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IOTM – Aubrey Terŕon

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Blog, Intactivist of the Month
February 10, 2013

FEBRUARY 2013: Over the last few years, we have seen tremendous changes in the anti-circumcision movement. What started as a small group of dedicated intactivists has grown into a far-reaching tapestry of people spreading the word that babies deserve to be kept whole. Social media plays a huge role in the growth of our movement, thanks in large part to people like Aubrey Terrón (née Taylor)—writer, videographer, and social activist.

Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Aubrey works in Atlanta with attorney David Llewellyn, who represents victims of botched circumcisions. Her involvement in intactivism, however, goes back to when she was a teenager: “The first time I recognized just how ignorant people were about the foreskin, I was 19 years old. I was at work, and somehow the topic came up. I was insisting that circumcision was a terrible thing to do, and my boss—circumcised, with one circumcised son—replied, ‘It’s just dead skin.’ Dead skin?? It really struck me that people had shockingly incorrect ideas about foreskin, and my job became obvious.”

Aubrey has been a force to be reckoned with in the world of social media, right from the start. “My first attempts at education started with the earliest social networks. There were websites that would allow a few pictures to be put up so people could judge how ‘hot’ you were. So I put up my best bikini shots and proclaimed the value of foreskin and the validity of men’s rights in my bios.” Her visibility has only grown since then. Aubrey remains a powerful presence on Facebook, talking openly and frequently, and often very personally, about circumcision and the male foreskin. In her essay “I LOVE Foreskin” written for a foreskin restoration site, she explains in plain English why having sex with an intact man is simply better—for both partners.

Aubrey’s YouTube videos are also very popular—her foreskin video alone has more than 130,000 views! In an article written for Western North Carolina Woman magazine, she says, “An empowered woman is educated, refuses to believe myth, is strong, moral, and she stands up for herself and the defenseless; it takes all of these things to say no to circumcision. For those empowered women whIntact America: Say No to Circumcision: Aubrey Tayloro aren’t faced with making this particular decision, they will have the same qualities: refuse to continue to be a catalyst for the perpetuation of a harmful practice against the defenseless.” She also uses sites like Pinterest to share images she creates of popular memes, spreading the pro-intact message.

Aubrey Terŕon and Georganne Chapin at the CDC conference.

When Intact America attended an Atlanta meeting of the Centers for Disease Control, to demand that the CDC not recommend circumcision (which they still haven’t!), Aubrey was there with us. “I’m really excited about Intact America’s work,” she says. “Intactivism has gained the most ground in the past by educating parents. Now that genital integrity is recognized as a real social issue, it’s time to publicly challenge the medical establishment for their lack of integrity and Intact America is doing that.”

“One of the great privileges in working to save babies from the horror of circumcision,” says Georganne Chapin, Executive Director of Intact America, “is meeting and collaborating with kind and intelligent colleagues. Aubrey is a bold and brilliant star in the intactivist constellation, shedding light on the truth and illuminating the way for so many others.”

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Marilyn

Marilyn Fayre Milos, multiple award winner for her humanitarian work to end routine infant circumcision in the United States and advocating for the rights of infants and children to genital autonomy, has written a warm and compelling memoir of her path to becoming “the founding mother of the intactivist movement.” Needing to support her family as a single mother in the early sixties, Milos taught banjo—having learned to play from Jerry Garcia (later of The Grateful Dead)—and worked as an assistant to comedian and social critic Lenny Bruce, typing out the content of his shows and transcribing court proceedings of his trials for obscenity. After Lenny’s death, she found her voice as an activist as part of the counterculture revolution, living in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco during the 1967 Summer of Love, and honed her organizational skills by creating an alternative education open classroom (still operating) in Marin County. 

After witnessing the pain and trauma of the circumcision of a newborn baby boy when she was a nursing student at Marin College, Milos learned everything she could about why infants were subjected to such brutal surgery. The more she read and discovered, the more convinced she became that circumcision had no medical benefits. As a nurse on the obstetrical unit at Marin General Hospital, she committed to making sure parents understood what circumcision entailed before signing a consent form. Considered an agitator and forced to resign in 1985, she co-founded NOCIRC (National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers) and began organizing international symposia on circumcision, genital autonomy, and human rights. Milos edited and published the proceedings from the above-mentioned symposia and has written numerous articles in her quest to end circumcision and protect children’s bodily integrity. She currently serves on the board of directors of Intact America.

Georganne

Georganne Chapin is a healthcare expert, attorney, social justice advocate, and founding executive director of Intact America, the nation’s most influential organization opposing the U.S. medical industry’s penchant for surgically altering the genitals of male children (“circumcision”). Under her leadership, Intact America has definitively documented tactics used by U.S. doctors and healthcare facilities to pathologize the male foreskin, pressure parents into circumcising their sons, and forcibly retract the foreskins of intact boys, creating potentially lifelong, iatrogenic harm. 

Chapin holds a BA in Anthropology from Barnard College, and a Master’s degree in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. For 25 years, she served as president and chief executive officer of Hudson Health Plan, a nonprofit Medicaid insurer in New York’s Hudson Valley. Mid-career, she enrolled in an evening law program, where she explored the legal and ethical issues underlying routine male circumcision, a subject that had interested her since witnessing the aftermath of the surgery conducted on her younger brother. She received her Juris Doctor degree from Pace University School of Law in 2003, and was subsequently admitted to the New York Bar. As an adjunct professor, she taught Bioethics and Medicaid and Disability Law at Pace, and Bioethics in Dominican College’s doctoral program for advanced practice nurses.

In 2004, Chapin founded the nonprofit Hudson Center for Health Equity and Quality, a company that designs software and provides consulting services designed to reduce administrative complexities, streamline and integrate data collection and reporting, and enhance access to care for those in need. In 2008, she co-founded Intact America.

Chapin has published many articles and op-ed essays, and has been interviewed on local, national and international television, radio and podcasts about ways the U.S. healthcare system prioritizes profits over people’s basic needs. She cites routine (nontherapeutic) infant circumcision as a prime example of a practice that wastes money and harms boys and the men they will become. This Penis Business: A Memoir is her first book.