Georganne Chapin (MPhil, JD) discusses her first awareness of male circumcision and the events leading to her becoming Executive Director of Intact America.
Chapin also talks about the curious policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics:
Ritual Genital Cutting of Female Minors
published on 2010 April 26 (the AAP has since rescinded that statement).
Intact America is a new organization that was established “to change the way the [U.S.] thinks about male circumcision”. There was a press conference on 2009 June 22, about which more can be read in this official press release.
Unfortunately, it is often the case that people cast the issue of male and female genital cutting as 2 completely separate and mutually exclusive topics—and worse, opponents of male genital cutting are often derided as “misogynists” for not spending their efforts fighting a real injustice like female genital cutting.
The truth of the matter is that both female genital cutting and male genital cutting are genital cutting, and when this act is performed on non-consenting children—male or female—it is child abuse.
In a moving account of her own story, Soraya Miré—who was herself a victim of this abuse as a child—reaffirms the mutually inclusive nature of the fight against all forms of genital cutting, which she specifically calls genital mutilation regardless of gender.
