Interview with "Intactivist" Hugh Young

As I promised you previously, I wanted to bring you the text of an interview that I conducted with one of the leaders of the online movement against circumcision. Hugh Young is associated with the website, Circumstitions.com which is dedicated to debunking some of the notions that lead people to be in favor of routine circumcisions. I got some insight into this issue from the perspective of an activist (or intactivist) and now I want to share it with you.

Tell me about Circumstitions.com and its primary mission?

As the URL implies, it began with the list of bad reasons to circumcise. There seemed just too many to be reasonable.
I thought there would be about 30, but there are now more than 330 of them! Every so often I merge those that are too similar, but they don't stop coming in. Then I started adding other lists like, functions of the foreskin and it just grew. It's directed first at parents considering whether to circumcise, then at young intact men who feel alone and marginalized, and finally at women who are unfamiliar with intact men.

Why did you choose circumcision as an issue to tackle?

I think it would be truer to say I fell into it. I've been involved in a lot of peace, justice and human rights issues over the years, and when I reached this one I found it was badly "understaffed". It's also "manageable" in the sense that it has boundaries, unlike "child welfare" or "peace". I was very influenced by Beverly Pentland, a brave solo campaigner to protect children from firework injuries, who made it her rule not to let her issue be diluted or diverted, and not to start an organization. (It's rather odd that Intactivism still has no organization with a registered, paid-up membership or elected officers). One thing that fascinates me is the enigma at its core: Why are people so passionately devoted to cutting babies' and
children's genitals? I think religion, "health benefits" and so on are just superficial excuses. The real reason has yet to be uncovered.

What arguments in favor of circumcision do you find particularly
ridiculous or offensive?

Where to start?! Do you count the ones that are so foolish they
hardly count as reasons? Like "if you don't he won't be able to have
children" or "if you don't it'll fall off".

Of the ones that get any traction, the worst are:
*to look like his father
* because it's an American tradition
* I am, so he should be
* his mother went through enough pain delivering him (so he should
suffer too)

Why do you think circumcision has become so routine in the
United States but not in most other countries around the world?

It did become just as routine in Australia and New Zealand, but
both have largely abandoned it - New Zealand almost completely.
They took their lead from Britain. The US is more inward-looking,
so that once it had become customary, that in itself keeps it going.
There's also a financial inducement in the US, that countries with
stronger public health systems don't have. (In New Zealand, one
strong-minded professor in charge of an important hospital made a
big difference. Another big difference was the offering of it, the
"sleeping dogs" policy. (Just presenting it as this big decision that
parents have to make pushes them towards doing it.)

What other countries is circumcision prevalent in?

If you mean neonatal and rates of more than 50%, only Israel. In
the Islamic world, the Philippines, South Korea and tribal Africa,
they do it later, as a rite of passage.

What do you think about so called female circumcision?

Abominable. (And yet - there's always an "and yet" - in parts of the
Muslim world, I'm told, it's minimal, tokenistic, and maybe even
painless.) People's devotion to it means we need to be culturally
sensitive and not colonialistic in encouraging them to abandon it,
but that doesn't mean we have to condone it. By definition, human
rights belong to all humans, regardless of their parents' cultures.

In your opinion is male circumcision just as bad as female
circumcision?

They have overlapping ranges of severity, and the worst of the male
is worse than the mildest of the female. When you compare apples
with apples, tribal with tribal, they're both pretty bad. I don't know
the death rate for female cutting, but 20 boys have died of
circumcision in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, in the last
three weeks. Considered as human rights abuses, how does
gender make any difference? I wish all Intactivists could unite to
oppose all involuntary genital cutting together, but sadly, some
people think they can advance one cause by attacking another.

Do you think infant circumcision will decline sharply within the
next 10 years?

Oh I wish. It seems that the factoid "circumcision prevents HIV" (in
sloppy trials on adult volunteers in Africa) is now being used as a
stalking-horse to promote routine infant circumcision in the US.
(Even if the claims were true, it would take hundreds or even
thousands of circumcisions to prevent one HIV transmission in the
US.) Until that claim came along, it seemed we were on a winning
streak.

If so what will be the likely be the cause of this decline?

I think a lot of good information is getting out on the Internet -
along with a lot of bad information, but our arguments are better. The Internet lets the rest of the world into the US, where other media could and did shut it out. Remarkably many people in the US didn't know that all of the rest of the world doesn't circumcise. (I began my pages of famous intact men when I saw someone mention that the composer, Schumann wasn't. It would have been remarkable if he had been.)

And the privacy of the Internet has broken down the conspiracy of
silence under which circumcision is committed, part of the silence
that still surrounds the details of sex. As more and more
circumcised men tell their horror stories, and intact men tell their
non-horror / good-news stories, many of the old myths (like "it's
just a snip" and "it makes no difference sexually") will become
untenable. And as the decline continues, there will be more intact
men to spread the word.

Are there any cases in which you feel circumcision is a valid
medical option (particularly in regards to those under 16)?

Malignant tumors on the foreskin (pretty rare under 16). For a
handful of other things, when all else has failed - we
none of us advocate intactness at all costs. Trouble is, in
circumcising cultures, circumcision is too often the
first option, so the alternatives never become well
known. And finally, an adult man who knows what he's doing has
an absolute right to have his own foreskin cut off for any reason or
none. That's the flip side of his right to keep it until then.

Should infant male circumcision be outright illegal?

I believe it's only a matter of misreading the law that it's not
deemed to be outright illegal now. As well as the ordinary laws
against maiming and unlawful injury, there are laws in most of the
developed world against cutting any part of the female genitals
unless there's pressing medical need (of even consenting adult
women in some jurisdictions, including the one I'm in), and with no
let-out for religion or culture, AND there are laws guaranteeing
equality of the sexes. Put those together and ...

Do you think infant circumcision ever will be illegal in the United
States or any other country where it is prevalent within the lifetime of a baby born today?

Maybe in some country where it's not too deeply embedded, by the
time he needs help to blow out all the candles on his birthday
cake... I'm not optimistic because of the two strong religious
lobbies. If we could have a religious opt-out without throwing those
babies to the knives, our job would be a lot easier. But how can we
say, "Muslim and Jewish boys deserve fewer human rights than
other boys"? When was the last time we heard that?
Religions don't have rights; people with religions have rights, but
the right to cut parts off the bodies of non-consenting people is not
among them - not even "their own" children. (We use the
possessive to express the parent-child relationship, but children
are not property, not owned.)

At what age should people be able to decide that for whatever
reason they do want to be circumcised?

Not until they have had a few years sexual experience with what
they were born with, and old enough that they won't just do what all
their peers are doing - so about, say, 18-20 years old.

How do you feel about non-surgical foreskin restoration?

It's great that it can be done, but it takes a long time and a lot of
trouble. It's no substitute for having all the nerves you were born
with.

Is it appropriate to call circumcision "genital mutilation" ?

I try to avoid the term, just because it's loaded and controversial,
but if it weren't so customary and "normal" we'd all call it mutilation in an instant.

Do you think an active campaign against circumcision will cause
circumcised males to feel inadequate or angry?

Some do already. Men are very sensitive about their bits. The
people they should be angry with are the ones who sold their
parents this bill of goods.

What advice would you give to someone who feels bad about or
is angry over their own circumcision?

Restore! It gives you back a power over your own body that seems
to be very therapeutic: men who are restoring or restored seem to
have the least emotional baggage about having been circumcised.
And join the movement. Protecting others from what you've suffered is also healing. Just adding pro-intact comments to blogs is good.

Is the medical community at large beginning to come around
concerning the issue of circumcision?

A good question. Some doctors seem to be ahead of the medical
associations on this issue. It's hard to tell from the few who write or
blog about it, but there are lots of anecdotes from parents who told
the doctor they weren't going to circumcise and the neutral facade
cracked and the doctor agreed wholeheartedly. In New Zealand,
more than one doctor (including my own) says "I always hated
doing them, and I was glad to give them up."

Why do you think there is some hostility towards the anti
circumcision movement?

Some of us can be a bit over the top! But at its base, circumcision
is about power and control, and nobody likes the idea of having
their power and control taken away. Some parents even say "He's
my kid, I'll do what I like with him" (the claim of the child abuser
through the ages). Many circumcised men perceive intactness and
intactivism as a threat to their self-image. Parents who've
circumcised sons don't like the implication that they were wrong.

According to some pro circumcision groups the incidence of penile cancer is higher among uncircumcised males, what is your response to this argument?

My full response is on my circumstitions.com, cancer page but in short, the early claims failed to correct for age -
circumcision had only just come into fashion, so older men were
intact, and it's older men who get penile cancer. There was
correlation but not because of causation. There are many factors
causing penile cancer, and a country such as Denmark, where
they don't circumcise, has a much lower rate than the US. Even if
there were any truth to the claim, penile cancer is so vanishingly
rare (rarer than breast cancer in men) that you'd have to circumcise
over a thousand babies to prevent a single case. Similar arguments
apply for HIV and
STD's.

Do you find it mind boggling that anyone (especially a male)
could actually, be actively pro circumcision?

Not really, people can believe such ridiculous and self-harming
things. All the macho, pain-denying demands on "real men" have a
part to play. "Harden up!" and so on. What's mind-boggling is that
circumcision means LESS PENIS, and what else could make men
be proud of that?

How do we convince the average person that circumcision is a
"big deal"?

It's not always a very big deal - men can go through
their whole lives perhaps not even knowing that they are
circumcised, their ignorance is bliss. But
* it can go wrong, leading to disasters like David Reimer's
amputation or the various deaths - all quite unnecessary
* their human rights were violated whether they know it or not
* it does downgrade sexuality, and I suspect that has ramifications
outside the bedroom.
So its enough to convince them that it's not a trivial issue. Of
course there are more important issues, but nobody can devote all
their energy only to the most important issue (global warming?
nuclear proliferation?) or nothing else would get done. With all the
energy devoted to the devastatingly trivial, like celebrities with
substance issues, how can anyone complain about this one? You'll
notice that it's unimportant only when we're talking about
not doing it: deciding to do it is deemed important
enough.

Have you had any interesting or heated debates over the issue of
circumcision?

Only online. Face to face, I'm quite bad at arguing - often because
something they say is wrong on so many levels I fall silent
wondering which one to answer first, and they think they've won.
Online there have been some that have gone on for months and
gone all over the shop. One recent one, on a sex advice board of all
things, was dominated by some medical people who just didn't get
it that cutting parts off healthy babies is not a strictly medical
issue. Yet slowly, we seem to be winning them over. I try to stick
to the topic, ignore personal attacks and resist retaliating. Amateur
circumcision proponents use two main tactics, appeal to authority
and anecdotal evidence. Sadly for their authority, the WHO and
UNAIDS have been hijacked by circumcisionists. (Daniel Halperin
is on record as believing his descent from a ritual circumciser has
made it his destiny to spread circumcision - whatever else that is,
it's not science.) And anecdotal evidence: one intact baby of a
Friend of a Friend who gets an infection and "has to be
circumcised" becomes the excuse for many, many unnecessary
circumcisions.

In your opinion is it harder to present the case against
circumcision to women or men?

They can both be hard, They present different kinds of difficulty
because they look at the penis "from opposite ends". It's amazing
how heartless an otherwise nurturing, caring mother can be, and
it's amazing how men can deny any men are ever harmed because
"I'm not missing anything."

Thank you for your time. Is there anything that you'd like to add
that may have been overlooked in this interview?

Yes! You've asked me all about circumcision and nothing about
intactness! My site is properly called The Intactivism
Pages, and that's what distinguishes it from all the others. (I
wish there were more like it.) The big problem is that circumcision
and the circumcised penis have been so normalized that people
forget what "normal" really is.

Not nearly enough is known about the sexual functioning of the
intact penis. Almost by definition, the functioning of the
circumcised penis has to be something less. There's lots of
anecdotal evidence that intact men are (on average) gentler,
slower, better lovers because they're more in touch (literally) with
what's going on in their own - and their partner's - genitals. We
don't have scientific evidence for this, Masters and Johnson were determined not to find any) and the work of Sorrells et al. only suggests that this is the case.

Even without that, just knowing you have all you were born with has
to be better for your sense of being than learning (sometimes late
or by accident) that you were strapped down as a baby and a
significant part was cut off for no good reason. I'm very fond of the
remark by a New Zealander on a TV program, I'm just
real glad I've got a foreskin, eh? It's a primo little
thing."

Thank you very much for inviting me on to your blog.

and thank you for agreeing to take part in my blog and bring some light to this important issue.

Onsexuality.com