Bloodstained brothers - impressive and in-depth look at the intactivist movement

dalkon · 2015-12-06T02:41:23+00:00

To repeat my comment from /r/Intactivists:

The title of this should be "Yale Doctor Adam Hittelman doesn't know much about infant genital surgery but he sure loves it."

The author knows nothing about her topic. She doesn't seem to be aware that she does have a prepuce too. The clitoral hood is the prepuce or foreskin of the clitoris. And she's not aware that the only reason her clitoral hood is protected by law is because it is considered to be a part of the clitoris.

Why isn't the penile foreskin considered to be a part of the penis?

Other corrections: Intactivism started in the early rather than the late '80s, but there has been opposition to infant genital surgery for the mutilating aspect from the initial 19th century medicalization of ritual religious genital surgery (which first occurred in Germany, spread to the UK and only from there to the US, an aspect of its history circumcision activists always ignore). Her history of the 19th century medicalization of circumcision is especially bad, and her history of circumcision from the 1970s is almost pure circumcision activism.

Especially because of how insidiously inaccuracies and accurate information are blended, this is easily the nastiest circumcision activism I've seen all year.

One of the comments was a lot better than this article:

I am an American medical student. On the whole, I am happy with my profession, and proud that I will graduate medical school next year.

But it is truly the shame of American medicine that our physicians have now spent over a century trying to dredge up dubious justifications to profit off irreversible amputative surgery on nonconsenting infants.

The rest of the developed world doesn’t perform routine circumcision on infants. There is no evidence at all that they are less healthy than us. Circumcision promoters can gish-gallop all manner of contested associations, but they cannot contest reality. And the fact of the matter is that there is absolutely no public health case for forcibly removing healthy, functional tissue from an infant before he can decide for himself what he wants.

Good on these intactivists for saying what I cannot, for fear of professional retribution. I wish them success, and I hope we can someday end this madness.

——————————————–

*As an aside, I believe you (or the Dr. you talked to) made some errors in the numbers, most notably in UTI risk. That number refers to the chance that a febrile, hospitalized infant will have a UTI. The UTI incidence in boys is approximately 1%, as per the European rebuttal you mentioned.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2013/03/12/peds.2012-2896.full.pdf

* What made you think this article was impressive or in-depth, OP?

zulu127 · 2015-12-06T13:40:26+00:00

This little gem indicates the author's [and many women's] attitude and response to the suffering of men and boys:

I arrange my face in what I hope is a sympathetic expression.

In other words, after hearing about a man's story of crying all the time as a newborn coming home from the [circumcision] hospital she has to feign sympathy.

Title	Bloodstained brothers - impressive and in-depth look at the intactivist movement
Author	JohnKimble111
Upvotes	10
Comments	6
Date	December 6, 2015 1:49 AM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/3vm0k6/bloodstained_brothers_impressive_and_indepth_look/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/bloodstained-brothers-impressive-and-in-depth-look.965694 https://theredarchive.com/post/965694

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