I'm not a big fan of people throwing around frivolous lawsuits today -- for the hot coffee that burned their tongue...the lawnmower that cut off their toe...silly things that user stupidity brings as a natural consequence.
However, one area that I do believe people have the right to sue (and win) in are cases where a healthy, functioning body organ was amputated from an individual without his/her consent.
Whatever results from this particular lawsuit site is not as vital as providing a place in which to collect men's thoughts on what was done to them, and taken from them.
Men are speaking up! And if you were cut without your consent at birth, share a brief blurb of your experience at this site: Circumcision Class Action Lawsuit
View one man's story here (who sued and won!)
Spread the word with a"Circumcised Against My Will"
T-Shirt
I had to stop reading the stories of these men-I coudnt see through my tears.
ReplyDeleteI am SO thankful that more adult men are speaking up. It is hard I am sure, to come to grips with such a thing - the more you know about what was taken from you, the more difficult it likely is. But it takes brave, strong men fighting on behalf of those 'men' who cannot yet defend themselves.
ReplyDelete"-the more you know about what was taken from you, the more difficult it likely is."
ReplyDeleteAs a wife and mother- I can attest to that.
I think this is the sort of outrage and determination that will make real changes, get other's attention. I can't tell you how many men I know who have basically told me I'm awfully concerned about penises for someone who doesn't have one. Circ'ed men, of course. I have a SON, for crying out loud.
ReplyDeleteand as women who have sex with men- we have a concern in that department too. Why wouldnt women want it the way its supposed to be too? Once you know the difference.
ReplyDeleteSarah - you can tell them that you DO have a prepuce organ! And THAT is the organ that is amputated through circumcision.
ReplyDeleteEvery single woman who says "I'll let my husband decide because he has the penis..." WELL, THEY DO HAVE A PREPUCE - it is homologous and analogous to the one that would be amputated from their child - no matter if this child is a girl or boy. And, while we don't like to talk about the similarities between the clitoris and the penis -- they, too, are homologous and analogous organs... http://drmomma.blogspot.com/2009/09/history-of-female-circumcision-in.html
Exactly Laura - any woman who is going to desire sex with a man who brings to the table ALL the parts necessary for natural, normal, healthy sex...well, why wouldn't they care?!
PLUS - we are mothers - it is our job to protect babies (that may piss some people off, but I have come to believe it is true. if we don't tap into our primal momma bear, no one will be protecting our little ones)
I'm still pissed off at the doctor who did that to my husband. The only consolation I get is that the doc is probably worm food right now.
ReplyDeleteJust finished reading them...makes my stomach hurt.
ReplyDeleteI just had a crazy thought- I wonder if docs who are intact do circumcisions? It seems like only circ'd men would defend it.
ReplyDeleteI would suspect so. I've never met an intact man who could fathom cutting off 1/3 - 3/4 of another 'man's' genitals...
ReplyDeleteThere are few doctors who will amputate needlessly anymore anyway... and I hear of fights between OBs and Pediatricians all the time when one is protecting the newborn and one is trying to just do what 'dad' wanted done...
Sometimes a doc can say there is a problem of some sort so they 'can't' do the surgery...the boy will be sent home intact, and hopefully not return to be cut.
My late wife's OB-GYN was also my son's ped, and he said circumcision was barbaric and unnecessary, and he didn't do them anymore (this was over 15 years ago).
ReplyDeleteI will say that the injury I suffered as a baby at the hands of that doctor has had a profound impact on my life. And it's something we can't get away from. Every time we use the toilet, that ugly brown Gomco scar is staring up at us.
Fortunately, non-surgical restoration has resulted in great improvements to both coverage and sensitivity. I'm only about halfway there, but it's better than not doing anything, y'know?
I should clarify "that doctor" was the German doc at a US Army hospital abroad when I was born, not my son's pediatrician. :)
ReplyDeleteIt is not only a human rights violation, it is the cruelest crime one can imagine. It's amazing that it could happen at all. Let's get them to justice now! We can do it.
ReplyDeleteSarah, and anyone else ... the same Langerhans' Cells (implicated in pseudo-HIV studies) that were amputated in males are also the ones present in aputated parts in females.
ReplyDeleteThe same Langerhans cells that have been shown in laboratory study to actually capture and consume HIV cells?
ReplyDeleteYES! Langerhans Cells... Because (as we should ALL know by now) the prepuce is directly a part of the IMMUNE system and one purpose is to PROTECT the body and it is present in ALL mammals (male and female).
ReplyDeleteWhy don't more people TALK about this?!
Such was the demonisation of the prepuce organ 80-120 years ago in the USA and UK, that hundreds of intact doctors circumcised thousands of baby boys. Either they were oblivious to the way the foreskin and frenulum are the Ground Zero of male sexuality, or they were consumed with the idea, then fashionable, that the foreskin was an unsanitary horror.
ReplyDeleteIn those days, most educated middle class men were emotionally disconnected from their experience of sex. Unless they were early sex radicals, or had long conversations with prostitutes. For a man to be very self-aware of what they were feeling in the tips of their intact penises was seen as effeminate at best, and immoral at worst.
One of many consequences of the hedonistic revolt of the 1960s and 70s is that some men became aware of the lack of sensation in the tips of their penises, and began articulating their unhappiness. In 1970, an angry Van Lewis picketed the Florida Capitol building because of his botched circ. In 1985, Rosemary Romberg revealed that she had received thousands of letters from men angry about having been routinely circumcised as infants.
The internet made it much easier for men with sexual deficits stemming from routine circumcision, to discover that they were not alone, and to exchange ideas. The silence has come to an end.
I seriously wonder about the connection between (some) men's preoccupation with sex and this early trauma of their genitals.
ReplyDeleteI refused to allow my son to be mutilated, and that was back in 1982 before it was such a publicized issue. My husband, who was also not circumcised, suddenly became diabetic at age 32 and the first thing his doctor (female) wanted to do was circumcise him to "reduce risk of infection." He refused. None of the men in my immediate family have been circumcised.
ReplyDeleteThank you Sophia for starting what will hopefully be a huge class action lawsuit against this clear violation of human rights against our babies, our most helpless in this world. God pray they all get restitution for what was taken.
ReplyDeleteA female doctor delivered my son and when it came time to make the decision to circumcise him I was totally against it but the doctor told me that it wasn't my decision to make, that it was my wifes the doctor then proceeded to convince her on why she should have it done. I will never forgive her for having my son circumcised.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know there was a class action suit filed for this. Maybe the class action attorneys involved could have publicized this more.
ReplyDeleteThe original meaning of circumucision at its root, meant something else entirely... to relate it to the body is kind of coarse... this is state/pharmaceutical reseach sanctioned genital mutilation for profit. Lets be honest.
ReplyDeleteVulnerable children who's first experience of humans, authority and being helpless is a scalpel and quite sharp pain, possibly retraint. And this doesnt affect later life relationships? Avoiding sex at all costs leads to a happy life? What a wonderful welcome to the world...
My parents were shocked when i told them when i was 30 years old as they had no idea. We had a difficult birth (full breach and my mother nearly dying). My mother commented that she wondered why i never cried as a baby. After she said that she believed i was just too shocked and beaten down to express anything. Kind of overly pre-stressed, overly quiet and completely withdrawn.
I could say more but will probably get angry.. :) It would be nice to get it back, with interest of course as those tht took it (ie.. the government) like to harp on about lost interest any chance they get. lol.
All the talking in the world will not change what has been ripped away from me.
ReplyDeleteI have terrible sexual self esteem because the skin part of my penis is covered in cyst-like bubbles. I have researched and these are the glands around the hair shaft - except they are supposed to be around my PUBIS area!! Because i am circumcised the skin has been pulled up. I am so furious. I am 33 and this will never go away. I am losing sensitivity (can't feel sex until i orgasm). I have a bent penis, i get pimples on my shaft all the time (and they burst and hurt).
I knew my penis was different when i was 5 years old. I wished I had been born a girl.
I want to start my life over. I hate how this major issue makes me feel. I want to sue for 10 million so that maybe I can get a penis transplant... I am so depressed about it. Who do I sue and who will take my case? I don't even think 10 million will change the depression but at least I could get a plastic surgeon assistance with it.
I believe this fight NEEDS to continue and I'm currently requesting my medical records from the exact moment I was born to see if I was 100% confirmed to have either phimosis or paraphimosis. Which something tells me my penis was too small to get a correct assessment. I'm also seeing into getting the names of all personnel that were there at my time of birth because I know for a fact my father was in prison and my mother was on a bunch of pain meds. So, consent is definitely not there.
ReplyDeleteI was circumcised at a couple of days old and started questioning it at 12-13 years old because I have about a one inch skin bridge that I have to clean with a Q-tip. (Easier to clean my a**) I've also had a steady loss of sensation since my early teens as well as shame because of the disfigurement/scarring caused by it. It's the main reason I haven't tried to get into a relationship (I've never been in a relationship) even though the less than 8 partners that I've had in my life haven't had a huge issue as it were one night stands. I've carried shame of it since I was 12 and at 38 still very, very angry with the contradictory "do no harm" medical establishment. I didn't know you could sue doctors or your parents at 18 for a non-consensual mutilation until the past year and my chance ran out years ago thankfully anyone becoming 18 in the current time resenting the cosmetic procedure perfomed on them shortly after their birth can read the stories of us that came before them and do something about it being done to them because the internet is a great place to share the hard truth about circumcision. Anyone resenting theirs please don't be afraid to expose the circumcision lie. Everyone that exposes the lie will give me great satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteI've been depressed for a long time now, about my circumcision. I want to sue, but in the end, getting a measly amount of cash, isn't going to bring my dick back to its functional state. I was very tightly circumcised, and even tried the fake, foreskin restoration, which is complete garbage, and did very little but give me some slack. I have hair almost up to my penis head because the skin was pulled up from my ball-sack, from lack of skin. Girls I've been with tell me my penis is ugly, and get angry at me, when I just can't ejaculate, and that really hasn't helped the depression. These goddamn monsters deserve to pay for what they did to me! Why couldn't I be at least one of the lucky loose circumcisions. If I could go back in time I'd save myself from this torture. Might as well come castrate me, and finish the damn job. Not to mention unsurprisingly, an mri scan to the brain of a baby before, during, and after showed permanent changes to parts of the brain that deal with emotions, and reasoning. I've always been anti-social, but finding out what circumcision really is, ruined my chances at ever being social again. I'm so bitter, so angry, so sad, and so depressed, and these doctors get away with it completely. Bastards I will see, and torment you in hell.
ReplyDelete