People in liberal societies tend to feel a little uncomfortable talking about male genital cutting, but generally do not think it is morally abhorrent. But female genital cutting is widely considered to be morally repulsive. This common social intuition – that male genital cutting is benign, but female genital cutting is impermissibly harmful – is mirrored in the policies of real-world liberal governments and real-world international liberal institutions. The difference in attitudes towards these practices could be explained by investigation into the cultural biases of people in liberal societies, where social preference is given to practices conducted by majority and established minority group members over those practised by members of marginalised groups. In this article, I argue that the intuition cannot be defended from a liberal position committed to equal children’s rights. I defend children’s equal right to bodily integrity. I claim that in practice children’s right to bodily integrity is conditional on it serving their greater interests – which sometimes require adults to interfere with children’s bodies in ways that we would not interfere with adults’ bodies. But, I argue, this practical conditionality ought not to mean that the state treat male and female children differently. I make a case for the child’s inviolable right to genital integrity, based on the relationship between the child’s genital integrity and their sexual and genital autonomy in adulthood. I outline and respond to potential criticisms, namely that (i) male genital cutting has medical benefits that outweigh its harms and that (ii) female genital cutting is more socially harmful than male genital cutting.

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At the time of writing in mid-2021, policy on child genital cutting and modification is inconsistent in the UK, US, and most European states, and there is growing consensus that this inconsistency should end [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. The question addressed here, is whether Western liberal democracies ought to discourage, if not legally prohibit, all forms of medically unnecessary child genital cutting and modification, or permit some relatively minor forms. Given the core political values of Western liberal democracies, including a commitment to human rights, this piece takes a liberal normative approach and argues that individual rights to bodilyand especially genitalintegrity should take priority over group rights if they come into conflict.

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We are all always culturally embedded. But some people in Western multicultural societies are treated as though they are more affected by cultural norms than others (Williams, in: Minorities within minorities, Cambridge University Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511490224.002; Kukathus in Political Theory 20: 105–139, 1992. ; Shahvisi in International Journal of Impotence Research, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-021-00514-8; Galeotti in Constellations 14: 91–111, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8675.2007.00424.x, in European Journal of Political Theory 14: 277–296, 2015; Townsend in Philosophy & Social Criticism 46: 878–898, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453719854212, in: The child’s right to genital integrity:Protecting the child, resisting harmful practices, and enabling sexual autonomy, 2021a. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/125329, in International Journalof Impotence Research, 2021b. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41443-021-00503-x). Members of marginalised cultural groups are treated as more ‘driven’ by culture than their dominant cultural group member counterparts (Honig, in: Is multiculturalism bad for women? Princeton University Press, 1999. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400840991-005). I focus on the treatment of genital cutting and modification practices conducted by diverse groups in contemporary Western societies and argue that they should all be understood as culturally ‘influenced’ as reported by Chambers (Sex, culture, and justice: The limits of choice, Penn State University Press, 2008). Further, different legal and moral treatment of genital cutting and modification practices within Western liberal societies is a form of cultural discrimination that hinders productive intercultural dialogue and the integration of diverse groups. I argue that policy on genital cutting and modification should be the same across groups to reduce socio-cultural disadvantage and enable smoother integration in Western democracies.