger Cooter provides a summarized excerpt of the complex Victorian interplay between secular medicine and religious authorities wielding the responsibly to prescribe and enforce normative ethics in his review of “A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain.” (Darby, 2005) with the statement “in 1866 the former Tractarian and High Church Anglican, E. B. Pusey—“of all people” (189)—wrote a series of hugely influential letters to The Times sensationalizing the physical and spiritual consequences of self-abuse among Oxford undergraduates (which he purported to know from the confessional in whose defense he preached), medical “hawks” were as quick to condemn the evil as to advocate the new preventive solution” (Cooter, 2005, pp.147). Cooter elaborates that Anglican Church authorities heavily recommended the procedure to their parish’s and even provided funding for clinics providing circumcision. This except however provides an interesting alternative view whereby the church authorities are opposing the procedure. In both cases the procedure is seen as a normative ethical debate in addition to a “secular” health debate, and in this way it can be seen as a type of orthopraxy regardless of the perceived secular/religious dichotomy of Victorian England and the contemporary Anglophone world.
Whether or not it’s purely coincidental that a non-Semitic culture practicing a religion rooted in Semitic culture happened to develop a largely Semitic custom is irrelevant. The point is that British practitioners regarded theological, or any sort of ontological or metaphysical, inquiry into the ideological basis of the custom irrelevant unless effectively enforcing that norm. E.B. Pusey’s argument wasn’t that circumcision was immoral; it was that it was ineffective in enforcing morality. Christian principles deriving from revealed knowledge formed the basis of those norms, and so this is effectively orthopraxy.
Secular male circumcision has fallen out of vogue in England, but remains strong in Anglo-America, especially the USA. Southern Alberta possesses a similar ethnic make-up to the old U.S. of A, and possesses the same set of traditional American anglo-saxon customs and ideals that constitute the “American spirit”, and so I figure that it’s as good a substitute for the years I haven’t spent in America as there can be. Southern Albertan Anglo-Saxon’s of British origin are almost always circumcised is what I’m told, and being white myself (different cultural background however), it’s repeatedly surprising to local women that I’m not. They not only consider it surprising, they often regard circumcision as more attractive, and even a sign of sexual maturity and virility. The former’s evident by the obvious voiced objections, and the latter is evident in the passing comments overheard (mostly from women, but also the oh-so-straight-it’s-suspicious redneck men.) about the implied inferior masculinity of indigenous men represented by their seldom circumcised penises.
A friend of mine from the region recently took her infant son to the local hospital to be circumcised, and the father was otherwise occupied and couldn’t attend. It upset him that he couldn’t attend and was unable to comfort his son during the procedure. This same guy, while a loving father no doubt, never expressed such exaggerated concern over his personal attendance to any other safe and routine medical procedures, suggesting that circumcision possesses exceptional relevance compared to other medical procedures. The preference for his presence over the mother’s suggests a patrilineal rite between father and son, oddly similar to the patrilineal covenant between God and Abraham. The procedure also possesses a small dose of patrilineal virility transmission that operates as a source of prideful identity that set’s them apart from the indigenous peoples they regard as inferior. This is a stretch for sure, but you can see what I’m getting at in the customs odd similarities to the Semitic custom and its orthopraxic nature.
Not sure what to make of all that, but it’s something interesting to think about for sure. It also brings us all to the next part, the mostly forgotten history of female circumcision and clitordectomy in the Anglophone world. Female circumcision and clitordectomy came into vogue around the same time as male circumcision, but both and especially the latter initially faced more resistance in the medical community and at large. British surgeons developed a new clitordectomy procedure in the 1870’s that involved partially removing the clitoris via stimulating it under anesthesia and then wrapping a copper cable around the end of the clitoris, with the copper able then being electrified, thus performing a cauterized cut. Doctor’s proclaimed the procedure safe, and seeing as female circumcision had by this time become acceptable, clitordectomies also became fair game. The procedure spread to Anglophone colonies, where it was prescribed as a treatment for an enormity of maladies, most prominently epilepsy. American and British doctors believed female orgasms were a type of epilepsy that caused permanent damage and would result in debilitating epilepsy if left untreated. G.J. Barker-Benfield (1976) states in “Historical perspective on women's health care - female circumcision” that clitordectomy was extremely common, with as much as one in five adult women between the ages of fifteen and thirty in Britain and America undergoing the procedure between 1880-1901. Neo-natal female circumcision was prescribed as a preventative treatment under the justification that “Smegma or adhesions between "hood" and clitoris could create the irritating stimulus to masturbation or involuntary sexual excitation and the whole train of what were usually termed "reflex" consequences that similar conditions were believed to create in foreskins.” (Barker-Benfield, 1976, pp.15), which echoed the same secularly justified means of enforcing normative ethical behaviour as British and American doctor’s used for male circumcision. G.J. Barker-Benfield further states that as high as three in five new-born females in America underwent the procedure between 1880-1901, when The Journal of Orificial Medicine (the main medical publication supporting clitordectomies) abruptly stopped publishing, and both clitordectomies and female circumcision abruptly fell out of the mainstream.
Modern medicine establishes beyond any reasonable doubt that female clitordectomy and circumcision don’t offer any medical benefit at all and in fact has many potentially severe negative consequences that are far more prominent than is the case with male circumcision. Thus somebody looking into the practice needs to view it from a strictly culturally normative standpoint, and there’s not much to add that hasn’t already been said for male circumcision, except that female circumcision is (to say it oh so academically) the male analogue on crack and the disparity is such that the two really shouldn’t be equated with each other. Victorian ethical zeal got out of hand and they went overboard in joining the exclusive club of cultures possessing the dubious distinction of randomly adopting clitordectomies in addition to female circumcision as common practice. It’s strange as hell, completely random, and regardless of the ethics of the thing, we call all agree it’s at least morbidly interesting.
Works Cited
Barker-Benfield, G.J. (1976). Historical perspective on women's health care - female circumcision. Women & Health: Vol. 1 (Issue 1, pp 13-16).
Cooter, Roger. (2005). Review of “A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain”. Victorian Studies: Vol.48 (Issue 1, pp.147-149). (Reprinted from A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain, by Robert Darby, 2005, University Of Chicago Press.)
Genesis 17:1-14
