Brian Levitt: My body was used in some Jewish ritual

Brian Levitt is a Jewish intactivist living in San Francisco. He describes his own story of the stages of awakening consciousness.

Jacqueline Maire: A foreign nurse trying to make sense of Genital Mutilation

Jacqueline Maire, a retired nurse from France and British Columbia, levels an emotionally charged and indeed angry appraisal at her fellow female colleagues.

Some have commented that her remarks are overly abrasive if not misdirected—and perhaps they are—but they also give voice to the way that those who live outside of cutting cultures view circumcision: Genital mutilation that is at best bizarre and at worst cruel.

[19] The Cut Podcast: The Psychological Consequences of Circumcision

Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon conversed with Dr. Ronald Goldman, a psychologist and published Intactivist, about the psychological consequences surrounding the practice of circumcision. Here is the recording.

Transcript
(slightly modified)

Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon

From the White Letter Productions studios in Los Angeles, California, I'm [Eliyahu] Ungar-Sargon, and this is The Cut Podcast.

Welcome to another special edition of The Cut Podcast; I'm very happy to be sitting here with Ronald Goldman, and we're going to be having a conversation today about some of the psychological aspects of infant male circumcision.

This is a field [into which] I've been a little wary to wade; I think when I talk to people who don't necessarily agree with my position on this subject, I find it much easier to talk about things like Meissner's corpuscles—the hard scientific stuff [to which] I can just sort of point, [and for which] we have hard data; my impressions—and I would love to get your reaction and your opinion about this—is that when it comes to the psychological data, just by virtue of where we are in our understanding of the human brain and the human mind, it's a little trickier to get hard data on these questions. Is that right? or is this a misperception [that I have]?

Ronald Goldman

Well, I agree with you; part of the problem is there's a resistance to doing these kinds of [study]. Most of the researchers who do the studies on circumcision are looking for benefits, not potential harm. They happen to be medical doctors for the most part, so they're starting with what they're familiar with, which is the physical body. Studying behavior is a lot more complicated. You can't so much put it in a box and put it under a microscope [to examine] it that way. So, human behavior requires a different kind of research, and we haven't had the will to do that for the most part.

David Wilton: Opportunists exploit African suffering

David Wilton has participated in intactivist events in the U.S. and abroad. Through his Male Circumcision and HIV blog and twitter account, David acts as a major conduit of information to help keep intactivists organized and knowledgeable.