Compelling reasons exist for strong concern among attorneys and the public about the various types of damage caused by circumcision. These include pain and suffering, psychological harm, behavioral changes, irreversible reduction or loss of full sexual function, and underreported tragic complications, including deaths. Moreover, no satisfactory medical justification for routine circumcision has ever been demonstrated.

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Recent ARC Activities and Accomplishments

New Book: "Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision"

I am pleased to announce the recent publication of a potentially ground-breaking new book on genital cutting. Rodopi Press, an academic press known for its medical works with offices in Amsterdam and New Jersey, has issued Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision. The editor is Chantal Zabus, one of the speakers at the 2008 NOCIRC Symposium in Keele, United Kingdom, where I had the great pleasure to meet her in person. The book, as its title suggests, addresses differential perspectives on female and male genital cutting. It may be the first volume to explicitly treat FGC and MGC with virtually complete parity.

Fearful Symmetries contains two pieces to which I contributed. One article has my esteemed collaborator Robert Darby of Australia as its lead author and is an extensively updated version of our article from the Medical Anthropology Quarterly, retitled, "A Rose by Any Other Name?: Symmetry and Asymmetry in Male and Female Genital Cutting." The other article is an account as told to me by an acquaintance of mine, Jerry K. Brayton, of his personal experiences relating to circumcision. Rob Darby also has a second article in the volume co-authored with Laurence Cox analyzing numerous personal accounts of the psychological and physical impacts of male circumcision, titled, "Objections of a Sentimental Character: The Subjective Dimensions of Foreskin Loss."

The upcoming issue of the ARC Newsletter will provide a complete overview of the book's contents. The book lists for $92 in cloth (to my knowledge, no paperback edition is planned) and is available directly from Rodopi Press (www.rodopi.nl) or from Amazon.com.

Steven Svoboda
Executive Director
Attorneys for the Rights of the Child

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Article: "Neonatal Pain Relief and the Helsinki Declaration"

An article by Robert Van Howe, M.D. and myself has recently been published addressing—for the first time, we believe—the ethical requirements imposed by the Helsinki Convention on medical studies addressing the efficacy of anesthetic for neonatal circumcision. It is entitled, "Neonatal Pain Relief and the Helsinki Declaration" and it appears on pp. 803-823 of the Winter 2008 issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics. You may veiw and download a PDF of the article here.

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Letter to Men's Health

I recently sent a letter to Men's Health in response to their horrible article in their current issue. Since Men's Health seems to only publish one- or two-sentence excerpts from letters, I drafted mine accordingly. Here it is:

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Steven Svoboda 706 The Alameda
Berkeley, CA 94707
[phone number]

February 18, 2009

"On the Minds of Men"
Men's Health Magazine
mhletters@rodale.com
Dear Men's Health:

"Should All Males Be Circumcised?" [March] Talk about a loaded question! Anesthetic can't eliminate pain and carries risks. The procedure kills over a hundred babies each year.

Circumcision condemns males to a lifelong loss of erotic function and sensitivity. Ever wonder why Viagra was a particularly big "hit" in the US?

The circumcision experiment has already been tried and failed here, as the US has both the highest circumcision rate and the highest HIV rate in the developed world.

Steven Svoboda
Berkeley, CA
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Steven Svoboda
Attorneys for the Rights of the Child

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Newsletter Year-end Issue

Happy Holidays to everyone! The traditional year-end issue of the ARC Newsletter will be coming to your inbox (or mailbox) soon.

I would like to report several developments since the last newsletter in our busiest and most successful publishing year yet:

The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics has published an article by Bob Van Howe and myself on the incompatibility of circumcision research with ethical and human rights obligations imposed by the Helsinki Declaration. The citation is Van Howe, R.S. and Svoboda, J.S. "Neonatal Pain Relief and the Helsinki Declaration." Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. December 2008, Volume 36, Issue 4, pp. 803-823.

The long-awaited book edited by Chantal Zabus, Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision, will be out soon from Rodopi. It includes two contributions on which I worked: A Rose by any other Name: Rethinking the Similarities and Differences between Male and Female Genital Cutting (revised version with Robert Darby, Ph.D. of our well-received Medical Anthropology Quarterly article), and My Story, by Jerry K. Brayton as told to J. Steven Svoboda, an autobiographical account of one man's experiences with his circumcision.

The Spring 2008 issue of the Journal of Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology & Health has published my review of Patricia Robinett's excellent book, The Rape of Innocence: One Woman's Story of Female Genital Mutilation in the U.S.A. This review was previously published in the ARC Newsletter.

Finally, along with my review of Michael Thomson's book of Endowed: Regulating the Male Sexed Body, the next issue of Social & Legal Studies will be publishing my review, also previously published in the ARC Newsletter, of Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund's groundbreaking 2007 book on female genital cutting, Transcultural Bodies: Female Genital Cutting in Global Context.

Other exciting news is contained in our upcoming newsletter.

In the meantime, my very best wishes to all for a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a most joyous New Year as 2009, I am confident, will usher in more good news about our struggle to protect genital integrity.

Steven Svoboda
Executive Director
Attorneys for the Rights of the Child

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London's Interdisciplinary "Genital Cutting in a Globalized Age" Conference Highly Successful

My talk at the Genital Cutting in a Globalized Age conference held in London on July 4 was extremely well-received by the mostly European, academic audience. The conference was held at the Royal Society of Medicine, which published an article by Robert Van Howe and myself on HIV and circumcision in 2005. The talk, entitled, "Three-Fourths Were Abnormal—Male Circumcision, Culture, and Law,"presented an overview of male genital integrity including harm caused by the procedure, law, human rights, ethics, history of medicalization, lack of medical justification, mythologies including the HIV craze, cultural aspects, and connections with the other forms of genital cutting.

Steven Svoboda Presenting at London Conference

The conference was the first meeting ever to bring together activists working in many different areas: intactivism, female genital cutting (FGC), cosmetic female genital surgery, transsexual surgery, and intersexual surgery.

Hera Cook of the University of Birmingham gave an almost entirely favorable response to my talk from an academic feminist perspective.

Famed anti-FGC activist Efua Dorkenoo, O.B.E. (Order of the British Empire) followed my talk by frankly telling the audience that she wholeheartedly supported intactivism and the anti-FGC movement simply made a strategic decision not to work to protect males as it would make their work harder.

Dr. David Ralph spoke in favor of cosmetic female genital surgery. Virginia Braun of the University of Auckland surveyed the same subject skeptically and thoughtfully.

Bo Laurent (formerly Cheryl Chase)

Bo Laurent (formerly Cheryl Chase) delivered the keynote address regarding her longstanding activism on behalf of intersex persons. The conference brought together activists working on female genital cutting, intersex surgery, transsexual surgery, cosmetic female genital surgery, and of course male genital cutting. Activists and thinkers in numerous potentially aligned but previously separate movements came together and strategized together at this exciting conference.

Panel at London Conference: (left to right) Dr. David Ralph, Hera Cook, Virginia Braun, Efua Dorkenoo, Steven Svoboda

We will be back in the UK again in early September for NOCIRC's biannual symposium, presenting a paper entitled, "'Three-Fourths Were Abnormal'-Misha's Case, Sick Societies, and the Law." Here is the abstract for the September paper: "Law, human rights, and medical ethics reflect, transmit, and reinforce social norms. By creating mandates ultimately underwritten by a state's police power, certain ambiguities are eliminated, and others are introduced regarding interpretation. Genital cutting, a tragically flawed attempt to perfect a child, thrives on such ambiguities. Gender identity anchors us from the buffeting winds of social change. 150 years ago, normality was redefined, and suddenly, "three-fourths of all male babies [had] abnormal prepuces." Circumcision helped cover up male anxiety over legitimacy and father-son relations. Cultural constructions of dirt served reigning ideologies then and now. Genital cutting presents a cluster of interwoven discriminations—racial, gender-based, age-based, and class-based—that violate law, human rights, and ethics. Parents (as in Boldt v. Boldt), doctors, and society seek treatment, not the infant. Thus the problem cannot be solved by a medical procedure, which circumcision never was anyway. Only human compassion can end the nightmare."

Hope to see many of you then.

J. Steven Svoboda

Audience at "Genital Cutting in a Globalized Age" Conference, London, July 4, 2008

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ARC Activities Archive

 

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Thanks to
International Coalition for Genital Integrity (ICGI)