Some of those interviewed conflate female genital mutilation with circumcision. Circumcision is a loss of a small amount of extra tissue of an infant boy vs the heinous practice of female genital mutilation, done up to her mid teens, which is “all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reason” which renders the female incapable of enjoying sex. It is ridiculous to compare the two.
“…a deep body horror that infant boys are being mutilated, that they can feel the pain of the operation, that it is somehow traumatic despite the fact that infant brains cannot remember pain. “
Turning away from the documentary to do some research reveals the medical consensus that there is some benefit in disease risk mitigation that results from circumcision, but mostly in cultures where hygiene and education is less advanced than in the developed world.
As a circumcised male, I find the phrase “intact” as a reference to uncircumcised men to be pejorative and offensive. I have no memories of the procedure. I grew up thinking this is how we look out of the box. An early sex partner mentioned she thought I had a very lovely scar. I was not aware I had a scar, was ignorant of the whole situation. Being circumcised has had no impact on my life at all, as far I can tell. There are some young (and older) men in the documentary who, upon reflection, have found cause for rage and recrimination toward their parents for having it done. Each to his own, I suppose.
Using the term “intact” is certainly meant to persuade in this film, which is a propaganda piece against circumcision presenting anecdotal evidence and logical fallacies.
Life comes with many occasions for pain and discomfort. When the long term benefits clearly outweigh the short term pain we don’t think twice about submitting children to it and explaining it later. We also live in a culture where body modifications many would consider horrific are just fashion, though clearly appropriate only when self-selected by adults of age. The body horror argument is specious and unsophisticated. The film gratuitously shows an infant being circumcised. I daresay most of us do not have the medical training context or experience to watch any surgery, so this will naturally be disturbing and uncomfortable. It is not horror.
Has this person actually watched this wonderful film denouncing organized, premeditated child abuse? It’s extraordinary that in this day and age we still have people defending this disgusting, sickening practice for which there should be lengthy jail sentences.
This entire review reads like someone desperately clawing at any reasons infant circumcision is acceptable because they can’t cope with the fact they had a piece of their body removed without consent.
Filled with unrelated opinions and unscientific facts. Absolute utter disgrace of a review.
So absolutely no empathy for the total horror that infants go through, nine for the makes and their partners that have to suffer a lifetime of genital mutilation, you certainly need to get a grip on reality!!!
You must be joking right? This review is absolutely terrible.
And if you DO watch American Circumcision, it is now available on Amazon Prime.
The comments would suggest that the panner’s panning backfired.
https://www.facebook.com/circmovie/
Is this a movie review or just someone trying to defend circumcision? To call it the former would be a stretch. It’s hard to know where to start with this, but I’ll give it a go. Babies might not be able to remember a painful experience in the same way we can as adults, but circumcision still does demonstrable psychological harm. The baby’s cortisol(stress hormone) levels spike significantly and don’t return to normal for at least 12 months. The child will also exhibit exaggerated responses to pain(vaccinations, etc) for years afterwards. The fact that they don’t have a narrative memory of what happened to them is not a valid defence. If it was, Bill Cosby wouldn’t be in prison right now, because his victims couldn’t remember either. Foreskin restoration, whilst a lengthy process, should not be painful or uncomfortable. Each man adjusts the tension and tries different devices until he finds a solution that is comfortable and effective for his needs. Most restoring men consider it a minor inconvenience at most. They all agree that the results are more than worth the time and effort, although they would still rather have kept the foreskins they were born with. The most common forms of female genital mutilation(FGM) involve cutting, pricking, or removing the clitoral hood(the female foreskin), and are less invasive than male circumcision. While there are more extreme forms of FGM, which involve removal of the clitoris itself, removal of the labia, and sewing up of the vaginal opening, these more extreme forms are much less common and are not really representative of what most victims go through. Male circumcision involves the removal of a significant amount of functional tissue, and like FGM is intended to reduce sexual sensation. Foreskin plays an important, even essential, role in sex, and removing it has serious consequences for sexual performance and sensation for both partners. It is ridiculous to be offended by the term “intact” simply because you never had the chance to experience your whole body. If anything, you should be offended that part of your penis was removed without your consent, and you were harmed in your most intimate area. There are no real benefits to circumcision, so they definitely don’t outweigh the extreme pain you are putting healthy newborn babies through. There is no medical reason for circumcision, and no other developed nations practice routine infant circumcision. America is way behind the rest of the civilised world in that regard, and it’s well past time for them to catch up. Saying that the viewers don’t have the necessary training or experience to watch the circumcision video is a classic appeal-to-authority copout. You don’t need a PhD to recognise torture when you see it. you don’t need a medical degree to recognise an infant in extreme pain and suffering. It’s not rocket science. It’s common decency, or the lack thereof. In all, I give this review a 2 out of 10. I would give it a 0, except that the author does such a good job of demonstrating how ignorance and cognitive dissonance allows circumcision to continue on such a large scale, in what is supposed to be the greatest nation on earth. He perpetuates all the same tired tropes and misinformation that we’ve seen and heard a thousand times before. Despite that, circumcision is still on the way out in America, even if somewhat slowly. Newborn circumcision rates have fallen below 50%, and in some states they are below 30%. Fewer and fewer insurance companies pay for unnecessary circumcisions, and Medicaid has stopped covering it in at least 18 states. People have stopped blindly trusting the same doctors who profit massively from circumcision, and are doing their own research. More and more people every day realise that foreskin is healthy, functional tissue, and that it belongs attached to men’s bodies. This can not possibly be said enough, but parents and future parents, do your research and keep your sons intact. Respect your sons and the men they will become, and let them keep their whole bodies.
Some facts about circumcision:
1. Over 100 babies in the U.S. die every year due to circumcision complications. Many more suffer life-long damage from botched circumcisions or complications during the healing process.
2. The foreskin is the most sensitive part of the male body. It contains a zone called the ridged band which is packed with 20,000 specialized nerves. Its removal destroys about 70% of penile erogenous sensation.
3. The foreskin serves a unique and important function in protecting and lubricating the penis and is a source of much pleasure for both the man and his partner.
4. Babies are circumcised with inadequate anesthesia or none at all, causing them excruciating pain. It’s torture, plain and simple, and even though the baby won’t remember it explicitly, parts of his brain will.
5. Babies can’t consent to this medically unnecessary and harmful surgery. It is thus a violation of their bodily sovereignty. If you oppose female genital cutting, you should also oppose male and intersex genital cutting.
6. Circumcision rates are declining everywhere, including here in the U.S., where they are now at about 50% nationwide. Worldwide, three-quarters of men are intact. Circumcision is rare in most of Europe, the Nordic countries, China, Japan, India, and Central and South America. It has declined to about 20% in Canada and Australia in recent decades.
For more information, please watch this video: https://youtu.be/Ceht-3xu84I
We also live in a culture where infant males bodily integrity right is not respected, and is legal to mutilale male infant genitals in name of superstition, old fashioned traditions, pseudoscience or fetishism.
You are not a scientist. Please review the movie itself rather than wax eloquent on your own firmly unshakable preconceptions. The fact that you were ignorant of your own scar doesn’t mean you’re not scarred.
I think you meant “clings”, not “cleaves”.
I just found this film, and saw it and wanted to read a review about it. I generally love Film Threat, but as a writer (and reviewer) myself I found this whole article quite bizarre. As it was less of a discussion about analyzing the film than the writers personal rebuttal in defensive of infant circumcision. I guess this issue hit home for you, but word of advice- you will write better articles if you can use that emotion to formulate a break down that will help viewers get a sense of the films quality. If they just wanted to hear someones opinion on circumcision- they would just watch the movie!
Dear Reviewer,
We implore you to experience and review your own neutering procedure without anaesthetic. We can then read a review that you have written which has meaning and context.
Regards,
“An early sex partner mentioned she thought I had a very lovely scar.” I highly, highly doubt that. I’ve never heard of a woman complimenting a circumcision scar, in any context. Dang this article is weird.
What a lousy review by a blathering idiot. The comments made by others so true . People far more scholarly than he have written expensively. It is if one just looks a rape and sexual assault on a baby. Cutting, vivisections struggling and oh yes, to make the perpetrator feels ok, lets knock the kid out and get on with it. Are all his reviews this flippant?
It is truly amazing to read your comments, wallowing in your explicit self-contradictions! From now on, you are no longer allowed to use the phrase “evidence-based”, as it obviously means nothing to you.
BTW, you refer to foreskin restoration as “almost a fetish”, failing to note that routine infant circumcision is a fetish.
So sad. So many boys subjected to this blindness to evidence!
“talking about the health benefits of circumcision painted as evil and out of touch”
Says the man who equates intacvists with conspiracy theorists&UFO believers.
“that they can feel the pain of the operation”
So you’re saying babies don’t feel pain? Okay, that’s an inhumane comment to make.
“making emotional arguments against the scientific evidence”
“Scientific Evidence” shows that Foreskin is a VITAL part of your body that you should never cut off unless facing serious medical issues. Pick up a biology book, a non-US one because they omit the “vital function of foreskin” part from their books.
“that it is somehow traumatic despite the fact that infant brains cannot remember pain”
So its morally justified to inflict pain&suffering on people as long as they don’t remember?
“Some of those interviewed conflate female genital mutilation with circumcision”
Circumcision IS Mutilation and all mutilations are the mutilations. There’s no “If’s” and “But’s”.
“or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reason”
THERE IS NO JUSTIFIABLE “Medical Reason” to mutilate. USA’s doctors are Liars and they must be exposed.
” I find the phrase “intact” as a reference to uncircumcised men to be pejorative and offensive”
BE OFFENDED! Something WRONG was done to you, stop trying to normalize which isn’t normal!
“When the long term benefits clearly outweigh the short term pain we don’t think twice about submitting children to it and explaining it later”
There are no “Long Term benefits” OF MUTILATION! IF you cut off your penis altogether you reduce the risk of penile cancer down to 0% “long term benefits”, eh? FORESKIN A VITAL PART OF THE HUMAN ANATOMY, STOP treating foreskin like it has no function! LIAR! I own a foreskin, i know its function thank you very much!!
“In the final analysis, both the potential benefits and potential harms resulting from circumcision are minimal for boys in the developed world. Parents can make the decision based on religious tradition, medical evidence, or just because that’s how it’s always been done in their family, either to circumcise or not and feel fine about the choice.”
Its not “The final analysis” its YOUR opinion, which is ill informed and heavily biased.
It seems that this ‘reviewer’ didn’t even watch the whole film. His review appears to be more of an argument against the documentary rather than an analysis of the various aspects of the documentary itself. But his ‘argument’ doesn’t actually deal with any details; rather, he simply makes a few false assertions and unsubstantiated claims.
To my mind, this ‘review’ is a good example of a circumcised man trying to defend his ego.
You don’t think babies feel pain? In their genitals or otherwise? What is wrong with you? You need to spend a day in a nicu, experience babies as little humans and not some sort of inanimate object you can dissect to your creepy “aesthetic preference”.
Gentle, human beings…pay very close attention to this “silent” film…but, all one can hear is at first the baby screams as the baby has come onto this planet because before it was in the mothers womb safe and sound for 9 months…the soft moanings of the mother and whimpering of the brand new baby, who is just being delivered with the loving hands of Dr. Frederick Leboyer MD, Ob/Gyn and THIS is a BIRTH WITHOUT VIOLENCE…notice how the baby craves being bonded to the mother and how the baby smiles in mirth when its in the womb-temperature tub of water…This couldn’t get any better how important being born without violence…and Leboyer initially was not aware of Male Genital Mutilation…And then realize that 9 years later this child gets to be AMBIDEXTROUS, that is both sides of his/her brain are balanced and developed. How many people do YOU know that are ambidextrous? Good question huh?
Do some more research on Leboyer…start with typing his name on YouTube and watch the video clips…
Anyway, watch this great video please
All love and light
Leon
Gerardo Morales (posted this, but there now several people that have posted it too…I preferred this one though)
Published on Apr 7, 2013
Frederick Leboyer (born November 1, 1918) is a French obstetrician and author. He is best known for his 1975 book, Birth Without Violence, which popularized gentle birthing techniques, in particular, the practice of immersing newly-born infants in a small tub of warm water — known as a “Leboyer bath” — to help ease the transition from the womb to the outside world. He also advocated that a newborn be laid on its mother’s stomach and allowed to bond, instead of being taken away for tests. Leboyer graduated from the University of Paris School of Medicine. His own birth was traumatic and without anesthetics available, his mother had to be pinned down. Leboyer attributes his interest in birth to this experience. Leboyer is often mistaken as a proponent for water births. Although Leboyer’s disciple, Michel Odent, is an enthusiastic supporter of water births, Leboyer himself is against the idea. Source;Wikipedia
I’m intact and whole as are 85% of the males on this planet except for these swines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlHHzL_OFZE
LISTEN TO THAT HELPLESS 8-day old baby screams and none of these sick effs can feel it? …because
the Chakra’s from the heart Chakra (Anahata), throat (Visshudha), mental (Ajna) and crown (Sahasrarah) have ALL been severed in a Circumcision. THE most banned book on the planet…THE IMPACT OF THE RUSSIAN GOD’S by Vladimir Ishtarkhov. READ MY FIRST COMMENT folks and understand how horrible MALE GENITAL CIRCUMCISION is!!!
Then take the time to study the work of Dr. Frerderick Leboyer MD, Ob/Gyn BIRTH WITHOUT VIOLENCE and get clued in to what circumcision really is!!!
Can’t find the book. Do you know where it is available? Also, can the cakras be connected again? You can email me here: strangerthanfiction3 @ outlook. com Thanks!
You apparently weren’t paying attention to the majority of the film if you’re honestly claiming the arguments for remaining intact were evidence free.
What of the legality portions?
The history? The biological functions?
The discussion about the statistics regarding the African trials?
The statements made by the AAP?
The different kinds of botches and how they go about reporting them?
The circumcision instruments and anesthetic?
No, I guess you missed all that information.
Yes, there were personally stories that we’re intercut between raw information. To miss the information segments, you have to either be drifting in and out of consciousness but obviously you’re just being dishonest.
Beautiful human beings looking for love and goodness, for heaven’s sake, this Jewish woman threatening violence to a 70 year old Jewish INTACT man who is spreading the word of intactivism in Israel gets assaulted by this Jewish older woman…It’s direct proof what I wrote here a few postings back about how Jewish women are the chief offenders not only amongs’t Jews but how they’ve encouraged circumcision throughout the world via their heartless Mohels and Rabbi’s and via their Jewish doctors encouraging circumcision to be the norm and how these doctors influence the controlling body of the The American Pediatric Association etc…
Sickening behavior from this hag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOC2Hnlf0EI
I was circumcised at a few days old and realized things didn’t look right in 1992 shortly before I turned 13. I have to clean a skin bridge that’s over an inch long with a Q-tip and have noticed what sensation I had down there in my early teens is almost gone. The skin bridge has also been getting infected lately, but it’s helped out running a Q-tip with peroxide on it through the skin bridge. I’ve also noticed the peroxide will come through a few of the holes caused by stiches from the original mutilation. I suppose I could have that worked on, but considering surgery won’t really improve anything and the cosmetic procedure that was unnecessary in the first place, I don’t trust a doctor to do anything within 5 miles of my penis anyway. I’m almost 39 and don’t have sex, but about every 3 years, because I don’t really get much out of it anyway. I’ve also been ashamed of my member 26 years of my life and sometimes wish I didn’t even have one, because I had to look at it’s ugliness all of those years. It’s also a part of why I’ve never been in a relationship in my life. I had never heard of intactivists until last year and started researching, so everything started coming together. Considering my experience with circumcision, I will trust an intactivist over one of those pro-circumcision idiots any day.
Dear people, Dr. Leboyer MD, Ob/Gyn wasn’t thinking about Circumcision when he did his brilliant research on being born (both genders). He emphasized that it was FROM THE BABIES POINT OF VIEW and NOT only the Mother’s although he clearly acknowledged the Mother’s Pain/ painful labor etc…Just being born, anyone of us, male or female causes the baby in the womb a lot of pain being pushed through the birth canal let alone having to face horrific genital mutilation etc… (do some research on Dr. Leboyer on YouTube.
This brilliant article especially highlights the fact that psychologist findings that all those babies when they were eight years old…when they were tested, all the 104 children were tested and discovered to be AMBIDEXTROUS Wow…(4th paragraph from the bottom)
The Leboyer Way:
Birth Without Violence
Ellen Goodman
(Article from WOMAN’S ALMANAC, 12 How-to Handbooks in one, page 197)
He’s a gentle man, this Dr. Leboyer from France. A peaceful man.
And when you look at pictures of newborn babies with him, he insists that you use your eyes. And when you hear the sounds of a newborn, he insists that you use your ears.
“Do you believe that birth is an enjoyable experience for the baby?” he asks.
“When babies are born they start shouting and screaming. Why don’t they just breath? Could it be that being born is as painful for the baby as it used to be for the mother?”
With these questions and the gentle insistence that we respond to a newborn as the most sensitive of humans, Frederic Leboyer, a French Obstetrician, has begun something of a revolution in the way children are born.
The wiry, gray-haired doctor had delivered thousands of babies the traditional way, hearing the shrieking through his mind as the sound of good healthy lungs, and seeing the thrashing of agitated limbs as those of an active newborn.
Then, in the process of psychoanalysis, as he tells it, with a primal scream therapist who led him back and back through a series of pivotal traumas in his own life, he re-experienced birth, and rediscovered it is a horrible wrench from a quiet, darkened environment into a cold, glaring, loud and painful one. An environment in which the infant is neither deaf nor blind, but blinded and deafened, he believes by the harsh hospital room.
Gradually, to the horror of the French medical establishment, he began smoothing the transition from womb to world through a method that assumes not only the existence but the importance of the emotional life of a newborn. He calls it simply, “Birth Without Violence.”
To an audience at the Harvard Medical School that included only one obstetrician, he talked about the simple non-technical ways he has turned the focus of birth toward the baby.
The newborn is massaged and gently lain on the mother’s stomach in a darkened, quiet room, and the umbilical cord severed only as it stops beating. Then the baby is bathed, rocked and caressed with water as it re-simulates its own birth.
He showed a beautiful film of the infant slowly opening its eyes, looking around and beginning to explore with its fingers and feet. The same infant, at less than 24 hours old, was playing and smiling.
There seemed to be nothing radical about this nurturing attention. Yet, Dr. Leboyer has become something of a cause celebre in his own country, accused of risking the health of a newborn for radical psychological ideas.
This is partly because he sees birth as an enormously important part of our our emotional life. It sets up the primary expectation in a child of how life will be.
“Our aggressions as adults,” he says, “is a response to early suffering. And birth is the earliest pain. Have you asked yourself why the experience of being left alone is so painful to us as adults? After all, being alone can be painful or pleasant. But we remember it as painful because the first separation is painful,” he says opening his arms as if to say, “how simple.”
“When I was a medical student we took it for granted that a newborn was essentially a digestive tract. That it couldn’t see or hear and had no emotions. But we know that a young baby needs one kind of food that we know very little about: love. We’ve been giving them medicine because it seems more practical than love.”
Leboyer is convinced that a “Birth Without Violence” – also the name of his poetic book (Knopf $7.95) – will make a difference in the lives of children delivered by his method. An independent psychologist is researching 104 of the babies who are now as old as eight, and while the study isn’t complete, she has discovered one fact that neither of them can account for: All 104 children were ambidextrous.
Leboyer is willing to admit that he may be overemphasizing the importance of birth. But even if it made no difference, even if it were simply a more humane borning, he asks “Why not try?”
If a child is crying, he reminds us, all of our instincts tell us it is in pain. If a newborn shrieks, we say it is healthy.
He says to look and listen: “For years we said that women had to give birth in pain and now we say, “No, no that’s not right.’ Now we have to say the same to the baby.”
Nate Burnett, that was a real good “The benefits of the foreskin” posting! Here’s some more stuff about the prepuce:
17 Functions of the Foreskin
http://www.circumstitions.com/Functions.html
This list is intended to be exhaustive, in descending order of importance in each section.
SEXUAL
1
Erotic pleasure, especially via the ridged band and Meissner’s corpuscles
2
Acts as a rolling bearing in intercourse and masturbation
3
Prevents dyspareunia (painful intercourse)
4
Stimulates partner’s genitalia, giving erotic pleasure
5
Supplies skin to cover the shaft in erection and prevent tightness
6
Stores pheromones and releases them on arousal
7
Stores and releases natural lubricants (“smega” and pre-ejaculatory fluid)
8
Makes the glans a visual signal of sexual arousal
9
Provides a seal against the vaginal wall to contain semen
PROTECTIVE
10
Prevents the glans becoming keratinised, and keeps it soft and moist
11
Protects the thin-skinned glans against injury
12
Protects the nerves of the glans, retaining their erotic function
13
In infancy, protects the urethra against contamination, meatal stenosis, (and UTIs?)
14
Provides lysosomes for bacteriostatic action around the glans
15
Pigmented, it protects the unpigmented glans against sunburn
16
Vascular (rich in blood vessels that bring heat to the tissues), it protects the less vascular glans against frostbite, as Sir Ranulph Fiennes found on his epic transpolar walk.
OTHER
17
Provides skin for grafts to burnt eyelids, reconstructive surgery, etc.
18
Storage of contact lenses, smuggled jewels, etc
The Doctors Opposing Circumcision (DOC) website has a clear and comprehensive video about the structure and functions of the prepuce.
The benefits of the foreskin:
1. to cover and bond with the synechia so as to permit the development of the mucosal surface of the glans and inner foreskin.
2. to protect the infant’s glans from feces and ammonia in diapers.
3. to protect the glans penis from friction and abrasion throughout life.
4. to keep the glans moisturized and soft with emollient oils.
5. to lubricate the glans.
6. to coat the glans with a waxy protective substance.
7. to provide sufficient skin coverage for a full erection by unfolding.
8. to provide pleasure from 10,000 erogenous nerve receptors that are vitally connected to the brain.
9. to serve as an aid to penetration.
10. to reduce friction and chafing during intercourse.
11. to contact and stimulate the G-spot of the female partner.
And we cut it off at birth to get rid of these benefits…. It’s insane!
Oh my goodness, Roi HuPer, your response is EXCELLENT…as a long time INTACT intactivist your explanation is so-so correct, logical and hard-hitting…
Yes the baby “gives up and stops crying” which in reality is the baby going into catatonic shock…this is THE absolute worst of shock and trauma and the idiotic ALLOPATHIC phony medical establishment are complicit in this MALE CHILD SEX ABUSE!!!
My most favorite HONEST doctor was Dr. Robert Mendelsohn MD who very daringly spoke out against the deceitful phony medical establishment (although him being Jewish he still thought Religious circumcision was OK???) but by and large he spoke out against unnecessary surgery…(anytime there is ANY kind of invasive surgery it leaves horrible out of control scar tissue) like in the scars in keratinized tissue on the glans penis…) I have all his 4 great books and one can actually read his “The People’s Doctor” newsletter for free if you Wikipedia his name and scroll all the way down..
Nowadays, there are so many videos about circumcision, to see a brutal one just type in “Neo-natal circumcision”
Or the excellent protests of Brother K and his “bloodstained men” OR Bonobo3D’s videos, or George Ann Chapin’s “Intact America” etc
My now deceased dear friend EUSTACE MULLINS who exposed these phony “medical” practitioners in his great book MURDER BY INJECTION, THE STORY OF THE MEDICAL CONSPIRACY AGAINST AMERICA. Mendelsohn put it very cleverly…He said the medical people know how to deal with these 4 things the best…(S)hock, (H)emorrhage, (I)njury and (T)rauma…GET IT? LOL, but the “BIG TICKET” items…(like all the degenerative diseases where they rake in the money) like Asthma, Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Allergies etc…THEY = these phonies…are absolutely 100% clueless…I haven’t taken ANY kind of pill (prescription or non-prescription) for over 31 years, not even Vitamin supplements etc. THE HUMAN BODY IS SELF-HEALING just like the un-cut penis is 100% natural…I have a delicious foreskin and know how it lubricates the penis and the skin slides like nature designed it to do.
Of course Kellog and the other fools back then said they were against Masturbation or self-pleasuring…but essentially its a control mechanism…and I think the worst offenders are Jewish wives who stand by and watch the cruel Jewish circumcisor, the Mohel Rabbi and his friends, cruelly hold down a helpless 7 day old male baby and chop off his foreskin at their “Brit Milah” bullshit and then the “kind” Mohel sucks the baby’s penis in “Metitzah” ???? These butt-holes Jewish b*****s are control freaks… DO YOU SENSE MY ANGER??? I am intact and angry, can you imagine the poor males who have been mutilated, can you imagine their anger????? it was bad enough that the folks on the Mayflower were so-sexually inhibited and they pushed their “Christian” values down the throats of the people they met…In Europe people are very very relaxed about their sexuality, but heaven forbid not so in America…
Whenever I see anyone in a “white coat” my blood pressure goes up plus I get mad…(“The white-coat syndrome” ) LOL
The facts are there are no benefits to cutting healthy tissue off an infants penis. I’m not saying it should be made completely illegal. I’m saying that performing a surgical procedure to prevent a potential future problem is clearly unscientific. If science is evidence based and you use the proper protocols for medicine then the surgical removal of tissue as a standard medical practice does not make logical sense. If you want to prevent a future infection soap and water works well. If there is an infection then antibiotics or antiviral medications would be the least invasive. If you use the excuse that it will prevent the potential for future sexually transmitted diseases then you have to ask what an infant doing having sex at their age. So there are cultural issues that say its cleaner, it prevents infection and potentially future venereal diseases. All of these are simply weak excuses to continue to cut childrens genitals.
Truth is male genital mutilation is rape. A probe is inserted into the sexual organs of an infant to separate the foreskin from the glans. Rape in its legal definition is the insertion into the sexual organs by force with any object. That there are laws which protect female genitals but not males is a violation of the equal protection claus in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The fact that this law is not applied equally to both sexes is an ethical violation as well as a violation to uphold the constitution.
For those who are Not Sees there is the denial of what is actually going on when an infant is being sexually abused. The truth is that forceably mutilating the genitals of an infant is a form of trauma based mind control. It causes pain to an infant. This is evident when the child cries. What is not seen is the level of sexual abuse trauma evident when the infant cries, then wails, then screams because their nervous system is in a traumatic stress reaction. When all crying has not created an end to the pain a form of learned helplessness occurs and the infant gives up. This is where a dissociative experience occurs and post traumatic stress syndrome begins. The doctors and nurses who don’t understand the traumatic reaction will tell you that he slept through the whole thing. They are not sleeping. They are in shock! Those who advocate for the creation of this level of trauma in an infant were most likely cut themselves. They are repeating an intergenerational pattern which is unconscious and based in a repetition compulsion of negative loyalty. Its kind of like the Stockholm Syndrome where people want to defend their abusers. Those who equate female genital mutilation with male genital mutilation don’t have a trauma based understanding of human development or they would be able to see that cutting the genitals of an infant is far worse than cutting those of a fully grown teen. There are so many developmental neurological and psychological issues that sexual abuse trauma effects differently than a child. Attachment bonding, impaired latching behaviors in breastfeeding leading to nourishment barriers, betrayal trauma and the felt sense of insecurity at the most fundamental biological level. This is a practice which must end if we are to repair our relationships with one another and in society. To allow this horror to continue will be at our own peril!
Donald Trump and other beurocrats. CIRCUMCISION HAS TO BE DECLARED A CRIME, nothing less, nothing more. All the Ashkenazim Jews in your administration. As a matter of fact ALL the Jews in America and on this pristine planet need to know that Circumcision violates 9 out of the 10 Values of Judaism!!!
A rabbi stated the top ten values of Judaism to someone from Jews against Circumcision and he felt that circumcision violated 9 out of the 10 values.
• V’AHAVTA L’RAYAHA KAMOKHA = Love of others: (Hebrew translation) SO… If you love your baby, you don’t torture and mutilate this newborn male baby’s genitals on the 8th day of his life at that Brit Milah so-called “tradition”!
• TZEDAKAH = Justice/responsibility: SO… It is not just or responsible to hold down or strap down a helpless newborn baby and mutilate his sex organs.
• GEMILUT HASADIM = Kindness/compassion: SO… It is not kind or compassionate hold down or strap a helpless baby and mutilate his sex organs.
• TALMUD TORAH (from the) = Love of learning: SO… It’s time we learn to stop mutilating babies. It’s a no-brainer.
• HAKHNASAT ORHIM = Welcoming guests/strangers: SO… It is not welcoming to hold down or strap a baby and mutilate his sex organs.
• SHALOM BAYIT = Peace/harmony in home/family: SO… It does not ensure/ help peace and harmony when you hold or strap a baby down and torture him. He will never trust you again and he will remember!
• TIKKUN OLAM = Perfecting the world: SO… We’d be more perfect if we stopped torturing and mutilating little boy’s sex organs. God made us perfect. It is blasphemy to think we know better.
• PIKUAH NEFESH = Sanctity of life: SO… Babies have died during circumcision, therefore it violates the sanctity of life.
• HEMIRAT LASHON = Sanctity of language: NOT APPLICABLE
• ANAVA = Modesty/humility: SO… It is not modest to hold down or strap a baby down naked in front of people.
Brendon Marotta, Marilyn Milos and the other experts. Why didn’t you all interview experts, Doctors, Pediatricians from cultures that do NOT circumcise? After all they would know better how important the foreskin is because they were NOT cut? Even though the documentary is called “American Circumcision” but every male on this planet has a penis (but not the botched one’s whose penises have completely been cut off) Again, Europeans (Swedes, Germans, Scandinavians) Russians, Chinese, Indian, Mexican (i.e. MOST MEN do NOT circumcise) …why didn’t you ask them for their excellent advise??
Professor Dr. Peter Duesberg, Molecular and Cell Biologist at UC Berkeley has proven conclusively that HIV is not the cause of AIDS (90% of the Scientific community are on his side) Check out the work of Gary Null…and your documentary kept showing the wrong conclusions about “AIDS in Africa” etc and about Circumcision causing AIDS etc. Homosexual men use Poppers (Amyl Nitrite, Butyl Chloride, Ethyl Nitrite) to enhance anal sex (these poppers relax the sphincter muscle hence making anal sex easier for these poor souls) and that’s what gives them the two main indicators of immune suppression, Karposi’s Sarcoma and Pneumosistis Karini. The people in Africa get sick from extreme malnutrition. (Research the work of Celia Farber on AIDS in Africa), hemophiliacs gets AIDS from blood transfusions (which suppress the immune system) and females get AIDS from drug addiction (same thing immune system suppression)…so HIV is a completely harmless factor in AIDS…
Plus since Anal Sex requires much heavier thrusting Homosexuals get pleasure from it because they have to pound harder and harder and since they ONLY get pleasure in the shaft of the penis it makes sense for them to pound harder. I have a sense that perhaps Homosexuality originated from people who circumcise the most. Israel has the highest rate of Homosexuality and Jews do circumcision the MOST on this planet?
Doesn’t seem like the makers of this documentary have done their homework and this added information could help them parry and thrust the people who say Circumcision stops AIDS etc…
Sorry to see that the intactivists have swarmed yet another website. As the reviewer correctly states, there is little advantage or disadvantage in circumcision in developed countries and the hysteria surrounding the practice among fringe groups is simply disproportional to its impact. Multiple studies have debunked the so-called “pleasure” disparity between cut and uncut men (as corroborated by adult men who have undergone the process due to medical necessity and have experienced sex both before and after circumcision), the preponderance of “botched” procedures has been shown to be vastly overblown and exploited, there has been no evidence of different levels of attachment or behavioral disorders between circumcised and uncircumcised children due to trauma, and comparisons to FGM have rightly been exposed as uninformed and reductivist.
Meanwhile, intactivist arguments have grown increasingly desperate and hyperbolic. The size percentage of the excised foreskin relative to the rest of the penis seems to get bigger every week (soon it’ll be 9/10ths!) and the obsession with sexual stimulation despite no evidence of a disparity borders on fetishism. There IS a valid argument to be made against circumcision, and that’s the argument for bodily autonomy. It’s too bad that the hyper-focus on faux-medical body horror scare tactics and despicable comparisons to FGM undermine that argument so badly.
But none of what I’ve written actually matters as the average intactivist won’t be able to get past the first sentence before wiping the froth from their mouth and furiously accusing me of cognitive dissonance/denial, offering ridicule-veiled-as-condolence re: my hideous, mutilated penis, accusing my parents of war crimes, equating my experience to castration, etc. etc. You guys have had a strong anti-vaxxer vibe for a while now, and it’s just not helping your case.
If, as you claim, circumcision makes little or no difference, then why do it? Non-circumcising cultures get along just fine.
Give me a break. I read your nonsense in full, and no, I’m not frothing at the mouth. It’s predictable and unoriginal. I’ll dismantle your argument thoroughly, though. There’ll be nothing left of it by the time I am done.
We have no cause for desperation. The facts are on our side, not yours. It is disingenuous to compare a PERMANENT AND IRREVERSIBLE BODY MODIFICATION TO THE GENITALS (all caps for emphasis) with vaccination. Stop grasping at straws; you’re not discrediting us in the least.
Perhaps – this is just a crazy thought – part of the reason why we’re so angry and aggressive all of the time is because some of us are men butchered at birth whom wanted the right to decide for ourselves what happened to the private parts of our bodies responsible for giving us physical pleasure? It was not our parents choice to make! Their “personal choice” robbed me of mine! Do you want to pay for my reconstruction through regenerative medicine as employed by this company? Be warned, the bill is likely gonna run you $10,000.
http://www.foregen.org/about
If not, you should show a modicum of respect and refrain from offering your contributions to the debate.
Speaking personally as a cut man, I had a competently performed circumcision in an upscale hospital AND I WAS BOTCHED. I suffered from hair follicle migration, because puberty caused tight erections due to being a grower penis type. It doesn’t matter if this is a minor complication – it is still a complication, because of performing the surgery on an immature undeveloped organ prior to puberty, and they don’t keep records to track these types of botches. That’s something they don’t tell you – there’s two penis types. Growers, and showers. Genetic difference in men’s bodies. They have no way to predict which of these two types the infant will grow up to become, and accordingly, how much skin is safe to remove or how little. What will cause damage, what won’t. In the face of such uncertainty, it is best to LEAVE IT WELL ENOUGH ALONE!
Study showing that the areas most sensitive to fine-touch thresholds as measured by specialized instrumentation are located ON THE FORESKIN:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17378847
This study proves a REDUCTION. Ergo, DAMAGE from circumcision. You do not have the right to alter someones body without their consent, because it will deprive them of this capacity to perceive fine-touch tactile sensation. It is not to be confused with sexual pleasure, though the two often go in hand.
You don’t want us to compare male circumcision – oh, I’m sorry. Male Genital Mutilation with Female Genital Mutilation? Here’s a video to demonstrate how identical they are socially:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcJNAtn-c6I
Women’s justifications:
“We take her to the hospital. It is very safe.”
“She will feel different if she is not.”
“She should look like mother.”
“It is cleaner.”
“I am circumcised. I am fine. She will be too.”
If you can’t see the similarities, when they’re spelled out right in front of you, I don’t know what to say. You have some high quality blinders on. At least we’re the group with an ideologically consistent position. We are against both, male and female genital mutilation alike. Meanwhile, you are the one running through these strange mental gymnastics in order to set up convenient barriers for the protection of your own narrative, as if to proclaim we are the bad guys for equating them in a social context when we have the proof in support of our claim. Whatever.
Here’s a reality check: pro-circ arguments rely upon fraudulent junk science and numerous logical fallacies. The appeal to tradition, popularity, authority, confirmation bias, questionable cause, it goes on and on. The facts simply are not on your side, and no amount of denial on your part is going to change those facts. Defending MGM is being on the wrong side of history. The underlying psychology driving male AND female circumcision is the same. The only difference, is what the host culture deems socially acceptable. You look down upon them? Well, they look up at us as hypocrites because we cut our males. We here in the west have no moral high ground. End of discussion.
We beat this issue to death because it should stop. We want both to end, without equivocation. Stop making excuses for one form of non-consensual genital cutting but not the other. Both are fundamentally wrong, and violate human rights.
Give me a ****ing break. I read your nonsense in full, and no, I’m not frothing at the mouth. It’s predictable and unoriginal. I’ll put you to bed sternly, though.
We have no cause for desperation. The facts are on our side, not yours. It is disingenuous to compare a PERMANENT AND IRREVERSIBLE BODY MODIFICATION TO THE GENITALS (all caps for emphasis) with vaccination. Stop grasping at straws; you’re not discrediting us in the least.
Perhaps – this is just a crazy thought – part of the reason why we’re so angry and aggressive all of the time is because some of us are men butchered at birth whom wanted the right to decide for ourselves what happened to the private parts of our bodies responsible for giving us physical pleasure? It was not our parents choice to make! Their “personal choice” robbed me of mine! Do you want to pay for my reconstruction through regenerative medicine as employed by this company? Be warned, the bill is gonna run you $10,000.
http://www.foregen.org/about
If not, shut up.
Speaking personally as a cut man, I had a competently performed circumcision in an upscale hospital AND I WAS BOTCHED. I suffered from hair follicle migration, because puberty caused tight erections due to being a grower penis type. It doesn’t matter if this is a minor complication – it is still a complication, because of performing the surgery on an immature undeveloped organ prior to puberty, and they don’t keep records to track these types of botches. That’s something they don’t tell you – there’s two penis types. Growers, and showers. Genetic difference in men’s bodies. They have no way to predict which of these two types the infant will grow up to become, and accordingly, how much skin is safe to remove or how little. What will cause damage, what won’t. In the face of such uncertainty, it is best to LEAVE IT WELL ENOUGH ALONE!
Study showing that the areas most sensitive to fine-touch thresholds as measured by specialized instrumentation are located ON THE FORESKIN:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17378847
This study proves a REDUCTION. Ergo, DAMAGE from circumcision. You do not have the right to alter someones body without their consent, because it will deprive them of this capacity to perceive fine-touch tactile sensation. It is not to be confused with sexual pleasure, though the two often go in hand.
You don’t want us to compare male circumcision – oh, sorry. Male Genital Mutilation with Female Genital Mutilation? Too bad. Here’s a video to demonstrate how identical they are socially:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcJNAtn-c6I
Women’s justifications:
“We take her to the hospital. It is very safe.”
“She will feel different if she is not.”
“She should look like mother.”
“It is cleaner.”
“I am circumcised. I am fine. She will be too.”
If you can’t see the similarities, when they’re spelled out right in front of you, god help you. You have some high quality blinders on. At least we’re the group with an ideologically consistent position. We are against both, male and female genital mutilation alike. Meanwhile, you are the one running through these strange mental gymnastics in order to set up convenient barriers for the protection of your own narrative, as if to proclaim we are the bad guys for equating them in a social context when we have the proof in support of our claim. Whatever. Can’t fix stupid.
Here’s a reality check: pro-circ arguments rely upon fraudulent junk science and numerous logical fallacies. The appeal to tradition, popularity, authority, confirmation bias, questionable cause, it goes on and on. The facts simply are not on your side, and no amount of denial on your part is going to change those facts. Defending MGM is being on the wrong side of history. The underlying psychology driving male AND female circumcision is the same. The only difference, is what the host culture deems socially acceptable. You look down upon them? Well, they look up at us as hypocrites because we cut our males. End of discussion.
We beat this issue to death because it should stop. We want both to end, without equivocation. Stop making excuses for one form of non-consensual genital cutting but not the other. Both are fundamentally wrong, and violate human rights.
pururdaya, you prove my point, you have lost all the energy from your heart, throat, mental and spiritual energy centers and you are shuckin’ and jivin’ with fancy words “hyper-focus” and “faux-medical” “anti-vaxxer? What utter rubbish!!! Calling it “fetishism” and measuring the length of the foreskin etc etc…???
Please stop putting down people who are trying to expose this horrific crime. You and a zillion other Americans have suffered needlessly and horribly. They (and you) had no control when their prepuce/foreskin was wrenched off their bodies WITHOUT yours & their consent…You probably went catatonic (your pain was so bad that you were blue in the face and couldn’t even express it due to the infinite pain you went through.) I don’t know if you’ve read my comment above?
I am intact, whole, uncut (as are 85% of males on this planet that are NOT circumcised) and we feel for the 90% mostly in the “Bible Belt” in the US who are cut and mutilated…your denial is so deep that the neuronal pathways to your brain do NOT function anymore…that is very very sad…Dr. James Prescott PhD did extensive research into the Pleasure-Pain paradigm.
Purudaya, stick your tongue out, leave it out for 5 mins, 24 hours, all day, all your life. What happens? it dries out. That’s what happens to the glans penis. You will need KY Jellies, and toxic lubricants when having intercourse with a female, even though she naturally lubricates, pre-cum as its called in the vernacular ( she creams) to make up for your dry, keratanized penis and to lessen the pain she goes through when having intercourse, plus MOST American females have really not experienced natural sex with intact penised men, so one cannot rely on their testimony.
I don’t think you’ve seen the movie otherwise you wouldn’t have made such an asinine comment.
Well, check out Kristen and Jeff O’Hara’s excellent website below, and go figure what happens to a female’s sex life when she has intercourse with a dry circumcised penis. I know your pain is horrible but she will suffer lots of pain too, to a point that she will want to leave you because inserting your penis into her vagina causes great pain and suffering. They were on the verge of divorce but Jeff O’Hara had skin from his s*****m and attached to his penis gland and their sex life improved…(one of many ways the foreskin is restoration) though I feel EVERY circumcision severs the frenulum so that even if the foreskin is so-called “restores” the horrible deed is already done and CANNOT be restored. The O’Hara’s did extensive research and put out this excellent treatise. http://www.SexAsNatureIntendedIt.com
Give me a ****ing break. I read your nonsense in full, and no, I’m not frothing at the mouth. It’s predictable and unoriginal. I’ll put you to bed sternly, though.
We have no cause for desperation. The facts are on our side, not yours. It is disingenuous to compare a PERMANENT AND IRREVERSIBLE BODY MODIFICATION TO THE GENITALS (all caps for emphasis) with vaccination. Stop grasping at straws; you’re not discrediting us in the least.
Perhaps – this is just a crazy thought – part of the reason why we’re so angry and aggressive all of the time is because some of us are men butchered at birth whom wanted the right to decide for ourselves what happened to the private parts of our bodies responsible for giving us physical pleasure? It was not our parents choice to make! Their “personal choice” robbed me of mine! Do you want to pay for my reconstruction through regenerative medicine as employed by this company? Be warned, the bill is gonna run you $10,000.
http://www.foregen.org/about
If not, shut up.
Speaking personally as a cut man, I had a competently performed circumcision in an upscale hospital AND I WAS BOTCHED. I suffered from hair follicle migration, because puberty caused tight erections due to being a grower penis type. It doesn’t matter if this is a minor complication – it is still a complication, because of performing the surgery on an immature undeveloped organ prior to puberty, and they don’t keep records to track these types of botches. That’s something they don’t tell you – there’s two penis types. Growers, and showers. Genetic difference in men’s bodies. They have no way to predict which of these two types the infant will grow up to become, and accordingly, how much skin is safe to remove or how little. What will cause damage, what won’t. In the face of such uncertainty, it is best to LEAVE IT WELL ENOUGH ALONE!
Study showing that the areas most sensitive to fine-touch thresholds as measured by specialized instrumentation are located ON THE FORESKIN:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17378847
This study proves a REDUCTION. Ergo, DAMAGE from circumcision. You do not have the right to alter someones body without their consent, because it will deprive them of this capacity to perceive fine-touch tactile sensation. It is not to be confused with sexual pleasure, though the two often go in hand.
You don’t want us to compare male circumcision – oh, sorry. Male Genital Mutilation with Female Genital Mutilation? Too bad. Here’s a video to demonstrate how identical they are socially:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcJNAtn-c6I
Women’s justifications:
“We take her to the hospital. It is very safe.”
“She will feel different if she is not.”
“She should look like mother.”
“It is cleaner.”
“I am circumcised. I am fine. She will be too.”
If you can’t see the similarities, when they’re spelled out right in front of you, god help you. You have some high quality blinders on. At least we’re the group with an ideologically consistent position. We are against both, male and female genital mutilation alike. Meanwhile, you are the one running through these strange mental gymnastics in order to set up convenient barriers for the protection of your own narrative, as if to proclaim we are the bad guys for equating them in a social context when we have the proof in support of our claim. Whatever. Can’t fix stupid.
Here’s a reality check: pro-circ arguments rely upon fraudulent junk science and numerous logical fallacies. The appeal to tradition, popularity, authority, confirmation bias, questionable cause, it goes on and on. The facts simply are not on your side, and no amount of denial on your part is going to change those facts. Defending MGM is being on the wrong side of history. The underlying psychology driving male AND female circumcision is the same. The only difference, is what the host culture deems socially acceptable. You look down upon them? Well, they look up at us as hypocrites because we cut our males. End of discussion.
We beat this issue to death because it should stop. We want both to end, without equivocation. Stop making excuses for one form of non-consensual genital cutting but not the other. Both are fundamentally wrong, and violate human rights.
Neonatal circumcision is a very traumatic event which seriously interferes with maternal attachment and the individual’s early mental organization at a deep level and which adversely affects subsequent impressions and behavior for a lifetime. While the trauma occurs before the development of conscious memory it produces everlasting and profound unconscious doubts about oneself and the world. The conflict between our biological expectations and the horrifying experience profoundly influences our basic emotional organization and responses. It is like a binary neural network or decision tree that gives an everlasting answer to questions such as “Is it safe here? Am lovable? Can I trust others? Can I get my needs met? Am I adequate/good enough? Deep insecurity, mistrust, anger, pain and sense of betrayal result. The routine practice of circumcision in America is likely to account for many aspects of the severe social and political problems facing our nation despite the many advantages available to us. Those who have witnessed hospital circumcisions and tell you the infant doesn’t feel pain don’t recognize catatonia when they see it.
THE most banned book on this planet is a book written by Vladimir Istharkov: “A Impact/Blow of Russian Gods” by Vladimir Istarkhov, ISBN: 5-7058-0312-5; ISBN 5-9243-0044-7 (4-th updated and revised edition)
Chapter 10 “The mystery of Jews circumcision”, pages 104-105.
According to ancient Hindu studies, in any circumcision, especially in Jewish circumcisions…(since Jews perpetuate and do THE most circumcisions on this planet) Only the bottom three Chakras stay alive and uncut and un-severed…The Root (Muladharah) the Genital (Svadishtana) and the Navel Chakra (Manipura) remain intact (these lower three base-most Chakras are the SURVIVAL Chakras,) all the upper more important Chakras are severed, gone forever…the Heart (Anahata), the Throat (Visshudha), the Mental (Ajna) and the Crown (Sahasraha) Chakras perish and are dead forever…This accounts for Istharkov’s view as to why Jews are so greedy, violent, power hungry and ruthless…They’ve NEVER been able to connect with their feelings(Heart), their expressing these feelings of despair on having lost their foreskins (Throat) and not having a right brain connection (Mental) and then not having a truly spiritual awakening (not the horrors of the hate filled Talmud and the just as bad Torah) A Jewish male baby has a comfortable existence till his 8th day (Brit Milah) when he is brutally manhandled and his delicate foreskin horrifically severed by the Mohel (Jewish circumciser) and then this Mohel/Rabbi sucks the baby’s penis (Metitzah)
Before anyone jumps on me and calls me an “anti-semite”, first off, 95% of current World Jewry the so-called Ashkenazim Jews are NOT Semites, secondly a Jewish diplomat openly admitted on Democracy Now being interviewed by Amy Goodman that calling people anti-semite “is a trick we always use”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUGVPBO9_cA 2:23 mins, “It’s a Trick, We Always Use It.” (calling people “anti-Semitic”)
“I believe the ONLY road to sanity for the Jews is to admit that circumcision is a crime. If a Jew will never admit that he will NEVER be on the road to sanity”
~BOBBY FISCHER World Chess Champion
http://www.RobertJamesFischer.blogspot.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oO0_1oS_oU 6:48 mins, The whole video is what Bobby thought about America in general, but at 5:09 Bobby shows how vehemently he was against Male Genital Mutilation. Fischer was NOT Jewish…and was NOT circumcised…Incidentally, you have to be circumcised in order to be considered and qualify as a Jew…so Fischer was therefore NOT Jewish… His Dad Hans Gerhardt Fischer was a German Scientist and his Mom Regina Fischer was Polish and NOT a Polish Jew…but the Jews keep shucking and jiving it to make it look like Bobby was a Jew, and then taunted him by calling him a “self-hating Jew”? They treated him very very badly, stole 40 years worth of his personal belongings from a Jewish owned storage facility in Pasadena CA, and then years later had him thrown into a prison and treated very badly in a prison near a leaking Nuclear Plant in Tokeimura Japan on a trumped up charge of having a bad passport? He proved it was a fake charge but his pleas were ignored. He put America on the map and that’s how they treated him? http://www.RobertJamesFischer.blogspot.com
I’m intact and uncut, Armenian by ethnicity and like 85% of the males on this planet we were NOT subjected to this brutal, inhumane treatment and ushered onto this planet whole…(reference Dr. Frederick Leboyer’s great book) I attended the First 2 International Symposiums on Circumcisions, (Anaheim CA in 1989) and (San Francisco CA in 1991) Brave Marilyn Milos (Registered Nurse) has pioneered and successfully hosted 11 more conferences all over the World.
To me the best resource is Kristen and Jeff O’Hara’s excellent study and research in SexAsNatureIntendedIt. This great expose will make you really think and find out what really happens in a male circumcision. Its the first link below:
http://www.SexAsNatureIntendedIt.com
http://www.NoCirc.org
http://www.gaamerica.org/ Genital Autonomy America
http://www.gaamerica.org/symposia/index.html
http://www.IntactAmerica.org
http://www.Circumstitions.com
http://www.MGMBill.org
http://www.DoctorsOpposingCircumcision.org
http://www.BayAreaIntactivists.org
http://www.BeyondTheBris.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jews-Against-Circumcision/165424110207450
People on the World Wide Web, answer this for me. How in Heaven’s name will this little baby (Jewish, American Christian, Muslim, Korean and Filipino) ever, repeat…EVER trust another human being after being so unceremoniously and brutally introduced onto this pristine planet?
If you want to learn what happens at birth, any birth (male of female) notwithstanding circumcisions study the work of brilliant Ob/Gyn Medical Doctor, Dr. Frederick Leboyer MD in his great book BIRTH WITHOUT VIOLENCE…its bad enough in his view (from the baby’s perspective) to go through the agony of going through any mothers inside’s and being pushed out after the 9th month but then to be brutalized in Genital Mutilation? Muslim girls are also genitally mutilated. (refer to pioneer Fran Hosken’s, Jeannette Parvati Baker’s, Alice Walker’s excellent research about Female Genital Mutilation) Dr. Leboyer did not go into circumcision in his great book but later contacted Rosemary Romberg and told her what he thought about circumcisions (Male or Female)
STOP GENITAL MUTILATION…p e r i o d!!!
It’s not rocket science?
Fighting for infants to be spared from torture, organ theft and sexual assault with a object is what we as compassionate human beings call knowing the difference between right and wrong. And America should be ashamed for discriminating against men and assuming we are happy being disposable. That each of us cut men is happy losing $100.000 worth of tissue from our most sensitive and private body part. Arguing anything else but for the truth is foolish and harmful to us as a species. Saying you’re glad you’ve lost part of your penis is like claiming you could play piano better with nine fingers. So no we are using our time wisely and we do have day jobs but I will take a day off to protect other infants from the the pain I feel every time I have to change my underwear or take a piss or pull outta my girlfriend. I fight for men to have the same rights as women because feminism a bullshit and is a distraction to make men feel like the abusers. EQUAL RIGHTS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS PEOPLE ITS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE ???????? ????????????????❌✂️????????
Since this idget has already been beautifully deconstructed by others here, I’ll just summarize this garbage review: This guy is triggered that his peepee is ugly and sex isn’t as good. This whole review is drenched in the tears of a man who thinks this documentary directly makes his penis less adequate. I’m cut by the way. Just because you’re cut doesn’t mean that uncut guys are better than you, don’t push the truth out because you conflate it with you being less of a man. Grow up bud.
Really???
Clearly, you haven’t done any real research on FGM. Only 1% of FGM removes more tissue than male circumcision, and that is the most extreme version called infibulation. Also many cut women still experience sexual pleasure as the whole clitoris is impossible to remove since it goes deep into the body. In many places male circumcision is done at older ages by traditional cutters and not doctors just like how you imagine FGM. In Singapore they cut baby girls in hospital, removing the prepuce which is what the foreskin is, the prepuce.
Also, the adult male foreskin is not a small skin flap like you claim. It’s the size of an iPhone on average! Or 1/3 to 1/2 of the penile skin!
You are clinging to the idea that altering infants’ gentials irreversibly is acceptable in order to make yourself feel better about your own penis and your own parents’ decision.
Intact is an ACCURATE description! Uncircumcised is NOT an accurate description. When they find a way to replace the foreskin with lab grown tissue, then we can truly call someone “uncircumcised”.
The fact that you even mention your penis status in a film review shows how biased you are and how obvious it is that you are experiencing cognitive dissonance.
I lived in Singapore for 20 years. Most circumcisions (“sunat”) are
performed on Moslem children. The operation is typically a shallow
cut in the prepuce some 8mm long, and it heals almost completely.
Some traditionalists insist that flesh must actually be removed, based
on their interpretation of the hadith. By tradition, the amount removed
is “one third of a grain of rice”.
I’m sure you can compare that with what is done to baby boys in the US.
[…] Circumcision (6/10) – Review by Bradley Gibson. The most viral review at Film Threat this year. So toxic that the filmmakers urged its supporters […]
The term intact is also used on animals that have not been castrated. Its not an offensive term, all it means is unchanged.
Like many other things the US falls behind in this is one of them. Why are we so against males having full agency over their bodies? Let them decide when they grow up if they want to be circumcised or not. Their body, their choice. They should not have a non medically necessary procedure forced on them.
The problem with this opinion piece is that it is culture bound. It presents the opponents of juvenile circumcision as “emotional” and the supporters of juvenile circumcision as “evidence based” and “scientific”. However, doctors are as divided about juvenile circumcision as the general public, and the division of opinion follows national and cultural lines in different countries.
In Scandinavia there is a lot of hostility towards the practice of infant circumcision and this is reflected in the medical profession in Scandinavia; in the United States and Israel it’s quite different. Doctors on both sides of the debate read or have access to the same literature, and they come to different conclusions. This suggests that circumcision makes less difference than either the supporters or the opponents admit.
The opinion piece is right in saying that circumcision or non-circumcision seems to make little difference. As that’s the case, why bother with it? Scandinavian men get on quite well with their foreskins and live as long as men in Israel and longer than men in the United States. That suggests to me that circumcision contributes more to doctors’ incomes than anything else.
I’m not sure how random anecdotes about one’s first lover and amateur review of medical research qualifies as a film review?
No national medical association in the entire world recommends routine infant circumcision. To suggest they do is dishonest. In most industrialized countries circumcision has fallen out of favor and remains a minority practice in less than 10% of infant boys. Except for Muslim countries and Israel who circumcise for religious reasons, the USA stands alone in the world in continuing to circumcise between 25-65% of infant boys (depending on the state), but the practice continues to decline and over time will become a minority practice in the USA, as well. It would decline sooner if the doctors who practice it in the USA would be more honest with parents about the loss of function and long-term harm of amputating this normal healthy human tissue from a baby. The medical establishment readily admits that they don’t know the long-term complications of circumcision because they have never been adequately studied and records are not kept to document it. The fact is that such surgery on a baby is very imprecise so some men have been harmed by the procedure more than others. One man who feels he is okay with his circumcision cannot speak for another man whose circumcision was not performed as skillfully. If an adult man wants to have the surgery then that is his choice. But an infant should not have such body modification forced upon him without medical necessity.
Look at the intactiloons proving the point of the review. Intactos are nothing more than irrational, histrionic little drama queens who deny science when it disagrees with them. Most of them don’t vaccinate either. Most of them don’t believe in soap or germ theory!
Ad hominen attacks also don’t give your argument any power. All these attacks do is make your argument weak and pointless.
Nicole, like the “science” whereby Nazis tried to kill off the Jews because they were considered an “inferior” race.
Yep, I bet the Jews were considered loons back in the 1940s.
They are now one of the most powerful forces on the planet.
So-called “loons” one day…powerful bankers, investors, businesspeople the next.
“Science” wins…until it doesn’t.
Three national medical organizations (Iceland, Sweden and Germany) have called for infant male circumcision to be *banned*, and two others (Denmark and the Netherlands) have said they’d support a ban if they didn’t think it would drive the practice underground.
“Routine” circumcision *is* banned in public hospitals in Australia (almost all the men responsible for this policy will be circumcised themselves, as the male circumcision rate in Australia in 1950 was about 90%).
Circumcision cannot be compared to vaccines because vaccines don’t involve cutting off normal, functional parts from babies’ bodies.
“The film gratuitously shows an infant being circumcised. I daresay most of us do not have the medical training context or experience to watch any surgery, so this will naturally be disturbing and uncomfortable. It is not horror. ”
Wow. Of all the ridiculous arguments made in this “review”, this one is the worst. One does not need any medical training to feel horrified at such a thing. Is open heart surgery “disturbing”? An appendectomy? A C-section? Uncomfortable, yes. Disturbing and horrifying? Not so much.
You rationalizing why it isn’t disturbing is what is disturbing.
This was an excellent review of your penis, Bradley! The movie wasn’t about it, though.
I am circumcised myself and self identify as mutilated or maimed. I am a Righteous Martyr, giving my all to oppose this degenerate practice.
Even with my MS and unemployment, I find ways through T shirts, and handing out cards to show that I live.
Bradley I too am offended by the terms intact and uncircumcised. We don’t refer to people with eyelids as intact or unblepharectomised. We refer to them as normal or the norm. All mammals have a foreskin or prepuce, it is normal. Most men and women in the world have a prepuce, it is the norm. America is neither normal nor the norm in this regard. You have been surgically altered without you consent. Get over it. Deal with your cognitive dissonance, instead of encouraging circumcision on defenceless children.
Happy to see that pro-cutters are taking the time to watch it. Surprised that one would leave still supporting the dated and barbaric practice. I could say so much, but I think all the other comments did it for me. I am cut, too. It took having a son of my own to look into the practice carefully. I left my sons intact (and that word is not used as propaganda, it’s more accurate), oldest is 12. I seriously wanted to find a good reason for the practice, but I have only found more reason to be passionately against it.
This is what denial looks like
“The medical argument against waiting is that the benefits of circumcision are realized for infant boys through adulthood”
Well, you could have stopped right there, because that’s a lie. There are NO “health benefits” to circumcision — even pediatrics organizations worldwide have confirmed this.
And the rest of this waste-of-space article is just chock-full of misinformation. I especially love the “But they won’t remember!” argument — boy, what a slippery slope THAT is! 😀 By that logic, you could accost someone in the street, administer some scopolamine, inflict any permanent bodily damage you like on them … and that would be A-okay, because “they won’t remember.” Can I come over to your house and do this to you, Brad? Don’t worry, I promise you won’t remember! 😀
Not sure what your agenda is, Brad, but it’s mighty suspect …
This article (not a movie review, come on) about how good circumcision is, and how bad a movie is because it seeks to enlighten viewers about circumcision, proves absolutely one point. Circumcision creates proponents of circumcision. It somehow embeds in a human brain total, unyielding support for the practice of partial penis amputation in the psyche of some men who experience it. And establishes complete unwillingness to become educated about a controversial topic, and to understand the pain that many men have suffered from it.
Rebutting arguments with ad hominem attacks like “religious extremists, UFO believers, or conspiracy theorists” is one half step short of breaking Godwin’s Law (q.v.).
BTW if “science” says babies don’t feel pain, the anaesthesia is not necessary. So how come most physicians (not all and no most mohels) administer some kind of anaesthesia?
I know: they must be getting kick-backs from the drug companies? OR is that another conspiracy theory?
Cant have it both ways, Brad.
Forcing genital mutilation on a child of any gender goes against freedom at every level, if every mutilated man had an idea of the true extent of damage done the people that do this barbaric crap on children would be in prison.
Cutting female and male genitals have the following similarities:
* Over 100 million procedures have been performed on current populations.
* It’s unnecessary and extremely painful.
* It can have adverse sexual and psychol. effects.
* It’s generally done by force on children.
* It is generally supported by local medical doctors.
* Pertinent biological facts are not generally known where procedures are practiced.
* It is defended with reasons such as tradition, religion, aesthetics, cleanliness, and health.
* The rationale has currently or historically been connected to controlling sexual pleasure.
* It’s often believed there’s no effect on normal sexual functioning.
* It’s generally accepted and supported by those who have been subjected to it.
* Those who are cut feel compelled to cut their children.
* The choice may be motivated by underlying psychosexual reasons.
* Critical public discussion is generally taboo where the procedure is practiced.
* It can result in serious complications that can lead to death.
* The adverse effects are hidden by repression and denial.
* Dozens of potentially harmful physiological, emotional, behavioral, sexual, and social effects on individuals and societies have never been studied.
* Where female genital cutting is practiced, cutting the genitals of males is often practiced.
* On a qualitative level, cutting the genitals of male and female children are one and the same thing.
* To allow us to develop into our maximum individual and social potential, we must stop the cutting of genitals of both sexes.
Any of these acts upon a child without a genuine medical reason, as in a life-threatening or chronic infection, or a birth defect, should be both outlawed and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. This type of behaviour is unacceptable, and anyone participating in such behaviour requires the use of the correctional system in order to prevent them from harming another child.
Genital cutting is disgusting, harmful, and completely unacceptable behaviour.
The reviewer needs to educate himself and stop embarrassing himself talking gibberish about something he obviously knows nothing about. How can he watch a carefully crafted documentary and not learn anything from it?
You’re either struggling to cope with your own circumcision and don’t want to fully confront how f****d up this practice is, or you are just an idiot.
First, this is not a film review, this is the stream of consciousness from a man who claims being circumcised ” has had no impact on my life at all, as far I can tell” but who admits to being triggered by the word “intact” to describe men who were not subjected to this procedure. Interesting. What would he prefer? “normal” “natural”? I suspect these would also trigger him because Brad lives in a world where facts about penises are not welcome. He recalls growing up thinking his penis was just how it came “out of the box”. Doesn’t say how triggered he was when he found out the truth on that one – but he then recalls another moment – when a sex partner commented on his scar – again another fact he was unaware of. Circumcision creates a scar. Despite his claim otherwise, Brad clearly has been impacted by being circumcised i.e. on at least two occasions in his life, someone told him something about what happened to his penis in the past that he didn’t know about (sidenote: he still claims that not remembering things means it doesn’t matter). Then he walked into this film. He forgot it was his job to review it. Instead he launched into a battle with more facts about circumcision and penises he didn’t know. He accuses the messengers of “emotional histrionics” – yet it is Brad who can’t deal with the word “intact”.
Great point. Brad looks at mothers watching their newborns be butchered without pain relief and calls them “histrionic”, but he is “offended” by the word “intact”! I think he has come straight out of the 19th century! Reminds me of Colonel Kurtz’ line in Apocalypse Now: “We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won’t allow them to write ‘f**k’ on their airplanes because it’s obscene!”
Seems less a film review, but more a self analysis of the reviewers own circumcised penis and a echo of familiar pro-circ propaganda/circumfetishism. It’s no wonder less people take film critics seriously when some clearly are blatantly biased and/or bandwagoners. I understand that this is very much a pick a side touchy subject but the test a good critic will be if they can hold back their temptation to turn this movie review into their own personal politics.
Does seem to be more a rant then a review of the movie yes.
Note Im circumcised myself and do NOT take offense to calling “Uncircumcised” Men intact.
Or to calling me myself Mutilated.
The body remembers what the mind forgets. Early trauma is separated from consciousness because it is too painful to be conscious. This is part of our psychological defense when there is no physical way to escape the trauma. Research has shown that circumcised men are less emotionally aware and responsive. For more on the psychological effects of circumcision, see Circumcision: The Hidden Trauma.
I love how the comments only serve to prove the author of this article was correct… inquacktivists disregard rational thought in favor of histrionics. Look at all the triggered loons, angry because someone saw this propaganda film for what it is… a total piece of crap that only appeals to the scientifically illiterate and/or drama queens and drama kings.
You must disregard the well being of an infant being held down and healthy tissue being cut off of their body as histrionics. How about you investigate trauma from a scientific point of view and provide the most nurturing and best care for an infant rather than cloak harming an infant in fake science!
I always kinda thought, “if it ain’t broke, don’t ‘fix’ it” was a great rule of thumb.
We don’t routinely perform preventative amputation for any other potential disease of a healthy body part. What is the rationale behind routine preventative circumcision? Why is the male foreskin where some folks draw the line?
First, do no harm.
Holly Ann Williams, how much cutting of infant male or female genitals would you consider scientifically and morally acceptable? Where would you draw the line? And why would you draw the line there?
The scientifically illiterate??? Most *national medical organizations* are against male circumcision of children. Are they all “triggered loons” too?
Three national medical organizations (Iceland, Sweden and Germany) have called for infant male circumcision to be *banned*, and two others (Denmark and the Netherlands) have said they’d support a ban if they didn’t think it would drive the practice underground.
“Routine” circumcision *is* banned in public hospitals in Australia (almost all the men responsible for this policy will be circumcised themselves, as the male circumcision rate in Australia in 1950 was about 90%).
Odd to call the responses here “triggered” (without addressing the substance of a single point raised, of course) when the review itself is so obviously “triggered.”
As to scientific literacy: I lived in Germany for a year, where the vast majority of the men are intact. They seem to be perfectly fine and healthy. We hear the Brian Morris types going on about how deadly it is to have a foreskin, and yet I’ve never heard them point to a non-circumcising population that has all the problems the foreskin is supposed to cause. Who are the quacks here?
Gibson, after reading your article about the movie that I viewed last night, I have to say that you have missed the point, in fact several points. It’s almost as if you watched the film only to see what you already believed. This is a common logical fallacy called confirmation bias: “A fallacy of logos, the common tendency to notice, search out, select and share evidence that confirms one’s own standpoint and beliefs, as opposed to contrary evidence. This fallacy is how “fortune tellers” work–If I am told I will meet a “tall, dark stranger” I will be on the lookout for a tall, dark stranger, and when I meet someone even marginally meeting that description I will marvel at the correctness of the “psychic’s” prediction. In contemporary times Confirmation Bias is most often seen in the tendency of various audiences to “curate their political environments, subsisting on one-sided information diets and [even] selecting into politically homogeneous neighborhoods” (Michael A. Neblo et al., 2017, Science magazine).”
Maybe you could watch it again, this time paying attention to those parts that you (blocked out) “missed”?
All these men who say they’re happy they were circumcised to slightly lower the risks of a few things are forgetting that men love taking risks of varying degrees in order to increase fun in life. Two beers instead of none, a big motorcycle instead of a safe car, having sex rather than abstaining. Even very highly religious men will climb ladders rather than stay safely on the ground. So, why is it ok to have the best and most pleasurably sensitive part of the penis removed so you’re possibly a little bit safer from a few things, if the scientists on the pro circ side are to be believed? By the way, a gaping hole in a study does not a trustworthy conclusion make; and neither are the scientists who made or left those holes good or trustworthy scientists. Look for the holes in the studies, people. On the pro circ side the holes are often absolutely huge. That is not good science.
I have a foreskin and find foreskin protective and lovely. I live where the vast majority of men have foreskin. I feel sorry for the reviewer and for all people who go through this useless violent abuse that is circumcision. Fact is circumcision (an obvious form of genital mutilation) is almost never beneficial at all. It’s also not ok for parents or anyone else to choose it to be done to someone else. Yes, I’ve also read the science, and not just one or two papers or conclusions, either.
Oh Bradley
You obviously missed the part of the fIlm that featured the happily circumcised woman. She defends female cutting.
She clearly and emphatically states that she is fine and not mutilated. She enjoys sex and has orgasms! Having her genitals cut apart improved her!
Were you in the men’s room examining your itchy scar during that part of the documentary?
OMG… I pity you!
So sorry for your loss and your ignorance…
“Lovely scar”?!? The word “intact” is offensive to you?!?
Unbelievable… I am actually at a loss for words….
There are no medical benefits to circumcision unless there is some life threatening reason to perform surgery on an infants genitals. Ask a doctor what the function of the foreskin in mammals is and they will stare at you blankly and state the function is that it needs to be removed. You can cite any number of reasons medically but doing this routinely to an infant is child sexual abuse. There is no evidence based medical science that can prove there are health benefits to mutilating an infant’s sexual organ at birth. Actually the scientific evidence is just the opposite. If you believe that infants do not feel pain then simply look at a circumcision being performed and you will notice that crying is a sign of an unacceptable and untolerable experience. The truth is that infants not only feel pain but they experience it to a greater degree as the neurological development is at its very beginning stages. The practice you define as circumcision is a form of trauma based mind control. To sexually mutilate an infant is rape.
The truth of doing this to a male infant is far worse than doing it to a female. Never mind the fact that it is illegal to perform a surgical procedure on a females genitals without being found guilty of a class one felony but the 14th Amendment does not apply it’s equal protection of male genitals from being cut since 1996. That is the amount of denial that this procedure has caused in American men as well as the doctors who violate their oath of office when this crime is committed. It is not ridicilous to compare the two forms of genital cutting as there are plenty similarities between what are essentially a loss of bodily autonomy. That is why an infant is raped. They did not provide consent and their parents were listening to a supposed authority who has a mistaken belief that sexually harming an infant is actually providing some kind of benefit. That is where the mind control comes in. Its a negative loyalty which is both unconscious and intergenerational.
Intact is not propaganda but a physical reality. Since most of the world spares their infants from this barbaric and unnecesary blood ritual the scar you and I both have is the symbol that someone used a sharp instrument and marked our flesh removing the most highly erogenous tissue. It’s not something I find lovely but abhorrent. If one of my sex partners told me that I would find her both lacking in empathy and uncaring for the trauma that I experienced as an infant.
Life does come with its occasions for pain and discomfort. To intentionally create pain in an infant for no reason either medically nor religiously is basically condoning child torture. The surgery is a horror and the fact that people so easily acquire the medical training to cut an infant like this with no empathy for what the infant is experiencing shows that their medical training is severely lacking when it comes to the knowledge and experience of trauma. An infant is a few days old and we subject it to horrendous pain and expect no effects? This is in error. If we look at issues present in the typical genital mutilation of an infant we see the effects of trauma on the psyche of an infant. What we do not see are the hidden developmental traumas. Attachment bonding is inhibited, latching behaviors in breastfeeding are stunted, nourishment barriers are created, post traumatic stress disorder, dissociation, betrayal trauma, a basic impairment in the felt sense of trust in the world, brain damage from 10-20,000 nerves being severed and the neurological re-routing the brain must do to the fundamental organ of procreation. It’s not histrionics its basic developmental psychology, neurological development and trauma science You want to create the best climate for nurturing and bonding in an infant that you possibly can. Especially at so young a stage of development. Violence begets violence and no amount of denial, rationalization or minimization will change the fact that cutting an infants genitals is an unnecessary sexual trauma and for no valid scientific reason!
Using the term “uncircumcised men” is certainly meant to persuade.
Male Genital Mutilation is stupid.
Cut a girl, go to jail
Cut a boy, cash a check.
This review is by someone in denial… Which is natural, who really wants to accept the fact they have been vialoted and abused as an infant, along with millions if not billions of other men. Stop the madness, put an end to this stupid cutting of penises!
It is quite a shock to the system to go from ignorance to a different perspective. It is natural for the reviewer to compare it to “religious extremists, UFO believers, or conspiracy theorists.”
Bradley Gibson clearly had a difficult time with the movie and did not know that his private parts had scars and that his current genitals are not as they came “out of the box.” Those who have come to a greater understanding of this perspective know how difficult it is to accept that something so routine in America is so wrong and has been done to us or we have allowed it to be done to our children. Bradley not only had to experience the first step in the process, but he had to immediately share his first emotional reaction on the internet as a movie review.
He clearly could not separate his reaction from either the movie an abstract philosophic and moral issue and we should remember our own Odyssey of understanding and how embarrassing it would have been to have our historical perspectives enshrined in a movie review.
Cultures who practice FGM feel the same way and defend their practices the same way. Had Bradley been castrated entirely he would probably still believe that it was normal, not know that he had any scars, and still believe that his enjoyment of women was complete.
Minds like Bradley’s are the minds that need to be changed in order for infant circumcision to stop. I am fairly certain that Bradley would not choose to be circumcised as an adult if the doctors had left him intact. Hopefully seeing the film will make him think twice about circumcising his own children should he have them. He will at least know that there is a very good chance that cultural norms will have changed in America and his son will resent him for having him circumcised.
Not sure if this was supposed to be a comical review? In any case, definitely got my laughs for the night. Thanks for the entertainment man.
The film is currently 2/3 of the way through a month long tour, but if you Google the name, its website links to a page where interested parties can host their own screenings (if enough people buy tickets). Hopefully people might be able to see what this review is talking about, in a theater, before the movie gets relegated to the dustbin that is Netflix.
“…Some of those interviewed conflate female genital mutilation with circumcision. Circumcision is a loss of a small amount of extra tissue of an infant boy vs the heinous practice of female genital mutilation,..” “…. It is ridiculous to compare the two….” The writer needs to do his homework. There are several forms of female genital mutilation. Some of them are heinous and some are less intrusive and less damaging than the typical male circumcision. The “small” amount of tissue amputated from the non-consenting infant, if left intact will become approx. 15 square inches of complex tissue on a grown man, not just skin. With rare exceptions, Humans, male and female, are not born with “extra tissue.” Just like girls, boys are born perfect, just as nature intended, not defective requiring corrective surgery.
Many men accept what was done to them because they don’t realize how the quality of their lives has been compromised, or because of ego refuse to allow themselves to accept the truth. It’s very sad that for many men it is easier to perpetuate the same abuse on to their offspring, than to admit to themselves that they were injured by the procedure. It is all about Individual Human Rights, or in the case of infant circumcision, Rights Denied.
In any other context if someone were to forcibly restrain an infant or child and do something to harm his or her genitals most people would consider that child abuse. What kind of mystical irrationality has caused us to mindlessly accept the same within a medical or religious context? It would be possible to take any non-life-essential body structure such as toes, ears or fingernails, associate them with infections, diseases and other “problems”, wrap it up in medical jargon and “studies” and construct arguments favoring routine amputation of these parts from all infants (save for the few “fanatics” who might wish to keep all parts of their babies!) The fact that sane people would quickly dismiss practices of amputating infant ears or toes as ludicrous if not horrific illustrates the absurdity of slicing away healthy genital tissue from babies. The author of this review appears too defensive of his own penis to see the logic, and rationality of human rights and body ownership.
As expected militant fanatics pro uncircumcised protesting too much.
Gibson writes,” An early sex partner mentioned she thought I had a very lovely [circumcision] scar….”
LOL….what a compliment…..”oh sweetie you have the nicest genital cutting scar I ever seen…”
I guess penis size wasn’t noteworthy…..LMAO
Why should some one be able to decide how much of someone’s body they get to keep? What other body part can some one “just decide” to get rid of? Why is circumcision not recommended by any medical organization in the world?
Also, most circumcised women enjoy sex just fine and would defend their mutilation just as you are.
Their are 4 types of female circumcision; and if you think no type of male genital mutilation can compare with infibulation, good subincision.
There are boys who died because of their mutilation, its not always simple.
“Uncircumcised” makes a mutilated penis seem like the norm. It is not. Less than 2% are circumcised at birth. Its not normal and not ok.
You might not think you are missing anything being circumcised, but you will never experience sex the way nature intended it to be. You don’t know what you are missing. And regarding your statement that infants can’t remember pain- there are studies that proove they do.
The “benefits” of circumcision are so slight and negligible that the argument for giving people the choice to decide for themselves in adulthood far outweighs any other argument to the contrary. There are billions of men around the world that aren’t circumcised and they’re not all dying of horrible penis diseases, the health benefit argument is a foolish one.
Sorry for your loss Bradley
Bradley Gibson’s review of “American Circumcision” is an excellent demonstration of how thoroughly most American men (and women) have been led by American obstetricians and pediatricians to believe that circumcision is a harmless procedure without any noteworthy negative physical, psychological, sexual, or emotional ramifications. This highly lucrative medical practice has continued in America, not because it has any real medical benefits, but because of the gullibility of the American population and the gullibility of the medical community itself. The practice became routine in Britain and America during a period when Victorian medical practitioners were conducting medicine without any awareness of the role of germs in causing diseases. The American Dr. Lewis Sayre promoted removing merely the tip of the foreskin in 1870 because he believed that the excessive abundance of nerves in that area were sending nervous spasms to other parts of the body and concluded from a few “successes” that removal of that tip would have beneficial effects throughout the body. He didn’t realize that the “tip” of the foreskin is the most richly erogenous portion of the penis. Other doctors like John Harvey Kellogg more astutely observed that the foreskin, being the most erogenous part of the penis, was the source of great temptation for boys and teenagers to develop the dangerous habit of masturbation and therefore the entire foreskin should be removed to prevent this sinful practice. From that time on, circumcision became a great source of income for doctors willing to perform it. When one theory of its rationale was abandoned, another was necessarily invented. By World War II circumcision became de regueur for men in the military who later became fathers and had it done to their sons. The practice has continued with a wide range of dubious rationalizations because most men, like Mr. Gibson, take great comfort in believing the “scientific” justifications provided by such organizations as the American Academy of Pediatrics. It is very unfortunate that Mr. Gibson appears to have tuned out of the eloquent testimony of Marilyn Milos and many other individuals in “American Circumcision” that circumcision is traumatic for infants and has inevitable negative sexual consequences for the men they will become. It is true that many men are able to maintain a sense of wholeness and sexual self-confidence in spite of this surgery, but there is a growing amount of evidence that men and women both are missing much of the sensation and joy that are provided simply be allowing “sex as nature intended it” to be a routine part of the American experience.
Well said, Robert.
I’ll just add to what others have not yet said – You mention that you feel the term intact to be used to referred to uncircumcised men is pejorative and offensive. I don’t understand why, if you are as fine with your circumcision as you claim. Intact means something that is whole, and whether you agree with it or not, a circumcised penis cannot logically be considered whole since a part of it has been removed. The only way you can find the use of intact men to describe uncircumcised men as offensive is if you are offended by the notion that circumcision makes you less than whole. I can understand that offense – we’re all offended by it – but it’s a truth that you have to come to terms with, and I suspect you know already on some level, or it would not bother you enough to suggest it is offensive.
While I can respectfully disagree with the majority of your ignorance-laden review, there is one point you made which cannot go unchallenged: the feminist canard that FGM is heinous and circumcision is not. To say that comparing the two is ridiculous shows that you yourself have bought into propaganda – one that inherently sees you as of less inherent value because you are a man. In my opinion, for a man to concede to this form of toxic feminism, sacrificing yourself to it like an obedient puppy…well, I can hardly find a better term to describe such a one as mangina.
Triggered much, author? It’s a shame how many people are too mentally weak to accept the harm that’s been done to us all.
“…infant brains cannot remember pain.” The fact is that infants can FEEL pain. They feel everything in a part of the body with thousands of nerve endings. No mother would want to inflict pain on their precious, innocent baby, but they do. They send their sons to be circumcised like lambs to slaughter. It’s absoluteky horrific. This was a chance for you to fight on the behalf of baby boys everywhere. You failed miserably.
Infants may not remember the procedure directly, but there is no doubt of course that it is an extremely painful and traumatic event for them. That physicians did not believe that infants felt pain is so utterly preposterous. It is frankly scary that people we consider experts and turn to for medical advice would have such idiotic beliefs.
The question is whether this traumatic event so early in life will have life long effects. We know that the younger someone is the more of an imprint a traumatic experience has on that person’s brain. My mom for instance almost drowned as a toddler and she has had a life long phobia when it comes to being near water, lakes and the ocean etc. Such an event would not have the same effect if it happened to an adult.
Perhaps some phobia men has regarding hospitals, medical procedures, doctors, and even needles may have something to do with the trauma of circumcision.
A lot of things when you learn about the medical community in the past are horrifying, that FGM was done in the USA, and there are still some women victims of it alive, now in their 60s and up, done for the same reason they cut boys, because masturbation was evil, and disease was punishment from god for sinning. FGM didn’t catch on as much, in part of because how sexist people were in those times, and for that aspect of sexism women should be grateful, otherwise there would likely be 3000 girls in the USA every day getting a clitoridectomy right along side the boys getting prepucectomies usually with an added extra harm of a frenulectomy.
There are so many factual errors with your review, it’s hard to know where to begin.
Here’s one of the more egregious ones: “Infants can’t feel pain.”
This is completely wrong. Infants most assuredly feel pain, and some infants herniate, blow blood vessels in their eyes, and go into shock.
Additionally, while most cut men cannot recall their surgeries to consciousness, the traumatic events are recorded in what is known as implicit memory.
Please do some research before you write. You’re harming people with the outright falsehoods in your review.
you poor thing.. growing up thinking you were just born missing part of your genitals. Obviously you have massive cognative dissonance about it being harmful. We should not be scarring childrens genitals and having them grow up to think thats normal. You are not intact…you are missing part of your body and it’s ridiculous that recognizing such a simple fact offends you so badly. Only 30% of men on earth are missing their foreskins. Most men on our planet are happy and healthy having their whole bodies. There is no scientific evidence that circumcision actually has any benefits and plenty of evidence that shows it is harmful. Trauma for children even before they form lasting memories is harmful to their brains. You also forgot to mention that the only persons in the film making the comparison between forced male genital cutting and fgm are fgm survivors themselves and that there are different types of fgm. Some types of fgm are more severe and some types of fgm are less severe than male genital cutting. Boys are not immune to being circumcised at a later age, while they can feel it, in a questionable setting(look up Islamic Turkish circumcision parties, tuli season in the Philippines, or circumcision initiation schools in Africa). All mammals, males and females are born with a prepuce organ. It is a benefitial, functional and healthy body part. The foreskin is not small on a male or extra. Human boys are not born with a foreskin by mistake. Circumcision removes half the skin, the ridged band and the fenulum that is meant to be on the penis. The foreskin is not a birth defect and healthy babies dont need surgery. #i2
So, you find the word, “intact” offensive do you? What other word would you suggest? Uncircumcised won’t do, because we don’t call our heads “undecapitated”, or our breasts, “unmasectomized.” Intact is the correct, non emotional word. Would you prefer, “complete” or “whole”, because I suspect you’d find that even more triggering, you poor delicate soul you.
Further, it seems you were unable to write this review without going into circumrage. The state in which a circumcised man goes into a rage to protect the sanctity of his cut penis, lashing out at those who would protect him, instead of those who cut him.
Your inclusion of personal testimony about the scar on your penis is VERY VERY telling of your psychological state when you wrote this. I am very sorry you are going through so much pain and trauma reliving your circumcision through watching this movie. They say the body never forgets trauma, and by your reaction, this is exceedingly true in your case. Sorry about your penis, bro.
“It is ridiculous to compare FGM to male circumcision…”
People who say this aren’t just saying it’s totally different to cut male versus female genitals, they’re saying the two practices are so amazingly separate that one should be completely and utterly illegal regardless of severity, while the other should remain completely legal despite growing opposition, reports of harm and risk, questionable historical motives, etc.
In fact what is ridiculous is to insist they shouldn’t be compared.
Some men will go to any length to rationalize the genital mutilations forced on them as children.
The Reviewer seems quite traumatized. Overlooked, is the fact that circumcision outcomes for a childhood procedure are very haphazard. But even when everything goes perfectly about half the surface of the penis is removed. There’s only one person with the ethical standing to offer consent for that, the owner of the penis.
This article is full of offensive trash. I understand why you feel threatened because you were cut at birth. The term intact is not offensive. It refers to the natural, whole, intact penis left unmutilated. Get over your emotions before you publish articles.
It would seem based on this review that the author of this article was eternally biased from the beginning and offended by the mere approach of the subject or they did not in fact watch the entire film. The author’s own admission to lack of medical knowledge is hugely telling on their stance toward circumcision. While criticism is healthy in all aspects of life I would say that using criticism as a base for rejecting something so informative such as American Circumcision I lose faith in this author’s reviews. Many points made in this review fall short of what was actually portrayed in the film and I would be surprised if someone reads this review then watches the film and comes to the same conclusions.
Just because an infant can’t remember pain doesn’t mean he can’t feel it and isn’t traumatized by it. And certainly doesn’t make the action right. Rape victims who are drugged don’t remember it either l, but when they’re made aware of it they’re still traumatized and have lifelong scars. Intact is a precisely perfect word – unharmed, unaltered, and whole. Just the way we all were born. No piece of skin is “extra”, especially one with thousands of nerve endings.
Thank you. I had a botched circumcision that left me with life-long pain. No doctor would discuss it with me because there’s nothing wrong with circumcision and you’re crazy if you think there is. And we’ll put you in an “insane asylum” if you don’t shut up about it. Out of desperation I decided to restore foreskin to see if the visual would somehow help in my mind. Surprise! I got physical healing when chunky bits of suture tunnels and other surgical debris began to push through to the surface. I went into it with totally negative expectations and was surprised by my outcome. Severe jabbing pain could insert itself at the most inopportune times (intimate sexual activity if you need the prompt). Now I have no pain in my unit. But this creep comes along and tells me it’s a fetish to seek a whole body, while it’s fine to cut up human tissue that is not diseased. How much money did the writer and FilmThreat get from the US Medical Industry for this screed in favor of circumcision? No other medical authority in any modern, industrialized economy and culture on Earth has such a perverted view of the human penis.
Talk about burying the lede. It took until paragraph 7, but we figure out the reason for this reviewer’s scoffing invective and incredibly defensive response to this documentary: The moviemakers hurt his feelings about his penis with the truth. Anger, denial, and dismissal and a pining for a return to happy ignorance is a common initial response when faced with the brutal ugliness of involuntary, unnecessary surgery.
There is no “potential” in the harm of infant circumcision Brad – a significant portion of the penile skin is always removed in the process. Far from “extra”, it’s 30% or more taken out right in the middle of the most sensitive part of the penile skin system.
But this film is not about your penis, Brad. Really, it’s not. Infant circumcision and the millions it is perpetrated on really is that ugly and that unnecessary, regardless of the sex of the baby involved. There are plenty of mutilated women in Africa that rush to the defense of FGM with the same gusto you as a circumcised male defends infant male circumcision. Women in some African countries report high satisfaction with even extreme FGM procedures when polled about it. This, however, does not justify perpetuation of a stupid procedure and negate the obvious wrongness of involuntary and unnecessary removal of part of a baby’s or child’s genitalia without their consent.
Very, very well said M.J. I 100% agree!
Excellent comment filled with truth.
I saw American Circumcision last night at a screening. Bradley Gibson’s ‘review’ is not actually a review of this amazing and much-needed film, but a soapbox for him to pontificate about why he’s okay with part of his penis having been cut off when he was a child. It’s as if he didn’t even pay attention to this documentary. He went in with a pre-conceived notion, and came out having refused to open his mind or consider what the film was actually about.
Let’s start with Bradley’s claim that “the potential harms resulting from circumcision are minimal for boys in the developed world.” Bradley presents this opinion as if it’s a fact, and provides no evidence to support his claim. The film spent many minutes of footage presenting numerous cases of botched circumcisions, in which babies either lost their lives completely or lost their entire penis. Further, the film exposes the fact that there is no institutionalized reporting system within American hospitals to record the statistics on botched circumcisions. The film interviews doctors who say they see the horrific results of botched circumcisions once to twice per week! And the film presents photos of babies who have lost their entire penis.
Bradley saw all of this but it didn’t register in his biased brain, and he didn’t mention any of this footage in his review because it would challenge the massive level of cognitive dissonance he’s built up.
Furthermore, the film demonstrated an interview with an Intact Man who can have Multiple Orgasms with his foreskin; Multiple Orgasms that he would not be physically capable of experiencing if he’d been circumcised. The film also talks about a scientific study that demonstrates the foreskin is the most pleasurable part of a man’s penis, and men who have been circumcised experience 75% LESS pleasurable sensations during sex. Bradley also doesn’t discuss the extreme pleasure potential of the foreskin because to do so would be to admit that perhaps some part of his sexual potential had been stolen from him when his foreskin was amputated.
Bradley neglects to mention in his review that most European medical associations condemn circumcision as a human rights violation and strongly recommend against it. His claim that there is a ‘medical consensus’ of disease prevention is pure B.S.
Bradley also neglects to mention that the women in the film who say circumcision is comparable to genital mutilation of females are themselves survivors of genital mutilation.
I have been restoring (regrowing) my foreskin for more than 8 years and the benefits are tremendous. It’s not painful, it’s easy to do, it only requires wearing a stretching device under one’s clothing, and doing this has massively improved the quality of my sex life. Although a restored foreskin is not as pleasurable as an intact foreskin, it’s WAY better during sex to have a restored foreskin than no foreskin at all. Bradley’s characterizations of foreskin restoration are his own distorted attacks reflecting his bias, and don’t line up with what the men in the film say about their experiences of foreskin restoration as being highly beneficial and worthwhile.
Basically, Bradley didn’t write a review here, he wrote a defensive post trying to rationalize the harm that was done to him. He ignored virtually all of the material in the film that contradicted his own pre-existing conclusions, and also misrepresented much of the material in the film.
Film Threat should be embarrassed to have published this pile of garbage and should invite someone to write a REAL review of this film.
Matthew, well said and I very much agree. I am so sorry that this happened to you as an infant with no say in it at all. I am glad that you have been able to restore much of your and are able to enjoy more of the increased pleasure those of us who were lucky enough to escape this barbaric procedure are able to enjoy.
Even though I very much enjoy living in the US I am very happy that I was born in northern Europe since the majority of those my age born here have had this procedure done to them. I have to say I was utterly shocked when I learned that the majority of men in the US had been circumcised. I just had a hard time believing it. I had known it was a practice in the Jewish community but had no idea it was done for non-religious purposes. It was also shocking to learn about the ignorance of medical professionals that should know better. I could not believe that doctors would routinely try to pull back the foreskin of young boys and did not know that this is not possible until puberty. It is truly shocking how little they know about the importance of the foreskin and how important it is for protecting the penis and pubic gland from damage and desensitization.
I suppose the problem largely is that they did not have a foreskin themselves so they did not have personal experience with it’s importance and how to treat it. As someone lucky enough to have a foreskin I can most definitely tell you how important it is. If I pull back my foreskin and leave the pubic gland unprotected to rub against my clothing as I do my daily activities I could not function as it is so sensitive. The only way someone who is circumcised can deal with that is if the pubic gland has been desensitized considerably. And that of course makes perfect sense. There is a reason all male mammals have foreskin. If it was not necessary it would have been lost through evolution millions of years ago.
I truly feel sad for all the millions of men who have lost so much sensitivity in their penis and the loss of sexual pleasure that has to be the result. I suppose the only consolation is that they don’t know what they have lost since they’ve never experienced it.
It is truly a travesty that this practice is still going on and medical professionals are advising parents to have this done violating their own oat of doing no harm. It should be banned internationally except for a few extreme instances where it may be medically necessary. Babies in religious families need protection too as this is very much a violation of basic human rights of not having a portion of your perfectly healthy body amputated without your own mature consent.
I just want to point out that I am circumcised and have multiple orgasms (in a row) every day. Not sure that has anything to do with it.
Orgasm is largely mental, but having better sensitivity certainly helps.
Here Here!!! We need a REAL review of the movie.
Amen. Well said.
I’m sorry for your loss, Bradley. You deserved the right to keep and enjoy all of your private parts, just like pretty-much everyone on Earth born outside of Islamic, American and Jewish cultures.
You sir suffer from cognitive dissonance. I’m sorry nobody protected you as an infant.
What an interesting take on this film. It’s easy to see that you cannot possibly look past your personal bias and social conditioning to research the truth for yourself. No one is saying to take what was said in this film as the bible and make your decisions based off it alone. It’s meant to be a jumping off point, to do your own research. If you are doubting the scientific validity of the points made in the movie, prove them wrong! It’s easy to fact check every scientific point presented during the movie. Look up the studies (which were shown briefly on the screen, with full name and authors, date and journal info available. This will be possible once we get DVD and digital copies available to slow down and jot down the info) and read them yourself. You claim intactivists didn’t present any scientific information, yet I remember multiple times that studies flashed on the screen and were spoken of briefly.
Documentaries are meant to spark more research. You seem to have wanted this magical “unbiased” look at things that shows that cutting the genitals of healthy babies is perfectly acceptable. And you’re just got going to get that from anyone except people who are pushing their personal bias’ onto the situation. The facts are clear and have been since the 1970s that there are no medical benefits. And the risks are severe.
I am a pediatric nurse. No medical benefits huh? Can you explain why the treatment for phimosis (relatively common in my part of the US) is circumcision almost 100% of the time regardless of age? Of course, a child older than 2 weeks generally has to be taken to the OR for general anesthesia (which, btw, has a much higher chance of an adverse outcome than the local anesthetic used in infant circumcision.) Have you ever seen a child with phimosis? It is very painful. I wish no boy to have to go through that. No medical benefit… You are an outsider looking in my friend. Don’t pretend to know what you are talking about when it is so obvious that you don’t.
Phimosis requires surgical intervention in less than 1% of cases, and any diagnosis of phimosis in any prepubescent boy is bullsh*t. Foreskin does not fully release until an average of 10 years old, and even after that it still grows through puberty to be fully and easily retractile, a sexual function that is not needed before sexual maturity, until that time it covers and protects the glans and urethral opening (almost as if it evolved that way, as the most beneficial trait, or a god designed it that way if you believe in one). In adult phimosis, which happens only in about 1% of men, 4/5 times all that’s needed is steroid cream and manual stretching, a slow, but effective process that leaves the person intact, following the principles of medicine like policy of least intervention and primum non nocere, even in those that do preputioplasty resolves almost every one of those 20% of cases. The reason why circumcision is the treatment for phimosis is because circumcision is so normalised in the USA, being intact is seen as a condition to treat, not the natural, normal and preferable way to be. And the reason why phimosis is so high in your area is likely iatrogenic, pathological phimosis is generally caused by doctors, nurses and the parents they give bad advice to, pulling back the foreskin while it is still tight, or fused to the glans by the balanopreputial lamina will cause it to tear, which will cause it to scar, and prevent it from growing properly, leaving it permanently tight. That’s medical malpractice, not medicine.
You IDIOTIC fool. Phimosis is impossible in a child unless idiots like you retracted his foreskin !
Jo, I’m also a nurse and you need to go back to school. I work on the intensive ward and only a small percentage of infant boys have some issues due to premature birth, mostly due to ignorant nurses and residents in training who attempt to do forced retractions. We have signs posted that only the intensive care nurses are to handle changing of male babies (that’s how much of an issue it can be). I’ve seen circumcisions performed when I was fresh out of school and also watched many babies brought back for “issues” following the procedure. Much of the time it was for excessive bleeding and infection. After I started my family (3 boys 2 girls), I realized that it was my girls that needed extra attention with regard to their private parts. My boys (now 15, 17, 21) are all intact. It may sound crude and I’m not proposing this, but: it would make more sense to trim the inner labia of girls and it would be a quicker, safer procedure. Girls would definitely have less issues with health (i.e. HPV, STDs, infections, etc.). The structure of the penis is very easy to attend to and I think my sons would be pretty mad if I’d had them “cut.” In my practice, when there is a tightening of the foreskin on a baby or small child (and I’ve seen this, too), it is almost 100% due to a doctor, nurse, or parent attempting who tried to retract the penis. ONLY the owner of the penis should do this. Although retraction at my hospital is a big no-no, steroid is usually prescribed if it’s been done. My own opinion is that messing with a boy’s penis in any way is a sexual assault. Please Jo, no offense, but go get some more training or find another area of nursing to engage in. Remember to “first, do no harm.”
and not only that but….we can fix that, we can reattach or prevent death related to blood loss
and yes we do not know how to care for them and we cause the problem we are so ignorant we can not even realize it, please research we do not cut breast or another part that has more severe cancer risk why do rationalize this I dont understand. Nurse continue to advocate for ending this practice there is not medical reason to mutilate and assume that risk ….. quite perpetuating these lies.
Male circumcision is for hygiene purposes. female genital mutilation has no medical purpose; in fact, the opposite is true
You’re a f*****g idiot. There’s so many ways it was hard for me to count.
Mutilating boys is wrong.
Triggered much!
All children, regardless of gender, deserve to grow into adulthood with their genitals INTACT.
“The tone and approach of the film seeks to cast doubt on scientific evidence the same way religious extremists, UFO believers, or conspiracy theorists would. If you’re a person who cleaves to evidence based science, it’s a hard film to watch because the scientific method takes a beating in all the emotional histrionics.”
The scientific evidence seems to be against male circumcision. Three national medical organizations (Iceland, Sweden and Germany) have called for infant male circumcision to be *banned*, and two others (Denmark and the Netherlands) have said they’d support a ban if they didn’t think it would drive the practice underground.
“Routine” circumcision *is* banned in public hospitals in Australia (almost all the men responsible for this policy will be circumcised themselves, as the male circumcision rate in Australia in 1950 was about 90%).
yes i can remember the circummutilation and i hate it.