How did you become an intactivist?

[loving-my-babies]

How did you become an intactivist?

Did you ever think you'd be so passionate talking about penises?

I *never* in my wildest dreams thought my face would get so red and I'd start sweating everytime I hear someone talk positively about circumcision. ever. BUT then again, I never thought people did this by choice, just so it would be cleaner

What made you an intactivist, and why?

[mattemma04]

I became an intactavist to protect my son from religious circumcision.

The more I learned about what circ did to boys and girls the more I realized I need to speak out about it,and educate people on why normal/intact is the way BOTH SEXES needed to be.

Being vocal about in at home and in the community helps not only to protect my son,but also gets people thinking/talking about the issue instead of keeping it a procedure that just happens behind closed doors and is hush-hush(just done and never spoken about).

[calngavinsmom]

How did I become an intactivist? Circumcision PI$$ED me off!!!: Thats how.

I really didn't know what was involved with the whole thing but once I learned about the pain, the trauma, the loss, and the absolute non-necessity of it, boy, it really burned my butt! How dare society accept such a horrendous act towards an innocent babe?

Disgusting.

Take care,
Tara

[USAmma]

When I was still working pre-kids, a man at my workplace had his own little movement going on. Anytime a woman at work was pg he'd go and have a small talk with them about circumcision. He was circed and felt violated by it. He said he always wondered what sex would be like intact, that he heard it was like color vs. black and white. He felt that his parents should have asked him because it was his personal body part, and he felt violated that someone handled his penis and did that to him when he was vulnerable and helpless. I'm not sure how many, if any, women didn't circ because of him but I thought it was great that he was speaking out.

My dh is intact and said the thought of anyone cutting a baby like that gave him the jitters. Dh is Hindu and very few Hindus circ their babies. We are done having kids but, if we had had a son he would have been left alone.

Darshani

[darsmama]

I found the whole procedure disgusting, violating, and just nuts.
I learned from my DH that the foreskin has feeling, before I'd never met anyone intact so I never even knew that.

If it has feeling, and it isn't always 'infected' and 'unclean' then why would you think of cutting it off?

The problem is, most of the people I know circed because it made the penis "look better" :Puke

I haven't convinced anyone, to date NOT to circ.

[feebeeglee]

I'd say it was having a son that finally kicked me from silent to very vocal. Before that I didn't say much unless the subject came around in a conversation. Now anything even a little baby-related and I'm driving the conversation around to how routine infant circumcision is unnecessary.

I've convinced at least two people not to circ, both of them with circumcised sons. That I know of. I may have convinced a lot more. I like to think I have anyway! It was just the thought that I might not 'have to' circumcise my sons that got me to learn about it and realize how completely unnecessary (and wrong) it is.

The most difficult thing for me is trying to remember that most circumcising parents believe they are doing the best they can for their children. I have a hard time keeping my cool and remaining compassionate. I used to be more likely to call it 'mutilation' right off the bat, now I tend to be a bit less volatile. I have had people just slam shut! their minds with too harsh of a tone and it doesn't benefit their kids at all if I'm such an ass that they stop listening.

One of my friends recently was given advice to look at a potentially high-conflict situation as if both sides were at a blackboard on which was written the problem, and they were both trying to solve the problem. In the case of circumcision, I think the blackboard should read 'How can we best care for and respect children?' not 'How can I keep you from cutting your children?'

So anyway, I try to present circumcision as if it is an absurdity so that people will see that it is. Sometimes I want to scream, but I keep trying!

[Doodlebugsmom]

I became an intactivist while doing research for a paper about female circ. I came across some info about male circ and I just knew that if I had a baby boy, I couldn't do that to him. I told dh all about it and he agreed. Too bad all people aren't so easily convinced! Anyway, I too get all sweaty and red if anyone makes pro-circ comments. Even online. It is truly something that makes me have a strong negative physical reaction. I look at my perfect baby boy and wonder how in the world someone can hurt a beautiful, perfect little human being like that. He's such a sweet, loving little baby and I know if I had gotten him circed it would have changed his being.

[A&A]

Having a son: that was enough to be anti-circ.

Finding MDC: that is when I became a true intactivist!!

[zaftigmama]

I always thought circ. was fine. It's part of our religion (we're Jewish) and I always assumed it would be something I would do if I ever had a son. I never thought to question it, and indeed thought it was better, cleaner, etc.,.

I had a daughter, and thank goodness I found MDC. Most of my friends haven't circ'ed their sons, and I started actually thinking about it from both sides. I ordered the Circumcision reprint when I found out I was having a boy. I talked to my Dh about it and we decided not to. It wasn't easy, we had many screaming fights about it, but it was finally agreed on.

What actually turned me into an intactivist was realizing 1. how close my son came to being mutilated, 2. what a disgusting and barbaric procedure it is, 3. how many people assume (like I had) that it's fine, no big deal, the right thing to do, etc.,. My eyes had been opened and I felt the need to start opening other people's eyes as well.

Thank goodness for Mothering Magazine and all their anti-circ articles. I love Paul Fleiss.

[loving-my-babies]

I am wondering about Frank... I am just being nosey here, but I wonder how you became an intactivist, Frank!

[Frankly Speaking]

I guess I've been an intactivist my entire life.

When I was about 7 years old, I saw one of my friends who was intact and instantly knew there was something wrong with me, not him. I finally learned what had happened when I was about 12 or 13 and was very upset about it. However, back then, it was just about impossible to learn anything about it much less the truth. About 4 years ago, I was beginning to see the initial stages of impotency and it was bothering me.

At about the same time, I first got internet access and I am a hobbiest woodworker. I went to the internet searching for information on "Furniture restoration" and somewhere in the thousands of returns from the search, I saw "foreskin restoration" and that was the begining of the active part of my intactivism. I read for hours a day for months and months. At some point, I realized that this was still going on thousands of times a day and that I could be part of the beginning of the end and could save other men from this disfigurement. As they say, the rest is history.

I have restored and my sex life has come back like gangbusters! That convinced me that I had a lot of work to do in this area. No man should suffer that for absolutely no reason!




Frank

[RosieTook]

I was against circ after meeting dh...I started researching circ (I had always thought I would... ) but dh is intact and told me before we were even married that he wouldn't let his son be circed...

I became and intactivist in a split second...when I first watched a circ video and heard the animal wail of the boy being mutilated...I was holding my daughter at the time and I sobbed for 15 minutes and held her so tight she squeeked...there on in I cannot fathom the reasons...and I think every pg woman should watch that video...I am teary now just thinking about it!

[TigerTail]

as soon as i'd heard of it (childhood) it struck me as 'off', cruel & wrong; then in teenage experimentation (the '70s, sigh) found out personally how much nicer it was when a man had all his working parts (& that wasn't even intercourse. so much for the 'cleaner' argument. )

just last night it struck me; reading anna sewell's 'black beauty' as a small child (a classic; do kids nowadays even read it?) as a child, it seemed obvious that the tail-docking & ear-clipping of dogs in the book was an unnatural obscenity (an opinion shared by the author), and it didn't take much for me to connect the dots. i'd forgotten all about that. a good book for intactivists to promote!

suse

[Mommiska]

Having a son is what did it for me. My dh is intact, and I live in the UK (although I'm American), so it was never an issue - we would never have circed.

But once I had my son in my arms, and a good friend asked me if we'd circ'ed him. Well - the violence of my reaction made me start hanging out on this forum and sending out information to friends who are expecting (the friend who originally asked got some info, as she was also pregnant at the time, and her son is intact! ).

I just cannot fathom handing over my child to let someone amputate a healthy body part. It makes me want to cry to think of any baby being put through that, so I do what I can to inform parents about what circumcision is...most people really don't know (although some still circ, even when they do know )

[Benji'sMom]

Somehow, I don't remember exactly, I saw a pic of a screeming baby with a blody penis on the internet. I couldn't believe it! That was all it took. I did more research, but really my mind was made up.

[calngavinsmom]

Originally Posted by loving-my-babies

I *never* in my wildest dreams thought my face would get so red and I'd start sweating everytime I hear someone talk positively about circumcision. ever.

I forgot to thank-you for including this description in your post of your reaction to postive circ talk. I thought I was the only one who reacted this way. I love this place, you all make me feel just a little bit less nuts (not too much though, that would be boring!)

Take care,
Tara

[kxsiven]

As typical Scandinavian I didn't know that something that horrible existed. And I knew that most jews/muslims here do not circ. Then 2 things happened. First, I used to work with international projects in aid organisation. I met older jewish man who was in the project and we ended up talking about children's rights. Long story short - I found out he was circumcised according to his religion and it had gone wrong. He had never been able to have normal sexlife due to that(he and his wife had children..done with other methods). Naturally his children were intact and he was very much against circumcision, religious or not.

The second thing that happened was me moving to USA. My (American)spouse showed me family pictures and there was an old picture of cousins, aged 3-5, in bathtub. Both circumcised. It was the first time ever I saw a circumcised penis. And on a child. To see that exposed glans made me sick, I almost threw up.It looked so horrible + for me, from my cultural background, exposed glans means aroused adult penis so my brain went totally crazy.

Those two things together made me realise that it is indeed a human rights issue and cruely done to innocent babies. The medical 'excuse' has no validation to me since I come from intact culture and know the truth about so called medical benefits.

[Acksiom]

Over the years, thanks to my interest in men's issues, I kept seeing various objections to routine and ritual male genital mutilation from various authors. However, it didn't stick with me for several reasons --

1, none of these sources ever really got down into the details about why it was so wrong and harmful;

2, I was more interested in other men's issues that were more immediately and personally obvious to me (domestic violence and false accusation in particular, having been through both myself), and;

3, I shared, without realizing it, much of the general culturally programmed attitude of just reactively trivializing and then ignoring the problem.

However, in mid-1995 my intact father suffered a massive stroke and I came home from NYC to take care of him. While he was recovering from that and from the cranial surgeries done to relieve the hematoma, a couple of the doctors on his team suggested that we have him prepucectomized. But when I started asking them why and how it would benefit him, they stopped giving me straight answers.

So, I put a hold on that decision, and when I had some free time, I went to the library and started doing some research. There wasn't much in print, but they did have a copy of Rosemary Romberg's intactivist book from many years ago, and that was enough to show me that there were indeed two very different sides to the subject. So then I went online through library access and started finding out all sorts of things that the mainstream information sources were not presenting. That was enough for me to go back to his doctors and say, "Definitely not!"

A couple of years later I got internet access at home and began spending a lot of time on abUsenet, being a rage junkie and venting my bile against bigoted femelitist vermin who were also looking for a fight. Since the forums I was most involved in were about gender issues, the topic of routine and ritual male genital mutilation kept coming up, so I went looking for more information and citations in order to be able to argue authoritatively on the subject. Eventually, somewhere along the line, I finally internalized everything I was learning and realized at a deep identity self-definition level that I had been victimized in this fashion. That, combined with my realization of just how few people were actually actively working to stop this, and just how massive the task was, was enough for me to decide to make intactivism a priority in my life.