Compulsory Penile Surgery and Abortion Rights: Let's End the Gendered Double Standard on Gendered Double Standards

by David Balashinsky

In the wake of SB8, the Texas anti-abortion statute that empowers bounty hunters and vigilantes to sue anyone who helps a girl or woman exercise her constitutional right* to terminate her pregnancy, at least one Texas urologist has seen a 15% increase in the number of men seeking vasectomies.  This is reported in yesterday's Washington Post and, while one angle of this particular article is the increased rate of vasectomies as a response to the decreasing availability of abortion services, the other is the emergence of "parody legislation" (it could also be called "parity legislation") that would require men to undergo vasectomies.  As the Post reports, "In their own form of protest, state lawmakers in Alabama, Illinois, and Pennsylvania introduced legislation that highlights the gendered double standards with regards to reproductive rights."  Women's bodies are regulated and their freedoms curtailed by states such as Texas in ways that men would never contemplate, let alone submit to were they faced with a comparable restriction of their bodily autonomy.  That, at least, is the theory behind such parody laws: to get people to think about the disparate effects that abortion restrictions have upon the rights and dignity of people with uteruses but not on those without.  As Christopher M. Rabb, one of the sponsors of these proposed bills explains, 

For far too long, the public debate around abortion, contraception and related reproductive matters has thrust government into the center of restrictions on the bodily autonomy of women and girls.

Rarely is there a meaningful dialogue around public policy focusing on the personal responsibility of cisgender men in this sphere.

The rights of cisgender men have always been paramount in our society with little focus on their responsibility as inseminators to change their behaviors for the good of their partners, families and society at large.

Rabb's proposed legislation "blew up in a way he didn't expect," prompting "thousands of hate-filled emails, Facebook posts and even death threats."  Afterward, Rabb commented on the reaction:

I underestimated the vitriol that this proposal brought.  The notion [that] a man would have to endure or even think about losing bodily autonomy was met with outrage, when every single day women face this and it's somehow okay for the government to invade the uteruses of women and girls, but it should be off limits if you propose vasectomies or limit the reproductive rights of men.

Rabb's heart may be in the right place, yet his statement seems oblivious of the fact that more than 80% of men living in the United States today have been subjected to a radical penile surgery as neonates and that, to this day, more than half of all males born in the U.S. still are subjected to this harmful and medically-unnecessary surgery.  Because penile circumcision is irreversible, the boys, the adolescents and the men that these infants become will never fully experience either bodily autonomy or sexual autonomy.  The shape, the appearance, the sensory-capacity and the function of their genitals was decided for them, without their consent, before they were capable of resisting and making known their own wishes (other than through their anguished screams during the surgery itself).  Likewise, the nature and the diminished quality of their sex lives was decided for them before they could effectively object and exercise their right to own and control their own bodies.  If that isn't a denial of bodily autonomy, I don't know what is.

While a fine distinction might be made between "reproductive rights" and the sexual rights that necessarily follow from the right of bodily autonomy (since not all sex aims at reproduction and not all reproduction originates in sex), it is undeniable that the term "reproductive rights" is meant to refer broadly to a woman's right to control her sexuality and every other aspect of her life that is liable to be affected by an unwanted pregnancy.  The underlying rationale of anti-abortion statutes, after all, is to control not just reproduction but women's sexuality.  If laws denying women ownership and control of their own bodies and control of their own sexual lives constitute an abridgement of their "reproductive rights," it follows, then, that the "reproductive rights" of men also are routinely limited in this country.

Clearly, the outrage directed at Representative Rabb isn't based on an objection to denying men bodily autonomy or reproductive rights - at least not consciously - since, statistically speaking, many of the same people who object to his proposed legislation undoubtedly also endorse and practice male genital cutting.  The more plausible explanation is simply that these objectors simultaneously hold multiple sets of contradictory views and "gendered double standards" regarding bodily autonomy.  On the one hand, they claim to support individual liberty and freedom of choice, yet they would deny girls and women exactly these by impeding and obstructing their access to safe, legal, affordable and timely abortions.  More to the point, they maintain a particularly "gendered double standard" in their opposition to Rabb's proposed legislation, presumably, because it would impinge male "reproductive rights," yet they countenance or even actively support legislation that is just as much an intrusion (if not more) upon the reproductive rights of girls and women.  

But there is still another whole level of gendered double standard here.  Many of those who are so up-in-arms at the mere mention of legislation that would subject men to compulsory penile surgery do not object in the least when the compulsory penile surgery in question is non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision which, because of its permanence, affects men every bit as much as (and, in crucial ways, much more than) it does the infants these men were when they were subjected to it.  And it goes without saying that penile circumcision is incomparably more invasive, damaging and risky than vasectomy is.  Yet one form of compulsory penile surgery elicits a yawn while the other elicits outrage.  The explanation for this double standard is that, in our highly gendered culture, non-therapeutic circumcision is regarded as an important male rite of passage that serves to inscribe male bodies with masculine gender.  In contrast, vasectomy, because it obstructs male fertility, undermines masculine gender.  Thus, support of male genital cutting and outrage at the mere mention of compulsory vasectomy are, in fact, opposite sides of the same gendered coin.

These sorts of double standards are to be expected of those who oppose abortion rights.  They are even to be expected of those who celebrate the sexuality of some (mainly hetero, cisgender males) but not of others (females and LGBTQIA+ persons).  These are double standards that abortion-rights advocates are absolutely right to criticize.

What is more disappointing and difficult to comprehend is the double standard of those abortion-rights supporters themselves who claim to base their support of abortion rights on the more fundamental right of bodily autonomy yet remain silent in the face of - or even actively participate in - the denial of that right when it comes to the right of persons born with penises to own their own genitals and to control their own sexual lives.  This, too, is a gendered double standard: the notion that "My Body - My Choice" applies only to women and to female bodies but not to men and male bodies or to intersex bodies.  Thus, as gratifying as it is to see the gendered double standards that harm women (regarding their sexuality and reproductive rights) called out, it is galling to see the gendered double standards that harm men given a pass.

While Representative Rabb is making a valid statement by his proposed legislation (given that he entertains little or no expectation that the legislation itself ever will become law), I would like to see him champion the right of bodily autonomy for boys, men (or people with penises) and intersex persons with as much pluck and conviction as he champions the right of bodily autonomy for girls and women (or people with uteruses).  The same holds for all abortion-rights advocates.  The right to abortion rests on the same ethical and moral foundation as the right not to be subjected to genital cutting.  That foundation, common to both, is the right of bodily autonomy. 

* This essay was, of course, written prior to the infamous Dobbs decision.  See here for my take on that.

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David Balashinsky is originally from New York City and now lives near the Finger Lakes region of New York. He is a licensed physical therapist and writes about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics.  He currently serves on the board of directors for the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and the leadership team for Bruchim.
 

 

 

What Kyle Rittenhouse Can Do to Heal America

by David Balashinsky

Much has been made by Kyle Rittenhouse's champions of the right to self-defense and of this young man's justification, therefore, in killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber.  Tomorrow, Rittenhouse is scheduled to be interviewed on Fox where he will have an opportunity to tell his side of the story.  I hope he will do more than offer a self-serving account of why he did what he did.  There is absolutely no need for him to provide any further rationalization or justification for his having shot Rosenbaum, Huber and Gaige Grosskreutz since, from a legal standpoint, he has already been exonerated.   

Under oath, Rittenhouse has stated, "I didn't do anything wrong."  What if we were to take Rittenhouse at his word, meaning that he did not go to Kenosha secretly hoping to try out his semi-automatic rifle on BLM protesters but because he sincerely wanted to do some good there.  (I know, it's a stretch.  After all, Rittenhouse was recorded on video several weeks earlier saying how much he wished he had his AR with him so he could "start shooting rounds" at several men he observed exiting a CVS.)  If Rittenhouse's aim was only to do good, maybe he can do some good now.  The nation is deeply divided and hurting.  Rittenhouse could use the platform that comes with fame (or notoriety) to deliver a message that might help heal the nation's wounds - not unlike when Rodney King went above and beyond what anybody had a right to expect of him under the circumstances and asked, "Can't we all just get along?"  Here are my suggestions to Mr. Rittenhouse on how he can rise to the occasion and help heal the nation.

First - acknowledge your own culpability.  All of the tragic events involving you, Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz that unfolded the night you showed up at the protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin occurred because you were openly carrying an assault rifle.  The mere fact that you were carrying that weapon made the protesters there view you as a threat to their safety, and rightly so.  Carrying a weapon in public is not a neutral act and it isn't an innocent state of being prepared to defend oneself should the need arise.  It is an act of intimidation.  It is a form of bullying.  It is a threat to others.  And in conflicts where tempers are high, exactly like the one in Kenosha, carrying an assault rifle is a provocation.  Simply by being there with a lethal weapon, you had a role in provoking the response that led, ultimately, to your shooting Joseph Rosenbaum.  If your aim was not to provoke or to intimidate, this would be a great time to acknowledge that bringing an assault rifle to that protest was a colossal miscalculation on your part.  You should take this opportunity to encourage wannabe vigilantes across the country to learn from your mistake.

Second - express remorse for the deaths of Rosenbaum and Huber and sympathy for their families and loved ones.  Maybe it's just that I don't want to believe that you went to Kenosha because you were seeking an opportunity to shoot people.  If you didn't, and if you pulled the trigger multiple times only in self-defense, surely you can take no joy or satisfaction in the deaths of the men you shot.  So, instead of basking in the glow of adulation that gun-fanatics and right-wing extremists already are heaping on you, renounce that adulation and ask them and the nation to join you in remembering the men who died and to reflect on the systemic racism that was the cause of the unrest in Kenosha in the first place.  Whatever they were doing in Kenosha that night, and whatever threat you perceived to your life or safety, Rosenbaum and Huber didn't deserve to die for it.  Their lives also mattered, and they should be remembered as human victims, not as nameless, faceless, two-dimensional excuses for the taking of human life.

Third - don't be a tool of the right-wing media.  You have already been lionized as a hero by those who want to use you as a poster boy in support of their political agendas.  But these opportunists are not going to have to carry the burden through life that you are of having taken human lives.  It's easy for them to put you on a pedestal; it's also expedient for them to do so.  But you're the one who's going to have live with the consequences of your actions.  This would be a good time to remind your fellow Americans that the taking of human life is never a good outcome.  It's nothing to be celebrated.  Even veterans who have killed for the noblest of causes do not, as a rule, take any joy in having ended another person's life.  Why not take this opportunity to reject the increasingly violent rhetoric of the right wing - and of some within the Republican Party in particular - and remind Americans of all political stripes that we are Americans first (and people, even before that) and that violence and killing have no place in our political discourse, much less in our streets.

Finally - don't be a tool of the second-amendment extremists.  It has long been recognized that guns don't make us safer.  They actually have the opposite effect.  (I'm sure Mr. Grosskreutz can attest to that.)  There is no doubt in my mind that, had you done everything exactly as you did that night with the sole exception of bringing a gun to the protest, Joseph Rosenbaum would be alive today, Anthony Huber would be alive today and Gaige Grosskreutz would not have been seriously injured.  Nor would you have had to endure the ordeal of standing trial for murder, let alone having to live with your role in the deaths of these men on your conscience for the rest of your life.  Second-amendment extremists live in a fantasy world where guns are fetishes and real-life mass shootings have no more moral significance than the wanton killing that occurs in video games.  Your experience belies that fantasy and demonstrates, in all its horrors, the grim reality of an irrationally and dangerously armed population.  Use what I hope you have learned from this experience to reject the culture of guns and tell those who want to exploit your encounter with the men you shot that guns, especially when carried openly, do not lead to peace and tranquility but to conflict, death, and, ultimately, to a shredding of the social fabric that makes civil society possible.

Update: Subsequent to the publication of this piece, Rittenhouse did, in fact, express something that at least approaches regret.  As Newsweek reports, Rittenhouse stated, "Hindsight being 20/20, [it was] probably not the best idea to go down there."  Rittenhouse said this while appearing as a guest on the right-wing podcast, You Are Here.  The Newsweek article further reports that,

Co-host Sydney Watson at one point celebrated Rittenhouse, stating "it was kind of impressive, when you think about it, that all the people that you shot at, you killed probably two of the worst on the planet.  Congratulations.  Good job you.

[Rittenhouse] responded, "It's nothing to be congratulated about.  If I could go back, I wish I would have never had to take somebody's life."

Rittenhouse deserves at least some credit for resisting these efforts to glorify his actions that night, but, as of this writing, the fact remains that he could and should do much, much more.  Particularly, if he is truly regretful for his actions in Kenosha that resulted in the needless deaths of two men and the injury of a third.

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David Balashinsky is originally from New York City and now lives near the Finger Lakes region of New York.  He writes about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics.
 

 

 

"My Body - My Choice": Abortion Rights, Genital Autonomy and the Vaccine Mandate

by David Balashinsky

There is no right more important than the right of bodily self-ownership.  I cannot conceive of a right that is even a close second.  Without a territorial boundary that demarcates one's entire body as belonging exclusively to oneself and prohibiting all others from trespassing on it or restricting one's control over it in any way, liberty means nothing.  Without the right to exercise sole authority over one's body, full personhood is impossible.  (It should go without saying that when I refer to "personhood," I am speaking about persons who actually have been born - not zygotes, embryos or fetuses.)  Bodily self-ownership is the starting point of personal liberty.  Or, as William O. Douglas put it, "The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom."

Because I have always had a healthy contempt for authority, I am biased toward personal liberty.  At the same time, I recognize that ours is a quintessentially social species.  Just as individuals have rights, groups of individuals, acting together, also have rights.  That is particularly true when the group in question is a society or a nation.  In that case, group rights are especially compelling when they are legitimately exercised in pursuit of the public good.  I believe that the guiding principle of any rational and just political system, therefore, should be maximizing personal liberty while simultaneously maximizing the public good.  

These two ideals - personal liberty and the public good - exist in equilibrium.  An increase of one often entails a decrease in the other and, yet, both are necessary.  We routinely sacrifice some of our personal liberties for the public good.  The entire concept of laws - which mostly limit what individuals are allowed to do but also sometimes compel us to do things we otherwise might not - is based on this principle.  A law that prevents an individual from driving drunk is one example of laws that limit our personal liberties.  A law against smoking in a restaurant is another.  Likewise, laws against public spitting or urination.  Some laws compel us to do things; military conscription is an example of this.  Other laws are conditional, imposing obligations on us as a condition of being permitted to engage in certain activities.  Obtaining a valid license before practicing medicine or nursing or physical therapy is an example of a conditional regulation.  No one is obliged to work in healthcare but, if one chooses to work in healthcare, one must accept the conditions under which she or he may be permitted to do so.  Completing the required degree program and getting that license is one of these conditions.  Abiding by a code of ethics is another.  Another is getting vaccinated so that one doesn't spread a highly contagious and deadly disease to one's patients and colleagues.

While both concepts - personal liberty and the public good - represent goods in and of themselves, both also have the potential to be misused, or weaponized.  For example, claims on behalf of the public good - typically made by governments - can be and are used to justify abridging individual liberties.  This is often what occurs when repressive governments prohibit public demonstrations or other forms of expression that are critical of the government.  The rationale typically provided is that it is for the public good - usually to maintain "public order" - despite the fact that curtailments of individual rights almost never have anything to do with the public good but, rather, are imposed in order to preserve the power of the ruling party in government.  Lately, there has been a discouraging and frightening increase in this sort of authoritarianism and repression around the world, from Hong Kong to Belarus and beyond.  This is even happening in our own country as more and more Republican-controlled state legislatures enact statutes criminalizing public protests.

But just as the claim of the public good can be used to curtail individuals' civil liberties and justify harm to individuals, the claim of personal liberty can be used to justify or excuse harm to society and harm to other individuals.  Until recently, the gun-rights lobby demonstrated probably the most extreme example of this phenomenon.  Believers in an individual's absolute right to own any and all kinds of weapons are not concerned in the least by the harm to others and to others' rights that necessarily ensues from an unlimited, "personal-liberty" right to own military-grade weapons with high-capacity magazines.  

A more recent example of the misuse of the claim of personal liberty is the refusal by many Americans (mostly Republicans, it turns out) to get any of the Covid-19 vaccines that have been proven safe, effective, are widely available and absolutely free.  As a result, the Covid pandemic rages on in the United States, with deaths now surpassing 700,000.  Had every American, who could have done so, done his civic duty by getting vaccinated, the pandemic likely would be behind us now and life and the economy would have returned to normal.

It may not be surprising to see antisocial behavior on the part of those who condemn virtually anything that benefits society as "Socialism!" (they use the word as a pejorative because, apparently, they regard anything that produces the greatest good for the greatest number of people as an assault on their individual liberties).  What is surprising, however, and disconcerting - and I speak as someone who has worked directly with patients in hospitals for more than 20 years - is the refusal even by some healthcare workers to get vaccinated.  As a result of their intransigence, New York and several others states have recently had to institute a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.  In response to this mandate, some of these opponents (and others) have appropriated the phrase, My Body - My Choice.  To me, this represents a new low in the history of those whose rights aren't being violated appropriating the discourse of those whose are.  This is either a shrewd if transparent tactic or just plain persecution envy. We see this in the Men's Rights Movement which, although there certainly are kernels of truth in what it has to say about sex discrimination, is based on the manifestly false premise that it is boys and men, not girls and women, who are, in fact, more often victimized and systematically oppressed.  Claiming persecution also has become a favorite tactic of Christian Conservatives and Evangelicals.

Invoking My Body - My Choice in support of anti-science, antisocial, anti-vaccine obstinacy is a misappropriation of the phrase in several important ways but what is particularly objectionable is the insensitivity that it shows toward those for whom the phrase has real meaning.  As is widely recognized, My Body - My Choice has been the battle-cry of the abortion-rights movement for at least the past half century.  There is a reason for this.  It encapsulates the fundamental issues raised by abortion: bodily self-ownership and the exclusive right of the individual, as the owner of that body, to exercise her own choices about it.  Every human being must be free to chart her or his own course in life and to control her or his own destiny.  Above all, every human being has a fundamental right to exercise absolute ownership of her or his body.  For girls and women, that necessarily and unquestionably entails the right to terminate a pregnancy.¹

It also necessarily entails the right to bodily integrity which is why, although its use in this context is not as widely familiar,  My Body - My Choice also has been taken up by the genital-autonomy movement.  It is frequently phrased as His Body - His Choice in recognition of the fact that, whereas genital cutting of girls is illegal and rare in the United States, genital cutting of boys is still legal and widespread.²   For this reason, the genital-autonomy movement here necessarily advocates on behalf of the right of boys not to be subjected to non-therapeutic circumcision.  Despite the unequal legal status of girls and boys insofar as the right to genital integrity is concerned (one of those truths about which men's-rights activists happen to be right), or rather, because of it, I prefer the universality of My Body - My Choice.  Taking sex out of the equation emphasizes that growing up with one's genitals intact and unharmed is a human right.³

The sex-neutral My Body - My Choice also emphasizes that the right to abortion and the right to genital integrity stand on the same ethical and philosophical foundation: the principle that every individual is born with an innate right of bodily self-ownership.  It is the denial of this right, and specifically in these contexts - the profoundly significant and life-altering human-rights violations that are forced childbirth and involuntary circumcision - to which the phrase My Body - My Choice is an appropriate response.  It is not a catchall for every law and regulation to which those who are irrationally jealous of their personal liberty might object.  There simply is no comparison between either compulsory childbirth or forced genital cutting and being expected, as a condition of employment in healthcare, to get vaccinated against a deadly disease in the middle of a pandemic.  

Invoking My Body - My Choice in opposition to something as benign (not to mention positively beneficial) as the Covid vaccine is a misappropriation of this phrase, then, in part because it trivializes it.  In sharp contrast to the Covid-vaccine mandate, whether we are speaking of preventing girls and women from obtaining timely and safe abortions or whether we are speaking of genital cutting, when an individual is deprived of her or his right of bodily self-ownership in either of these two ways, real harm ensues.

A girl or woman who, against her will, is forced by the state (or, under a provision of SB8 in Texas, by any private citizen in the United States who wants to score ten grand) to undergo the ordeal of a pregnancy and childbirth has no remedy available that can undo the harm that will have been done to her.  Her life will be irrevocably changed.  If she keeps the child, doing so will have major ramifications for her education, her employability, her financial stability and economic independence and her ability to choose to have a family when she is ready to.  It will affect every almost aspect of her personal life, her social life and her professional life.  Even if her child is adopted, the girl or woman who bore her will have gone through not just the trauma of forced pregnancy but the additional trauma of giving up a now, fully formed human being who is her offspring.  Conversely, if she is forced to obtain an illegal abortion, she runs a considerable risk of medical complications and serious injury including sepsis, hemorrhage, sterility and death, to say nothing of the potential legal sanctions.  Pregnancy and childbirth, themselves, pose much greater risks to woman's health and life than abortion does, and those risks increase significantly for younger women and girls.  Beyond all this is the affront to personal dignity and autonomy - the negation of one's full personhood - that is an inevitable part of being denied the right to make one's own reproductive decisions and the right to exercise exclusive control over one's own body. 

What is getting vaccinated against Covid-19 in comparison to any of this?  The most common effects of the available vaccines are not dying or getting seriously ill.  More importantly, a vaccinated healthcare worker is much less likely to spread Covid-19 to others.  Needlessly infecting one's fellow healthcare workers (to say nothing of one's patients), besides causing them harm and being, therefore, unethical on its face, also results in a further depletion of already critically understaffed hospitals.

As with forced childbirth, in the case of forced circumcision there is no remedy.  Amputation of the prepuce is irreversible - it can never be undone and its harms are life-altering and life-lasting.  Non-therapeutic male circumcision removes the primary sensory structure of the penis.  As a result, those who are subjected to this surgery in infancy or childhood can never know what intercourse is supposed to feel like.  They are permanently prevented from experiencing the degree of sexual intimacy and bonding - the shared, mutual sensuality - that is only possible when both partners have fully intact genitals.  If this were not enough, as with any surgery, circumcision subjects the victim to a range of risks and complications,  from meatal stenosis to excessive scarring to complete loss of the penis, to sepsis, hemorrhage and even death.  Also, as with any invasive surgery, non-therapeutic circumcision necessarily subjects the victim to pain.  Beyond all this is the affront to personal dignity and autonomy - the negation of one's full personhood - that is an inevitable part of being denied the right to make one's own decisions about one's sexuality and the right to decide for oneself which parts of one's body one is permitted to keep and which parts get cut off.

Again, what is a vaccine mandate, as a condition of employment, in comparison to any of this?

Another crucial distinction between the vaccine mandate and either forced childbirth or involuntary circumcision is that the vaccine mandate has a rational, reasonable and justifiable public-health objective.  In contrast, there is no justifiable public-health objective in denying women the right to abortion or in subjecting male minors to involuntary circumcision.  Not only are the public-health claims in support of neonatal circumcision - namely a reduction in risk for transmission of STIs - not supported by the evidence but what evidence there is now actually points in the opposite direction.

Of course, the most significant difference between forced childbirth or forced circumcision and the vaccine mandate (and this is a difference not of degree but of kind) is that - the label mandate notwithstanding - no healthcare worker is being forced against her or his will to get vaccinated.  The mandate is being instituted simply as a condition of employment.  Healthcare workers who do not want to get vaccinated remain free to choose not to do so.  They simply are being required to forego, as a consequence of exercising that choice, the privilege of working in healthcare.  They may not like that choice, but it is still a choice.  That is fundamentally different from denying someone access to abortion and it is fundamentally different from subjecting someone to genital cutting without consent - both of which deny the victim any choice in what happens to her or his body.

In addition, the choice for healthcare workers that the vaccine mandate actually allows them to make is not between bodily autonomy and a forfeiture of bodily autonomy.  It is between retaining one's job at the cost of a relatively small degree of one's bodily autonomy and retaining one's absolute bodily autonomy at the cost of one's job.  Even that is still a choice.  Giving up one's job - even one's profession, if it comes to it - is no small thing, and I am not minimizing it in the least.  But one's job doesn't even begin to compare in importance to one's body.  We routinely accept conditions of employment, precisely because they are undertaken voluntarily,  that we would never accept if they were imposed on our bodies without our consent.  That is the difference between forced childbirth and genital cutting as opposed to the vaccine mandate as a condition of employment for healthcare workers.  It is the difference between the fundamental right to own one's body and the everyday compromises we all make in order to hold down a job.  And, while everyone may be entitled to a job, not everyone is entitled to a job in healthcare.  That is because working in healthcare is a privilege - not a right.  Bodily autonomy, on the other hand, including the right to abortion and the right to grow up with one's genitals intact, is a right - not a privilege.

1. It seems strange that the right to terminate a pregnancy is not explicitly and universally recognized as a fundamental human right and that that right has not been formally codified.  And, yet, even here, in the U.S.A. - a nation that cherishes the ideal of personal liberty - women's and girls' right to own and control their own bodies is under relentless assault, is now widely and significantly curtailed throughout much of the nation and the constitutional right itself, as recognized a half century ago in Roe v. Wade, is hanging by a thread.  (The Senate can remedy this by passing the Women's Health Protection Act.  The House did so last month.)

2. It also seems strange that the right not to have part of one's genitals cut off without consent is not explicitly and universally recognized as a fundamental and universal human right.  And yet, here we are in 2021 and 3,000 times every day in the United States an infant boy is subjected to a traumatic and totally unnecessary genital surgery for no other reason than that the practice has become a self-perpetuating cultural norm.  Worldwide, at least 200 million girls and women have been subjected to female genital cutting (FGC) and more than one billion boys and men have been subjected to male genital cutting (MGC).  It is not known how many intersex individuals are subjected to genital cutting every year. 

3. It is a paradox that abortion restrictions and involuntary circumcision are both so alike and yet so different.  Feminists cite the unequal effects of abortion restrictions - because they apply to (biological) girls and women only - as an example of systemic, sex-based discrimination.  MRAs, for their part, cite the practice of male genital cutting (MGC) - hence the unequal effects of anti-FGM statutes because they protect girls but not boys from genital cutting - as an example of systemic, sex-based discrimination that affects only boys and men.  Both are right and it is perplexing that feminists and MRAs have not generally made common cause with one another on the principle of bodily autonomy.  They should, because, in theory, at least, their shared belief in bodily autonomy ought to make them natural allies.

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David Balashinsky is originally from New York City and now lives near the Finger Lakes region of New York.  He has been a physical therapist for over 20 years and writes about bodily autonomy and human rights, gender, culture, and politics.
 

 

 

Whose Flag?

by David Balashinsky

A friend recently posted the following meme on Facebook:

 

I usually avoid taking the bait when I see memes like this but this one seemed so belligerent and so obnoxious that I could not let it go without asking, "Who is telling you to apologize for our flag?"  The implication that Americans are being asked to apologize for the United States flag is only one of several falsities artfully woven into this work of propaganda but, because this notion stood out as being even more goading than the others (which is saying something), this seemed like a logical place to start.  Although my friend never directly answered my question, her response did get me thinking about how this meme epitomizes the right wing's misuse of our nation's flag and the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which it cleverly packages animosity toward the values actually represented by the United States flag within an outward show of devotion to it. 

First, some context:  It is no secret that, especially since the Vietnam War, the right wing has sought to appropriate the U.S. flag as a political symbol of its view of America.  The left, itself, bears some responsibility for this.  I am old enough to remember when the U.S. flag was desecrated, burned and otherwise disrespected in protest of the U.S. war against Vietnam and in protest of any number of other evils perpetrated by the government of the United States.  (Its support of repressive, military dictatorships around the world and, especially, in Latin America throughout much of the latter half of the 20th century comes to mind.) 

There is an undeniable logic to this form of protest.  Since the flag symbolically represents the nation and since policies that are carried out by the government are carried out on behalf of the nation (and in the name of the People of the United States), U.S. government policies, the administration that enacts them, the nation itself and the flag that represents it are all links in a chain.  It stands to reason that, if one wants to condemn a policy that has the U.S. flag figuratively stamped all over it, stamping all over the flag, in turn, seems a valid and appropriate way to do it.

The problem, however, is that this form of protest by the left has played disastrously into the hands of the right, not just allowing it to appropriate the nation's flag as a symbol of right-wing values but enabling it to exploit the flag in an ostentatious display of its own professed patriotism.  This has reinforced the fiction that right-wingers and conservatives are more patriotic than left-wingers and liberals and that right-wing values are intrinsically more patriotic than left-wing values.  That is why the U.S. flag is ubiquitous on the lapel pins, the podiums, the buildings, the lawns, the websites, the pick-up trucks and motorcycles, even the clothing of right-wingers.  And, of course, in right-wing memes on social media.  

But despite the success that the right wing has had in appropriating our nation's flag as a symbol of its values, these are not the values that the flag actually represents.  And, generally, when the right wing waves the flag, it does so not as a statement of patriotism but as a form of "virtue signaling" and for the purposes of propaganda, as in the meme above.  To this patriotic American, this is an even more offensive desecration of the flag than burning it.  An even greater desecration of the flag occurs when it is waved alongside the flag of the pro-slavery and seditionist Confederacy.  And a desecration even greater than this occurred when the flag was used, literally, as a weapon by Trump's insurrectionists in their attempted coup on his behalf on January 6th.  That is why I believe it has been a gigantic mistake on the part of the left to let conservatives and other right-wingers get away with their appropriation of our nation's flag.  It is long past time that the nation's flag be reclaimed - not as a symbol of the left (although I do believe that the ideals articulated in the nation's founding documents are fundamentally liberal, rooted, as they are, in the European Enlightenment) - but as a non-partisan symbol of the nation's shared ideals and of the nation broadly, including everyone within it.

Which brings me to why this meme is so offensive and how it succeeds at being so antagonistic.  By claiming the flag as his through the use of the first person  - "this is my flag" (my emphasis) - what the creator of this meme is really saying is that it is not yours nor mine.  This contradicts both the letter and the spirit of our nation's original and traditional if unofficial motto: e pluribus unum - "from many, one."  Making the nation's symbol exclusive of one's political enemies is a favorite tactic of the right wing, but it is not just a rhetorical device.  White nationalists, the Christian Identity movement and Christian nationalists all, to varying degrees, actually envision the United States (or at least much of its geographical territory) as a White, Christian homeland in which non-White, non-Christian residents are less authentically American (and less authentically human, even) and not truly part of the fabric of the nation's polity.  That's what the alt-right movement is all about and it was precisely to this quandom undercurrent (until Trump legitimized it and brought it fully out into the open) of White nationalism, racism, religious bigotry, antisemitism and xenophobia to which Trump very deliberately appealed in 2015 and throughout his occupancy of the office of President of the United States.  Referring to the flag as "my flag" rather than as "our flag" clearly signals that this meme has little or nothing to do with patriotism and everything to do with White nationalism.  "My flag," as it is used in this meme, is a repudiation of the sentiments of unity and camaraderie with all other Americans - the shared love-of-country that is the lifeblood of the American spirit - and serves no other purpose than to marginalize those Americans who are not in the same demographic group that overwhelmingly comprises the Republican base.

Is it a stretch to tie Trump and Trumpism to this meme?  Not really.  The person who originally shared it on Facebook (at least the version that I saw when it was re-posted by my friend) is Ina Holiday, a Las Vegas "entertainer and singer," and former candidate for the Nevada State Assembly whose Facebook page includes a goodly amount of anti-vaccine, anti-mask and pro-Trump memes and posts.

More to the point, it is also not a stretch to interpret this meme as a reaction against the Black Lives Matter movement.  Thanks to the efforts of Colin Kaepernick (and those who have joined him), our nation has lately been forced to reckon not just with its history of racism but with the systemic manifestation of that racism which persists to this day.  (This is even more true since the murder of George Floyd.)  Not unlike the flag-desecration of those who protested against U.S. policy and warfare in Vietnam in the 1960s, Kaepernick's symbolic gesture of kneeling during the playing of the national anthem is intended to admonish the United States - albeit in a vastly less confrontational and more respectful way than flag-burning - for its racism by strategically directing that admonition toward the national anthem, a symbol of the United States that is probably second only to the flag itself in terms of significance and veneration.  The meme, of course, makes no mention of the BLM movement or of the increasingly widespread consciousness of racism that we are seeing today but, given the current political and social context, it is hard to imagine that anything else could be intended by the reference to "skin color, race [and] religion." 

Just as denying the existence of racism is a form of racism, attempting to invalidate any criticism of systemic racism on the grounds that such criticism is unpatriotic is also a form of racism.  To the extent that the BLM movement and Critical Race Theory (another favorite bogeyman of conservatives) constitute critiques of our nation's systemic and institutionalized racism, this meme seems intended to invalidate them by treating them as an attack on the nation's flag and, therefore, on the nation itself.  

It achieves this partly through the affectation of grievance but also through the use of innuendo.  Both the second and third statements in the meme ("I will not apologize for [the flag]" and "It does NOT [sic] stand for skin color. . . .") employ the same rhetorical technique: an assertion is phrased negatively and in opposition to what the creator of the meme intends us to believe is a previous assertion to which he is merely - but with justified indignation - responding.  Thus, by declaring that he will not apologize for the flag, the audience is led to believe that someone else has demanded that he should.  And by declaring that the flag does not stand for skin color, the audience is led to believe that someone else has claimed that it does.  

One of the purposes of this meme, then, is to inspire those who view it with this same feeling of righteous indignation against the long-overdue reckoning of our nation's history of systemic racism.  In other words, to get them riled up against the movement for racial justice.  Another is to raise the alarm that the meaning of the flag is being deliberately subverted.  The theme that both the flag and its meaning are under siege is visually represented (and rather artfully, too, to give credit where credit is due) by depicting the flag perseveringly and defiantly waving before a landscape that is clearly intended to be seen as a battleground.  The land in the foreground is barren, the trees stripped of much of their foliage while, in the distance, the sky glows red and orange as though from the fires of a recent or ongoing bombardment.  We are meant to understand from all this that it is not just the flag and its meaning that are under assault but the heart and soul of our very nation. 

The idea that our nation and our way of life are under attack is now the predominant theme of White-nationalist, Republican and Trumpist discourse.  Writing for The Atlantic, Ronald Brownstein described the history and the current state of "the ominous tenor of contemporary Republican messaging":

Late in the 2016 presidential campaign . . . Michael Anton, a conservative scholar who later joined the Trump White House, described the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the "Flight 93 Election." . . .  Anton insisted that a Democratic victory would change America so irrevocably that conservatives needed to think of themselves as the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 on September 11 - the ones who chose to bring down the plane to save the U.S. Capitol from al-Qaeda hijackers.  Letting the Democrats win, in other words, would doom the country. . . .

For at least the past decade, GOP candidates and conservative-media personalities have routinely deployed rhetoric similar to the Flight 93 argument.  Only about 40 hours before the [January 6] insurrection, at a campaign rally hosting an enthusiastic, virtually all-white audience in rural Georgia, President Trump insisted that if Democrats won the state's two Senate runoff elections . . . "America as you know it will be over, and it will never - I believe - be able to come back again."

And, of course, on January 6th, while inciting his mob before it assaulted the capitol in order to prevent the certification of Biden's electoral victory, Trump declaimed "We fight like hell.   And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore."

In his speech accepting the Republican Party's nomination for him to run for president again in 2020, Trump declared "this election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life, or whether we will allow a radical movement to completely dismantle and destroy it."

As CNN reported last January, the day before leaving office, former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo tweeted, "Wokism, multiculturalism, all the -isms - they're not who America is.  They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. . . ."  In the same story, CNN notes that in remarks he delivered the previous July,

Pompeo fanned the flames of division stoked by Trump, warning that "the very core of what it means to be an American, indeed the American way of life itself, is under attack" amid nationwide protests for racial justice and against police brutality.

Also last January, writing in Vox, Zack Beauchamp drew essentially the same conclusions as Brownstein (in the Atlantic) namely, that "The Capitol Hill mob was the logical culmination of years of mainstream Republican politics."

The animating force of modern Republicanism is this: Democratic Party rule is an existential threat to America and is by definition illegitimate. . . .

Whether elite Republicans genuinely believe what they tell their base is beside the point.  The fact is their delegitimizing rhetoric has been the fuel of the conservative movement for many, many years now.

Beauchamp noted that, on the morning of January 6th, Lauren Boebert, a Republican representative from Colorado, "tweeted that the efforts to overturn the 2020 election results amounted to a new American revolution.  'Today is 1776,' she wrote."  Ten years earlier, Sharon Angle (a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate) had stated in an interview "that she believed that Americans might need to take up arms against the tyranny of Barack Obama and the Democratic congress."

Writing for the New Yorker last spring, Susan B. Glasser pointed out that

In one alarming survey released this week, nearly thirty percent of Republicans endorsed the idea that the country is so far "off track" that "American patriots may have to resort to violence" against their political opponents.

Last month, writing for the Washington Post, Ruth Ben-Ghiat reported that 

In June, an anchor of One America News suggested that execution might be an apt punishment for the "tens of thousands" of "traitors" who, he claimed, stole the election from former president Donald Trump.  A sitting member of congress, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told Americans in May that they "have an obligation to use" the Second Amendment, which is not about recreation but "the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary."

. . . 

This Republican culture of violence and threat builds on histories of racial persecution and on policing used as an instrument of terror against non-Whites.  Habituation to such violence, reinforced by the presentation of non-Whites as an existential threat to the future of America (as in the "great replacement theory" that Tucker Carlson has referenced on Fox News) makes it easier for the public to accept violence around political events, like elections, as necessary to "save the country."  Tellingly, the participants in the January coup attempt, which was billed as just this kind of patriotic act, included 57 local and state GOP officials. . . .

The meme that I have been discussing here is a distillation of the Republican worldview of imagined or affected persecution, that America and "the American way of life" are under assault from within (by Democrats, otherwise known as "radical leftists," and the BLM movement), and that part of the epochal struggle for the heart and soul of America, indeed, its very survival, includes a propaganda war currently underway for the meaning of our nation's national symbol, the U.S. flag.  On this front, the meme's creator steadfastly holds the line against those fifth-columnists who demand that he apologize for the flag and who would see his flag debased as it only could be by the suggestion that its broader meaning might actually have something to do with skin color, race and religion.

So, what does the flag, with its red and white stripes and white stars on a blue background represent?  Of course "it does not stand for skin color, race or religion" but, equally, it does not "stand for" freedom (or "FREEDOM"), as the meme's creator claims.  At face value, the flag symbolizes merely what we all learned in elementary school that it does.  The stars in the upper left-hand corner represent the number of states currently in the Union while the thirteen red and white stripes represent the original thirteen colonies that declared independence from Britain on July 4, 1776.  There are deeper meanings associated with the design of the flag, too, including its colors and the symbolism of its particular design.  Most sources credit  Charles Thompson, the secretary of the Continental Congress from 1774 to 1789, who was instrumental in designing the Great Seal of the United States, with the use of red, white and blue (for the Seal) and attribute their symbolic intent, which comes from heraldry and which subsequently became associated with the colors of the flag, itself, to the following quote by Thompson:

White signifies purity and innocence, Red, hardiness & valor, and Blue, the colour of the Chief, signifies vigilance, perseverance & justice.

Ultimately and most importantly, the flag is a national and non-partisan symbol of the nation and of the unity of its states and of its people.

To be clear, no one is being asked to apologize for the flag.  What their fellow Americans are being asked to do by the Black Lives Matter movement and others is to recognize the reality that the enslavement of Black people was the original sin of our nation's founding, written into our very constitution (its liberal ideals, notwithstanding).  Acknowledging our nation's past wrongs, the legacy of those wrongs and the wrongs that persist to this day is not an assault on the flag nor a demand that anyone apologize for the flag.  To suggest otherwise is to denigrate the cause of racial justice by defining it as conflicting with what the flag represents when, in fact, in a very real sense, this is what the flag represents: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. . . ."

My own view of the flag, looking beyond its obvious, superficial symbolism, is that it represents the ideals that our nation was founded on.  It represents not only the best that America has been in the past and is now but could be in the future.  It ought to inspire feelings of togetherness and camaraderie, mutual understanding, compassion, reconciliation, resoluteness, justice, courage and, above all unity.  That means having the rectitude, the strength, the wisdom and the will to acknowledge the ways in which our nation has erred and working together to create "a more perfect union," one that truly embodies justice and equality for all.

When I think of our nation's flag, then, and what it means to me, I experience overwhelmingly positive feelings, including pride.  In contrast, when I see the flag used as it is in this meme, I see only an angry, paranoid, scapegoating and militant belligerence.  This meme manages to turn what should be a positive and uplifting symbol into a hate-filled one.  It weaponizes the U.S. flag and, what is worse, weaponizes it against other Americans.  It perverts the transcendent symbolism of the flag - its very spirit - by converting it from unity and love-of-country to hatred of one's political enemies.  And that may be the biggest desecration of all.

An Appeal to Nurses

This is an appeal to nurses everywhere but, especially, here in the United States.  

Like you, I work in healthcare.  I am a licensed physical therapist with over 20 years of experience helping people recover functional mobility following strokes and other debilitating injuries and illnesses.  Although we don't know one another, the fact that you are a nurse tells me that you share the same concern for the well-being of others that motivates most of us who work in healthcare.  It also means that we have a historical connection, since the first physical therapists were nurses.  As a physical therapist,  I'm proud to work in healthcare, I'm proud of my profession, and I'm especially proud to work in a profession that has its roots in nursing because nursing epitomizes what healthcare is all about: helping people get better.

Unfortunately, although healthcare is among the most honorable and rigorously scrutinized of human endeavors, it is not without its share of historical missteps.  Sometimes, these have been well-meaning interventions that simply did not withstand the test of time.  From bloodletting to lobotomy to the use of IV ethanol as a tocolytic agent to the widespread prescription of Thalidomide to routine episiotomies and unnecessary hysterectomies, the history of medicine is replete with treatments and practices that once were considered state of the art but that subsequently have come to be recognized as not only medically unnecessary but, in many cases, even harmful.

Regrettably, medicine also includes episodes that are even less honorable and that are impossible to reconcile with contemporary standards of medical ethics and human rights.  The forced sterilizations of thousands of marginalized women (mostly poor women and women of color) is one example.  The notorious "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male"  is another.  Still another is medicine's disgraceful history of labeling homosexuality a "psychiatric disorder" and subjecting gay men and women to electroconvulsive therapy, "aversion therapy," even lobotomies in a misguided attempt to "cure" them of their gayness.

Unfortunately, for as long as medical practice has existed, medical malpractice and human-rights violations committed in medicine's name seem to have existed alongside it.  That is why those of us who are medical professionals have a special obligation to speak out when medical practice fails, as it has so many times in the past, to live up to its own ethical standards, beginning with the cardinal principle, primum non nocere: "first, do no harm."

That is why I am reaching out to you today, as one healthcare professional to another.  The history of discredited medical practices - discredited both ethically and by the failure of evidence to support them - is, even now, not completely behind us.  To this day, and about 3,000 times every day (more than one million times every year), children are subjected to a harmful and medically-unnecessary genital surgery in fully accredited hospitals throughout the United States under the guise of medical care.  I am referring to non-therapeutic neonatal penile circumcision and these are the facts about this surgery:

• Despite being medically unnecessary, non-therapeutic penile circumcision remains one of the most commonly performed surgeries in the United States.
• The medical profession acknowledges that neonatal penile circumcision is unnecessary yet permits this lucrative genital surgery to continue and profits from it anyway.
• There is not a single claimed "health benefit" of penile circumcision that cannot be achieved through less invasive, less harmful, less costly and less painful methods, such as
• the use of antibiotics to treat UTIs, as is routinely done in the case of females (who develop UTIs ten times as often as males do)
  
• the use of condoms and other safe-sex practices to prevent the transmission of STIs.
• Non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision is always performed without the consent of the person subjected to it.
• Any intact, adult male can undergo circumcision if he wants to and, although very few men actually make this choice, those who do are not harmed in any way by having waited until they are adults and capable of exercising informed consent.
  
• When performed on infants, circumcision is excruciatingly painful yet often is performed without any anesthetic and always performed without adequate anesthetic.
• Penile circumcision removes a natural, essential, sensitive and functional body part.
• The penile prepuce (or foreskin) is the primary sensory organ of the penis with a greater concentration of specialized light-touch receptors than is found in the glans or in any other part of the penis or, for that matter, in any other part of the body except the fingertips and lips.  All of that sensory function is permanently lost to circumcision.
• Non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision is irreversible.
  
• The overwhelming majority of men who remain intact value their foreskins and do not want to have them surgically removed.
• Consistent with this, many men who were subjected to non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision report that, had they been allowed to make this choice for themselves, they would not have chosen to have this part of their genitals removed.  Beyond objecting to the irreparably diminished capacity for erotic experience that necessarily results from this surgery, they resent having been deprived of their fundamental right to bodily autonomy: the right to make their own decisions about their bodies, including which healthy parts they get to keep and which healthy parts get cut off.
  

 

Perhaps you haven't really thought much about non-therapeutic circumcision before.  The fact is, this genital surgery is performed so routinely that even many healthcare providers seldom think about the reality of what this genital surgery is and what it entails.  That needs to change.  My hope is that, when you consider the facts about non-therapeutic circumcision, you will come to view it differently from the way you may have been accustomed to viewing it up until now - just as we now view other discredited medical practices differently from the way they were viewed by previous generations. 

My own perspective, which I also hope you will come to share if you don't already, is that of a healthcare provider who believes that it is unethical to subject a healthy child - whether female, male or intersex - to a medically-unnecessary genital surgery.  At the same time, my perspective - which I hope you do not share and never will - is that of someone who was subjected to this surgery.  Although, if it hasn't happened to you, I don't expect you to fully comprehend what it's like to have had part of your genitals cut off without your consent, I do trust that your capacity for empathy - that same human quality that prompted you to become a nurse in the first place - will enable you to understand the perspective of the many men like me who object to what was done to our bodies and, ultimately, move you to share our outrage.

If you do already, the good news is that we are not alone.  Non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision has been condemned by many of the world's leading human-rights advocates, psychologists, attorneys, bio-ethicists, physicians and professional medical organizations.  Here, in the United States, one of the organizations that is leading the way is Doctors Opposing Circumcision.  Doctors Opposing Circumcision is an organization that was founded more than 25 years ago by George Denniston, MD, MPH in order to help bring about an end to the unconscionable practice of subjecting unconsenting children to medically-unnecessary genital surgery.  DOC is comprised of like-minded physicians and others who share the principles, the ethics and the core values that all of us, as healthcare providers, are obligated to uphold.  These ethical principles include:

• beneficence: the principle that the care and services we provide must benefit the patient
• nonmalificence: the principle that we must not harm or injure our patients 
• justice: the principle that all patients should be treated equally and fairly
  
• respect for autonomy: the principle that every human being, regardless of age, sex, religion, race, ethnicity or anything else, has a fundamental and absolute right of bodily self-ownership.

Non-therapeutic neonatal penile circumcision violates every one of these ethical principles.  

It also violates both the spirit and the letter of most of the specific provisions of the American Nurses Association Code of Ethics for Nurses, especially Provision 3: "The nurse promotes, advocates for, and protects the rights, health, and safety of the patient [my emphasis]."

For all of these reasons, Doctors Opposing Circumcision is working to end what, for too long, has been a cure in search of a disease - a deeply entrenched cultural practice masquerading as medical care. 

I hope you will take a few minutes to listen to Dr. Denniston explain, in his own words, why DOC exists and why this cause is so important.

After listening to Dr. Denniston, I hope you will listen to the firsthand accounts of a group of nurses - medical professionals like yourselves - who decided that they could no longer in good conscience participate in the harmful practice of non-therapeutic neonatal penile circumcision.  In 1995, these conscientious objectors went on to found the organization, Nurses for the Rights of the Child.  As explained on its website, 

Nurses for the Rights of the Child is a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the rights of infants and children to bodily integrity.  As health professionals, we specifically seek to protect non-consenting infants and children from surgical alteration of their healthy genitals. 

I encourage you to visit the NRC website in order to learn what your fellow nurses are doing to protect children from medically-unnecessary genital surgery.

I also encourage you to read this short column by Adrienne Carmack, MD, a board-certified urologist and one of the board members of Doctors Opposing Circumcision.  For a comprehensive, evidence-based review of non-therapeutic penile circumcision, see Evidence and Ethics on: Circumcision by Rebecca Dekker, PhD, RN and Anna Bertone, MPH.

Finally, I urge you to visit the website of Doctors Opposing Circumcision.  Here you can find useful information and resources, including information on conscientious objection if you are currently involved in obstetrics and neonatal care.  Nurses for the Rights of the Child also provides information on conscientious objection in a brochure that can be downloaded from its website.  Once you have come to the unavoidable conclusion, as many of us in healthcare already have, that participation in medically-unnecessary and non-consensual genital surgeries is incompatible with the ethical duties of healthcare providers, you will find it difficult, if not impossible, to do so.  Both the DOC and NRC websites have guidance for medical professionals that can help.

And if you have any other questions or would like to discuss this further, please do not hesitate to contact me directly at my email address: balashinsky@yahoo.com.

Thank you,

David Balashinsky, P.T.

 

 

About me: I am originally from New York City and now live near the Finger Lakes region of New York. I have been a physical therapist for over twenty years and began my career at NYU Medical Center in New York.  I now do inpatient rehabilitation in a major central NY hospital system.  I currently serve on the board of directors of the Genital Autonomy Legal Defense & Education Fund, (GALDEF), the board of directors and advisors for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and I also serve on the leadership team for Bruchim, an organization that fosters welcoming spaces for Jews opting out of circumcision.