This Penis Business: A Memoir

CIRCUMCISION CUTS THROUGH US ALL. In her eye-opening memoir, Georganne Chapin exposes the business of medical circumcision. This unnecessary yet most common pediatric surgery in the United States permanently reduces the size and alters the function of a boy's penis for the rest of his life. Every year, nearly 1.4 million baby boys are assaulted in American hospitals and doctors' offices where their foreskins are surgically amputated, subjecting them to pain, functional and psychological damage, and a forever-altered sexual experience. (Less than 2 percent of all circumcisions in the U.S. are done for religious reasons.) A long-time healthcare executive, Chapin serves as the founding executive director of Intact America, a nonprofit dedicated to ending the unethical genital cutting of all children. She weaves in her unusual upbringing and background as she chronicles how she got into "this penis business."

As a preteen, Chapin was traumatized by the sight of her newborn brother's penis after two surgeries in his first week of life and her mother's resulting deep grief. When her own son was born, there was never a question that she and her Argentine husband would keep his genitals intact. At age eighteen, her son thanked her for that decision, and she knew she'd found the cause to which she would devote her life. After getting her law degree and becoming an adjunct professor at Pace Law School, she taught a health law course on bioethics and medical malpractice, part of which was a three-week mini course about infant circumcision that served as a case study of cognitive dissonance, medical fraud, and ethical bankruptcy. After meeting several of the leaders in the intactivist movement, including Marilyn Fayre Milos, known as the "mother of the movement," the innovative executive director of one of the first managed health care organizations in the country ended up accepting the responsibility of leading Intact America, which launched in 2008.

In her memoir, she traces circumcision's U.S. roots from 19th Century fears of masturbation to stereotypes about race, class, religion, and male sexuality. She describes how what started as a way to keep men and women from enjoying sex morphed into a for-profit medical practice-one that is rare or unknown in Europe, non-Muslim Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. She reveals how physician organizations, especially the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), have worked for decades to fraudulently promote circumcision's supposed benefits and suppress facts about circumcision harm and deaths. Indeed, the AAP now characterizes male genital mutilation as a matter of "culture" and "parental preference"-a position that, conveniently, shields trade associations and their physician members from legal and financial liability. Chapin has listened to hundreds of stories about the trauma and harm caused by circumcision. She shares some of these stories to show how circumcision affects not only male children, but the men they become and those in their intimate circle, who love them. This thought-provoking book educates readers on how they can help put an end circumcision perpetuated by the fee-for-service medical machine. It is a punch-in-the-gut wake-up call that will enrage and empower anyone impacted by the multi-billion-dollar penis business. Those who would benefit from this book include: expectant parents, men who have suffered injuries, medical professionals, midwives, doulas, lactation specialists, librarians, and academics. "This Penis Business" should be required reading in fields ranging from bioethics to human sexuality to trauma-informed psychology to gender studies and more.