Male Circumcision and HIV

Five years of MC_HIV

Next month, this blog will celebrate five years of telling the world that circumcision does not prevent AIDS. The fifth year has been tough. How was your year of intactivism? Tell me in the comments.

OCTOBER 29: Cut, Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision

NOTE: I got the date wrong in the initial post. This event takes places Saturday, October 29, 7pm to 10pm. Not Oct 28. Sorry about that.

San Francisco will host Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision on October 28 29 from 7pm to 10pm at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center. The event is organized by the Bay Area Intactivists in association with The Whole Network.

From the facebook page, CUT Tour 2011 -

Cut: Slicing Through the Myths of Circumcision is a powerful film. It takes a critical look at circumcision, and specifically at how it's viewed within the Jewish community. It explores the conflict between personal ethics and what some people have been told is a religious obligation.

The film maker Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon is going on this nation-wide tour and will have screenings and discussions in thirty cities and towns. His presence will help us draw large and diverse crowds, and enable many people to think about this issue in a whole new way for the first time ever. (Or maybe just really think about it at all for the first time.)

James Loewen interviewed the filmmaker Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon in Vancouver during the tour's stop there. The interview is well worth the time to listen to and process before seeing the film.

CANADA: CAN-FAP does Vancouver Pride

It's been a lean couple months of posts at a time of almost weekly breaking news on circumcision. Please bear with me. Meanwhile, enjoy this video evidence of changing attitudes in North America.

Thanks to James Loewen and the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project.

At SF PRIDE: Intact and Jewish

There is still more to come on the IAS 2011 conference in Rome. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, the video below was captured at the San Francisco Pride Festival this year. This one goes from an Auschwitz survivor angrily turning over the booth table to meeting a young Jewish man who talks about being intact and loving it. This is our future!

GEORGETOWN Univ.: Child Circumcision: an Elephant in the Hospital

A careful dissection of a cultural harm.

VIDEO: Jewish American Scholar Leonard Glick on Circumcision

Here is another essential James Loewen film. This one is of Leonard Glick, an anthropology professor and scholar of Jewish history. I've had the privilege of meeting Professor Glick and even of receiving some very kind and encouraging words from him concerning this blog. He's a soft-spoken man who has given us a very important scholarly work on circumcision, Marked in Your Flesh: Circumcision from Ancient Judea to Modern America. For that, I wish to thank him.

Thank you, Dr. Glick!

THE ECONOMIST: Against the Cut, The intactivist movement takes on the oldest surgery known to man

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that a magazine with its origins in Britain, a largely intact country, would take a sober and objective look at the San Francisco circumcision ballot measure. The Economist correctly concludes, "Whatever the fate of his proposed law, Mr [Lloyd] Schofield seems most interested in changing minds. He is thrilled that many Jews signed his petition. Some have begun practising an alternative ceremony; brit shalom, the “covenant of peace”, which involves no cutting."

Brit Shalom began long before Lloyd spearheaded this initiative. But the idea that changing minds is what this is all about is precisely correct. Putting the word intactivist in quotes notwithstanding, The Economist chooses to examine the issue with the seriousness in which the measure is offered rather than with silly assumptions, a haughty or dismissive tone, or a reflexive lament about growing government interference in private matters or waning parental rights.

Against the cut: The “intactivist” movement takes on the oldest surgery known to man

“MALES need protection as females do,” says Lloyd Schofield, the main sponsor of a local ballot measure in San Francisco that, if voters pass it in November, would in effect make circumcision of babies illegal in that city. A federal law and various state equivalents indeed ban female circumcision, whether performed as a religious rite or not. So-called “intactivists” such as Mr Schofield therefore quite reasonably ask why the cutting of a baby boy’s foreskin should be any different.

San Francisco circumcision ban ballot measure heating up

Amazing how indifferent people can be towards other people's suffering until someone tries to stop them from inflicting said suffering. The San Francisco circumcision ban ballot measure has spawned an astounding number of hostile and incredulous articles followed by similar comments on the interwebs. You can see the outpouring of attention on Google's news search page (search terms "circumcision" "ban").

There is so much going on in the world of intactivism at the moment. We have Intact America's ongoing "Put Down the Knife" campaign. We have a reboot of an important grass roots organization in my backyard, Bay Area Intactivists. There is the International AIDS Society conference happening in Rome in July in which yours truly will be in attendance on behalf of Intact America with your help. And then there are all the facebook groups that have been popping up over the last 12 months that support the right of every child to genital integrity and respect. Very heartening, indeed. It's a great time to be in the movement.

TIME: Condoms designed specifically for circumcised men?

The author doesn't come right out and say it. But it seems plausible enough. Men who are circumcised and therefore desensitized dislike condoms because, well, they lose their erections due to desensitization. A need without a product until now.

Could a New 'Viagra Condom' Encourage Safer Sex?

It's been dubbed the "Viagra condom," but that's not entirely accurate. The new product is lined with a vasodilating gel, which increases blood flow to the penis and helps maintain erection. But unlike the pill, it's not designed for men who have erectile dysfunction; rather, it's meant for men who have trouble keeping erections specifically while using a condom.

Africa could become a huge market with the circumcision juggernaut steamrolling men by inducing circumcision envy and foreskin panic. If a circumcision doesn't kill African men's erections, the truth that they still have to wear condoms will. No worries. The NGOs now have a solution. No wonder fighting AIDS is so expensive.

OPEN THREAD MONDAY: How important is it to you that intactivists are represented at the International AIDS Society Conference in Rome?

In answer to the above question, it's very important. The circumcision lobby needs to know that we are out there and we're not going away. While circumcision takes Africa by storm as the powerful Aids industry steamrolls the weak economies and governments of the poorest region of the planet, our presence at Rome will influence policy in the United States. What are your thoughts?