Apr 10, 2024
The arrival of a new baby often brings to light differences in parenting philosophies. One of the more contentious decisions is whether to circumcise their newborn son or leave him intact. This subject can spark intense debate between parents, particularly when one is staunchly against circumcision. While promoting “This Penis Business” and “Please, Don’t Cut The Baby” at the recent Tucson Book Festival, we were asked about this exact dilemma by several different attendees, prompting discussions on how parents can navigate this disagreement.
The decision to circumcise often stems from cultural, religious, or aesthetic reasons, but increasingly, parents are questioning the necessity of this procedure. Those opposed to circumcision argue that it’s a non-consensual act that removes a functional part of the body — an argument that’s backed by countless studies and statistics. They often point to the fact that the foreskin is not a birth defect; it’s a natural part of the male anatomy, serving protective and sensory purposes.
The Dilemma of Disagreement Between Parents on the Circumcision Decision
Nurturing Understanding Through Compassionate Dialogue
Navigating the sensitive topic of circumcision within families often calls for a deep level of understanding and empathy. It’s not merely about stating one’s stance but about opening a channel for heartfelt communication where both parents feel heard and respected. When disagreements arise, it’s essential to explore the roots of these differing views, whether they stem from cultural beliefs, medical perspectives, or personal convictions about bodily autonomy and consent. An effective conversation involves expressing one’s concerns about the risks, pain, and ethical considerations and actively listening to and understanding the other parent’s viewpoint. This mutual respect sets a foundation for decision-making that places the child’s welfare and rights at the forefront, ensuring that any choice is made with the child’s best interest in heart and mind.
Read the 7 Things New Parents Should Know About Foreskin Removal with your partner here.
The Power of Informed Decision-Making
In the discourse on circumcision, knowledge is a potent tool for advocacy. The intricacies of the foreskin’s anatomy, its physiological purposes, and the brutality of circumcision are often not common knowledge among expectant or new parents. By introducing well-researched information, including scientific studies, expert analyses, and personal accounts from healthcare professionals who question the necessity of routine circumcision, parents can be better equipped to make informed decisions. Education on this matter sheds light on the potential immediate and long-term medical implications and ethical considerations, empowering parents to grasp the permanent consequences and drawbacks from a place of knowledge rather than tradition or societal pressure.
Empathy and Experience: A Nurse’s Personal Strategy
The anecdote of a nurse from the Tucson Book Festival brings a unique and impactful perspective to the circumcision debate. By encouraging her partner to be present during their child’s circumcision and to participate in the aftercare actively, she provided an opportunity for him to witness firsthand the realities of the procedure and its aftermath on their newborn. This approach goes beyond theoretical discussions, directly confronting the physical and emotional ramifications. Taking an approach like this has the potential to influence a parent’s viewpoint, making the abstract debates over circumcision starkly real. Witnessing the vulnerability of their child and the tangible effects of the circumcision decision can catalyze a deeper reflection on the practice, its lack of necessity, and its consequences, fostering a more empathetic understanding of the issue at hand.
The Transformative Power of Witnessing
For many parents, the act of witnessing circumcision is a deeply impactful event that shifts perspectives from theoretical debates to the palpable reality of their child’s experience. Observing the procedure exposes the immediate physical distress it imposes on an infant, challenging the abstract notion of consent and prompting a visceral reaction that can redefine parental instincts and decisions. This first-hand encounter with the procedure’s immediate effects often serves as a critical juncture, compelling parents to reconsider their stance. It illuminates the stark contrast between the decision made in the quiet of a doctor’s office and their child’s loud cries of discomfort, fostering a protective urge that leans towards preserving the child’s physical integrity from the outset.
Instead of ever needing to see a child’s pain firsthand, you could also share the true stories we’ve collected about the after-effects of circumcision with your partner.
The Revelatory Nature of Aftercare
The period following circumcision offers parents a continuous, unvarnished look at the consequences of their decision, making the experience of aftercare a compelling argument against the procedure itself. Engaging in the daily care of the circumcision wound, parents confront the physical repercussions and the emotional toll of seeing their newborn in discomfort. This ongoing care routine serves as a potent reminder of the procedure’s invasiveness, challenging the normalization of circumcision and encouraging a reassessment of its necessity (reminder: it is rarely ever medically necessary). As parents navigate this challenging period, many find their initial justifications for the procedure confronted by the reality of their child’s pain and vulnerability, leading to a deeper questioning of the practice and its prevalence.
Championing the Right to Choose
The dialogue surrounding circumcision is increasingly focusing on the concept of informed choice, with advocates urging a reconsideration of who should make such a significant decision about bodily autonomy. The argument posits that circumcision, a procedure with lasting physical and psychological implications, should be a personal choice made by the individual most affected by its outcome. By advocating for delaying the procedure until the child can express their informed consent, proponents emphasize respect for bodily integrity and autonomy. This perspective invites a broader discussion about medical ethics, children’s rights, and the role of parental decision-making, encouraging a shift towards practices that prioritize the long-term well-being and consent of the child above cultural, religious, or familial expectations.
Cultivating Unity in the Face of Disagreement
Parenting is inherently a collaborative venture, where the harmony of mutual respect and congruent values is crucial for navigating the complex landscape of raising a child. Within this partnership, disagreements emerge as catalysts for deeper understanding and personal growth. The discourse surrounding circumcision transcends the simplicity of choice; it becomes a platform for advocating the rights of the child, nurturing an environment where future autonomy is protected, and societal pressures are critically examined. This conversation demands a delicate balance, encouraging parents to look beyond prevailing customs and consider the broader implications of consent and bodily integrity in shaping their child’s identity and rights.
Navigating the Crossroads of Decision-Making
The deliberation over circumcision stands as a testament to the intricate challenges parents face, where ethical considerations, cultural traditions, and personal beliefs intersect. This decision has consequences on the child’s well-being and sense of autonomy, underscoring the need for a thoughtful, informed approach. The insights shared during the Tucson Book Festival shed light on a constructive path toward consensus, advocating for a direct engagement with the realities of circumcision. Such engagement is pivotal in cultivating empathy, enabling parents to transcend their initial positions and unite in a choice that honors the child’s dignity and bodily autonomy. In parenting, where decisions are imbued with profound impacts, embracing empathy, respect, and a commitment to the child’s best interests becomes the guiding principle. It is through this lens that parents can navigate the complexities of circumcision and other challenging topics, ensuring that the child’s welfare remains at the heart of their shared journey – and that neither parent makes a decision that forces them to live with regret.
Jan 16, 2024
There’s a piece of my body missing. That’s a big deal.
You wouldn’t have known this growing up in my family. Circumcision was a laughable topic and only regarded as a joke; never in a serious tone, and certainly never condescended upon. Like if we were having hotdogs for dinner, the crude comments would inevitably come up. My older relatives thought it was very funny for some reason, and I could not understand. My mom might wrinkle her nose and softly say something like “That’s nasty.”
Through gritted teeth, I tried not hearing the words—blocking them out as a chilling cocktail of disgust, horror and disbelief coursed through the back of my head and down my spine, seeking refuge from the words that the Grown Ups were saying. How could they not see that this is wrong?
I was circumcised as an infant in a routine hospital procedure. If they had done the right thing and left me alone when I was a baby, I certainly believe I would be a better version of myself than how I actually ended up. Things like trimming my nails bother me to this day; my best friend who trims and styles my long, golden hair probably doesn’t know why I wince at the metallic sound of her scissors.
When I was young, I had a recurring traumatic dream. It’s like I’m watching the scene from above. I’m a baby and something disturbing, something painful is happening to my body “down there,” and I don’t know what it is. I see a blue cloth and a lot of blood. I see me being passed around by family members, presumably at a table, in a room in a house. I’m swaddled up in a blanket and I’m screaming my lungs out and they are saying to each other, he’s just cranky. The same things always happened in the dream.
I don’t know what this means. I find it hard to believe I can remember something that’s impossible to remember, but having that dream over and over when I was little seems significant. I do know the dreams stopped after I figured out what had happened to me.
I didn’t know what circumcision was until I was 13 or 14, when I saw the word in the Bible that my parents had given me. I looked it up in the dictionary because I’ve always been bookish. I told my parents, “Please not to do this to me,” and their answer was something like, “Well, don’t worry, we already did,” followed by a blind parroting of the same shallow arguments of hygiene and tradition that my frantic and terrified reading through medical almanacs and Bible footnotes had yielded. Dad got angry shortly after he realized I wouldn’t back down. Mom sat in front of the computer searching for a web page that would prove her right with little original thought on her part.
I have my own theories about why my family always joked about it and got defensive when I objected. Everybody deals with pain in their own way. For me, the pain of circumcision and then being ridiculed in my own family for speaking up has shaped my life in profound ways. I’m 30 now. For years I had pickled my thoughts and feelings with alcohol and drugs (mostly alcohol) so I didn’t have to think about that part of my body. If that thing hadn’t happened to me, hadn’t been done to me, I might have been able to stay away from it.
I sought out therapists and told them my struggles stem from circumcision trauma, and they just wrote it off. “Deep down, you’re hurt by something else,” “You can’t be that upset about a piece of skin,” “Don’t you understand they just wanted to help you?” Always being met with resistance by people you trust, starting with your parents and just going forward—that does something to you. It makes you doubt yourself. How could I be wrong for wanting to keep my body the way it was designed? How does someone inflict such harm and horror on their child, and claim it to be an act of love?
Luckily, I’m surrounded by so many friends who are also against cutting baby boys. We’re a very close-knit group. I don’t talk about my feelings or experiences with most of them, but we have a mutual understanding that circumcision is wrong. I was happy when a friend who recently had a baby boy kept him intact.
I want that for every boy. No one should grow up thinking that they’re somebody’s property, or that their wishes for their body don’t matter. Think about it: If boys don’t understand that, when they start dating, they’re not going to understand consent, and a lot of bad is going to happen out of that. Teaching our boys consent starts with protecting their rights to their body.
In our family, I was told there was something wrong with me for wanting to be left whole and being outspoken about it. I was supposed to stay in line and be OK with being cut. But harm is harm, no matter what twisted motivation is used to justify it. People need to remember that whatever they do to a child, they’re not the one who has to live with that. The child is, and they’re going to be an adult one day…still having to live with someone else’s decision.
— Kay Zugar
Interested in lending your voice? Send us an email, giving us a brief summary of what you would like to write about, and we will get back to you.
Jun 23, 2023
The 23rd of December 1947 is a day I’ll never forget. That is when I first learned, to my horror, what a circumcision was.
I was raised Roman Catholic and attended 12 years of parochial school. That day marked the last class before Christmas break, and the teacher (a nun) explained why January 1 was a holy day of obligation. (It’s the Feast of the Circumcision.)
In that moment, I understood immediately what had been done to my body. I understood why I was never comfortable there and why my clothes were always irritating me. I realized then that the head of my penis was meant to be covered. It was this unnatural exposure that was causing me to experience an almost constant state of semi-arousal. It’s not normal to be exposed that way. Being sexually aware and acting on that awareness are two, very different, things. I was an introvert, and thus a shy child, and there was no one with whom I could speak. I never broached the subject with my parents because I knew they would dismiss it, hoping I’d forget about it.
This is not considered a “normal” preoccupation, but then, having a scar encircling one’s penis isn’t “normal” either in most of the world, no matter how much our American culture insists that it is.
As a gay man who had wished since childhood for a foreskin to soothe the constant discomfort, I always found the circumcised penis ugly and to be a turn-off. It’s difficult to explain the trauma of being unable to discreetly identify intact gay men with whom to engage in sex, especially as an introvert.
This act that was done to me without my consent makes me very angry. I’ve channeled that anger into researching circumcision and the arguments for and against it for more than 75 years now. I still don’t understand why someone would amputate a normal body part simply because they have accepted without question the notion that it’s not clean.
For some reason in American culture, we don’t talk about the penis in a matter-of-fact way, and we definitely don’t talk about its foreskin—except to say that it’s dirty. What this is referring to is smegma, a word normally heard only in the context of jokes. Smegma is a natural lubricant the body produces to prevent the foreskin lining from adhering to the glans. It’s made of body oils, skin cells and moisture. Every body produces smegma—it’s between our toes and behind our ears, anywhere skin folds against itself. We just give it a quick wash and get on with our day.
The idea that a foreskin is dirty is a uniquely American notion. We’ve been cutting it off for six generations. We’re the only advanced nation where cutting off the foreskin of a male infant is routine practice, and we don’t even know why. The medical community makes all sorts of excuses that don’t hold up to science—while the rest of the advanced nations think we’re crazy. It’s sexual violence on an infant. It’s just insane.
But it’s so normalized. At a recent medical appointment, the doctor asked me to list every surgery I had ever had. I included circumcision on that list, but when I reviewed notes from the appointment, I realized she had left that one off. It has become so ubiquitous that she didn’t even mention it.
I’m 82 years old, and I’ve become more outspoken about this. I have repeatedly sent email letters to my congressmen and women and my senators, and their response is, “There, there. Don’t worry about it. We’re taking care of you.” They don’t see the harm that’s been done. I really feel that most American men have the attitude that it was done to them and there’s nothing they can do about it now. But it’s a human rights issue. And no one wants to listen.
— Wallace Muenzenberger
Interested in lending your voice? Send us an email, giving us a brief summary of what you would like to write about, and we will get back to you.
Dec 4, 2022
Two recent surveys by Intact America have raised the question by some participants of why we asked the men if their penis looked like A (an intact penis) or B (a circumcised penis), which they found either distasteful or an invasion of privacy. This is the A or B image they were talking about.
The short answer is accuracy. Asking this question improves the quality of the survey results. A lot. The reason is that many men don’t know their penile status! A 2004 study of college-aged men found that 33% were mistaken or unsure of their penile status.[i] This is nothing new, a 1960 study found 14% of men were unsure; their status was confirmed by a physical examination.[ii]
More recently, in Intact America’s three, national random sample surveys (2017, 2018, & 2021) of 3298 Americans, 14% of men were mistaken or unsure of their penile status. See below for my decade-old methodology to determine whether men were mistaken or not. But first, here’s an entertaining anecdote to illustrate the problem.
You may have seen the episode of the Graham Norton Show on BBC in 2017 with guest actor Sir Patrick Stewart. He relayed the funny story about him mentioning in passing to his wife that he was circumcised. According to Stuart, in his 70s at the time, the conversation went something like this:
Stewart: I’m circumcised.
Wife: (laughs) You’re not circumcised.
Stewart: That’s ridiculous! I should know if I’m circumcised! End of conversation.
Stewart: The next day, I happened to be seeing my doctor for my annual physical. When the doc was ‘down there,’ I mentioned my disagreement with my wife, and asked, “I’m circumcised, right?”
Doctor: Not!
Surprisingly, even men who call themselves intactivists, and who are presumably knowledgeable about circumcision and male sexual anatomy, aren’t sure. A survey of intactivists found that 13% of intactivist men are mistaken or unsure.
In 2011, I wanted to learn if newborn circumcision was associated with alexithymia. Alexithymia is the inability to identify and express emotions. It is thought that it is acquired at a very early age. Such people have difficulty in relationships, social interactions, and even in therapy. But I could not examine these men who live across the United States. So, I had to develop a viable validation alternative for that peer-reviewed alexithymia and circumcision study. My solution was to ask their penile status and then compare that with their answer to the A-B image question. Entries that did not match correctly were removed from the dataset.
As it turns out, and unknown to me at the time, I’m not the first researcher to realize that self-report is inaccurate when it comes to penises. In 1992, Schlossberger found that: “Use of visual aids to report circumcision status was more accurate (92%) than self-report (68%).[iii] Wow.
Granted, the best way to determine penile status would be a physical examination. But this is so problematic on so many levels that it would be all but impossible to survey. You’d have to pass certain standards using human subjects, hire medical staff, obtain liability insurance, and of course get permission from the men to disrobe. (By the way, the proper way to determine if a man is circumcised isn’t to look for the lack of a foreskin, but the presence of a circumcision scar.)
The solution that I came up with, and one I’ve used many times since, is a three-part survey-question method. The questioning goes something like this:
Are you circumcised or intact (not circumcised)?
Circumcised
Intact
Don’t know
Which one of these images most looks like your flaccid (not erect) penis?
A
B
Unsure
Are you restoring your foreskin?
Yes
No
I don’t know what this is
As you can see, this method results in much more accurate answers, and provides trustworthy data. Nevertheless, some men are not comfortable answering these questions, even to an anonymous researcher. I can appreciate that. That’s why I’ve taken steps to avoid their discomfort: 1) I inform participants that they’ll be asked personal, sexual questions, 2) tell them they can opt out now, 3) tell them they can opt out at any time, 4) mention that this data will only be used in aggregate form, and that at no time will their identity be revealed, and 5) use the image shown above obtained from a medical illustration stock image source instead of using a photo of real penises.
A study I recently conducted, and now in-press, titled “Adverse Childhood Experiences, Dysfunctional Households, and Circumcision,” also employed this method. None of the journal reviewers mentioned a problem with using this image.
So, not using this tripartite image question would make the results skewed, if not unusable, and therefore unpublishable.
Sadly, many circumcision studies being published since I created this method continue to just ask the men if they are circumcised or not, leaving us unsure of what to make of their conclusions. As scientists like to say: “Junk in, junk out.” (no pun intended!)
—Dan Bollinger
[i] Risser JMH, Risser WL, Eissa MA, Cromwell PF, Barratt MS, Bortot A. Self-assessment of circumcision status by adolescents. Am J Epidemiol. 2004;159:1095–1097.
[ii] Wynder EL, Licklider, SD. The question of circumcision. Cancer. 1960;13(3):442 5. 14.
[iii] Schlossberger N, Turne R & Irwin C (1992) Early adolescent knowledge and attitudes about circumcision: methods and implications for research. J Adolesc Health 13(4): 293-297.
Nov 15, 2022
Intact America interviewed Dusty Drake (they/she) following her heartwarming and open TikTok account of their circumcision complications. A transcript of the interview and her video follows.
How did you discover Intact America and what does the intactivist movement mean to you?
I first discovered Intact America a few years ago on Instagram. Back in 2011 however was the first time that I heard the term intactivist. Without knowing the word though, it is something I advocated against within my social circle even before that because of my own experience. To me, the intactivist movement is about bodily autonomy more than anything else. It’s giving the right to make cosmetic decisions about one’s body to the individual themself. It seems to be a controversial opinion in North America, but I don’t think that parents should be allowed to alter their child’s body for cosmetic purposes just because it’s their child. That child is an autonomous human being and will grow into an adult who can consent to those procedures if they decide they want them.
What encouraged you to share your story, and why now?
I was encouraged to share my story when I saw a prompt posted on September 22nd to Instagram by Intact America. The prompt simply said “Robbed of your foreskin? Tell us your story.” Their email was written below and I thought to myself, “I should email them. I’m shut down so often when I bring up the problems with cosmetic infant circumcision so I’m terrified to share my story but at least they are willing to be a listening ear.” After composing the email though I had a spark of inspiration and decided that I wasn’t going to send it. I have a following on TikTok and though even though I’ve been harassed and shut down before while speaking against cosmetic infant circumcision, this is still something that people need to hear even if they aren’t ready. So I decided to record and post my story instead. I can’t begin to tell you how extremely nervous I was to talk about my own personal experience with having been circumcised as an infant and the issues I experienced during puberty because of it. While recording, it felt just as nerve wracking as if I was speaking to a room full of strangers who had no interest in what I had to say. But I continued, because if my voice can help one parent reconsider their entitlement over their child’s body and prevent them from taking away their child’s bodily autonomy then it was worth the temporary discomfort I felt while recording.
What are some of the reactions to your TikTok video and how do they make you feel?
A majority of the reactions from my TikTok on my own experience have been overwhelmingly positive which I was honestly surprised about. I have posted content against cosmetic infant circumcision in the past and have been met with a lot of hate, harassment, and even bullying. So I was understandably nervous to share my own story, but I am so glad I did. I think the biggest reward from posting about my own experience is the new and expecting parents posting that they are reconsidering doing this to their child, have now made the decision not to, or feel more reassured that they made the right decision by leaving the choice up to their child.
Would you consider sharing more about your experience, or discuss circumcision in future TikTok videos?
If the right inspiration strikes, I will continue to talk about my experience. I absolutely intend to continue making content against cosmetic infant circumcision because the right to bodily autonomy is a human rights issue.
Dusty’s TikTok Transcript:
When I was a baby, only a few days old, a doctor had convinced my parents that there was something wrong with my body and that immediate surgical intervention was needed. There was no infection, no birth defect, and there were no adverse effects that could come from leaving my body in its natural state. Yet despite this, my parents had been convinced that to be good parents and do what was best for their first born child, that immediate surgery was necessary. They hadn’t been properly educated on the surgery, and they had have been given information on the benefits of leaving my perfectly healthy body alone. So they followed through with the doctor’s recommendation.
When I began puberty at around 10 or 11-years-old, my body began to grow quickly, so quickly, in fact that the incision from the surgery that I was unnecessarily forced to undergo as an infant began to tear. The scar tissue began stretching beyond its limits. This increased tension led to years of bleeding and scabbing along the incision line from the scar, not to mention the pain that this caused me during this whole time. But I was scared and ashamed of what was happening to me. I had believed that I had done something wrong, or worse, that there was something intrinsically wrong with me and that this was a punishment for it, and this made sense to me. After all, I was a young closeted queer kid who was being bullied every single day by my peers. Heck, I didn’t even know what queer or gay or any of that was, but I knew that that was something I didn’t wanna be and that it was bad, because that’s what my peers and society had taught me.
So it made sense to me that on top of being bullied every day, that life would just punish me in this way, despite the fact that I hadn’t done anything except for show kindness to others. So I never told anybody what I was going through and I just suffered through it alone. But when I was an adult, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one who had gone through this. There were doctors all over convincing parents to perform these unnecessary surgeries on their children, their newborn children. After I realized that I wasn’t alone in this, I got the courage to speak to my parents about it. They didn’t know what to say at the time, and they were clearly processing the information I was giving them, but they did look really remorseful.
Just last month, I was hanging out with my mom and she came up to me on her own, she sat next to me on the couch and just gave me a big old hug. She looked me in the eyes and she said, “I am so sorry. I would never crop a dog’s ears or tail, but for some reason, I never gave a second thought to mutilating my own newborn baby. I wish I could go back and make an informed decision with the knowledge I have today. I’m so sorry that we circumcised you.”
