Cutting of boys’ and girls’ genitalia is a debated human rights topic. Here, the first aim was to summarise why parents choose to have these procedures performed on their children. Results from 22 survey studies on ‘male circumcision’ and 27 studies on ‘female genital mutilation’ revealed that non-medical reasons, such as tradition, are prominent in the decisions for both procedures. The second aim was to describe researchers’ use of medical words (i.e. ‘circumcision’) and non-medical words (i.e. ‘cutting’, ‘mutilation’) when referring to these procedures. Relevant phrases were searched in titles and abstracts of articles indexed in PubMed. Total article count was similar for male (1721 articles) and female (1906 articles) procedures. However, for female procedures, ‘genital mutilation’ was used most frequently (61.7% of articles), whereas for males, ‘circumcision’ was used almost exclusively (99.4%). Because both procedures involve significant alteration of genitalia, and social/culture reasons are prominent in parents’ decisions for both, the results suggest a gender bias in medical ethics applied to bodily integrity, which manifests itself in nomenclature that expresses negative value judgement toward the female procedure (‘mutilation’) but not the male procedure (‘circumcision’). The results add to emerging evidence of a ‘male empathy gap’ in public health.

One issue that has been put forward by some authors is that the benign medical word‘circumcision’, which means‘a circular cut’, tends to be used to refer to cutting of male genitalia, whereas the word‘mutilation’, which includes negative value judgment, tends to be used to refer to cutting of female genitalia. Use of the benign medical term‘male circumcision’ is potentially problematic for a few reasons. First,not all male circumcisions are performed by medical doctors or in medical facilities.34,35In one study, 85% of boys in a Muslim community in western Nepal were found to have been circumcised at home, and only 4.2% of circumcisions involved use of a new, sterile blade.35In another study, 64% of boys in Turkey were found to have been circumcised at home, and 60% were circumcised by someone who was not a medical doctor.34Second, use of the benign medical word‘circumcision’ implies safety. However, male circumcision is not without risks. Bleeding, infection, amputation, and death are all possible risks associated with male circumcision.36–39Rates of these risks are not high but they should be weighed against whether or not male circumcision is medically necessary or advantageous.Third, even when male circumcision is performed under conditions of best practice,use of the word‘circumcision’ is still potentially problematic because it implies parents choose the procedure for medical reasons. However, social and cultural factors likely influence parents’ decision. Moreover, if parents choose circumcision for non-medical reasons, this should cause pause for reflection on the similarities and differences between male circumcision and female genital mutilation, because female genital mutilation is sometimes also performed for social and cultural reasons, though comprehensive reviews on reasons why parents choose to have such procedures performed on their children appear to be missing from