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IOTM – Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon

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Blog, Intactivist of the Month
September 14, 2011

SEPTEMBER 2011: Filmmaker Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon’s documentary Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision takes a powerful look at the practice of infant circumcision from a uniquely Jewish perspective. The film is currently on tour throughout the United States. Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon

Eliyahu, a writer, director, cinematographer and photographer, produced the film in 2007. It examines the subject of male circumcision from a religious, scientific and ethical perspective. Using both research and interview footage of rabbis, philosophers, and scientists, Cut challenges viewers to confront their biases by asking difficult questions about this long-standing practice.

Eliyahu grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Brookline, Massachusetts. When he was 13, his family moved to Israel where he lived until he was 19. He next enrolled in medical school in the United Kingdom, but after three years, Eliyahu decided to abandon medicine and follow his dream of becoming a filmmaker. He has since earned two degrees from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Cut is his first feature-length film.

cutThe film has received positive reviews, and has been embraced by the intactivist community. Says George Robinson, film critic for Jewish Week, “I approached the film with a complex set of preconceptions and, to the filmmaker’s great credit, after it was over my certainties were utterly shaken.” The WHOLE Network, a growing grassroots intactivist organization, is sponsoring the film’s United States tour; you can see the full list of showings here.

The trailer for the film is available on the Cut website, as is the abridged version of the film. You can also listen to his podcast here.

“Eli’s contribution to intactivism is incalculable,” says Georganne Chapin, Executive Director of Intact America. “His thoughtful sensitivity imbues every minute of his film, as well as his interactions with others. His work will truly make a difference in the lives of many boys and their families. Intact America is proud to have Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon on our Board of Advocates.”

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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.