Bay Area Intactivists

Four members of the human rights organization Bay Area Intactivists staffed a booth in Campbell, California at the recent Bay Area Birth Information Meet BABI event to educate attendees that infant circumcision is both medically unnecessary and harmful. The intactivists distributed a broad assortment of literature covering topics such as how infant circumcision impedes breastfeeding, the damage caused by forced foreskin retraction, and non-surgical foreskin restoration for adults.

Those travelling past the San Francisco LGBT Community Center last Wednesday evening may have caught a glimpse of signs denouncing infant circumcision and challenging the claim that male circumcision protects men from HIV. Bay Area Intactivists, a human rights group opposed to forced genital cutting, organized the demonstration which took place prior to a panel discussion on global issues pertaining to HIV/AIDS and the human rights of gay men.

Three members of the human rights group Bay Area Intactivists spent last Saturday afternoon dispelling myths about infant circumcision as part of the Bay Area Birth Justice Fair. The event, which took place at the West Oakland Family Resource Center, focused on empowering birth through education. One of the intactivists, Jonathon Conte, gave a talk during the fair about the surgical risks, sexual damage, and lack of necessity in regard to infant circumcision.

On Friday, March 8, eleven-day-old Brayden Tyler Frazier died in Sacramento at UC Davis Children's Hospital after a grueling battle to stay alive. It is unclear why, despite having been in poor health, Brayden was subjected to circumcision in Lodi, California two days prior to his death. News of Brayden's failing health traveled quickly after his family members used Facebook to post pleas for prayers and updates about his struggle.

Human rights activists with signs and faux blood-stained clothes flanked the entrance of the Concordia-Argonaut Club on the eve of the San Francisco Medical Society's 2013 annual dinner to protest the physicians' opposition to the San Francisco Male Genital Mutilation Bill. The ballot initiative, which garnered the support of over 12,000 San Francisco voters, sought to restrict non-therapeutic circumcision to consenting adults.

The American Civil Liberties Union has once again come under fire for its defense of forced circumcision and ritual genital cutting of children. In 2011, the ACLU of Northern California argued that the San Francisco Male Genital Mutilation Bill ballot initiative violated a parent's right to subject healthy children to non-therapeutic genital cutting practices such as male circumcision in order to satisfy the religious beliefs of the child's parents.

In honor of Día de los Muertos, members of Bay Area Intactivists set up an altar in San Francisco's Garfield Square to memorialize the numerous lives lost to genital mutilation. The altar displayed the following text that was borrowed from www.sexuallymutilatedchild.org:

In Memory of the Sexually Mutilated Child

Attendees of the recent Association of American Medical Colleges conference in San Francisco were met by Bay Area Intactivists member Brother K during a demonstration condemning routine infant circumcision. Outfitted in white clothes with a red-stained crotch meant to symbolize a genital mutilation wound, Brother K carried a sign demanding equal rights for boys (to be protected from non-therapeutic, genital cutting) on one side and urging the public to view the video "Child Circumcision: An Elephant in the Hospital" on the other.