20 May 2015

Culture and Bodies

Richard Dawkins posted a link to a story about a woman sent to jail for contravening a court order, insisting on her son's circumcision. Richard Dawkins, noted atheist, said this is wrong because it's based on respect for religion.

A very brief bit of research demonstrated that neither father nor mother are Jewish or Muslim (both of which require infant male circumcision), and the father is on record as saying he wants his son circumcised for personal reasons.
The USA has a strong culture of male infant circumcision, based on ideas of cleanliness and health, rather than religion. The USA's board of paediatricians say that it the benefits of male infant circumcision outweigh the risks of the procedure.

Some atheists shun religion on the base of no evidence. Empiricism is at the heart of atheism - "show me the proof and I'll believe". Well, in the USA, the evidence seems to point to male infant circumcision being beneficial. On this basis, surely all infant males should be circumcised?

Well, no, they argue, because there is choice. But where does the notion of bodily autonomy come into atheism, an ideology based on evidence and facts?

We have a humanity-old tradition of our bodies being good only if intact and whole. This is a tradition that has endured, despite knowing our entire body regenerates every few years and is not, therefore, the same body as we started with. The DNA remains, but the cells regenerate constantly, otherwise we wouldn't get cancer. Amputees do not just suffer from the physical loss of their limb, but from the psychological effects. The tradition that we take our bodies with us to the afterlife goes back as long as we can find graves for ancient people. People were buried with things they used in life, things they might need in death, even slaves. This didn't stop with the birth of the big monotheistic faiths, or with the slow decline in religious belief. Even today, we sometimes tuck in mementos and possessions with our loved ones before their burial or cremation, whether we consider ourselves religious or not.

Various cultures all over the world deform their bodies with knives, with brands, with tattoos, with lip-plates, for reasons of religion, or traditional heritage, or to meet their particular standard of beauty. In the UK, this tends to be limited to tattoos, piercings and cosmetic plastic surgery. Harder body modifications like scarification are considered abnormal, whereas piercing a baby's ears is socially acceptable. Orlan, a French artist, has repeatedly undergone plastic surgery to challenge the norms of beauty, and been castigated for it. Too many modifications are seen by some as a sign of mental instability. It is entirely culturally dependent.

Circumcision was originally adopted by the Jews to differentiate themselves from the Gentiles. It was adopted by the Islamic faith for similar reasons, and broadly common in the Middle East at that time. It is the oldest surgical practice on record.
Unlike female genital mutilation, which is widely condemned for the barbaric practice that it is, male circumcision is considered generally harmless, with a very small risk of side effects. It is not specific to religion. In the UK, it is almost solely done either for religious reasons or because of phimosis (the foreskin 'balloons' when the child urinates). It has not been normalised through tradition. In the USA, things are very different. There is a growing anti-circumcision movement within the USA, but it is still a normal thing to do to your newborn son.

People do things because their culture informs their practice, and religion has often informed their culture. When people claim the UK is not a Christian country, perhaps they mean in terms of going to church and professed religion. In this, they are correct. But culturally, it is wholly Christian. We don't generally work Sundays, because of religion. Shops aren't open for as long for the same reason.The church practiced the earliest forms of taxation, and that noble tradition has continued in earnest. We get Easter and Christmas and the second bank holiday in May off because of Christianity. Going back further, we celebrate Bonfire night, Halloween, May Day, and touch wood for good luck, because of ancient religious practices we don't even have records for.

Unusually, the USA's preference for circumcision doesn't seem to be based on religion, but medical belief and recent tradition. It is, in fact, an exception to the religion=culture=practice rule.

So, it entertained me a little bit to see Atheism's Self-Appointed Spokesman attacking a court judgement based on evidence and personal autonomy, because of assumptions of religious connotations.

PS: I don't agree with the court ruling, at all. That poor child.

2 comments:

  1. I'm pretty sure the AAP has never recommended infant circumcision. I think attempting to draw a link between ear piercing and circumcision is rather tenuous given one can easily heal over whereas the other involves permanent removal of sensitive genital tissue.

    I also disagree with the comment about circumcision being generally harmless. It can be with adults whose foreskin is not fused to the glans, who can take pain relief and have the procedure carried out with anaesthetic and have given INFORMED CONSENT. The same cannot be said of infant circumcision and there have been studies which show that babies which have been circumcised have increased response to pain from things like vaccinations for example.

    As an atheist I don't see Richard Dawkins as my spokesman. I would suggest though that far more mutilations have been carried out in the name of religion than atheism

    ReplyDelete
  2. The AAP's most recent release about circumcision is that the benefits outweigh the risks, but not enough to recommend universal circumcision (https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/newborn-male-circumcision.aspx). Conversely, the NHS argue there are no convincing medical reasons for routine infant male circumcision, and won't fund it. I am firmly with the NHS on this, and wonder if the USA would be the same if their health system was state funded.

    I was referring more to the broad spectrum of body modifications done routinely in some areas, where they are abhorred in others. There is no worldwide consensus on acceptable modifications. In one small African tribe, young boys have their faces deliberately (and unhygienically) scarred to signify they've killed an animal and become a man. This is considered a tribal custom that should be observed and preserved. You can guarantee it wouldn't be socially acceptable if they started doing it in the UK!

    I don't think male circumcision is harmless personally - I know far too many people who have suffered from it going awry. It is, however, broadly considered harmless, again from a cultural level. I'm not sure what it will take to convince society otherwise.

    I've amended that bit to read Self Appointed Spokesman... And you're quite right, and by all manner of religions throughout time. Mutilation as both a signifier of belonging and as a punishment seems endemic in civilisation, probably because we generally have such strong values attached to our bodies and how they look - as we should!

    ReplyDelete