Changes

|Text=Hello, thanks for tuning in to the Worldwide Day of Genital Autonomy. As you may know, under normal circumstances we would be holding this event live in public in Cologne. Of course, due to the ongoing pandemic, such an in-person gathering isn’t possible. We, like so many people around the world, are changing our practices right now in order to advance the very highest goal of human enterprise: to alleviate suffering. The willingness with which so many people have undertaken the difficult changes of the past months is a testament to the transformative the power of our human benevolence. This same power lies at the foundation of the genital autonomy movement.

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.