NOHARMM Stands in Solidarity

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

NOHARMM stands in solidarity with women
in the fight against female genital mutilation.
see also Common Denominators between Male & Female "Circumcision" and types of male/female genital mutilation

Photo © 1985 B. Emory, from:
Circumcision-What Every Parent Should Know
Anne Briggs, Birth & Parenting Publications
Earlysville, VA, 1985

Photo from:
Truth Seeker, July/August 1989

Although male circumcision is more common than female, most forms of female circumcision are more severe than most male forms. But it's perverse to excuse one cruelty by invoking a worse one. The genitals of both sexes should be left intact, without encouraging a "dreadfulness competition" between assaults on little girls or boys. "Circumcision" of either sex is a euphemism for genital mutilation. Both vary tremendously from culture to culture (and circumciser to circumciser) in the degree of severity and reasons for performing them. Cultures that practice genital mutilations (invariably dominator cultures, whether in the U.S. or Africa) always rationalize and idealize them. Unless the victims' awareness is raised, he or she continues to repress his/her feelings, or to deny and accept the mutilation as "beneficial."

"Circumcision" for hygiene or to prevent infection or disease is as unnecessary and senseless for the male as it is for the female. Violating the normal genital integrity of the male child subordinates his natural sensitivities - emotional as well as sexual - to a warrior-like cultural psychology. American men, the largest population of circumcised males ever to inhabit the planet in one place, are increasingly aware of the physical and psychosexual harm inflicted by infant circumcision. None of us consented to, nor could we escape, this destruction of our genitals and the violation of our right of choice over our own bodies.

Informed choice, body ownership, and the right to intact genitals are too often considered only feminist issues. Americans and their health care providers must extend those same human rights to male children as well.

Author Alice Walker, Possessing the Secret of Joy and Warrior Marks, on infant male circumcision ("Talk of the Nation" National Public Radio/November 9, 1993):

"I think it (male circumcision) is a mutilation. In working with FGM we often find that the battle is such an uphill one that we hope that the men who are working on this issue of male circumcision will carry that." And later in the interview: "In all of it we have to try to think about what is being done from the point of view of the person to whom it is happening, namely the children."

More Pages Related to Male & Female Circumcision