• Our Team
  • Initiatives
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Support Us
  • Donate

Compelled Altruism

by
By Georganne Chapin
April 2, 2014

The following is an actual comment made by someone on Intact America’s Facebook page. We often see comments from men who defend their circumcised status, but this was the first time I’d seen someone finding solace in the idea that his foreskin was (perhaps?) used for a “good purpose.” Here’s what he wrote, verbatim:

Using Foreskins for CosmeticsWhat im going to say may shock you, i am circumcised and my penis is in fact not a gnarled calloused lump of dead flesh devoid of feeling, and because i was born in the 80’s my foreskin went to make a skin graft for a burn victim, today they are also used in stem cell research…its ok guys really.

And this was my reply:

 It’s great that you are happy with your body and NOBODY should be allowed to take that happiness away from you. But there’s a phrase for what you’re referring to, with regard to the worthy use of YOUR bodily tissue without your consent. It’s “compelled altruism”; in other words, your “donation” was not your choice. How would you feel if you found that your foreskin was used, not for artificial skin for burn victims, but for $200/quarter ounce anti-wrinkle cream? Also, what about the fact that somebody other than you is making a fortune selling products made from your stolen foreskin? Is that really ok? How can it be that the foreskin deemed to be so useless and problematic to its owner is, at the same time, so valuable to others? There’s something wrong with that.

Our Facebook audience is growing exponentially, and we’re getting more and more people thinking about circumcision for the first time; some of those who haven’t thought about it before react by defending the practice, as did the man who left the comment repeated above. When people come out like this, we intactivists have a chance to educate them in a really powerful, far-reaching way. The conversation may get intense and heated, but every conversation is important and takes us toward achieving our goal – ending the abuse and mutilation of babies.

Georganne Chapin

P.S. If you haven’t already, be sure to visit Intact America on Facebook, like our page, and share our great posts!

Author

, , , ,

Related Posts

7 Comments

  • Dan Bollinger

    April 2, 2014 4:30 pm

    The other phrase that comes to mind is “tissue piracy!”

    • Jhon Murdock

      April 2, 2014 9:58 pm

      How about “organ trafficking”?

  • rh

    April 2, 2014 7:06 pm

    poor guy, they grow skin in labs today from stem cells , no need to “donate” your pleasurable parts buddy, why didn’t you give skin from some neutral area that could easily have been multiplied and grown in the lab, .really now is this altruism or some other mechanism operating here. one has to question . sorry totally illogical and unconvincing. never give your penile parts to ANYONE and don’t let anyone con you into that.
    MD

  • rh

    April 2, 2014 7:11 pm

    face cream from peoples pleasure organs and sensory pleasure innervated penile parts. WHAT? are y all crazy out there in the new US of A? inordinate amount of greed malice and evil coupled with simplemindedness and gullibility here. what a pathetic scene

  • Paul Frohlich

    April 3, 2014 2:27 am

    Those mutilations is like a knife cutting in to the constitution of Unites States of America. Crime on the most helpless, unable to run, fight of. Shame on you that still do this to your own child!

  • Gianluca

    April 8, 2014 12:38 am

    What if he had found out that they had taken one of his kidneys? After all it’s ok. You can still survive with only one and it might have served a good purpose. But without your consent?

  • Gianluca

    April 8, 2014 12:41 am

    There is a published article about “compelled altruism”:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11958235

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

About Us

Intact America operates as a not-for-profit organization based in Tarrytown, NY that is tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. EIN: 81-2887457.

(914) 400 1915

PO Box 8516 Tarrytown, NY, 10591

Latest Posts

Links

Twitter Facebook Instagram Linkedin Youtube
  • © 2024 All rights reserved

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.