[40] The Cut Podcast: Cutting Culture: Circumcision, An Overview

Travis Wisdom, a student of Women's Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, organized a daylong conference on male circumcision and the issues surrounding identity and body ownership.

The first speaker of the day was Marilyn Milos of NOCIRC, who gave an overview of the history of circumcision and its effects on the sexual experiences and psychology of men, women, and society at large. Here is the recording, and a transcript follows.

Zenas Baer: the Medical System and the Judiciary ignore the illegality of Circumcision

Zenas Baer (J.D.) discusses the events that led him to study the legal issues surrounding the circumcision of children.

Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon: Culture is Changing

Independent filmmaker Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon discusses the experiences that informed his film:

Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision

Circumcision: The Big Transparent Lie

Harry Guiremand speaks candidly of his personal discoveries about circumcision and his efforts to bring evidence of its harm to the discussion.

Georgeanne Chapin: The beginning of Intact America and the common sense of Intactivism

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published on 2010 April 26 (the AAP has since rescinded that statement).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 has first official Press Conference

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.