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wikify amputation
Our theme this year is the history of education on genital autonomy. I thought I’d take the opportunity to share how my own education on genital autonomy emerged and evolved. I will tie this in with some thoughts on how the uncritical gendering of the human right to genital autonomy has created imperial and patriarchal harms. And finally, I will touch on why we are now in a better position than we ever have been to make genital integrity a universal human right.
My own enlightenment began in 2012, when I was entering my final year of college. I travelled to Berlin for an internship at a contemporary art museum, unaware of the discussions happening throughout Germany in the wake of the Cologne ruling in which the [[amputation ]] of a boy’s foreskin was determined to constitute bodily harm. So, I was rather taken aback when a museum patron asked me for my opinion on circumcision. I was too guarded to admit it during the ensuing conversation, but despite being nominally aware that, like most Jewish American boys, I was circumcised, I didn’t really know what circumcision was. I simply thought of it as a benign, normal part of birth, like clipping the umbilical cord. When I subsequently began to research the matter, however, I realized that quite a lot of functional tissue had been removed from my body without my consent and for no apparent purpose. I felt shocked and harmed and I quickly discovered that many others do as well, and that some of them were actively fighting for the protection of children’s right to bodily autonomy. I, like many others, was drawn to this movement after recognizing the needless harm that was done to my own body. This recognition led naturally to a powerful drive to protect others from harm being done to them.
I decided to write my bachelors thesis on circumcision and thus spent many months researching its effects and history. While conducting this research, I also read extensively about female genital cutting. Interestingly, I found that these forms of cutting drew much more widespread condemnation than male circumcision did.