Anti-Circumcision Demonstration at Forest Hills on August 5

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On Friday, a group called Bloodstained Men will be outside the Forest Hills T stop protesting America's most common surgery -- circumcision.

The members of this touring non-profit are hard to miss because they wear white pants with red-stained crotches symbolizing the genital mutilation inflicted upon them. People are encouraged to speak to them because they want people to know about the irreversible, non-consensual procedure forced upon babies.

In 2020, Massachusetts passes a statute criminalizing circumcision of females defined “altering the structure or function of the female genitalia for non-medical purposes." Also in 2020, after years of pressure by activists, Boston Children’s Hospital suspended the surgical “normalizing” of healthy intersex (having ambiguous genitalia) children. An estimated 1.7% of births are intersex.

But today, roughly 25% of children born in Massachusetts endure forced genital alterations. Nationwide, more than 3,000 children per day, more than one million per year.

Circumcision, the medical industry’s euphemism for genital cutting, is unnecessary -- full stop. It’s classified as a cosmetic surgery and does not meet the standards of evidence-based medicine. Most men and women around the world live healthy lives with their prepuce (foreskin) and would never voluntarily part with it, understanding, at sexual maturity, the pleasure and value of intact genitals. The United States, with our for-profit medical system, is an outlier in promoting this harmful practice.

Genital cutting amputates highly innervated tissue, which serves many functions including protection, maintaining erection and providing lubrication during sex. Thus, genital cutting is inherently harmful.

Bodily autonomy begins at birth with children’s justice and peaceful parenting. Let’s allow children to grow into happy, healthy adults with their sexuality intact.

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