Circumcision controversies

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

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in a rapidly changing medical and surgical world, circumcision rose in popularity as a primitive 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.

Modern proponents say that circumcision reduces the risks of a range of infections and diseases and confers sexual benefits. By contrast, some 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, in their view, 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. Traditional branches of Judaism, Islam, Coptic Christianity, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the Eritrean Orthodox Church still advocate male circumcision as a religious obligation.