Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting.
 

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Experience Project: New Member And My Story....
A mother describes her experience with her intact son. Between the time of her son's birth and his schedule circumcision, she learned about the harms of male infant circumcision. The clincher was visiting her doctor and hearing the screams of a baby boy being circumcised. No way was she going to subject her healthy boy to circumcision surgery.

Beyond the Bris: How "Cut" Saved My Son's Foreskin: A Movie Review
The film Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision saved the author's little boy’s foreskin from herself and her Jewish religion and culture. She admires Cut because it shows actual circumcisions and parents should be made to view how it is done.

Barefoot Betsy’s Thoughts: The Taboo Topic
A blog about circumcision where the blogger goes to great lengths saying that she is not judging anyone. He entreats others to research the issue before deciding to circumcise their son. She warns parents that they should be able to answer their son when he asks, "Why did you circumcise me?"
 

Monday, May 23, 2011

Ask Dan & Jennifer: Can A Man Restore His Foreskin After Circumcision?
A good article about the benefits of having a foreskin. There is a brief discussion about foreskin restoration and its benefits. "Men who have had successful prepuce restorations report that not only are sex and masturbation better, but they also feel emotionally satisfied that they now have their foreskin back after having it taken from them without their consent as babies. It can give a man a sense of feeling like he’s gotten back something he’s lost. Female partners of men who have had this done are also pleased with the results, because sex feels better for them too."

The Active Intactivist - The WHOLE Network: An Open Letter to Mohel Michael Henesch
A young man writes a letter to the mohel that circumcised him. He writes about how the circumcision changed him in a way he does not like. He constantly feels discomfort from his penis rubbing against his undergarments. His glans is no longer supple, sensitive mucosal tissue. Instead, his glans is dry, calloused, and losing sensitivity. He wants the mohel to know that he does not like his circumcision and wishes that he had been left whole.

The Volokh Conspiracy: Proposed San Francisco Circumcision Ban (with No Discussion of Religious Freedom in This Post)
An analysis of the law with respect to parental rights and a ban on male infant circumcision. The author concludes that the outcome is uncertain. One failing of the article is it does not consider Prince v. Massachusetts, a US Supreme Court case that addressed parental rights and limits on the parents' right to practice religion with respect to their children. Unfortunately, the article is not that scholarly, from a legal viewpoint. The author wanders and does not reach a conclusion.

The Volokh Conspiracy: Proposed San Francisco Circumcision Ban, and Religious Freedom
The second half of a legal analysis of the proposed San Francisco infant circumcision ban. This half of the analysis addresses the constitutionality of the proposed male infant circumcision ban in San Francisco, California, with respect to religious freedom. The author makes no conclusion regarding a circumcision ban. This is typical for lawyers. Nothing is black and white, particularly constitutional law. One failing of the article is it does not consider Prince v. Massachusetts, a Supreme Court case that addressed parental rights and limits on the parents' right to practice religion with respect to their children.

Saving Babies: Female Genital Mutilation: Not so different
A discussion of the Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) act that was passed in 1996 in the United States. Girls are protected from genital cutting by law. Boys are not protected from genital cutting.

Saving Babies: Freedom from Religion
No one is born Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. Religion is a personal choice made by the person based on his beliefs. Religion cannot be forced on another. Unfortunately, a Brit Milah is a forced male infant circumcision and is a religious rite for the benefit of the parents, not the child. It forces the parents' religion upon the boy by cutting off part of the boy's body, a part that most males value highly.

Male Circumcision and HIV: Proposed San Francisco circumcision ban gets the Taiwanese animation treatment
A Chinese animation on circumcision. The video tells a story about the proposed infant circumcision ban in San Francisco. It starts out with a humorous introduction. Then it switches to a dubbed animation.

Joseph4GI: Circumcision in Africa: It ain't workin'...
The promotion of circumcision is a disservice to the fight against HIV. AFter years of promoting the circumcision campaign, information is now becoming available that male circumcision is ineffective against HIV. Many in Africa are thinking that male circumcision is a shortcut and they do not need to wear a condom. This thinking is a deadly shortcut that is beginning to show up as an increase in the HIV rate.
 

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Saving Babies: Fourteen Minutes of Myth Busting
A short blog featuring the YouTube video of The Doctors: Daytime Talk Show Disaster.

Santa Monica Daily Press: Potential ballot measure seeks to ban circumcisions in Santa Monica
A news report about the effort to ban infant circumcision in Santa Monica, California. "We're not trying to stop people from getting circumcised if they want to," said Matthew Hess, president of MGMbill.org. "We just want to protect children from getting it forced on them." "The foreskin is there for a reason. It has functions," Hess said. "If you cut that off, you're losing that function and it's going to be a different experience."

Intactivists: Keratinization and Circumcision Status (NSFW)
An illustration of an intact penis showing the shiny glans. The post also shows a circumcised penis with a keratinized penis. The difference between the two penises is striking. Before I started restoring my foreskin, my glans penis was keratinized like the second picture. It was dry, rough, and skin colored. Now, after restoring my foreskin and having my glans protected by my restored foreskin, my glans is shiny and purple-colored like the picture.

Male Circumcision and HIV: THE DAILY BEAST: Adam Winkler bizarrely insults the unemployed and San Francisco's Castro neighborhood in his attack on genital integrity
"Alleged constitutional scholar Adam Winkler writes a genuinely clueless column today in The Daily Beast attacking the San Francisco proposed circumcision ban, both insulting the unemployed and San Francisco's Castro neighborhood in doing so." "A genuine constitutional scholar would acknowledge the competing interests and argue his points transparently, but not Winkler."
 

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Greater Than Lapsed (Wordpress): Circumcision, Religion, Law, and My Road To Being Very Angry
Greater Than Lapsed (Tumblr): Circumcision, Religion, Law, and My Road To Being Very Angry
A blogger provides a list of circumcision related posts she recently made on her Tumblr blog. She makes the point in her Tumblr posts that there are no real "health benefits" to circumcision. The major health benefits commonly touted are related to sexual activity. Because babies do not have sex, the circumcision decision should be deferred until the male is old enough to be sexually active. Then he can decide for himself.

Greater Than Lapsed (Tumblr): Snipped a bunch of previous commentary because it’s getting long
Thoughtful commentary about parental rights versus individual rights. Infant circumcision removes the individual's right to an intact body. It violates the person's bodily autonomy by the removal of a portion of his sex organ.

Alternative Mummy: 10 Reasons You Should Rethink Infant Circumcision
There are many reasons not to cut off part of a baby boy's penis. This article lists 10 of those reasons. They range from bodily autonomy (the penis owner is not consenting to having part of his favorite toy cut off) to infant circumcision is harmful to both the baby (it hurts and takes a while to heal) and the man he grows up to be (yes, sexual pleasure is adversely impacted from removing erogenous tissue from the penis).

Male Circumcision and HIV: FOX NEWS HOUSTON: Debate on Circumcision
A Houston, Texas, attorney defends the San Francisco, California, proposed ban on infant circumcision. He battles a doctor who seems to be into circumcision for the money, rather than addressing the ethical, moral, and practical issues of circumcising baby boys without consent or need.

Joseph4GI: Diane Cole: Circumcision FAIL
A critique of a recent blog where the woman attributes her husband's circumcision as the reason she did not catch HIV from him. There is one study that found that female partners of HIV infected men were more likely to be infected with HIV if the man was circumcised.

World Moms Blog: The Circumcision Decision
In the USA, circumcision is a big deal. It is a big financial deal for the hospitals performing the procedure, it is a big deliberated deal for the parents of a newborn male and a big traumatizing deal for the baby going under the cut. The author notes that her intact son acts differently than many of her friends circumcised sons. She is happy that she left her sons whole and intact.
 

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Liberal Democrat Voice: Opinion: Why do we allow new-born babies to be circumcised?
The author very ably defends the male infant circumcision ban proposed in San Francisco, California. Religious freedoms are important and need legal protection, but they are no more important than any other kind of personal freedom. We have accepted, as a society, that the liberty of children must be restricted in certain areas. One law on body modification states that children under the age of 16 cannot legally consent to a genital piercing (or for girls, a nipple piercing), and any such piercing would be considered indecent assault. This is not the law for any other body part – we have set a legal precedent for genital modification. Why, then, do we allow new-born male babies to be circumcised on the wishes of their parents?

Forbes: Circumcision: You Can’t Have It Both Ways
The author is surprised that there are men who do not like that they are circumcised. He does some digging and finds an unpublished Yiddish play. Der Yiddische Tiresias (“The Jewish Tiresias”) is a play by Peretz Pntschik that was first presented at the Brownsville (Brooklyn) Roumanian Art Theatre in 1926 and periodically revived. In the play, a Jewish man is transformed to his original, intact condition so that he can woo back his wife. He wins her back, but before he resumes relations with his wife, he implores to be returned to his circumcised state. The man says he does not want to know what it feels like to have sex with a foreskin.
 

Friday, May 27, 2011

TPM LiveWire: Circumcision Opponent, Rabbi Face Off Over Circumcision Ban (VIDEO)
Article with a video of a CNN interview of Lloyd Schofield and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Lloyd Schofield is the man behind the proposed San Francisco circumcision ban. Sadly, the Rabbi opens with an attack on San Francisco, rather than addressing the issue raised by Lloyd, that cutting the foreskin off is a human rights violation.

Huliq: Laws banning circumcision sought in two California cities
Residents in both San Francisco and Santa Monica are seeking to do away with the archaic and painful custom of altering a male baby’s penis, otherwise known as male circumcision. They seek to delay circumcision until the boy is old enough to choose for himself, which is the case for female circumcision, which is banned at both the federal and state level. While most doctors have traditionally said “no,” the procedure is not painful for the baby, studies suggest that the circumcision is painful. Upon being circumcised, “the baby began to gasp and choke, breathless from his shrill continuous screams,” is a description of one baby going through this procedure from the Circumcision Resource Center.

BioEdge - Bioethics News: San Francisco moves to ban circumcision
Circumcision arrived in America mainly as a Victorian British fad – which originally purported to aim at discouraging masturbation. Circumcision spread during the 20th century, becoming almost universal by the 1960s and decreasing in recent years. Many Jews signed the petition to ban infant circumcision. Some Jews carry out an alternative ceremony known as “brit shalom” – the “covenant of peace” – which does not involve cutting off part of the baby boy's penis.
 

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Chicago Tribune: 10 things you might not know about Chicago authors
Ray Bradbury says he remembers being born. The beloved author of "The Martian Chronicles" and "Fahrenheit 451" admits it sounds preposterous, but the Waukegan native says he recalls emerging from the womb, the taste of his mother's breast milk and the pain of being circumcised.

Hollywood Today: Circumcision Ban by Law: Christian (?) Boyz with the Hoods v. Jewish in Modern Day San Francisco
Another article about the proposed San Francisco male infant circumcision ban. The best part of the article are the comments, which are written by some who did more research than the article's author. Some good points include the "research (by a Jewish doctor, Bleustein) has found that circumcised men reach sexual impotency a full 7 years before genitally intact men. Also, Phizer Pharma, the manufacturer of Viagra reported that 54% of it’s world wide production is consumed by (circumcised) American men, the world’s leading per capita consumer of Viagra type products is Malaysia (Muslim and circumcised) and the world’s leading counterfieter of Viagra is Israel (Jewish and circumcised)."

Calgary Herald: Storm's choice
"Society loves to indoctrinate our children and mislead. . . . Society loves to sexually abuse children with genital religious mutilation." "It seems reasonable to conclude if that procedure is stopped in California, it will also be stopped around the world. It is bloody well time! It is so sexist a procedure. No Canadian or American woman would undergo circumcision herself, yet, they allow their sons to be mutilated. Is this indoctrination or a procedure for medical financial gain? At times, it seems the whole world is obsessed with removing foreskins from innocent babes."

Joseph4GI: Where Circumcision Doesn't Prevent HIV
Contrary to what many circumcision advocates want to the world to believe, there are many countries in which the HIV infection rate is higher among circumcised men than uncircumcised. This article lists those countries with the supporting sources. The evidence is clear that male circumcision is ineffective in reducing the HIV rates.

Gloria Lemay Birth Blog: Circumcision: dirty little secrets exposed
A list of circumcision tragedies. The list identifies botched circumcisions with a terrible outcome. The worst possible outcome for an infant is death by circumcision. Gloria Lemay compiles an extensive list of circumcision deaths. The list is incomplete because many circumcision related deaths show the cause of death as hemorrhage or bleeding or infection. But if not for the circumcision, the child would have not suffered from those causes of death. Other botched circumcisions leave the child alive, but with a damaged penis. Yet another type of circumcision tragedy listed are those done by parents obsessed with circumcising their child. A recent case is told of a mother circumcising her 3-month old son with a box cutter knife.