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Voices – Damon Favor

“Taking a whole baby home was way harder than I ever thought it would be. Protecting a whole baby was hard, too.”

I don’t know how old I was when I first discovered what the word “circumcision” meant, but from my earliest memories, I knew I didn’t like it. I could never understand why someone would do that to another person, especially a baby…I still can’t. So, I guess the answer to when I first decided to refuse circumcision for my son is, long before I ever considered having children. However, since it is not a decision made by one parent, I had to make sure my wife and I were on the same page.

Initially she was quite surprised that anyone wouldn’t circumcise. She said she had never even thought about the subject, let alone formed an opinion about it, and always assumed it was something that was “just done”. After many hours of talking about my feelings on the topic, and her doing independent research (thank god for the internet at that point), she also decided she was against circumcision for any future children. The final straw that won her over to the pro-intact side was when we were taking a parenting class offered by the local health department, and the teacher, a public health nurse, showed slides of a circumcision being performed and talked about how it was unnecessary.

My son was born at Onslow Memorial Hospital in Jacksonville, NC and they tried many times to take him from us to circumcise him. We had met with the hospital administrator before the delivery and they approved and signed the birth plan that clearly said he would not be circumcised and that no one should manipulate or retract his foreskin. They pressured us repeatedly, saying it would be better to have it done before we left. Hospital policy didn’t permit rooming-in, but I never left the hospital and I wouldn’t let the staff take my son out of our room unless I was allowed to go with him. Nurses argued several times that they had to take him to the nursery for rounds and that the doctors liked to have all the babies lined up to be checked at the same time. I refused and told them I’d be happy to sign AMA or they could tell the doctor to walk down to our room. They eventually relented and even allowed me to sit in the nursery with my son while he underwent phototherapy.

I had a similar pro-circumcision experience following the birth of my daughter. She was born in North Carolina also, at Naval Hospital, Camp Lejeune. Shortly after her birth, a doctor stopped by the room and said, “Are you ready for the circumcision?” I replied, “Since we didn’t circumcise our son, we won’t be circumcising our daughter.” They apologized profusely, and walked away embarrassed.

The fight to protect my son didn’t stop when we left the hospital after his birth. Although he was never forcibly retracted, one of his pediatricians wanted to. I had warned my wife about doctors who would try to retract. She didn’t believe it would happen though, so she didn’t say anything about it at the beginning of the well-baby visit. When the time came for the genital portion of the exam, the doctor frowned when he saw my son was intact and started manipulating my son’s foreskin. My wife immediately said “STOP!” and asked what he was doing. The doctor said he had to “pull it back” so he could “see that the urethra was in the right place”. My wife said, “No, you don’t” and the doctor said, “Yes I do, in order to make sure he can urinate”. My wife said, “He’s been urinating just fine for months and you’re not pulling it back”. They argued a bit more, but my wife stood her ground, my son was not retracted, and the bit of manipulation the doctor had done before she stopped him did not cause any damage or discomfort. After that we changed doctors and we always made sure to have the “don’t retract” conversation before any undressing occurred. Fortunately, when we had the conversation with our son’s new pediatrician, his response was, “I would never!”

The “don’t retract” conversation continued with grandparents, caregivers and daycare administrators. We even typed a little info letter, which we had the daycare sign when we registered our son there. It actually started several conversations, because some people had never heard of not circumcising and were curious why we didn’t. Most of the caregivers had never seen an intact male or cared for one. Some thought maybe you had to “stick something in there” and clean it, but after the simple “clean it like a finger and just wipe it off” conversation a couple of them even remarked how much easier it was to clean an intact boy than a circumcised boy.

We moved to Italy nearly six years ago. It is shocking how different public opinion is here about circumcision, and to realize how ignorant most Americans (including physicians) are about basic anatomy. Many of my Italian friends were shocked to learn that so many people in the United States circumcise their sons. Most of them don’t even know it is something that happens and they are incredulous to hear it’s routine.

I first learned about Intact America in 2009. Like many people, I think, I initially approached the subject of circumcision with trepidation and fear of how other people would react. In fact, I didn’t tell anyone my feelings about circumcision until my sister asked me what I thought before her first son was born, and then not again until I got married. It’s strange that even though I am from a very progressive city in California, where almost anything is socially acceptable, I always felt afraid to talk about circumcision. That is why I am so grateful for Intact America. Your message lets other men know that they are not alone and they are not the only ones who stand against circumcision. To this day I am a somewhat closeted intactivist. I have talked to a few friends who asked me for information because they knew I kept my son intact and I tried to share facts and opinion, but for the most part I don’t discuss the issue.

Thank you so much for what you are doing to help people understand how unnecessary and harmful circumcision is, and for helping to educate our healthcare professionals.

Damon Favor

Interested in lending your voice? Send an email to [email protected], giving us a brief summary of what you would like to write about, and we will get back to you.

Author

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.