Alliance with LGBTIQ+ networks

[jean-christophe Lurenbaum]

This thread is open to intensify collaborations with LGBTIQ+ networks.

[Ephraim Seidenberg]

On this note, my statements from an earlier newspaper interview here in Switzerland were taken up in an article about circumcision by DISPLAY, which calls itself a "Swiss lifestyle magazine for gays and friends". You can find the article in German here. Since it's the May edition, I hinted at WWDOGA, which they were very interested in and actually made it the main theme of it. In the printed version, the legal aspects with the work of Pro Kinderrechte Switzerland (PKS) are also mentioned. You can find a PDF of the printed version on the PKS website.

[Timothy John]

Congratulations Ephraim.

Related to LGBTIQ+ issues I will soon have a completed revision of the brochure that I made for CHHRP (Canada) in 2014: "Circumcision and the  LGBTI Community". I will post the new brochure here before the end of May.

[Michael Winnel]

Looking forward to the brochure Tim. 

Ephraim, congrats on getting in the media! Bravo! 

Although, I was surprised the Swiss German Gay magazine showed such ignorance (see 2 quotes below). I expected so much more from a European publication. This was a real eye opener for me. Now I can see how clueless and uninformed many Europeans are. It demonstrates most people, regardless of intact/cut status, are completely ignorant about the topic. We have such an education barrier to overcome!

Examples of Swiss journalist from Display Mag. being uninformed:

"Whether circumcision is beneficial during sex is controversial: While some appreciate the fact that they can take longer to come because the glans is less sensitive, others complain about the loss of the sensitive nerve endings in the foreskin."

"But what does sex feel like with or without circumcision? It is different for everyone. Joy and pleasure in sex do not depend on that alone."  

[Timothy John]

I agree that there's widespread ignorance about foreskin functions, even among those societies where most of the men have foreskins. However, I do not harshly judge any statements about the intact/cut sexual experience being "different for everyone". My harm surveys, as well as Earp, acknowledge that the circumcision experience is very subjective.  Because everyone had a different circumciser (who created the child's "man-made" penis), no two circumcisions are the same. It depends on which device was used, how much tissue was removed, how the scar heals, and how each man views his circumcision. Also the sexual nervous system can compensate for the damage by re-wiring itself to make other parts of the remaining genitals or other parts of the body to become erogenous zones. It also depends on whether the emotional bond with one's partner is sufficient to compensate for and overcome the neurological damage of circumcision (i.e., where the brain and heart become heavily involved in the genital/sexual experience).

According to Prisoners of Ritual by Hanny Lightfoot-Klein, the same is true of circumcised females. I encourage everyone to download her book from TB and read it. (My apologies but the only PDF of her book that I have is heavily annotated by me).

I think it's very useful for us to acknowledge the fact that it is exactly BECAUSE the results of (and reactions to) circumcision are very subjective that it should NEVER be imposed on child when not medically necessary. It is the height of arrogance and abuse of power for any adult to not only decide how much of a child's genitals they get to keep, but also to presume to know in advance how any newborn child's penis will develop after being cut or how the child will come to view his altered penis later in life.

[Ephraim Seidenberg]

Thanks for the feedback, Timothy and Michael, which I completely agree with!

Thanks for the book recommendation and PDF, Timothy, too.

Yes, there's a lot of ignorance in Europe, too. I could go on for hours about that and at times I have wondered about why Europe seems to have such a high reputation within the genital autonomy community. Yes, most men here get to keep their foreskin. Does it make them aware and educated about it? Often, the answer is no. I recently had a very clear example for that in a recent discussion with one of my sisters and her boyfriend on the topic of my interview. It became clear that he had thought of his uncut, intact penis to be malformed, so I had to talk him through the individual parts and explain to him why the way he described them was not only the way this naturally looks, but also quite advantageous in the purposes that genitals generally serve, compared to a cut one.

In regard to the criticized statements, I find this a really important point. Let me tell you first that I lost quite a bit of sleep over all this, together with Manasseh, after we received the first version of the article. The whole setup with the juxtaposition between me and this other cut man is questionable, together with the banana image you could also see it as some kind of macabre penis comparison. On a sidenote here, I found out that this Stephan is an employee of the magazine, he's reponsible for the graphic design, so they might have just talked to him quickly about how he felt about it and I doubt that he had taken much time to reflect upon it. In any case, we are actually glad that the statements are the way they are now, since in the first version they were not in this subjective and relative way, but in an absolute and factual wording. Even just the word "alone" in the last sentence, it was not in there in the first version we got. We are very glad it's in there now, because while clearly, important information is lacking, that statement in itself is true. Similarly with "some appreciate" in the statement about intercourse. That subjectivity inducing phrase was not part of the statement in the first version, instead it was actually just presented as a fact. The word "fact" is not there in the German version, that must have been introduced by your translator.

My approach with journalists so far is to criticize the minimum of what I cannot accept to get the highest chance of my criticism to be implemented. In other words not getting too greedy in order not to risk loosing it all and instead get a result that I can live with. That's what we did. In regard to the last sentence, I told them that in this absolute way it was contradicting my own experience and apart from that, scientific findings. Also, taking up a hint by Victor Schiering, I told them that I found the idea of intentionally diminishing sensitivity for the aspired purpose of enhanced longevity to be conveying a sexist clichee about men who need to last long, regardless of what they feel and asked the somewhat rethorical question about whether we would ever say something like that about women.

Sexism in a gay magazine? To be honest, I had least expected that and blindly assumed much more awareness to such issues. To me it also shows once again how strong genital cutting is as an instrument of patriarchy, in my case under the guise of religion, and genital autonomy is a great way to liberate ourself from these inhuman ideas. That's also why I am very glad about the article after all, because it does stimulate the discussion, with genital autonomy at the center of it.