Traditional Male Circumcision (TMC)
Each ‘circumcision season’ sees multiple deaths and injuries due to the unsafe practices often associated with ‘Traditional Male Circumcision’ (TMC).
1 The term ‘Traditional Male Circumcision’ (TMC) gained prominence after the WHO’s 2009 publication, Traditional Male Circumcision Among Young People, which contrasted TMC with the rollout of VMMC and promoted a medicalised adaptation of traditional practices. While widely used in global health, the term oversimplifies the diverse practices it seeks to describe. Even more concerning for many observers are the high levels of interpersonal violence that are tolerated, institutionalised, and sometimes encouraged during male initiations in Kenya (Lamont 2018). By framing these initiations as TMCs, the Kenyan government (at both national and county levels), churches, and educational institutions – including juvenile detention centres – seek to impose a sense of ‘order’ on the diverse initiation practices across ethnic communities. This is done through public health policies that aim to make circumcision ‘safe’ and ‘hygienic’ via training programmes for circumcisers.
However, within these communities, deeply rooted concepts of order are tied to moral questions about legitimate sexual relations and marriage, what John Lonsdale (1994) called ‘civic virtues’. These virtues are grounded in an ethic of male authority and provision (Moore 2016). Ethnic groups in Kenya often function as ‘communities of argument’, where dynamic practices like bridewealth or circumcision are debated and contested. As Luise White aptly describes, such debates provide a ‘forum for intense discussion about the workings of culture and power, about marriage, inheritance, and the customs that shape adult responsibilities’ (White 2004:2).
While actors such as private doctors and county medical officers have advocated for a hybrid, medicalised approach to boys’ initiations – aligned with the WHO’s model of ‘safe and hygienic’ TMC – local male-only councils like the Kikuyu Kiama kĩa Ma or Meru Njuri Nceke seek to regulate initiations within the bounds of civic virtue and state power. Against this backdrop, the events leading up to Juliano Kanyonyo’s tragic death represent a watershed moment. His death not only sparked public debate about safety and violence in TMCs but also exposed the deeper historical and political forces driving these discussions.
Methodology
Methodologically, this chapter builds on experiences beginning in 1991, when I first lived in Meru, Kenya, and spans subsequent periods of ethnographic research that took place between 1998 and 2016. While much of my work has focused on the initiation and circumcision of boys, I have also explored the public violence associated with forcible circumcisions (Lamont 2018).
In 2018, I began an historical ethnography of the medicalisation of male circumcision in Kenya, conducting fieldwork in Nyanza on VMMC for HIV prevention. For over two decades, VMMC has dominated scholarly research on male circumcision, yet much of the policy literature on VMMC – the largest surgical-based medical intervention in Africa’s history – remains uncritical of the programme’s rapid expansion by global health agencies, often overlooking lingering, unresolved concerns within the targeted communities (Luseno et al. 2023).
My last visit to Kenya coincided with the tragic and violent death of Juliano Kanyonyo. At first, I paid little attention to the case, but as I began to see his death as a catalyst for political action – particularly through the activism of mothers advocating for safer male circumcision – I came to understand its deeper significance. Kanyonyo emerged as a powerful symbol for the many boys who have lost their lives during initiation rites. His death should not be viewed as an isolated incident but rather understood as part of a long-standing controversy, rooted in colonial times, where concerns about safety and rights have repeatedly emerged. Juliano Kanyonyo’s death prompted the first national legislation on male circumcision, the 2020 Act. This event forms part of a broader history of efforts to regulate genital cutting in Kenya, beginning with colonial interventions and extending to the landmark 2011 anti-FGM Act (Van Bavel 2023).
The connections between these two pieces of legislation highlight the influence of global institutions, such as the WHO and the UN, in shaping Kenya’s policies on these practices. This context and research methodology points to the need for understanding genital cutting as a unified category, challenging the gendered distinctions that arise when male circumcision and FGM/C are treated separately, despite their shared cultural and initiatory contexts in Kenya.