What's Wrong with the Talkway.Com Ad?

Quick links to products available in the Campaign for Genital Integrity . . .

     INFORMATIVE VIDEOS:
     Facing Circumcision Eight Physicians Tell Their Stories
     Restoration in Focus   Instructional Video for Foreskin Restoration
     They Cut Babies, Don't They?   One Man's Struggle Against Circumcision
     Whose Body, Whose Rights?   Award-winning documentary seen on PBS!

THE BOOK THAT EXPOSES IT ALL:
     Circumcision Exposed
Rethinking a Medical and
Cultural Tradition

FORESKIN RESTORATION with:
The P.U.D. new low pricing!
and The VacuTrac at special pricing!
plus the Foreballs device

In the spring of 1999, the image to the left (with a band-aid over the penis) began appearing on billboards, bus shelters, postcards, and in print media from New York to San Francisco.

It was part of a media campaign to introduce the public to a new internet discussion site called talkway.com.

What better way to involve the public than to capitalize on a current social controversy?

We encourage people to think more about this issue and to get involved in discussions like those on talkway.com.

Before you go, however, consider these points that might interest your discussion partners.

The ad introduces a topic: circumcision. A fictitious respondent replies that s/he has heard that it's totally unnecessary. Then another fictitious respondent offers the advice to do it anyway ("before he has any memory cells")!

The final comment is representative of the lack of critical thinking surrounding all childhood genital cutting customs. Imagine how clear this would be to us if the focus of the ad were on female circumcision (removal of the female foreskin, "clitoral hood"):
- I heard there's no medical basis, that it's totally unnecessary.
- My advice: do it before she has any memory cells.

The final comment isn't just silly, it's dangerous to children. It leaves the public with the incorrect impression that newborns have no memory cells.

The articles below summarize what scientists now know about infants, pain, memory, foreskin anatomy and functions, and the consequences to men of infant circumcision. We suggest that you read these articles and share what you've learned by discussing it with others. Help to correct the dangerous notion that it's OK to cause unnecessary pain and mutilation to infants just because adults think that children won't remember the event.

And beyond pain, there is the inevitable lifelong mutilation and functional changes that occur after circumcision.