“My penis is just fine,” shouted a young male motorist Monday at the busy intersection of Dorset Street and Williston Road in South Burlington before screeching off.
Was someone asking after the health of his sex organ? Sort of. The man, presumably circumcised, was responding in loud disagreement to a clutch of roadside activists protesting circumcision. They dressed to stop traffic in all-white clothing with blood-red patches over their crotches and signs showing babies and bearing slogans such as: “How Dare You Cut His Penis!”
Circumcision is performed on males, typically when they are newborns, and entails cutting the foreskin from the penis.
Concern about the practice and shifting recommendations from public health experts contributed to a drop in rates of circumcision in the U.S. between 1979 and 2010. It fell from 65 to 58 percent of male newborns over that time, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Now the rate appears to be climbing back, possibly in response to research showing that circumcision can help reduce the spread of HIV and other STDs. Three years ago the American Academy of Pediatrics revised its position on circumcision to offer stronger support. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also chimed in, saying the benefits outweigh the risks.
The anti-circ squad on the streets Monday remains dead-set against the practice. “It’s really barbaric and harmful and babies scream like hell,” said Franny Max of Montreal, as she stood in a white outfit waving a sign at traffic.
None of her four sons has been circumcised, nor have the males in her extended family, Max said. She acknowledged the research about STD transmission, but said condoms, not circumcision, are the way to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
She and other anti-circumcision protestors said the procedure causes pain, risks infection, reduces sexual pleasure and reduces penis size. “If you cut something, you make it smaller not bigger,” Max said. “If you cut a loaf of bread, you have a smaller loaf of bread.”
Max started protesting circumcision after one of her sons, then a baby, was in the hospital intensive care unit for a health problem, and she observed the procedure being done on newborns. “I saw other babies having vivisection basically, and it was horrible,” she said.
One of the props at the protest Monday was a plastic baby doll with two surgical clamps attached to its penis and a sign a
sking, “Was this you?” Circumcision advocates say the pain is temporary, infection risk is low and any reduction in penis size is not noticeable. The CDC says studies around sexual sensation are mixed.
The protest is part of a campaign by a national organization called Bloodstained Men & Their Friends. Some of the protesters were heading to Portland, Maine and other locations in the northeast after the stop in the Burlington area.
If circumcision is worthwhile, then boys can choose to have the procedure once they are adults, many of the protesters said. Harry Guiremand says he views his parents as “incompetent” for having him circumcised as a baby.
“Why didn’t anyone protect me?” he asked. Guiremand, who is from Hawaii, is on the road protesting the issue so future generations of boys are not subjected to what he sees as a brutal procedure. “It’s up to me, it’s up to us, to protect them.”
The fake-blood-stained get-ups help bring eyes to the issue, Guiremand added. “It catches peoples’ attention. They can’t look away.”
Most of the eight or so protesters were from outside Vermont. The exceptions were Amanda Fortier of Barre Town and Erin Langevin of Monkton, who came with their uncircumcised 3-year-old sons. The tots played with toy trucks on the ground as their moms waved signs.
Circumcision is wrong on many levels, including the baby’s lack of choice in the decision, Langevin said. “You’re forever changing their bodies, and they had no say in it.”
An earlier version of this article in one section incorrectly stated Franny Max’s name.
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Ask yourself: Is there a number of “studies” or “benefits” that would convince you that female circumcision is acceptable? Even recommendable? Here’s the deal, not even the AAP not CDC recommend infant circumcision. They all agree that the “benefits” are not great enough. Read the fine print. Basically the US and Israel are the only countries where infant circumcision is carried out routinely. There’s a reason why. Thanks to advancing technology, circumcision is easy for adults. (See PrePex) Let adult men make that choice. Forcing it on children is abuse.
Actually, Other medical organizations around the world do NOT support infant circumcision. Foreskin is healthy, beneficial tissue, with thousands of nerve endings. The USA is one of the only countries that removes this routinely on infant babies. I had to watch one while in nursing school and it was horrific! The baby screamed in agony. I knew then and there that I’d NEVER cut any sons of mine. Now I have a 3 year old son, perfect and WHOLE! http://www.yourwholebaby.org
Body modifications done on anyone, for no medical reason, without their consent, is wrong.
Great article, agree with the protesters. It’s a barbaric cultural ritual that needs to die out. There are no benefits worth the risks of surgery on your healthy newborn. It’s the only time we allow parents to choose to remove healthy tissue from someone else’s body, and it’s abhorrent.
What is not mentioned in this article is the deaths from circumcision. Approx. 100 baby boys die each year as a direct result of this COSMETIC surgery. Leave your baby’s penis alone. It’s fine just the way nature intended.
The AAP and CDC claims of HIV/STD prevention are spurious and ridiculous on the face of it! Infant surgery to protect against adult sexually transmitted diseases? Really?! The cutters have blood on their hands, babies’ blood. It’s an atrocity!
No other country besides Israel cuts baby boys. This insanity needs to stop.
Ethically, just like slavery, forced male and female genital mutilation are the same – a violation of the victim’s Human Right to a whole body. Parents should protect their baby from genital mutilation by criminal medical profiteers. Babies are not born in need of partial amputation of their most sensitive organ.
Il existe suffisamment de témoignages et d’études scientifiques qui montrent que la circoncision non consentie est source de souffrances pour nombre d’hommes, à court comme à long terme :
http://www.droitaucorps.com/temoignages-circoncision
http://www.droitaucorps.com/consequences-circoncision
il est temps d’ouvrir un débat public sur les conditions du consentement à la circoncision.
Foreskin is what contains all the pleasure. Fact.
I am amazed that this story has generated this many comments.
“My penis is just fine”. So said the girl about her cut clitoris, because in her culture “that is normal”.
Believe what you want. Circumcision or not. However, to frame it as mutilation is a hyperbole. The penis is just fine after being circumcised. I can assure you it is not rendered seriously damaged or less functional, as is the definition of mutilation, because of circumcision. It’s no more mutilation than piercing one’s ears and less so than those giant earlobe spacers I’ve seen.
Furthermore, I have witnessed circumcisions where the baby actually slept through the process.
I agree that it seems strange that the practice takes place but it does. It’s six of one, half dozen the other in terms of positives/negatives on either side of the fence. This self-righteousness of framing those that circumcise as monsters is preposterous.
These people are nothing more than lunatics. They use lies and propaganda to shame circumcised men and try to bully parents. Fortunately, most educated people take advice from doctors and scientists, as opposed to strangers wearing period pants. Parents in every country are free to weigh the pros and cons of circumcision and make the best choice for their families. The intactiquacks will never change that.
It’s not just the infant boy you are brutally flaying the foreskin off of, most of the time with NO effective anesthetic, it is your future adult son. Would you tie down and force your 40 year old son to be mutilated and deprived of his most sensitive and sensual part of his “privates” without his consent? I think not.The reason we call them “privates” is that they are HIS and no one else’s. You have no right to modify what nature has designed better than any knife could do. This barbaric practise started with one thing in mind, damage the normal sex organ in order to control the person and render it less sensitive. Do your homework. Most expecting parents spend more time researching car seats than they do the impact of this injustice on their son’s future sex lives and his partners’. Ask any European women, where “circumcision” is largely inexistent, if they want their husband’s penis to be bereft of its foreskin? They would laugh at you and think you were insane. DO NO HARM! It’s HIS penis.
Mark Lade: cutting healthy parts off of babies is preposterous.
Also, if they were sleeping through having their foreskin ripped from their glans, crushed, and sliced off, they were either in neurogenic shock, or they have a serious problem. Healthy babies don’t sleep through pain. I have not seen any videos where an infant who was being cut was sleeping through it. All of them are shrieking in pain, some to the point that they are vomiting.
Intactiloons have to use hyperbole and exaggeration to make their point because the science simply does not back them up. “Crushing” and “mutilation” and “flaying” are words designed to elicit an emotional response. We could apply that logic to any surgery… we could say when a woman has a c-section they “rip open her stomach” and “gouge the baby out with a knife!” But that’s silly and we all know it. Intactiloons also like to pretend like they’re physicians and throw around words like “neurogenic shock” and their favorite term “cognitive dissonance.” It’s quite entertaining. Shaming circumcised men and harassing parents and doctors is not entertaining, however. These Menstrual Men and Their Butthurt Friends are a small fringe cult. They seem to be mentally ill and incapable of forming healthy sexual relationships and they use circumcision as a general scapegoat for their problems in life. There’s nothing more to it.
Read what you wrote, Lola, and seriously tell me it does not sound over the top and ridiculous. Nothing is being ripped or crushed. Sliced, even though you intend it to be a charged word, is more accurate to what occurs. Do you even know what neurogenic shock is or is that one of the charged buzz words used in the pamphlet you read? I’m not sure what the agenda of the videos you watched is. I do know that I studied circumcision and part of the research I did found me attending the procedure live about a dozen times. A sizable portion of those babies slept through the process because they were numbed. I’ll admit it did not look like a pleasant process and I do not fault anyone for not wanting to have it done. It is a respectable choice. I do, however, find fault in lunatic behavior and the type of verbal painting and shaming you are trying to do in convincing others they are less because you believe a certain way.
Circumcision is medically unethical. There is no logic to cutting and removing a permanent body part that was put there by God/nature. The foreskin’s rich number of nerves and its rolling, gliding function in sex cannot be discounted. Defenders of circumcision are ill-informed, protecting an industry, conflicted that they were circumcised and cannot admit they are damaged. The fact that most of the world’s males are intact and doing just fine underscore that the foreskin is an integral part of the male sexual system. The pro-cutters can try to try to defend the insanity of circumcision, but it always, always comes down to the right of the individual to have sovereignty over his own body. Men resent that they were circumcised. Those that don’t are oblivious like a boy who doesn’t know his parents have spent his college fund. He doesn’t know he is missing anything. Wise up you people think circumcision is OK.
Lots of women worried about penises. I don’t see them protesting outside synagogues, though, where teens are pushed to circumcision.
‘Circumcision is wrong on many levels, including the baby’s lack of choice in the decision, Langevin said. “You’re forever changing their bodies, and they had no say in it.”‘
So, I am assuming that these protestors are also opposed to abortion, which is also done with the baby’s lack of choice and does kill them. Just saying.
It was intactivosts like these who helped me see that circumcision isn’t “just something they do” and what it really is, an outdated barbaric procedure kept alive by social stigmas and tradition and people inability to even consider that they made a mistake, or that their own body could be better had it been left intact.
I love all the outrage by women! Let me tell you from personal experience, I have no memory of any pain, its easy to clean, and cute. Keep your laws off my body (and my kid’s body).
Pro or Con, there is no reason you need to have signs written out with the word Penis on it and fake blood, so all our kids or grandkids see this . this is a teaching issue, go to the schools and colleges to see if you can protest or do classes on the pro and cons. but get the hell off the public street corners….. I do still think we hae laws on the books to say what you can and can’t do in public. The anti abortion group can’t protest in peace on the sidewalk but you can do this. Go figure . and I do wish you luck in your crusade if it is all the truths. but take it inside.
I can’t believe some people are actually attempting to justify cutting part of a baby’s penis off.
In the tone of this article, I read an author who either chose to circumcise her son(s) or, at the very least, planned to if she ever had a son. Not hard to figure out people’s past choices based on the biases they exhibit involving this issue.
Well I say that most people view female circumcision/female genital mutilation as barbaric. So how does male circumcision not qualify also? These body parts whether male or female serve a purpose and a function. I prefer to not lose parts of my body. I would advocate for no circumcision on either sex. Teach proper hygiene and birth/disease control and the boys will be just fine.
All the issues in the world, and state for that matter and we are concerned with the foreskin? ITS A PERSONAL CHOICE….so get the hell out of everyone else’s life folks.
I was called anti-semitic for not supporting circumcision…a guy told me that european men chose uncircumcision because they wanted to spite jews or secretly support the holocaust.. i am uncircumcised becaue my family thought it was unecessary for me… i like my penis but i thought girls hated foreskins so i felt like a freak when i was 18…i hope i am not antisemitic
Mutilating. “To injure, disfigure, or make imperfect by removing or irreparably damaging parts. To deprive (a person or animal) of a limb or other essential part.”
Crushing: (From a site explaining the different types of circumcisions, this is from the Plastibell method) “A ligature is tied firmly around the foreskin, CRUSHING the skin against the groove in the Plastibell. Then the excess skin protruding beyond the ring is trimmed off. Finally, the handle is broken off at the end of the procedure.”
This is the site.
http://www.circinfo.net/the_procedure_itself.html
Flaying: to strip off the skin or outer covering of.
Isn’t that exactly what Circumcision does?
I realize those words elicit emotions, but they are not in fact emotive. They are factual words that correctly describe the procedure. If that bothers anyone, it is on them. Why? Does it feel wrong to use those words and infant together? If so that tells you something.
For the comment about c-sections … a surgery to help one or both parties live is not comparable to a forced cosmetic one. The only comparable surgery is female genital mutilation, period.
This shit is from the Top 10 of “Who gives a shit?”
And aborting children is ok. A short dick or a dead dick?
My wife, Erin Langevin (full disclosure, we’re getting divorced), is quoted in this article. I am not okay with the fact that she brought him to a rally like this where he was exposed to men with bloody crotches, a doll with surgical instruments in its penis, and that Max held signs saying “his body, his choice” with blood spatter on it. Ironic, as a 3 year old he didn’t choose to be there – in fact, he was supposed to be in preschool.
His body, his choice. Period. Every man has the right to intact genitals. Our nation has been misled for long enough. End routine infant circumcision now!!
Elephant in the hospital.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ceht-3xu84I
http://www.msn.com/en-us/health/pregnancyparenting/infant-circumcision-more-painful-than-we-thought/ar-BBk9kuc
#Godmadehimperfect
#knowbetterdobetter
#humanrights4babyboys
#hisbodyhischoice
#keephimwhole
#breakthecycleofabuse
I’m surprised that there is so little discussion of the fact that the foreskins are sold by hospitals to various companies that use them to produce a variety of highly profitable products.
In addition, doctors and hospitals charge a fair bit of money to perform this procedure.
Finally, removing part of an organ in the hopes that it will reduce the spread of HIV strikes me as another example of applying public health policy to the individual body. There may be some benefit in a reduction in the spread of HIV from foreskin removal if you look at a large enough group. But for the individual, the best bet remains protected sex or careful monogamy. I’d think any man who indulged in unprotected sex because he had been “cut” was out of his mind and certainly wouldn’t look at him as a potential bed partner!
“I’m surprised that there is so little discussion of the fact that the foreskins are sold by hospitals to various companies that use them to produce a variety of highly profitable products.”
Probably because that fact, even if true, has absolutely, positively nothing to do with whether circumcision is medically advisable.
Profit has an effect on medical recommendations. Are hospitals and doctors more likely to promote a procedure if it is profitable? Sorry, but yes.
Read David Healy in Pharmageddon on how guidelines for drugs are manipulated. As I pointed out in my previous comment, mass circumcision in the hopes that it might reduce the spread of HIV is a very weird strategy. Especially in the US, where people do have access to protection and every even slightly sensible person uses such protection.
No individual obstetrician is motivated by the vast, vague “medical community” conspiracy that you seem desperately convinced of. She or he is thinking about what’s best for the health of the baby in that moment.