a Departments of Philosophy and Psychology , Yale University , New Haven , CT , USA.
b Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Anthropology , Quinnipiac University , Hamden , CT , USA.
Cult Health Sex. 2018 Aug;20(8):945-959. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2017.1400104. Epub 2017 Dec 6.
Critics of non-therapeutic male and female childhood genital cutting claim that such cutting is harmful. It is therefore puzzling that 'circumcised' women and men do not typically regard themselves as having been harmed by the cutting, notwithstanding the loss of sensitive, prima facie valuable tissue. For female genital cutting (FGC), a commonly proposed solution to this puzzle is that women who had part(s) of their vulvae removed before sexual debut 'do not know what they are missing' and may 'justify' their genitally-altered state by adopting false beliefs about the benefits of FGC, while simultaneously stigmatising unmodified genitalia as unattractive or unclean. Might a similar phenomenon apply to neonatally circumcised men? In this survey of 999 US American men, greater endorsement of false beliefs concerning circumcision and penile anatomy predicted greater satisfaction with being circumcised, while among genitally intact men, the opposite trend occurred: greater endorsement of false beliefs predicted less satisfaction with being genitally intact. These findings provide tentative support for the hypothesis that the lack-of-harm reported by many circumcised men, like the lack-of-harm reported by their female counterparts in societies that practice FGC, may be related to holding inaccurate beliefs concerning unaltered genitalia and the consequences of childhood genital modification.
批评者认为非治疗性的男童和女童生殖器切割是有害的。因此，令人困惑的是，“割礼”过的女性和男性通常并不认为自己受到了伤害，尽管他们失去了敏感的、表面上有价值的组织。对于女性生殖器切割（FGC），针对这个难题，一个常见的解决方案是，在性成熟之前切除部分外阴的女性“不知道自己失去了什么”，并且可能通过接受关于 FGC 益处的虚假信念来“证明”她们的生殖器被改变的状态是合理的，同时将未被改变的生殖器污名化为不吸引人或不卫生的。这种类似的现象是否适用于新生儿割礼的男性？在这项对 999 名美国男性的调查中，对割礼和阴茎解剖学的虚假信念的更大认可预测了对割礼的更大满意度，而在生殖器完整的男性中，出现了相反的趋势：对虚假信念的更大认可预测了对生殖器完整的满意度降低。这些发现为假设提供了初步支持，即许多割礼男性报告的无害，就像在实行 FGC 的社会中报告的女性割礼的无害一样，可能与对未被改变的生殖器和儿童生殖器改变的后果的不准确信念有关。
