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In 2015, a senior British judge, Sir James Munby, stated that nontherapeutic childhood male circumcision must be a “significant harm”. His reasoning was that the law currently treats all forms of nontherapeutic cutting or alteration of female genitalia as significantly harmful, including forms that are less invasive than male circumcision (such as “pricking” of the clitoral hood). In his words, “to dispute that the more invasive procedure [i.e., male circumcision] involves the significant harm involved in the less invasive [female] procedures would seem almost irrational”. Against this view, one could note that most men who were circumcised in infancy do not appear to regard themselves as “significantly harmed” by the procedure, seeing it instead as “normal” in their culture or community. However, most women who have undergone even “extreme” forms of nontherapeutic female genital cutting similarly do not regard themselves as harmed, since such cutting is normative in their culture(s) viewed as a means to bodily enhancement. In the latter case, it is often argued that the typical lack of self-perceived harm may be due to a paucity of relevant information (i.e., “they do not know what they are missing”), as well as a greater likelihood of believing various myths about unmodified female genitalia (e.g., the myth that the clitoris, if not cut, will grow to the size of a penis). Might a similar explanation apply to the case of men who do not regard themselves as harmed by circumcision? In this talk, I report the results of a new empirical study exploring the association between American men's satisfaction with being circumcised and their endorsement of false beliefs concerning natural penile anatomy and the effects of circumcision.

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