In an article that appeared in Adweek on March 15, 2017, Andrew Burmon expressed his excitement at his then impending move to Fatherly as editor in chief. Fatherly, which describes itself as "the leading digital media brand for dads," has become a colossus in the online-parenting-publication industry. According to Laura Hazard Owen, who profiled Fatherly (along with one of its co-founders and CEO, Mike Rothman) in NiemanLab in May of that year, by 2017, Fatherly was already receiving 75 million Facebook visits each week. Burmon's assessments, both of Fatherly's prospects and of Fatherly itself, were grandiose. In the Adweek article, he is quoted as follows: "I believe that the publication's success will be more than just quantifiable - that it will be culturally significant. My goal is to expand a brand that's smart, relevant, and humane."
"Smart, relevant, and humane." These are not words that I would use to describe the coverage that Fatherly has given since then to the topic of male genital cutting (or non-therapeutic male circumcision) and, in particular, to the movement to end it. Much of this coverage is the product of Lauren Vinopal, Fatherly's prolific science reporter and moonlighting stand-up comedian. (Ms. Vinopal performs under the stage name Lauren Vino.) In her coverage of this topic for Fatherly, Vinopal treats as foregone conclusions the persistent popular assumptions that non-therapeutic male circumcision is positively beneficial and, at the very least, perfectly harmless, despite the fact that both of these assumptions are disputed by numerous professional medical organizations. Accordingly, Vinopal bypasses any comprehensive exploration of male genital cutting (MGC) itself - including its physical and psychological effects, its history and symbolic meanings, and the ethical objections to its imposition on unconsenting minors - in order to focus instead on one narrow swath of those who publicly oppose it. This includes primarily the group Bloodstained Men, Brother K (its founder and co-director, along with David Atkinson) and two other protesters, Anthony Losquadro and Christopher. Vinopal profiles and interviews these men in the first two of her MGC articles for Fatherly: Inside the Bloodstained Men's 19-Day Anti-Circumcision Protest (October 17, 2017) and Meet the 'Intactivists' Claiming Circumcision Violates Human Rights (November 7, 2017). These articles also include interviews with Dominic Barba (also of the Bloodstained Men) and Richard Duncker (of Men Do Complain) and a very brief interview with Marilyn Milos, executive director of Genital Autonomy America, (formerly NOCIRC). In her third article, The Documentary 'American Circumcision' Is Anti-Circumcision Propaganda (August 18, 2018), Vinopal interviews the director of American Circumcision, Brendon Marotta. (Follow this link to a complete transcript of the interview as Marotta recorded it and, from there, to a comparison of the actual interview with the interview as Vinopal presented it in Fatherly.)
It is not difficult to follow the internal logic of Vinopal's approach: if there is nothing wrong with male genital cutting, it follows that there must be something wrong with those who oppose it. This explains Vinopal's main objective which, to all appearances, is simply to discredit the genital autonomy movement broadly and to discredit the protesters whom she profiles particularly. (It also helps to explain the attitude - which comes across as sarcastic and condescending - with which Vinopal appears to regard her subjects.) If this seems an odd angle from which to approach the topic of MGC, especially for a science reporter, it is also disappointing to find such an offhand treatment of the topic in Fatherly, given its claims of providing "deep dive reports" and "expert parenting advice." The result of this approach, however, is that the most relevant facts about male genital cutting itself - those facts that Fatherly's readers can be assumed to care about the most - are given short shrift. Consequently, none of Vinopal's reporting in these articles advances in any useful way what would be a perfectly legitimate goal of illuminating this topic for Fatherly's readers.
That's unfortunate because neonatal male circumcision merits a serious treatment in Fatherly. More to the point, Fatherly's readers deserve it. Why? Because one of the first decisions that new parents often find themselves pressured to make is whether or not to choose this elective surgery on behalf of their male child. Any surgery that permanently alters a child's body is not something that should be undertaken lightly. In fact, it should not be undertaken at all without a compelling medical justification, particularly in the case of a surgery, such as circumcision, that can and ought to be postponed until the individual is old enough to decide for himself (or herself or themselves) whether to undergo it. It is his penis, after all. When new parents preclude their son's own choice in the matter and permanently foreclose his ability to exercise it, the standard of justification had better be a high one. Significantly, this justification must satisfy criteria not only within the realm of medical science but within the realm of medical ethics. With respect to the science, questions that parents must consider would include such basic ones as these: What is the pathological condition or deformity that we are seeking to correct with this surgery? Is the surgery efficacious? Is it the least invasive and lowest-risk option available? Is the harm of the surgery outweighed by its potential benefits? Beyond the harmfulness (per se) of the surgery, are the surgery's additional risks justified by its potential benefits? Is it necessary now, when our child is an infant, or can it wait? With respect to the ethics, the question that more and parents have been asking themselves is Do we have a right to permanently surgically alter our child's body in the absence of a rational, urgent and compelling medical reason to do so? (There are numerous scholarly articles concerning the ethical problems with non-therapeutic circumcision. To mention just a couple, see J. Steven Svoboda, Esq., MS, JD: Nontherapeutic Circumcision of Minors as an Ethically Problematic Form of Iatrogenic Injury and Brian D. Earp: The ethics of infant male circumcision.)
For the past 150 years, parents have not generally entertained these questions in the context of infant circumcision. This surgery became so routine in the United States as a component of childbirth and so entrenched that it was, and still is, performed as a matter of course, with little thought and even less justification. But the science has changed and so have the ethics. Indeed, contemporary notions of ethics and bodily autonomy, thanks in no small part to the civil-rights-, feminist- and LGBTQ-rights movements in recent history (and to the Enlightenment itself, more remotely; see Earp, cited above), have greatly expanded our concept of human rights. This includes children's rights. Contemporary beliefs about ethics and bodily autonomy have therefore led many not only to question but to condemn certain acts and surgical procedures that it was once considered perfectly reasonable for parents to impose upon their children's bodies. These include severe corporal punishment, female circumcision, male circumcision and sexual-assignment surgery in the case of intersex children. Any forward-looking parenting media platform, therefore, has an obligation - to its readers and to the culture at large (recalling Burmon's expectation of Fatherly that its success be "culturally significant") - to take account of the significant progress that has occurred in medicine over the course of the past several generations, particularly insofar as non-therapeutic male circumcision - MGC - is concerned.
That is what is so disappointing about finding such a retrograde approach to this topic in Fatherly. Vinopal's superficial, highly selective and just plain careless reporting (the serious errors of fact in these articles suggest that Vinopal was unwilling to do the most basic research and fact-checking) takes no account of the current medical, legal, psychological and ethical opinion that ranges from skepticism of MGC to being emphatically against it (including the reasons why it is). Foregoing an opportunity to make Fatherly's readers aware of the current professional opinion on this hugely controversial topic, Vinopal chose instead to focus on the guerilla-theatre-style protests of Brother K and the anti-MGC group, Bloodstained Men, and Anthony Losquadro and his fellow protester, Christopher.
Apart from their anti-MGC message, the tactics of these protesters may be inherently interesting, particularly as seen through the lens of social movement theory. They also represent a time-honored form of social protest. Social-justice movements often encompass a range of methods and strategies, from those that are more cautious and institutionally based to those, at the other end of the spectrum, that might include everything from street theater to civil disobedience. Viewed in this context, one could say that the Bloodstained Men, with their white and sanguine suits, and Mr. Losquadro, with his props, are to the genital-autonomy movement what PETA is to the animal-rights movement, what FEMEN and Pussy Riot are to feminism, and what ACT UP was, in its heyday during the 1980s, to HIV/AIDS research- and treatment-advocacy. But if this is the angle that Vinopal was going for, why did these two stories appear under the rubric of "Health and Science" rather than, say, "Culture" in Fatherly? Conversely, if "Health and Science" was the context in which Vinopal sought to report on this topic, why does she peddle long-discredited myths in support of MGC itself?
To any impartial observer, it must be obvious that, by focusing on the tactics and especially the appearance of these particular activists (or intactivists, as they have come to be known), Vinopal's goal is not so much to educate Fatherly's readers about the movement to ban male genital cutting as it is simply to discredit that movement. To that end, Vinopal has found, in Brother K, the Bloodstained Men and the others, convenient foils against whom to contrast what she would have Fatherly's readers believe (and, perhaps, even believes, herself) is a more sober, credible and weightier medical consensus that is overwhelming in its assessment of neonatal male circumcision as both harmless and beneficial.
This technique - presenting the most extreme example of something or someone, preferably in as lurid and alarming a way as possible - is also a time-honored tactic and one that is often used to discredit social-justice movements or simply to degrade, in one way or another, those on whose behalf these social-justice movements are organized. At times, this involves presenting a fictionalized and exaggerated version of those whom one would discredit, as D.W. Griffith infamously did in his portrayal of African American Reconstruction-era congressmen in Birth of a Nation. At others, this technique is intended specifically to trigger fear by invoking racist stereotypes, as G.H.W. Bush did in his notorious Willie Horton advertisement. Then there are the cases - common in the age of internet memes - in which images of people who deliberately dress (or undress) themselves in a particular manner for the purpose of making a political statement are used against them. In the hands of reactionaries, the attire and appearance of members of a movement's cultural vanguard - which often are extreme by design - become weapons to use against the movement broadly. To cite a couple of examples of this technique, religious conservatives and homophobes have been known to use photographs of outlandishly dressed (or undressed) gay men from New York's annual Village Halloween Parade or from a Pride March, while anti-feminists and misogynists have been known to use images of topless women from "free-the-nipple" demonstrations. The purpose in these cases is generally the same: to exploit images of convention-rejecting and gender-non-conforming protesters in order to discredit the movements that they represent. Not coincidentally, these are usually photographs of public demonstrations and, also not coincidentally, the point of focusing on these particular protesters is to portray the broader movements that they represent as threats to the social order.
Looking at Vinopal's articles, it's hard not to conclude that something like this is at work here. From the spectrum of opposition to MGC, Vinopal has chosen to present the genital autonomy movement to Fatherly's readers filtered primarily through the words and images of what she seems to regard as the lunatic fringe. Surely it is no coincidence that Vinopal's interview with Losquadro and Christopher appears not just under the rubric of "Health and Science" but under the sub-rubric of "Psychology." Vinopal thus approaches this topic not by questioning the cultural prepossession in favor of genital cutting but, rather, by questioning the psychological factors that might impel one to oppose it. After all, who in his right might could possibly oppose male genital cutting? There is every indication, then, that Vinopal did not choose to focus on these protesters in order to give them a fair hearing, let alone to enlighten Fatherly's readers on the topic of MGC itself, but simply in order to discredit the anti-MGC movement. Indeed, Vinopal makes no bones about this, describing not only the methods of these protesters but their convictions - the substance of what they are saying - as "extreme" and "out there." Accordingly, Vinopal goes out of her way to portray the genital autonomy movement as a "fringe" movement that is based upon an irrational distrust of the medical profession and out of step with the mainstream of medical opinion. That it represents, as she puts it, a "distrust of healthcare institutions and scientific consensus."
But can she make this case? That is where her selectivity comes in. It is one thing, after all, to make a sweeping pronouncement, as Vinopal does, that "most of their claims are unscientific" and to hold up pictures of men in bloodstained suits, as much as to say, This is the intellectual and scientific caliber of the opposition to circumcision. It is quite another, however, to cite the Belgian Government Committee for Bioethics, the Danish Medical Association, the Swedish Medical Association, the Danish College of General Practitioners, the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, the Nordic Association of Clinical Sexology, the Swedish Paediatric Society, the German Paediatric Association, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Royal Dutch Medical Association (whose statement has been endorsed by The Netherlands Society of General Practitioners, The Netherlands Society of Youth Healthcare Physicians, The Netherlands Association of Paediatric Surgeons, The Netherlands Association of Plastic Surgeons, The Netherlands Association of Paediatric Medicine, The Netherlands Urology Association and the Netherlands Surgeons' Association), Doctors Opposing Circumcision (DOC), Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC) and numerous other professional organizations and individuals here in the United States and around the world who have issued critical statements that encompass everything from skepticism and discouragement of MGC to frank opposition to it - in the latter case, just as the Bloodstained Men do and for precisely the same reasons. These reasons all boil down to the same thing: any health benefits that its advocates adduce in support of involuntary male circumcision can and should be achieved through non-harmful, non-invasive, non-painful, low-risk and low-cost means. At the same time, there is a consensus among these medical professionals and other leaders in their respective fields concerning the ethics of involuntary circumcision: a recognition that amputation of a healthy, normal, functional and erogenously important part of a child's genitals without his consent violates that child's right of bodily integrity. And, yes, this violates his fundamental human rights.
As the Circumcision Resource Center notes, "No national medical organization in the world recommends routine circumcision of male infants." Even the American Academy of Pediatrics, which defends "access to this procedure for families who choose it" and which, notwithstanding that it encourages parents to "weigh medical information" about circumcision, advocates their doing so within the "context of their own of religious, ethical and cultural beliefs and practices," concedes that "existing scientific evidence is not sufficient to recommend routine circumcision." Thus, far from standing outside of the mainstream of "scientific consensus" concerning circumcision, Brother K and the Bloodstained Men, Messrs. Barba and Losquadro, Christopher and Milos all stand decidedly within it.
In the grand scheme of things, the tactics of those who are out in the streets protesting against MGC may not be that relevant to the readers of Fatherly. But when it comes to the scientific, medical and ethical consensus on non-therapeutic neonatal circumcision, it is hard to imagine anything that could be more relevant. That is precisely the information that Vinopal chose to omit and that is precisely the information that Fatherly's readers - indeed, all American parents - deserve and should have been given.
So, leaving aside, for the moment, the matter of her conceptual approach to this topic, in what ways, specifically, did Vinopal get it wrong? Let's go down the list.
To begin with one of her most startlingly erroneous assertions, Vinopal states that the claims of intactivists are "ahistorical." "There is certainly no evidence," she writes, "that circumcision began as a way to prevent masturbation." Vinopal makes this claim despite the fact that there is abundant evidence that male circumcision was explicitly promoted during the nineteenth century as a way to inhibit masturbation and so prevent its alleged sequela, "masturbatory insanity" (including many other illnesses and conditions). The medical and pseudo-scientific texts in which the "dangers" of masturbation are decried and its antidote - circumcision - advocated are extant, easily found and also cited in numerous scholarly and popular articles and books about the history of circumcision (and masturbation). One often-cited example (but by no means the only one) is that of the nineteenth-century physician and inventor, John Harvey Kellogg, the co-creator of Cornflakes, who railed (and railed, and railed) against what he called "self-pollution" in a chapter entitled Solitary Vice in his book Plain Facts for Old and Young. (Various publishing dates for this text are given but all seem to fall roughly within the decade from 1877 to 1887.) The following passages are from the 1881 edition (courtesy of Project Gutenberg).
If illicit commerce of the sexes is a heinous sin, self-pollution, or masturbation, is a crime doubly abominable. As a sin against nature, it has no parallel except in sodomy (see Gen. 19:5, Judges 19:22). It is the most dangerous of all sexual abuses, because the most extensively practiced. The vice consists in any excitement of the genital organs produced otherwise than in the natural way. It is known by the terms, self-pollution, self-abuse, masturbation, onanism, manustupration, voluntary pollution, solitary or secret vice, and other names sufficiently explanatory. The vice is the more extensive because there are no bounds to its indulgence. Its frequent repetition fastens it upon the victim with a fascination almost irresistible. It may be begun in earliest infancy, and may continue through life.
Even though no warning may have been given, the transgressor seems to know, instinctively, that he is committing a great wrong, for he carefully hides his practice from observation. In solitude he pollutes himself, and with his own hand blights all his prospects for both this world and the next. Even after being solemnly warned, he will often continue this worse than beastly practice, deliberately forfeiting his right to health and happiness for a moment's mad sensuality.Kellogg discusses at great length various aspects of masturbation, including its many "causes," the numerous telltale signs that it is occurring, and he even touches upon its geographical prevalence:
The habit is by no means confined to boys; girls also indulge in it, though, it is to be hoped, to a less fearful extent than boys, at least in this country. A Russian physician, quoted by an eminent medical professor in New York, states that the habit is universal among girls in Russia. It seems impossible that such a statement should be credible; and yet we have not seen it contradicted. It is more than probable that the practice is far more nearly universal than even medical men are willing to admit.Fortunately, there are many signs that a child may be masturbating in secret by which its practice may be discovered or in the presence of which masturbation should, at the very least, be suspected. These signs include general debility, early symptoms of consumption (tuberculosis), premature and defective development, laziness, sleeplessness, fickleness, unstrustworthiness, love of solitude, bashfulness, unnatural boldness, "mock piety," being easily frightened, "round shoulders and a stooping posture in sitting," weak backs, lower-extremity paralysis, a shuffling gait, "bad positions in bed" (particularly lying prone), lack of development of the breasts (in females), paleness, acne, bed-wetting, epileptic seizures, heart palpitations and a "habitually moist, cold hand." While Kellogg cautions that "no single one of the above signs should be considered as conclusive evidence of the habit in any individual," he admonishes his readers that "any one of them may, and should, arouse suspicion and watchfulness." Another of the warning signs of surreptitious masturbation that Kellogg cites is fingernail biting:
Biting the finger nails is a practice very common in girls addicted to this vice. In such persons there will also be found, not infrequently, slight soreness or ulceration at the roots of the nails, and warts, one or more, upon one or both the first two fingers of the hand - usually the right.In case you are wondering how masturbation might lead to ulcerations and warts upon the first two fingers of girls' right hands, here is Kellogg's explanation:
Contact with the acrid, irritating secretions of the vagina produces soreness of the fingers at the roots of the nails, and also frequently causes warts upon the fingers. Hence the value of these signs, as previously mentioned.Kellogg proposes a host of remedies for masturbation - circumcision is by no means the only one - but it is circumcision that concerns us here:
A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision, especially when there is any degree of phimosis. The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anaesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind, especially if it be connected with the idea of punishment, as it may well be in some cases. The soreness which continues for several weeks interrupts the practice, and if it had not previously become too firmly fixed, it may be forgotten and not resumed. If any attempt is made to watch the child, he should be so carefully surrounded by vigilance that he cannot possibly transgress without detection. If he is only partially watched, he soon learns to elude observation, and the effect is only to make him cunning in his vice.Kellogg, incidentally, also recommended putting carbolic acid on girls' clitorises for the same purpose, that is, to inhibit masturbation. This passage is from the 1887 edition of his book:
In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement, and preventing the recurrence of the practice in those whose will-power has become so weakened that the patient is unable to exercise entire self-control.Kellogg also recounts a case (in the 1881 edition) in which he performed clitorectomy upon a ten-year-old girl at the behest of her father after "applying other measures without success. . . ."
Kellogg was enormously influential; according to Brian E. Strayer (Professor Emeritus of History at Andrews University), during the nineteenth century Kellogg "was one of the three most prominent physicians in the United States. . . ." Plain Facts for Old and Young had numerous editions. Kellogg, however, was not the only advocate of circumcision (and clitorectomy) as a cure for "self pollution" during the nineteenth century. In the era of Google and Google Scholar, this is information that any high school student with a laptop or smartphone could readily access in the time that it takes a search engine to return its results. Vinopal, evidently, couldn't be bothered to type "circumcision + masturbation" into her search box.
True, and to take Vinopal literally, there may be no evidence that male circumcision started as a way to prevent masturbation, as Mr. Losquadro is quoted in Vinopal's interview as saying if, by "started," he was referring to the dawn of the practice in antiquity. Male genital cutting, of course, is many thousands of years old, as is female genital cutting, and the actual purpose attending its origin is now probably hopelessly obscured by the passage of time and the lack of credible explanatory primary sources. (There certainly are plausible theories, however. See, in particular, pp. 17-20 in Leonard Glick's Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America [Oxford University Press, 2005].) On the other hand, it does not require a great leap of imagination to conjecture that the discouragement of non-procreative sexual acts - masturbation and intercourse for the sake of pleasure only - by means of amputation of erogenous tissue was one of MGC's original purposes, if not the primary one. But, whatever its original purpose, Vinopal is simply ignoring what is known and what is well documented about the social context - the abhorrence of masturbation that prevailed during the Victorian era - in which forced circumcision was taken up and promoted by the medical establishment during the nineteenth century. That is when childhood punitive and prophylactic circumcision firmly took root in American medical practice and that is where it has remained to this day as the proverbial (and perennial) cure in search of a disease.
In her zeal to present male genital cutting as benign, Vinopal states that "the claim that circumcised men have inferior sexual sensation has never been substantiated." This is simply a false statement.
As Glick documents (Marked in Your Flesh, p. 214),
In 1996, a team of Winnipeg pathologists, John R. Taylor and colleagues, published a paper breaking new ground. Remarking that even opponents of circumcision defended the prepuce as protection for the glans, rather than "as a tissue worthy of preservation in its own right," these researchers demonstrated that circumcision removes tissue richly supplied with nerves and blood vessels, including a band of ridged mucosa (the "ridged band") - highly specialized sensory tissue located at the junction of the penile skin and smooth mucosa [note omitted]. In plain language, they concluded that circumcision destroys not just a bit of "superfluous skin," as is so often claimed, but a vital sensory component of the male genitalia, essential for normal sexual sensation and functioning.
In 2007, Sorrells, Snyder, Reiss, Eden, Milos, Wilcox and Van Howe concluded,
[C]ircumcision removes the most sensitive parts of the penis and decreases the fine-touch pressure sensitivity of the glans penis. The most sensitive regions in the uncircumcised [sic] penis are those parts ablated by circumcision. When compared to the most sensitive area of the circumcised penis, several locations on the uncircumcised [sic] penis (the rim of the preputial orifice, dorsal and ventral, the frenulum near the ridged band, and the frenulum at the muco-cutaneous junction) that are missing from the circumcised penis were significantly more sensitive.These findings were replicated and confirmed yet again by Bossio, Pukall and Steele in 2015:
Similar to Sorrells et al., we found that - of all the genital sites tested - the foreskin was the most sensitive to tactile sensation stimuli. However, given the high prevalence of fine-touch pressure receptors (Meissner corpuscles) in the preputial mucosa, this finding was not unexpected [authors' citations omitted].It would be irresponsible to cite the Bossio study here without acknowledging that its authors went on to conclude virtually the opposite of what their results indicated. It would be no less irresponsible, however, to cite Bossio et al.'s study without also citing Brian D. Earp's analysis of the Bossio study in which he demonstrates how and why "the way they reported their results was woefully misleading." As Earp observes,
The foreskin is part of the penis. It is made up of sensitive tissue . . . so if you remove it, the penis loses sensitivity by definition. Specifically, it loses all the sensitivity experienced in the foreskin itself, along with all the subjective sensations that are unique to having a foreskin.It seems to me that it should not be necessary to conduct a scientific study in an exam room with fluorescent lighting and monofilaments in order to test the hypothesis that the male prepuce is capable of sensation. All one need do is ask a man with a full penis whether he perceives any pleasurable sensations on any part of his prepuce. If he does, the next question ought to be how willing he would be to forego all of those sensations. The final question ought to be how he would feel about it if he had been deprived of all of those sensations without his consent before he even got to experience them. I would encourage all new parents to consider that last question carefully. Once they do, they may begin to understand the depth of the resentment of men - like Brother K, the Bloodstained Men and Anthony Losquadro, and many, many more - about what was done to them without their consent and what they were deprived of.
None of this appears to matter much to Vinopal, whose premise seems to be that, unless proved otherwise, no diminution of sexual sensation can be assumed to result from the amputation of the highly innervated, highly sensitive erogenous tissue, with its specialized fine-touch receptors, that comprises the male prepuce. Left unaddressed by her is how, exactly, one is supposed to quantify a subjective experience and how one might "prove" that it is diminished in men who never got to experience that sensation in the first place. (Again, see Earp on this.)
On the other hand, assuming there were some way to prove diminished sensation in someone who had been subjected to circumcision at birth, one has to wonder what level of "substantiation" would satisfy Vinopal before she - someone who was permitted to grow up with her genitals intact - takes seriously the complaints of men who weren't so fortunate. How many additional studies confirming that the male prepuce contains sensory nerves need to be performed before Vinopal acknowledges that the inferior sexual sensation that necessarily results from removal of the prepuce has finally been "substantiated"? At the end of the day, is there any sort of evidence that could persuade deniers like Vinopal to accept at face value the complaints of men who were subjected to circumcision in infancy that they have been condemned to live their entire lives never knowing what intercourse and true sexual intimacy are supposed to feel like? More to the point, why should the burden of proof rest with these men in the first place? Why should it be necessary to convince Vinopal (or anyone else) that circumcision adversely affects penile sensation before the right of someone not to be subjected to it without his consent is recognized as a fundamental human right?
These are valid questions, given that Vinopal frames the topic of MGC not in terms of an absolute right to bodily integrity but, rather, in terms of a utilitarian and amoral cost-benefit analysis. In her profile of the Bloodstained Men, Vinopal does concede that there may be a loss of sensation (a concession from which she subsequently retreats in her interview with Losquadro and Christopher one month later) but, in one fell swoop, Vinopal both trivializes this loss and justifies it as a legitimate "trade-off" between what she has determined (and how she has determined this, she does not say) is "a sliver of pleasure" and "safety." While Vinopal's concern for public health is commendable, it is also irrelevant in a society that values the rights of the individual and aspires to balance those rights against the interests of the common good. After all, without that balance, where would it end? Just think of all the benefits that could result if we were to enforce, for example, strict dietary restrictions on people or otherwise control their unhealthy behaviors (such as recreational drug use). Similarly, who knows what other diseases and pathological conditions could be avoided by amputating parts of individuals' bodies? And if the motive be honorable, such as advancing public health, who needs consent?
An analogy that is often made in order to drive home the point is that of the suppositional case of prophylactic breast-bud excision. Breast cancer, which takes the lives of over 40,000 women annually in the United States, could be nearly wiped out were we to routinely remove the breast buds of infant girls the way we routinely remove the prepuces of infant boys. But is the undeniable benefit to society (and to the individual women themselves) that would result (including decreased mortality and the saving of billions of healthcare dollars annually) the only valid metric to use when considering a non-consensual surgery such as this? If one were to approach prophylactic breast-bud excision of infant girls the same way that Vinopal approaches prophylactic prepuce amputation of infant boys, one could easily conclude, as Vinopal apparently has, that this is a perfectly reasonable "trade-off" between a "sliver of pleasure" and "safety." The ethical, moral and philosophical objection to this approach, however, is that it omits any and all consideration of the feelings, wishes and rights of the person whose body is being surgically altered and thereby deprives that person not just of the body part that has been removed but - no less importantly, if more abstractly - of the right of bodily autonomy. That is one of the central objections to involuntary circumcision that is raised by the many professional healthcare organizations cited above and by Brother K, the Bloodstained Men, Anthony Losquadro and the others - an objection, incidentally, that Vinopal characterizes as "radical."
In seeking to discredit the anti-MGC protesters (and, by extension, the genital-autonomy movement) as scientifically or biologically illiterate, Vinopal asserts that "their equating female genital mutilation to circumcision betrays [a] poor understanding of anatomy." Yet what is in fact betrayed by Vinopal's imputation of the protesters here is her own poor understanding of anatomy - both female and male - and also her evident unfamiliarity with the World Health Organizations four-part classification of female genital mutilation (FGM). The specific anatomical, cultural and ethical similarities and areas of "overlap" between female genital cutting and male genital cutting is ground that has been well covered, particularly by such scholars as Brian D. Earp. (See in particular, Earp's essay in Practical Ethics, Female genital mutilation (FGM) and male circumcision: Should there be a separate ethical discourse? An abbreviated version of this work can be found in Aeon and published as Boys and girls alike. A more extensive version of both of these is Earp's Female genital mutilation and male circumcision: toward an autonomy-based ethical framework, Dovepress, 2015.) This holds also for the relevance of the WHO's own four-part FGM definition to any discussion of MGC. Still, because the notion is so prevalent in our society that female genital cutting and male genital cutting are fundamentally different, I think it worth going into some detail on these points. It is particularly worth doing so in the present case in order not to leave Vinopal's perpetuation of this absurd notion unanswered.
The WHO defines FGM as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons." It further classifies FGM into four categories or types. Type I, Clitoridectomy (or clitorectomy), entails "partial or total removal of the clitoris and/or the prepuce." This category also includes two sub-types, one of which - Type Ia - entails "removal of the clitoral hood or prepuce only," which means that it is identical to the most commonly performed type of male circumcision, except that the latter ultimately results in a loss of significantly more genital tissue. To continue with the WHO's FGM classifications, Type Ib entails "removal of the clitoris with the prepuce"; Type II entails "partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora with or without excision of the labia majora"; Type III entails "narrowing of the vaginal orifice . . . with or without excision of the clitoris"; and Type IV includes "all other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example, pricking, piercing, incising, scraping and cauterization."
In her interview with Losquadro and Christopher, Vinopal asks why it matters that there are four types of FGM. The reason that it matters, as Earp explains, is because
[as others have] argued, . . . both male and female forms of genital alteration fall on a wide spectrum, and . . . the harms they may entail substantially overlap. That this is not commonly understood in the popular discourse is most likely due to the fact that when Westerners hear the term "FGM," they tend to think of the most extreme forms of female genital cutting, done in the least sterilized environments, with the most drastic consequences likeliest to follow (since these are the forms to which they will typically have been exposed, due to their disproportionate representation in the media and in other popular accounts). When people hear the term "male circumcision," by contrast, they are much more likely to think of the least severe forms of male genital cutting, done in the most sterilized environments, with the least drastic consequences likeliest to follow, largely because this is the form with which they are culturally familiar. [Earp's emphasis. Earp's citations omitted.]
However, as the anthropologist Zachary Androus has noted, this way of thinking is misleading: "The fact of the matter is that what's done to some girls [in some cultures] is worse than what's done to some boys, and what's done to some boys [in some cultures] is worse than what's done to some girls. By collapsing all of the many different types of procedures performed into single set for each sex, categories are created that do not accurately describe any situation that actually occurs anywhere in the world. [Earp's interpolations.]In other words, although FGM can be worse than male circumcision in severity and damage, FGM also includes procedures that are identical to and, in many cases, less extreme and less harmful than that which occurs in routine infant male circumcision. Hence, MGC, when judged by the WHO's own criteria, is more properly known as male genital mutilation (MGM).
Vinopal, of course, would counter that female genital cutting differs fundamentally from male genital cutting in that the former is performed exclusively "for non-medical reasons" whereas MGC, which Fatherly's readers are expected to regard not as a custom but as unassailably good medical practice, is performed honorably in the service of public health. "The custom of removing a clitoris," Vinopal tells Losquadro, "isn't even for a marginal public health benefit. . . ." Yet exactly the same can be said of MGC. The custom of removing a prepuce "so his penis will look like his father's" is not for a public-health benefit. The custom of removing a prepuce "because of hygiene" is not for a public-health benefit. The custom of removing a prepuce "because it's ugly" or because "it looks weird" is not for a public-health benefit. The custom of removing a prepuce "because my religion demands it" is not for a public-health benefit. The custom of removing a prepuce "because women don't like it" is not for a public-health benefit. The custom of removing a prepuce "because he'll be made fun of in the locker room otherwise" is not for a public-health benefit. The reasons predominantly given by parents for subjecting their sons to circumcision are, in fact, not related to its alleged "health benefits" but to factors completely unrelated to health and medicine. Even Andrew L. Freedman, MD, one of the members of the AAP's 2012 "task force" on circumcision, admits that much. Most often, it is simply the circumcision status of the father that determines the circumcision status of the son. It is high time that MGC defenders admit to themselves, therefore, as they sanctimoniously condemn other cultures for the practice of FGM while patting themselves on the back for their own moral superiority, that MGC persists here for the same reasons that FGC persists there: the irresistible force of tradition. Like female genital cutting, male genital cutting is a deeply ingrained, self-perpetuating cultural practice that is passed down from generation to generation. And while the momentum of tradition would seem a rather obviously and stupendously unscientific basis upon which to rationalize a medically unnecessary and irreversible genital surgery, tradition is, in fact, one of the most difficult things to combat - let alone overcome - with science and reason alone. That is precisely why Brother K and the Bloodstained Men are out in the streets protesting in bloodstained suits. A "visceral" or "emotional argument," which Vinopal dismisses as being somehow irrelevant, is perfectly appropriate - necessary, even - particularly in a campaign that seeks to effect a fundamental shift in how our culture regards one of its most deeply entrenched and cherished customs.
It should also be pointed out that, in equating FGM with clitorectomy in order to establish what is, in fact, a specious distinction between FGC and MGC, Vinopal ignores the fact that FGC does not always entail removal of the external portion of the clitoris (the glans) and never entails removal of the entire clitoris since the majority of this organ is internal. Moreover, in contrast to Vinopal's assertion that clitorectomy "doesn't so much lessen sexual experience as obliterate it" (and, again how she knows this she does not say), as Ahmadu J.Abdulcadir et al. have pointed out, "[r]esearch by gynecologists and others has demonstrated that a high percentage of women who have had genital surgery have rich sexual lives, including desire, arousal, orgasm, and satisfaction, and their frequency of sexual activity is not reduced" (Seven things to know about female genital surgeries in Africa, Hastings Center Report, 2012, cited in Earp: Female genital mutilation and male circumcision). Vinopal's assumptions about and conceptual differentiation between MGC and FGC are actually typical of the discourse concerning these topics in the Western media. As Nancy Ehrenreich and Mark Barr (cited by Earp in Female Genital Mutilation and male circumcision) point out,
the mainstream anti-FG[A] position is premised upon an orientalizing construction of FG[A] societies as primitive, patriarchal, and barbaric, and of female circumcision as a harmful, unnecessary cultural practice based on patriarchal gender norms and ritualistic beliefs. . . . Lambasting African societies and practices (while failing to critique similar practices in the United States [and Europe]) . . . essentially implies that North American [and European] understandings of the body are "scientific" (ie rational, civilized, and based on universally acknowledged expertise), while African understandings are "cultural" (ie, superstitious, un-civilized and based on false, socially constructed beliefs). [Yet] neither of these depictions is accurate. North American medicine is not free of cultural influence, and FG[A] practices are not bound by culture - at least not in the uniform way imagined by opponents. [Earp's ellipses and interpolations.]If Vinopal is guilty of cultural arrogance here, she is certainly no worse than many in the popular media who, on the basis of nothing more than the most superficial knowledge about genital cutting - female and male - voice unqualified condemnation of the former while defending the latter. But Fatherly's readers deserve more than stereotypes, tropes, myths and popular misconceptions. (Again, in contrast to Vinopal's facile misrepresentations and for a useful discussion of the degrees to which FGC and MGC are alike or dissimilar, see Earp, Female Genital Mutilation, cited and linked above.)
It should be noted further that FGC is now being medicalized (particularly in Egypt) just as male circumcision became medicalized in the West during the nineteenth century. Accordingly, while it is treated as a foregone conclusion (as Vinopal does) that FGC is performed exclusively for non-medical reasons, the claim that it is will become harder and harder to make as physicians in FGC-practicing societies increasingly rationalize and justify FGC on the basis of its alleged "health benefits," as, in fact, they already are doing (cited in Brian D. Earp, Does Female Genital Mutilation Have Health Benefits? The Problem with Medicalizing Morality). For example, consider this statement by the Egyptian gynecologist Mounir Mohammed Fawzi, quoted in Amy Wright Glenn's Ending Circumcision: the case for extending legal protections to America's boys: "It has been proven scientifically that women are healthier if they are circumcised." Medicalized FGC is also being justified on the principle of "harm reduction," the reasoning being that, if it's going to occur anyway, better that it should be done under sterile conditions by trained medical practitioners in order to minimize the risk of untoward sequela. (See Section 1.5 in the WHO's Guidelines on the management of health complications from female genital mutilation.)
Vinopal also plays fast and loose with basic scientific methodology when she alludes to several circumcision studies that were conducted in Africa which tested the hypothesis that male circumcision can reduce the incidence of HIV transmission. These studies have been claimed to demonstrate a huge prophylactic benefit of male circumcision: a 60% risk-reduction with respect to the incidence of female-to-male HIV transmission. This 60% figure is routinely touted by circumcision boosters, has been repeatedly cited by the media and, not surprisingly, is uncritically parroted by Vinopal in her article about the Bloodstained Men protest. But what Fatherly's readers likely do not know (but ought to, particularly if they are factoring this statistic into their harm-risk-benefit calculations regarding genital surgery for their newborns) is that this "60% risk-reduction" is not an absolute risk reduction but a relative risk reduction. Circumcision does not, as the WHO claims, reduce a heterosexual man's absolute chances of acquiring an HIV infection by 60%. What the studies found was that the relative risk of contracting HIV was lowered by 60% in the circumcised group compared to the intact group in the study. But a relative risk reduction can be used as a deliberately misleading statistic.
For those unacquainted with these terms, here is an illustration of the difference between absolute and relative risks. Let's say that each female member of a population has a 10% chance of developing a certain type of cancer in her lifetime. That means that, out of 100 women, ten of them can be expected to develop that type of cancer. That 10% represents an absolute, or actual, risk. Now suppose that a drug is found, in clinical trials, to reduce that risk from 10% to 5%. The manufacturer of that drug will happily report that reduction as a 50% decrease in the risk of getting that particular type of cancer because 5% is half (or 50%) of 10% (the original risk). So although the absolute risk in the clinical trials was reduced to 5%, this risk was reduced by 50%; in other words, the relative risk reduction in the trials was 50%. That is how promoters of male circumcision have misrepresented it in the African HIV studies as being spectacularly efficacious. The reality is that the overall absolute risk of contracting HIV among heterosexual intact men is in the single digits and, in these studies, this risk was reduced by a whopping few percentage points. In other words, the actual decrease in risk was on the order of between 1 and 2 percent. (For a fact- and science-based explanation of how the circumcision campaigns now under way on the African continent might result in an outcome opposite to that of their putative intent, see Brian D. Earp, A fatal irony: Why the "circumcision solution" to the AIDs epidemic in Africa may increase transmission of HIV, in Practical Ethics.)
These constitute some of the more significant errors in Vinopal's articles. But her reporting is also notable for its sins of omission. For example, an important aspect of MGC that Fatherly's readers might wish to have been informed about is that there are some segments of the medical profession and of the bio-tech and cosmetics industries that profit handsomely from infant circumcision. There remains, therefore, a very powerful financial disincentive for these parties to see this cash cow put out to pasture. Neither is it hard to grasp the legal and ethical bind in which these medical professionals - mainly the obstetricians, family practitioners and pediatricians who perform non-therapeutic circumcisions, as well as the facilities where they are performed - now find themselves. Were they to reverse course and publicly admit that non-therapeutic circumcision is unethical and, therefore, constitutes malpractice, a tsunami of lawsuits surely would follow. (There is a parallel here to the tobacco industry's dogged refusal to acknowledge for so many years that inhaling cigarette smoke is harmful. As we now know, the tobacco industry knew otherwise for decades but, as a legal strategy, had to deny knowing it.) At the very least, parents who may be pressured by healthcare providers into subjecting their children to circumcision have a right to know that the advice they are receiving may not be entirely disinterested. That is information that I certainly would want to weigh against any recommendation for surgery for my newborn that I might receive; I can only assume that others would feel the same way. Is it really so much to ask that relevant information such as this be provided to Fatherly's readers, given its promises of "deep-dive" reporting and "expert parenting advice"? Yet this important aspect of MGC receives nary a mention by Vinopal in her several articles on this topic.
Here I will concede, without apology, that a suspicion of the motives of those who profit from non-therapeutic circumcision may appear to be an example of the very sort of mistrust of the American medical establishment that Vinopal claims is behind the genital autonomy movement. (Recall Vinopal's characterization of intactivists as people who embody a general "distrust of institutions and scientific consensus.") But mistrust of the American medical establishment and institutions is not the same thing as mistrust of the scientific consensus. On the question of infant circumcision, it is the American medical establishment itself that is at odds with the scientific consensus. Yet Vinopal lumps these together as though they are one and the same. This is how she deftly misrepresents the genital-autonomy movement as being out of step with the scientific consensus when the opposite is the case. (Vinopal's false characterization of the genital-autonomy movement as embodying a rejection of scientific consensus also seems to be the basis for her comparison of it to the anti-vaccination movement.)
At the same time, if the 40-year Tuskegee syphilis study and the Henrietta Lacks case have taught us anything, it is that the conduct of the American medical establishment and healthcare institutions has been, at times, less than honorable and its methods less than ethical. Perhaps, therefore, a certain amount of skepticism on the part of the public is, on balance, a good thing. (The gynecological experiments that were performed by J. Marion Sims during the nineteenth century on enslaved African American women could perhaps be offered as another example in this category, however, it does not appear to be as clear cut as the Tuskegee and Lacks cases. In the Tuskegee syphilis study, the U.S. Public Health Service deliberately withheld treatment for syphilis from poor African Americans who were suffering from it so that researchers could observe how the disease progressively ravages the human body. Henrietta Lacks was an African American woman who, while undergoing treatment for cervical cancer, had some of her cancerous cells harvested and then cultured without her consent. These cells ultimately led to the so-called HeLa (for Henrietta Lacks) cell line which, as Salamishah Tillet, writing for the New York Times, summarizes,"emerged as one of the most widely used lines in medical research and helped establish the multibillion dollar vaccine industry, cancer treatment and in vitro fertilization industry. . . . all done without the knowledge of, consent from or any compensation paid to Lacks's family. . . ." As an aside, I should mention here that, irony of ironies, Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has been dramatized in a movie both produced by and starring none other than Oprah Winfrey.)
Insofar as skepticism of the American medical establishment's support of non-therapeutic circumcision is concerned (allowing, of course, that "the American medical establishment," even taken as an entity by itself, is by no means unanimous in its support of non-therapeutic circumcision), the genital-autonomy movement does not, as Vinopal would have Fatherly's readers believe, have a great deal in common with the anti-vaccination movement. Yet, several times, Vinopal attempts to tie the two movements together, as when, for example, she ascribes Barba's opposition to MGC to "the same fear of medical norms as the anti-vaxxers." According to Vinopal, "Intactivism is driven by a culture of distrust." What it is actually driven by, however, is a culture of respect for basic human rights. That is not to suggest that there are not vaccination skeptics and opponents who oppose male genital cutting just as, I presume, there are vaccination skeptics and opponents who also oppose female genital cutting. Should they be criticized for that? Are intactivists any more obliged to purge vaccination opponents from their ranks than anti-FGM organizations are obliged to purge vaccination opponents from their ranks?
Although objections to forced circumcision - whether as a religious rite or for ostensibly medical reasons - were being raised over a century ago (see Glick, Marked in Your Flesh), it seems to me that the philosophical antecedents of the contemporary genital-autonomy movement (aside from the civil-rights-, women's-rights- and LGBTQ-rights movements to which I alluded above) are more likely to be found in two powerful trends that emerged during the latter part of the last century, both firmly anchored in feminist thought.
Although objections to forced circumcision - whether as a religious rite or for ostensibly medical reasons - were being raised over a century ago (see Glick, Marked in Your Flesh), it seems to me that the philosophical antecedents of the contemporary genital-autonomy movement (aside from the civil-rights-, women's-rights- and LGBTQ-rights movements to which I alluded above) are more likely to be found in two powerful trends that emerged during the latter part of the last century, both firmly anchored in feminist thought.
One of these was the objection to the large number of unnecessary hysterectomies and episiotomies to which American women were being routinely subjected. This objection was a major part of the more fundamental second-wave feminist critique of the male-dominated practice of medicine in which not only had childbirth become medicalized but women's bodies themselves pathologized: their functions and states of being defined as deviations from the norm simply because they were not consistent with the male biological pattern (or the "norm" of maleness). The anti-hyserectomy movement probably provides a much more appropriate analogy to the genital autonomy movement because, unlike the anti-vaccination movement, its concern is with the surgical removal of a body part; moreover, because its central premise is that that that routine surgical removal reflects not medical necessity but a culturally constructed pathologizing of the body part in question. The women's health movement, too, is not without its critics, and not necessarily from within the bastions of traditional male-dominated medical practice. Sometimes hysterectomies are, in fact, appropriate. But the genital-autonomy movement, it should be remembered, does not oppose circumcision in those exceedingly rare cases when there is actually a medical indication for it but, rather, in those cases - the overwhelming majority - when there isn't.
The other major trend was the "coming out" or development of the abortion-rights movement, with its shift away from justification arguments (whether medical necessity, financial necessity or social necessity) and toward the establishment of abortion rights on the principle of bodily autonomy. This principle is expressed in what has become a mantra of the abortion-rights movement: "My body - My choice." While it may seem axiomatic that every human being comes into the world in possession of an inalienable right to own and control her or his own body - including every part of it and everything within it - the current legislative assault on women's reproductive rights, the persistence of the pro-circumcision lobby and the backlash against the genital autonomy movement, as epitomized in the treatment that it has received in Fatherly, all indicate how revolutionary and even controversial that idea remains.
The other major trend was the "coming out" or development of the abortion-rights movement, with its shift away from justification arguments (whether medical necessity, financial necessity or social necessity) and toward the establishment of abortion rights on the principle of bodily autonomy. This principle is expressed in what has become a mantra of the abortion-rights movement: "My body - My choice." While it may seem axiomatic that every human being comes into the world in possession of an inalienable right to own and control her or his own body - including every part of it and everything within it - the current legislative assault on women's reproductive rights, the persistence of the pro-circumcision lobby and the backlash against the genital autonomy movement, as epitomized in the treatment that it has received in Fatherly, all indicate how revolutionary and even controversial that idea remains.
More basically, what all of these movements demonstrate is that medical practice is not something apart or outside of the cultural milieu in which it exists but, rather, is symbiotically connected with the culture in which it exists, both influencing that culture and, in turn, being influenced by it. The manner in which the medical establishment has regarded and treated women's bodies is a function of how our society has regarded women's bodies. At the same time, medical practice has influenced how our society regards women's bodies. Likewise, the manner in which the American medical establishment has regarded and treated the male prepuce is a function of how our society has regarded the male prepuce, while the way that our society has regarded the male prepuce has also been profoundly influenced by the medical establishment. For 150 years, the American medical establishment has defined the male prepuce as a useless and disease-prone appendage. That puts the male prepuce in pretty good company. Consider this physician's statement about the uterus:
When the patient has completed her family, total hysterectomy should be performed as a prophylactic procedure. Under these circumstances, the uterus becomes a useless, bleeding, symptom-producing, potentially cancer-bearing organ and therefore should be removed. . . . To sterilize a woman [through tubal ligation] and allow her to keep a useless and potentially lethal organ is incompatible with modern gynecological concepts.
(The quotation above, attributed to Dr. Ralph C. Wright, is cited in Sure Doctor, You Can Have My Uterus, in Feministing, and is taken from an essay that was written by Deborah Larned entitled The Epidemic in Unnecessary Hysterectomy, which appears in the anthology Seizing Our Bodies: The Politics of Women's Health [Vintage, 1978].) The attitude expressed here about the uterus and its prophylactic removal is very similar to the attitude about the male prepuce and its prophylactic removal that was once (and, to some extent, still is) so popular among American physicians, maintains a tenacious hold on American cultural beliefs about the male body, and is so ardently cherished by circumcision enthusiasts. In her thorough and brilliant article on the history of MGC, The troubled history of the foreskin, Jessica Wapner provides some illuminating examples:
An 1890 journal identified smegma as "infectious material." A few years later, a book for mothers - Confidential Talks on Home and Child Life, by a member of the National Temperance Society - described the foreskin as a "mark of Satan." Another author described parents who did not circumcise their sons as "almost criminally negligent."
. . . . In an influential 1891 book about circumcision, [Peter Charles] Remondino described the foreskin as a "malign influence" that could weaken a man "physically, mentally and morally; to land him, perchance, in jail or even in a lunatic asylum." Insurance companies, he advised, should classify uncircumcised [sic] men as "hazardous risks."(Incidentally, see Wapner's essay besides for an example of how a writer who takes seriously the craft of science reporting approaches this topic with the earnestness, sensitivity, open-mindedness and thoroughness that it deserves.)
Contemporary American attitudes toward the male prepuce have their antecedents in these nineteenth-century diatribes. And while most Americans nowadays probably do not regard the male prepuce literally as a "mark of Satan," the roots of contemporary attitudes remain firmly anchored in nineteenth-century thought. Accordingly, it remains perfectly common and, socially, perfectly acceptable, to disparage this critical part of the anatomy of the penis and to body-shame those men who happen to possess it. Vinopal's comment in her most recently posted stand-up routine, in which she sarcastically claims to be able to "relate to toxic men because I'm also uncircumcised" is an example of this attitude, the premise being that the mere presence of a prepuce on a man's body makes that man "toxic."
But the fact that such attitudes - whether about uteruses or prepuces, whether about prophylactic hysterectomy or prophylactic prepucectomy - may in less enlightened times have been common among American physicians does not mean that such attitudes reflect current medical best practices or the highest standards of medical ethics today. Rather, they reflect the mutable nature of both cultural attitudes about the human body and the medical establishment's attitudes about the human body with which these cultural attitudes are inextricably linked. As cultural attitudes change, corresponding medical practices inevitably change with them, and vice versa. The fact that the incidence of non-therapeutic circumcision is declining in the United States, along with the fact that it is increasingly and explicitly being renounced by much of the world's medical community, represent the very paradigm of this phenomenon.
Of course, cultures don't necessarily change spontaneously; sometimes they need a push. Feminists whose particular focus has been to impel the medical profession to adopt a more respectful and enlightened view of women's bodies, women's health and childbirth have not limited their efforts to the realms of medical education and practice narrowly but, instead, have worked to effect a fundamental change in the way that society regards women's bodies, women's health and childbirth. Similarly, intactivists understand that, in order to end MGC, it is essential to alter not just the medical landscape but the cultural landscape. Indeed, it is probably impossible to effect substantive change in the one without first or at least simultaneously effecting a fundamental change in the other. That is why, along with bloodstained suits, one is likely to see signs at anti-MGC demonstrations proclaiming "foreskin pride." Intactivists realize that efforts to ban MGC on scientific, legal and ethical grounds must be accompanied by a campaign, in parallel, to elevate the male prepuce from an object of derision in the popular culture to its rightful place as a natural, useful and valid feature of male anatomy that, to put it anthropomorphically, has a right to exist.
But if effecting a fundamental change in society's attitudes about the male prepuce is central to this cultural shift, effecting a fundamental change in society's attitudes about its violent removal also is central to this cultural shift. That necessarily entails demolishing the utterly false notions that circumcision is "just a snip," that it is painless, that it is bloodless and non-traumatic, that it is ultimately harmless - both for the infant and for the man that he will become - and that men don't object to having been subjected to it. It entails jolting complacent passers-by (and, in some cases, complacent medical professionals) with the blunt truth that neonatal circumcision is in fact the opposite of every one of these things. That, too, is why the Bloodstained Men are out in the streets protesting in bloodstained suits.
If Vinopal's reporting on MGC for Fatherly leads one to the inevitable conclusion that she is much more concerned with discrediting the genital autonomy movement than she is with advancing Fatherly's mission to provide "expert parenting advice," one is led there by her employing not one but multiple lines of attack against the protesters. At times she assails their position on scientific grounds, stating matter-of-factly, yet falsely, that "most of their claims are unscientific." At others, she treats them with condescension, dismissing victims' grief and anger about what was done to their genitals as "an emotional argument" as opposed to "a scientific one." In other words, if a man expresses anger or aggrievement over something that was done to his body without his consent, and if he argues against what was done to him on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves, these arguments are without merit because they are based merely on feelings. Several times Vinopal attempts to discredit the genital autonomy movement by asserting that it is motivated primarily by an irrational mistrust of medicine and science, a point not so subtly reinforced by presenting the interview with Losquadro and Christopher to Fatherly's readers, as noted above, under the rubric of "Psychology." (Discrediting social justice movements by representing their champions as deviants or crackpots is yet another tactic of those fighting to preserve the status quo.) At another point, lapsing into her comedian's persona, Vinopal employs sarcasm, deadpanning about the Bloodstained Men that "they are doing this because they believe circumcision to be a human rights emergency." Finally, Vinopal attempts to discredit the genital autonomy movement by tying it to sexism and racism, proclaiming that "the more one zooms out on intactivism, the more it starts to resemble other forms of white male privilege." This statement, incidentally, appears literally a few lines of text above a photograph of a woman of color protesting MGC alongside Brother K.
What is the basis for Vinopal's comparison of opposition to forced genital cutting to "other forms of white male privilege"? Beyond her remark (already discussed) that "The trade-off is between safety and a sliver of pleasure" with which she follows this comparison (a comparison that serves not only to negate the message of the protesters but to impugn their motives as well), Vinopal does not say. She neither explains what those "other forms" of white male privilege are nor how a movement that opposes non-therapeutic genital cutting resembles them. As it happens, though, by invoking the concept of white male privilege, I believe that Vinopal has stumbled upon an aspect of the cultural practice of MGC that deserves to be explored a bit more thoroughly. Instead of "zooming out," then, let's "zoom in"on the phrase "white male privilege," in order to consider whether its constituent elements - privilege, whiteness and maleness - and the phrase itself, taken in the aggregate, accord or conflict with MGC within the historical and social contexts that have given rise to both white male privilege and to male genital cutting.
To begin with the "privilege" piece, a privilege, derived from the Latin privilegium, is "a right, immunity, benefit or advantage granted to some person, group of persons or class, not enjoyed by others. . . . " (This definition is from Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, [New World Dictionaries/Simon and Schuster, 1983].) To suggest that demonstrating on behalf of an infant boy's right not to be subjected to genital cutting is to demand a privilege denied to others is wrong on its face, given that female genital cutting is illegal under numerous state laws and has been proscribed by federal statute in the United States since 1996. Physicians, medical organizations, ethicists and academics, women and men and, of course, Brother K, the Bloodstained Men and the other protesters profiled in Vinopal's articles who oppose genital cutting are not claiming special rights for males but equal rights for males (and intersex children). Intactivists are not defending a privilege that only males enjoy but opposing a human-rights violation to which only males (and intersex children) are still legally subject. Intactivists seek for boys (and the men that they will become) nothing more and nothing less than what girls (and the women that they will become) already have: the right not to have any part of their genitals cut off without their consent.
As for the "white" in "white male privilege," a bit of digging (speaking of "deep dives") into the sordid history of male circumcision also reveals that the efficacy that was claimed for it as a prophylaxis against excessive libido and sexual arousal made it an ideal solution to what, during the nineteenth century, was believed to be black men's innate hypersexuality, their predisposition for promiscuity and, it almost goes without saying, their particular penchant for raping white women. (The racist stereotype of black and brown men as rapists and, in particular, as rapists who target white women was behind large numbers lynchings of black men during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This stereotype, which persists to this day, is what Bush the elder exploited in his Willie Horton campaign against Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign (cited above) and was exploited again by Donald Trump in 2015 when he portrayed Mexican immigrants as "rapists.") If blacks were a "savage" or "infantile race" that needed to be enslaved and controlled for its own good, that was no less true on account of its alleged brutish sexual proclivities. And if the methods of controlling black bodies included shackling, scourging, branding, gouging, burning and mauling (among other such refined treatment administered by the guardians of genteel white civilization), what was circumcision to these? As the medical historian, the late Robert Darby, has meticulously documented, besides being advocated as a prophylaxis against venereal diseases, male circumcision was also proposed as a reasonable and comparatively humane solution to "the negro rape problem." As Darby explains,
Finally, for the "male" piece of "white male privilege": Vinopal is absolutely right about there being a connection between MGC, intactivism and white male privilege. Except that she is not right in the way that she thinks she is. If intactivism implies support for white male privilege (again, as Vinopal has suggested), and since feminists obviously oppose white male privilege, we should expect feminists therefore to oppose intactivism and to support MGC - the latter, on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Once again, however, Vinopal has it exactly backward. There is a vibrant feminist constituency within the genital autonomy movement. Fatherly's readers may not know this but, if they didn't know it before reading Vinopal's articles, they certainly didn't know it afterward either because this is yet another aspect of intactivism that Vinopal completely overlooks. So, instead of ignoring and marginalizing feminist perspectives on this topic, as Vinopal has done, and since the concept of white male privilege is one best articulated by feminists themselves, let's consider what feminists have to say about male genital cutting in order to draw a reasonable inference about whether white male privilege and intactivism accord or conflict with one another and about whether feminism itself and intactivism accord or conflict with one another.
In the 1880s, there were suggestions that African Americans should be forcibly circumcised as part of a campaign against venereal disease. It was asserted that they were irredeemably promiscuous and impossible to educate in the laws of hygiene. In the 1890s, some doctors went further, arguing that Negroes committing sexual assaults should be summarily castrated, while Dr. P.C. Remondino thought it would be both more effective and more humane to pass a law requiring all Negro boys to be routinely circumcised, since the surgery was guaranteed to keep their innate lust within reasonable bounds.Darby provides some fascinating and disturbing examples from primary-source materials. The following excerpted passage comes from an essay written by Remondino that appeared in the National Popular Review in 1894:
From our observations and experience . . . we feel fully warranted in suggesting the wholesale circumcision of the Negro race as an efficient remedy in preventing the predisposition to discriminate raping so inherent in that race. We have seen this act as a valuable preventive measure in cases where an inordinate and unreasoning as well as morbid carnal desire threatened physical shipwreck; if in such cases the morbid appetite has been removed or at least brought within manageable and natural bounds, we cannot see why it should not - at least in a certain beneficial degree - also affect the moral stamina of a race proverbial for the leathery consistency, inordinate redundancy, generous sebaceousness and general mental suggestiveness and hypnotizing influence of an unnecessary and rape, murder and lynching breeding prepuce.
It would certainly be more humane for a State legislature to pass an act legalizing and enforcing circumcision as a preventive measure, just as it would enforce either vaccination or quarantine regulations, than to enact laws to castrate or eunuchize the accused after his infraction of the laws. The many burnings, hangings, shootings and stonings that have of late taken place should suggest the search of the physical cause of this law-breaking and of some preventive measures; the radical means adopted by mobs certainly cure the burned, hung, shot or stoned to death, but they seem in no wise to act as preventative in others. Circumcision, as a preventive measure, certainly stands at the head of all possible suggested measures.If intactivism implies, as Vinopal suggests, support for "white male privilege," we should expect MGC itself to undermine or threaten that privilege. (Or else, why would intactivists oppose it?) Yet, what we learn from the historical record is that, far from undermining white male privilege, the proposed implementation of routine, forced circumcision as a racist and practical method for controlling black sexuality was advocated in order to enforce the very white male privilege that Vinopal seems to think that opponents of MGC want to defend. (There are actually two overlapping white male privileges in this context: the ownership of black bodies and the proprietary stake in white female chastity, hence the need to protect it through forced circumcision of black men.) This overtly racist aspect of MGC's history in the United States may not be generally known to Fatherly's readers, but it is to intactivists. Yet this, too, is information that Fatherly's readers deserve to have. After all, might not an African American parent who may be considering circumcision for her or his child want to know about its having been advocated as a form of racist violence directed against black bodies in defense of white privilege? Irrespective of any hygienic or prophylactic claims by which an African American parent may be persuaded to impose circumcision on her or his child, that parent may wish to eschew MGC for no other reason than its historical ties to racism, analogously to the desire of African Americans (and all Americans) to refrain from tobacco use not necessarily for reasons of health but simply because of tobacco's historical connection to the enslavement of millions of black people.
Finally, for the "male" piece of "white male privilege": Vinopal is absolutely right about there being a connection between MGC, intactivism and white male privilege. Except that she is not right in the way that she thinks she is. If intactivism implies support for white male privilege (again, as Vinopal has suggested), and since feminists obviously oppose white male privilege, we should expect feminists therefore to oppose intactivism and to support MGC - the latter, on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Once again, however, Vinopal has it exactly backward. There is a vibrant feminist constituency within the genital autonomy movement. Fatherly's readers may not know this but, if they didn't know it before reading Vinopal's articles, they certainly didn't know it afterward either because this is yet another aspect of intactivism that Vinopal completely overlooks. So, instead of ignoring and marginalizing feminist perspectives on this topic, as Vinopal has done, and since the concept of white male privilege is one best articulated by feminists themselves, let's consider what feminists have to say about male genital cutting in order to draw a reasonable inference about whether white male privilege and intactivism accord or conflict with one another and about whether feminism itself and intactivism accord or conflict with one another.
Feminism, at its best, encourages us to think broadly and critically about the potentially harmful effects of gender constructions on both men and women. It is so much more than a narrow interest group of women who care only about "women's issues" or women's rights. Feminism is much bigger than that. It is about identifying and challenging discourses and practices that engender all of us. The legal scholars Marie Fox and Michael Thomson describe male genital cutting (MGC) as "a gendering practice tied to masculinity and the management of male sexuality" that "parallels the ways in which feminist scholars have argued that female genital cutting (FGC) serves to fix gender in women." As such, like FGG, MGC is a feminist issue.
This quotation (above) is from an interview with the political scientist Rebecca Steinfeld that originally appeared in Hysteria, an online platform for feminist activism.
Leonard Glick, in the preface (p. viii) to Marked In Your Flesh (cited above), observes that "With regard to Jewish circumcision in particular, I realized that the practice is rooted in anachronistic sexist ideology. . . ." Elsewhere (p. 256), Glick describes MGC as a "practice [that], perhaps more than any other, highlights the intensely gendered quality of traditional rabinnic Judaism by focusing attention on the penis. . . ." And that "circumcision, by celebrating the male-centered quality of traditional Judaism, surely contributes to the shaping of the self-image of Jewish girls and women."
Writing in Slingshot, Jessie McCloud notes that Gloria Steinem "connected male and female circumcision during a 1997 forum on female genital mutilation in New York." McCloud quotes Steinem as follows:
I would like to remind us that we all share patriarchy, which is the pillar of almost every current political system, capitalist or socialist. And it has a rock bottom requirement, the control of women's bodies as the most basic means of reproduction. . . These patriarchal controls limit men's sexuality, too, but to a much, much lesser degree. That's why men are asked symbolically to submit the sexual part of themselves and their sons to patriarchal authority, which seems to be the origin of male circumcision . . . speaking for myself, I stand with many brothers in eliminating that practice, too [Mcloud's ellipses].A more detailed analysis of the intricate connection between male genital cutting and traditional patriarchal power can be found in Miriam Pollack's monumental essay, Circumcision: Identity, Gender and Power. Pollack explains the crucial role that MGC plays in what she describes as
. . . the twin patriarchal fears: the fear of woman and the fear of pleasure. Circumcision is both the vehicle and the product, the menace and the antidote, which simultaneously assuages and perpetuates those ancient terrors. This is the achievement and true function of circumcision. Circumcision achieves this by violently breaching the maternal-infant bond shortly after birth; by amputating and marking the baby's sexual organ before he knows what he has lost; by disempowering, "taming," the mother at the height of her instinctual need to protect her infant; by bonding the baby to the community of men past, present and future and to a male-imagined G-d [sic]; by restructuring the family and the society in terms of male dominance; and by psycho-sexually wounding the manhood still asleep in the unsuspecting baby boy. In all of these ways - socially, politically, religiously, ethnically, sexually, tribally, and interpersonally - the cutting of our baby boys' sexual organs is the fulcrum around which patriarchy exerts its power. Circumcision is a rite of male domination - domination and the entitlement of domination over other men, women, and children both institutionally and personally. It is the essence of patriarchy.This analysis accords closely with a similar interpretation of the significance of neonatal circumcision to patriarchal culture made by the sociologist Michael Kimmel in his essay for Tikkun, The Kindest Un-Cut: Feminism, Judaism and My Son's Foreskin (Tikkun, 16/[3], May/June 2001). Explaining how he came to decide not to subject his son to circumcision, Kimmel writes,
. . . what was ultimately decisive for us was the larger symbolic meaning of circumcision, and particularly the gendered politics of the ritual. After all, it is certainly not circumcision that makes a man Jewish. . . .
No, circumcision means something else: the reproduction of patriarchy. Abraham cements his relationship to God by a symbolic genital mutilation of his son. It is on the body of his son that Abraham writes his own beliefs. In a religion marked by the ritual exclusion of women, such a marking not only enables Isaac to be included within the community of men - he can be part of a minyan, can pray in the temple, can study Torah - but he can also lay claim to all the privileges to which being a Jewish male now entitles him. Monotheistic religions invariably worship male Gods, and exhibit patriarchal political arrangements between the sexes. . . .
Circumcision . . . is the single moment of the reproduction of patriarchy. It's when patriarchy happens, the single crystalline moment when the rule of the fathers is reproduced, the moment when male privilege and entitlement is passed from one generation to the next, when the power of the fathers is exacted upon the sons, a power which the sons will someday then enact on the bodies of their own sons. To circumcise our own son, then, would be, unwittingly or not, to accept as legitimate 4000 years not of Jewish tradition, but of patriarchal domination of women.As these feminist writers recognize, MGC is not just intimately connected with white male privilege but part and parcel of it. Given that it is, and given that intactivists oppose MGC, if one can make any inference at all about how that opposition might dispose intactivists to view white male privilege, that inference ought, if anything, to default to a presumption of intactivist opposition to it, rather than support for it, as Vinopal seems to think it does. (It also seems significant that, in attempting to establish an association between these protesters, the movement to end MGC and white male privilege in the minds of Fatherly's readers, Vinopal makes no mention of the many women who are actively involved in the genital autonomy movement, nor of the many women who protest alongside the Bloodstained Men.)
A word about "rape culture" is in order here. Having considered the historical use of male genital cutting as a means for curbing and controlling (both black and white) male sexuality, having considered the historical phenomenon in which the male prepuce was pathologized and its involuntary removal advocated, having considered MGC as a negation of the right of bodily autonomy, having considered its archaic and deeply rooted historical connection to patriarchal culture and, therefore, to white male privilege, and having surveyed some feminist critiques of MGC, the question of whether or not MGC "contributes to rape culture" does not just follow as a logical extension of these arguments but, as it happens, receives prominent mention in one of Vinopal's articles. The caption to the article in which Vinopal interviews Losquadro and Christopher reads as follows: "Intactivists blame rape culture on circumcision, in a bizarre interview with Fatherly." I do not know whether Vinopal wrote that copy herself or whether an editor or an intern appended it but, whatever the source, the implication is unambiguous: the idea that forced genital cutting is conceptually related to rape culture and, perhaps even causally related to sexual assault, is bizarre. (That caption, of course, sets the tone for the entire article and is clearly intended to prejudice Fatherly's readers against Losquadro and Christopher and against the genital autonomy movement as a whole.) Christopher's take on this, however, does not strike me as bizarre or even far-fetched.
. . . I think we're teaching men that they don't have agency over their bodies. And I think that definitely contributes to a lot of the violence against women, because if you don't have agency over your body, then why does anybody else? We're teaching people that we don't value their sexual experience, their genitals, why would they value someone else's? And I think that is at least a little bit of the problem with rape and other violence against women.It seems to me that there are two basic questions here. First, whether or not MGC is at least connected in some way to rape culture and, second, whether it is connected directly to sexual assault, meaning that a causal relationship exists between MGC and rape. I don't know whether subjecting boys to genital cutting increases the odds of their becoming rapists or perhaps violent in some other way (although it certainly increases the odds of their subjecting their own sons to genital cutting) but the relationship that Christopher suggests here does not seem implausible. (It should be noted that Christopher does not, himself, use the term "rape culture.") That MGC should contribute to rape culture in a more general or indirect way certainly does not seem like a "wild theory," as Vinopal characterizes it in her article. As we have seen above, the feminist analysis of male genital cutting views this practice as intrinsic to patriarchal culture. And rape culture itself, as understood within feminist critical theory, is also intrinsic to patriarchal culture. Just to clarify what rape culture is, this is how Lynn Phillips, of the University of Massachusetts defines it:
Rape culture is a culture in which dominant cultural ideologies, media images, social practices, and societal institutions support and condone sexual abuse by normalizing, trivializing and eroticizing male violence against women and blaming victims for their own abuse.(This quotation is taken from a HuffPost article attributed to "investigative journalism students at the University of Massachusetts" but specifically crediting Julia Kacmarek and and Elizabeth Geffre in the bylines.)
Becky Lockwood, the associate director of the Center for Women and Community in Amherst, Massachusetts, defines rape culture (in the same HuffPost article) as
. . . anything that supports a culture where people think that it is okay to use sexual violence to get what they want. And it's usually not about sex. . . . It's about power [ellipses in original].A similar definition is attributed to Emilie Buchwald, one of the editors of Transforming a Rape Culture (Milkweed Editions, 1993). As quoted on the webpage of the Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW) Rape Crisis Centre, Buchwald defines rape culture as
a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent.And then there is this that has been said of male genital cutting:
Circumcision is where sex and violence meet for the first time.(This aphorism is usually attributed to Marilyn Fayre Milos, however, I have also seen it attributed to Jeannine Parvati Baker.) It does not seem implausible that visiting a form of sexual violence on infant boys - and, surely, no one can dispute that the cutting away of erogenous tissue from an infant's genitals, no matter what the sex of that infant, is a form of sexual violence, albeit one to which our society has become desensitized precisely because it has been normalized - reinforces, generation by generation, the cultural precept that one's genitals, one's body and one's sexuality ultimately are not one's own. Nor does it seem implausible that it should reinforce the hard truth that, while boundaries and consent may be lofty ideals, they are only ideals. As elements of the moral code that our society aspires to live by, the inviolability of a person's physical boundaries and the principle of consent may, under certain circumstances, be transgressed. Finally, that the original act of transgression with which boys are initiated into masculinity (or male privilege) establishes an implicit social contract that confers upon males an imprimatur for their, in turn, transgressing against the bodies of others. What is that, but rape culture?
That does not mean that MGC victims necessarily go on to commit sexual harassment and assault, any more than one's constant exposure to rom-coms - in which the message is routinely reinforced that, when pursuing the object of one's desire, one should never take "no" for an answer - necessarily results in the same thing. Rather, MGC, like the other "cultural ideologies, media images, social practices, and societal institutions" to which Phillips refers, is one thread in the complex tapestry of a culture that, in ways both subtle and not so subtle, implicitly and explicitly, rationalizes and accommodates both sexual violence and genital cutting. Thus, if MGC is not the cause of rape culture, it is certainly not unreasonable to view it as a manifestation of rape culture.
That it is is supported by several striking similarities or parallels between sexual assault and MGC. First and foremost is the fact that both sexual assault and male genital cutting both constitute forms of sexual violence. It goes without saying that rape and sexual assault are manifestly sexual in nature, and that MGC is an act of violence directed against a quintessentially sexual part of the human body. At the same time, however, neither of these two forms of sexual violence is performed necessarily for the sexual gratification of the person committing the act but, rather, as an act of control and an exertion of power. As Lockwood observes about sexual violence (above), "it's usually not about sex [but] about power."
Another striking parallel is in how our culture tends to view victims. A central aspect of rape culture, as Phillips points out (above) is that it blames victims rather than rapists for sexual assault. To this day, the onus not to get raped is often put on (primarily female) victims of sexual assault, rather than the onus not to commit rape being placed on (primarily male) perpetrators, where it belongs. Thus, when a victim attempts to bring charges against her assailant, it is often she herself who is scrutinized in ways touching upon everything from what she was wearing, to how much she had had to drink, to what possible motive she might have for making an accusation of sexual assault. Our society treats MGC victims in much the same way. Instead of questioning genital cutting itself, our society tends, in effect, to put its victims on trial - but only when they complain about it, of course. They are generally treated with a presumption that there there must be something wrong with them, rather than with what was done to them (an approach amply demonstrated by Vinopal in Fatherly).
Finally, a third similarity is the lack of empathy for victims of both sexual abuse or assault and male genital cutting - a lack of empathy that is a hallmark of rape culture. One of the best (or, it would be more accurate to say, egregious) examples of the former is provided by my own father, whose history of pedophilia and sexual abuse of girls and young women I wrote about in this blog in 2017. Tragically and horribly, my sister was not only sexually abused by our father for much of her childhood but also by our maternal grandfather. When my sister finally reported this to our father, his exact words to her were, "So you made an old man happy; what's the harm?" I was reminded of this (I suppose "triggered" may not be too strong a word) when I read Vinopal's comment to Losquadro and Christopher regarding genital cutting: "I'm just not convinced that . . . it's sexually or psychologically harmful." Both of the attitudes expressed here - the one toward the sexual abuse of a child and the other toward the genital cutting of a child - demonstrate a stunning lack of empathy for the victim that is, as I have said, a hallmark of rape culture.
Vinopal's comment here regarding MGC provides a convenient avenue by which an overview of her reporting on MGC for Fatherly may be gained. Viewed from this vantage point, two central themes emerge: her skepticism if not hostility toward the genital autonomy movement and her comfort with the practice of male genital cutting itself. Vinopal's full comment is this: "I'm just not convinced that there's no health benefit or that it's sexually or psychologically harmful." Yet to those who embrace the principle of bodily autonomy, it is precisely this cavalier and callous attitude toward genital cutting, far from opposition to it, that seems "radical" (see above). We are speaking, after all, about the practice of taking a knife or a scalpel or a clamp to the genitals of an infant or very young child, removing a significant portion of erotogenic genital tissue and leaving what remains permanently scarred and altered. This is, moreover, a traumatizing, excruciatingly painful, invasive surgery about which there is universal consensus that it is not medically necessary. And all this is done generally without sufficient anesthesia, often without any anesthesia, and always without the consent of the person who is subjected to it. Yet, from the science reporter for what is perhaps the internet's premier parenting platform, this elicits nothing more than a figurative shrug of the shoulders. Why? Here, I will venture three possible explanations.
First, according to information readily available on the internet, including statements about her and by her in some of her YouTube stand-up routines, Vinopal (or "Vino") is originally from Chicago (she refers to herself in this YouTube video as "midwest trash"). As anyone who studies this topic will already know, while the United States, overall, is an outlier with respect to the incidence of MGC (other than South Korea, into which routine, non-therapeutic circumcision was imported by the U.S. military during the Korean War, the U.S. is the only modern industrialized nation in which a majority of male infants continues to be subjected to genital cutting for non-religious reasons), circumcision rates also vary greatly by region. In some parts of the United States, such as the West Coast, the incidence of non-therapeutic circumcision is well below 50% but, in others, well above. Chicago is one such area. Thus, the Northern Midwest region is not only ground zero in the United States for the incidence of MGC but ground zero for the world when genital cutting for religious reasons is factored out. It stands to reason that, to those born in the United States, MGC should seem normal, not only in the sense of its being common (that is, statistically normal) but in the sense of its being socially desirable (that is, normative, as sociologists use this term). By the same token, where MGC is even more prevalent, as it is in the Midwest, where Vinopal is from, it should seem that much more normal and be that much more normative. (Conversely, in such regions, a complete or natural penis is likely to be regarded as strange and abnormal, hence the conformist argument that "he'll be made fun of if that part of his penis isn't removed." This is one of the ways that cultural practices, including harmful ones like MGC, become self-perpetuating.) I do not think it unreasonable to deduce that, but for the accident of the location of Vinopal's birth and upbringing - had she been brought up in Denmark, for example - she would not have approached the protests of the Bloodstained Men and the others against MGC with such skepticism, nor would she have gone to such lengths to discredit the genital-autonomy movement while simultaneously defending MGC as a legitimate public-health practice. (It goes without saying that she certainly would not make the kind of circumcision joke to which she treats her audience in the closing moments of her routine in the video linked above.)
A second possible explanation is to be found in Vinopal's - or Vino's - avocation as a stand-up comedian. There are about half a dozen videos of her sets on YouTube and I have made myself watch all of them. I do not pretend to be qualified to judge Vinopal as a stand-up comic. I will say that, given her disdain for the principle of consent regarding one's physical boundaries - at least as far as MGC is concerned - I found her performance in Teaching Consent to Kids (posted by Fatherly itself) to be particularly funny. None of that matters, however. If someone wants to wear two hats - one during the day and the other at night - that's her business. But I am concerned that, in approaching this topic and these protesters as she did for Fatherly, Vinopal might have got her hats confused. In these articles, Vinopal's bias seems to have crept into her reporting (if it didn't motivate it altogether). At times she seems to be more interested in playing it for laughs (as with her "human rights emergency" wisecrack) - in effect, making the Bloodstained Men and the others the butt of an in-joke between her and her audience - than in providing a well-researched and thoughtful series of articles on this topic that might actually elucidate it for the benefit of Fatherly's readers. Readers who, it is to be remembered, are primarily parents seeking useful and expert parenting advice. True, Vinopal pays lip service to the protesters' being "deserving of both respect and consideration." But this is more than offset by her treating them, and the cause for which they are advocating, with the same insouciance, narrow-mindedness and sarcasm that figure so prominently in her comedy-club act.
A second possible explanation is to be found in Vinopal's - or Vino's - avocation as a stand-up comedian. There are about half a dozen videos of her sets on YouTube and I have made myself watch all of them. I do not pretend to be qualified to judge Vinopal as a stand-up comic. I will say that, given her disdain for the principle of consent regarding one's physical boundaries - at least as far as MGC is concerned - I found her performance in Teaching Consent to Kids (posted by Fatherly itself) to be particularly funny. None of that matters, however. If someone wants to wear two hats - one during the day and the other at night - that's her business. But I am concerned that, in approaching this topic and these protesters as she did for Fatherly, Vinopal might have got her hats confused. In these articles, Vinopal's bias seems to have crept into her reporting (if it didn't motivate it altogether). At times she seems to be more interested in playing it for laughs (as with her "human rights emergency" wisecrack) - in effect, making the Bloodstained Men and the others the butt of an in-joke between her and her audience - than in providing a well-researched and thoughtful series of articles on this topic that might actually elucidate it for the benefit of Fatherly's readers. Readers who, it is to be remembered, are primarily parents seeking useful and expert parenting advice. True, Vinopal pays lip service to the protesters' being "deserving of both respect and consideration." But this is more than offset by her treating them, and the cause for which they are advocating, with the same insouciance, narrow-mindedness and sarcasm that figure so prominently in her comedy-club act.
The third possible explanation may be found in traditional notions of masculinity and in the corresponding expectations for men's behavior that color the thinking of many defenders of MGC who, paradoxically, in most other respects entertain (and pride themselves, even, on their) enlightened attitudes about gender. For all the progress that has been made with respect to gender insofar as it affects girls and women (which is by no means to suggest that there isn't a tremendous amount of progress that still needs to be made), there persist in our culture ideas about masculinity that are every bit as deeply ingrained but which seem to be even more inextirpable. The idea that boys and men ought to be tough, that, if they are not, they need to be "toughened up," that they should be impervious to pain or, at least, unflinching in the face of it, that they should be fearless, strong, competitive, taciturn, assertive and, above all, not too sensitive (or anything remotely approaching effeminacy): these are all notions that are inextricably connected with and epitomized by male genital cutting. As Rebecca Steinfeld explains,
Reactions like this are not infrequently elicited by men who protest or complain about MGC because their complaints violate normative expectations of masculinity. And while this particular violation of the rules of masculinity is profoundly disturbing for men and women alike who cling to regressive notions of gender, it is my suspicion that women tend to be even more virulent in their attacks on the masculinity of male opponents of MGC because these women themselves must daily encounter the vestiges of patriarchal customs and the ongoing manifestations of sexism. Perhaps one of the few compensations for women who must contend with all manner of indignities and inequities on account of sex is the expectation that men will at least behave chivalrously. If men are granted certain privileges in our society, is it so much to expect of them that they act like real men? With all that women have to put up with, what right do men have to complain? Thus, for women who are quick to reject the constraints of gender that are imposed upon women, there may be a profound discomfort in beholding the spectacle of men attempting to reject their own gendered constraints.
. . . not challenging MGC while condemning FGC reinforces sexist attitudes about female and male bodies. It perpetuates the idea that male bodies are resistant to harm or even in need of being tested by painful ordeals, whereas female bodies are highly vulnerable and in need of protection, and as such propagates the notion that vulnerability is gendered.Rosemary Romberg (author of Circumcision, The Painful Dilemma, [Bergin and Garvey, 1985]) has also speculated on the connection between MGC and the reinforcement of traditional masculinity:
I've wondered if for some there's this male, macho idea of, "He's a boy so he can take it" mentality that comes into play with infant male genital cutting/mutilation. "Toughen him up from day one 'cause he's a boy and has to face a tough world."(Romberg's comment is from a Facebook post. My own exploration of this aspect of MGC can be found here.) There remains in our society an expectation of men who have been subjected to circumcision - the masculinizing ordeal par excellence - that they should "shut up and take it like a man." Accordingly, when men do complain, the reaction is visceral. They are often mocked and ridiculed. On social media and in the mainstream media itself, examples abound in which defenders of MGC resort to classic sexist put-downs of men who complain about what was done to their genitals without consent. MGC defenders often regard such men as "whiny cry-babies" and do not hesitate to say so. In 2016, in her own profile of Anthony Losquadro that appeared in the New York Post, the columnist Andrea Peyser wrote, "I just hope that guys who spend their lives feeling wounded by circumcision, and the women who enable them, find new hobbies." It is significant that Peyser doesn't merely negate the validity of Losquadro's aggrievement and outrage by dismissing his efforts to end MGC as a "hobby," nor that she implicitly criticizes this "hobby" for being insufficiently masculine, in contrast, for example, to woodworking or hunting. More than this, by invoking "the women who enable them," Peyser means to portray Losquadro and men like him as immature, weak and dependent - hiding behind the skirts, so to speak, of the "women who enable them." Peyser's rhetorical technique seems rather obviously intended to characterize men who protest forced genital cutting as not real men.
Reactions like this are not infrequently elicited by men who protest or complain about MGC because their complaints violate normative expectations of masculinity. And while this particular violation of the rules of masculinity is profoundly disturbing for men and women alike who cling to regressive notions of gender, it is my suspicion that women tend to be even more virulent in their attacks on the masculinity of male opponents of MGC because these women themselves must daily encounter the vestiges of patriarchal customs and the ongoing manifestations of sexism. Perhaps one of the few compensations for women who must contend with all manner of indignities and inequities on account of sex is the expectation that men will at least behave chivalrously. If men are granted certain privileges in our society, is it so much to expect of them that they act like real men? With all that women have to put up with, what right do men have to complain? Thus, for women who are quick to reject the constraints of gender that are imposed upon women, there may be a profound discomfort in beholding the spectacle of men attempting to reject their own gendered constraints.
Alternatively, it may simply be the most natural thing in the world to view the lot of one's own sex critically without questioning the lot of the opposite sex because one never experiences that other lot firsthand. If the MeToo movement has taught us anything, it is that men, by and large, have no concept of what it is like to be female in our society. But even allowing that boys and men enjoy certain privileges, freedoms and opportunities that girls and women do not, it is not unlimited privilege and power on one side and unmitigated subjugation on the other. (Genital cutting is a case in point.) Thus, the willingness of women, who criticize the social construct of femininity and the expectations of gender for women, to leave undisturbed the parallel social construct of masculinity and the expectations of gender for men, could be due simply to a failure of empathy (of a more innocuous sort than that discussed above). However it is, because of her dismissive attitude toward these protesters and especially because of her inability to recognize MGC as a harm in and of itself to boys and men, I suspect that one or the other of these phenomena is also behind Vinopal's attitude toward the Bloodstained Men, Losquadro and Christopher and toward the MGM-eradication movement broadly.
If this gender bias seems inappropriate in a science reporter, it seems especially so in one who writes for Fatherly. Long before Andrew Burmon sought to expand a brand that he described as "smart, relevant and humane," and long before he envisioned a success for Fatherly that would be "culturally significant," its founders, Mike Rothman and Simon Isaacs, conceived of Fatherly as a platform that would eschew age-old notions of gender (or so they seemed to claim), both with respect to the role that men play in parenting and with respect to the way that boys are being raised now. The entire concept of Fatherly is that it is geared toward fathers as nurturers. Its very logo - a male seahorse which cleverly doubles as the F in Fatherly - epitomizes that concept (in seahorses, the female deposits her eggs into a pouch on the male's body and it is the male, therefore, who incubates the fertilized eggs throughout their development). In her interview with Rothman (cited and linked above), Hazard Owen, and Rothman himself, explain the genesis of Fatherly:
It is not merely within the realms of culture and gender, however, that Vinopal's MGC articles fail to live up to the philosophy and aspirations of Fatherly's creators. As noted at the beginning of this essay, the other central aim of Fatherly is to serve as a source of "expert parenting advice" (this phrase appears in the site's About Us section, linked above). As Isaacs emphasizes (in the Intelligence interview),
Rothman was one of the founding employees at men's lifestyle site Thrillist. "I spent the better part of 10 years marketing to young, single people. Then a funny thing happened," [Rothman] said. "They were no longer as young and single anymore. The founding team had wedding bands on and babies on the way." . . . Rothman didn't like the sites he saw in the parenting space. "They took . . . an abjectly caricatured perspective and portrayed the guy as the doofy dad who's failing his way through parenthood." Fatherly was designed to reject these stereotypes. . . .Exactly this view is shared (as it ought to be) by Fatherly's co-founder, Simon Isaacs, as we learn from another interview (by Mary Cass in J. Walter Thompson Intelligence, June 9, 2017). As Isaacs points out,
This is a generation of people who think very differently about gender norms. It's a generation of people who have equal interest in parenting, as well as in work. Everywhere I looked, I saw men primarily being the one in the grocery aisle, men walking around the park with their Baby Bjorns.Isaacs recounts what led him to conceive of Fatherly as a parenting site geared toward men:
When my wife and I were exploring having kids, we signed up for all the traditional parenting sites. . . . None of it was really connecting to me. There was this idea that women controlled 80% of all purchasing decisions. It wasn't reflective of what I was seeing, nor could I actually pinpoint where this information was coming from.
In parenting, that became even more pronounced. Everything was geared toward "mommies," and brands had "mommie blogger" blinders on, and it was a self-fulfilling prophesy. And yet it wasn't true. At the same time, a recent report had just come out where 52% of men claimed they were the primary grocery shopper. . . .
The way we were speaking to parents was really off. And I realized what a huge opportunity that would be from a marketing and business perspective, but also from an impact perspective.Expanding on this critical point, Isaacs explains that one of the purposes of Fatherly, then, was not merely to fill a void in the online parenting industry created by changing gender roles but to lend its shoulder to the cause of pushing society further in that direction:
Part of why we exist is that if you can create the content tools and community at scale, you can shift and shape culture. You can get men engaged even more than they already are, and excited about fatherhood. And if you can do that, you can address gender equity at home and at work.Significantly, Isaacs doesn't see Fatherly as reflecting changing (and helping to change) gender norms for men only but also for boys. In the Intelligence interview he states,
The other thing I think we're going to see is a real focus on boys. The world has put a lot of focus on girls' empowerment, and rightly so. But we tend to see boys as "easy." Shrug it off, man up, all these things. We don't recognize the complexity. There's a lot of work to do there. I think we're going to start seeing a lot of work around emotional intelligence and boyhood, overall."Shrug it off; man up." Isn't this exactly the attitude of those who refuse to recognize that genital cutting harms boys and men? Isn't this exactly the attitude of those who trivialize and dismiss the complaints of men who were subjected to it? Isn't this exactly the attitude implicitly expressed in Fatherly's own virtual pages by Vinopal herself?
It is not merely within the realms of culture and gender, however, that Vinopal's MGC articles fail to live up to the philosophy and aspirations of Fatherly's creators. As noted at the beginning of this essay, the other central aim of Fatherly is to serve as a source of "expert parenting advice" (this phrase appears in the site's About Us section, linked above). As Isaacs emphasizes (in the Intelligence interview),
Previously, with gen X, everybody was an "expert." All these content platforms were built around a chat room, where every mom and dad could be the expert. That's no longer interesting for parents. We're seeing a big rise in backlash against parental judgement. This generation just wants the damn answer, and they want it from an expert. They want it from somebody who's the most credentialed. A lot of our approach is to deliver that.I come full circle, then, to the theme with which I began this essay. Fatherly's readers do not turn to Fatherly for expert protesting advice but for expert parenting advice. They simply want "the damn answer and they want it from an expert." For all their heart, for all their passion and commitment, the Bloodstained Men and the other protesters are not out in the streets in their capacity as "experts" on genital cutting but as campaigners against it. The irony, of course, is that they all acquit themselves perfectly well in Vinopal's interviews, notwithstanding her attempts to portray them as cranks, and they certainly know a great deal more about MGC than Vinopal does. Yet the only "credentials" that the Bloodstained Men bear are the symbolic bloodstains on their white suits. The question is whether a credential such as this is the one best suited to a parenting site such as Fatherly. After all, there are so many other authorities whom Vinopal might have consulted for her stories. Authorities whose credentials are more befitting the aims and approach of Fatherly and whose opposition to male genital cutting probably would be, for this very reason, far more likely to find a receptive audience among Fatherly's readers. These are the authorities - academics, doulas, midwives, nurses, physicians, scientists, bio-ethicists, attorneys and psychologists - whom Vinopal might have consulted but chose not to, opting instead to present the street protesters whom she profiled as the primary if not the sole face of the genital autonomy movement. I suspect that she did this not because she thought Brother K, the Bloodstained Men, Losquadro and Christopher could offer the most cogent and convincing arguments against involuntary circumcision but because she thought they could not, and that is why Fatherly's readers would do well to regard as disingenuous, as I certainly do, Vinopal's coverage of these protesters and of the cause to which they have courageously and selflessly devoted so much of their time and energy.
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