Georganne Chapin and Marilyn Milos release their memoirs detailing their experiences and observations as leaders of the intactivist movement .
Georganne Chapin’s memoir of becoming an intactivist – one who actively opposes child genital cutting – delivers a powerful indictment of the U.S. circumcision industry. Motivated since childhood by an innate sense of justice, Chapin earned degrees in anthropology and sociomedical sciences from Barnard College and Columbia University. In 1980, recalling her baby brother’s trauma following “routine” circumcision, and having learned that most of the world’s men are not circumcised, Chapin relied on common sense in declining the surgery for her son. When he thanked her years later, she realized that not only had she spared him momentary suffering, but that for his lifetime he would enjoy the sexual pleasure nature intended. Chapin went on to lead Hudson Health Plan, a nonprofit New York insurance company for 25 years. Mid-career, she enrolled in an evening law school program, exploring the ethical, legal and cultural standards applied to the genital cutting of boys versus those applied to girls. In 2008 she co-founded Intact America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting boys and the men they will become from a surgery undertaken in the interest of profit and custom. This Penis Business: A Memoir is Chapin’s first book. It presents the definitive case for ending circumcision and will change lives.
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.
Marilyn Milos was a nursing student on the obstetrical unit in 1979 when she first witnessed a baby being circumcised. The only person to step forward to comfort the infant as it writhed and screamed in pain during the surgery, she was shocked when the doctor said to her: “There is no medical reason for doing this.” From that moment on, Marilyn became an advocate for ending medically unnecessary circumcision, protecting our children, and educating parents, the public, and medical professionals about this cultural fraud and violation of human rights. She founded the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC); organized fifteen international symposia; and became a spokesperson for promoting the genital integrity of all children. A story of determination, service, and love, Marilyn’s memoir describes the myths, misinformation, and economic forces driving non-religious infant circumcision in the United States, where it has become standard practice. Readers may find their own beliefs and assumptions challenged, and their hearts touched by this story of a life devoted to justice for babies and the adults they will become.
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.
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.
