Brendon Marotta | American Circumcision, Intactivism, & The Hidden Truth

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01:54 Alright, Hiresight Chatters brace yourself for an off-the-radar ride today as we penetrate the snickers stigmas and social awkwardness around a topic that I think you'll find is much more significant than you thought it was. And I'm sure many of us would admit that a culture can find itself in weird places and human beings have an uncanny tendency to blindly go with the herd that makes me think those advocates for origin theories that involve engineering us for obedience might be on to something. Because there's no other way I can rationalize a long tradition of cutting off parts of baby penises all the way into 2018 without ever so much as a real conversation about it

02:36 Who decided this was okay? How did it get to be the norm, and why—like many important topics we consider here—do so many people spout off a few regurgitated bullet points in support of it suspiciously as if it was implanted right in their brains. Well, a vigorous and lengthy golf clap is in order for today's guest filmmaker Brendan Murata for tackling this uncomfortable conversation head on with his recently released and now award-winning film American Circumcision which breaks down the arguments from both sides of the situation examines the history and explains the gory details and data we should all be fully aware of before we make up our minds about it.

03:15 Like my teacher said in sex ed class so long ago, if you can't talk about it you probably shouldn't be doing it. So here to talk about everything you ever wanted to know about circumcision and probably more, Brendan Maman welcome the higher side. Thank you that was a great introduction Thanks i like to have fun with those interest but i am really psyched and thankful that you're here when I heard about this film i thought. No that's interesting but im not sure can carry a full episode of the show because how much is there to really know well when i watched it was definitely impressed learned way more than expected to,

03:51 And I actually got emotional about it despite my heart being two sizes too small. And maybe we should ease into this one with that classic cliche question of how did you find yourself making a film on the subject of circumcision? So, like most Americans it was not a topic I'd thought about before It was something that i just sort of thought well there's nothing i can do about that now so why think about it seems a little uncomfortable. It seems a little weird and besides what is there really to know about this issue, add at the time i was in los angeles working as a filmmaker and i was sorta focused on escape things like car films and sci-fi and you know stuff i got paid for essentially

04:37 And at the same time I started going through a period in my life where i was looking at a lot of things that happened to me and early childhood that might have affected me later on. I was reading a lot of the psychology stuff about how early life events impact you later, and i would run across this and those readings i thought well you know something i can do about it now maybe uncomfortable cuz i think like a lot of people i wanna feel like im in control with my life And I can change my beliefs and my patterns and all these other things, but that was something i couldn't really change so just kinda pushed out of mind. And then later have a meditation practice in the meditation practices just being present with whatever is there. Nothing miss go not trying to achieve any strange states of mine it's just whatever comes up in my consciousness i be present with it and during the meditation i had the word circumcision come into my mind

05:31 And i have this really cold sensation in the body was very sort of uncomfortable feeling and it felt like all my energy drained down to my belt. It happened a couple times during his meditation i thought that's really weird like some part of my consciousness clearly wants me to look at this so i'm gonna pay attention to this and actually do some research And one of the first things I found is something that we cover in the documentary, something called foreskin restoration. Which is where men take their remaining skin that they have and slowly stretch it over time and this doesn't get back all the nerve endings of the foreskin but it does get back some of the form and function and creates a covering of that part of the body again. So I thought that's really weird but all my life I've been told there's nothing you can do about this and clearly there's something you can do about this so

06:22 What else have i been told that isn't true and I started having one of my interview subjects called the obsessive epiphany Which is the moment when you realize there's more to an issue than what your culture has told you And you start researching everything about it, you know reading every book searching every article watching every film listening to every podcast I felt like the things that i was learning really important and things at the water culture wasn't aware of and i needed to communicate in some way. And like i said my craft is a filmmaker it's what do you professionally love doing this when i wanted to do since i was fourteen so film seem like the natural place to express that,

07:02 And that's what led to the documentary and you know within a month of learning all this i was traveling up and down the coast interviewing every person whose book read, add whose website seen in his work i was aware of so that's what lead to the film. And I think that a lot of people are afraid to look at this issue because they have this idea that if they look at the issue of circumcision, it's just gonna make them feel bad in some way and there's going to be nothing they can do about it. What I found was very much the opposite – that there's a lot you can do about it if you're willing to look at some of the difficult questions this issue raises. So that's what The Film Explorers and what we get into in the movie

07:44 Well well said and i think that is really the heart of the issue i think another thing is that people can be self centered and to admit. That there's something wrong with this issue might mean to admit that something bad happened to them or they might thing well it happened me i'm here you know i'm not gonna fight too hard in this practice cuz its, do like for me those kind of thoughts but I do think the trauma issue is kind of interesting because one of your subjects in the films mentions that people can have flashbacks or reoccurring nightmares about being laid out on a medical table with figures looking down on them and some type of sexual experimentation happening.

08:25 That sounds like some other things that we cover on this show from time to time, and I thought the correlation was interesting. Who knows where these things really come from? Maybe it can come from something like that. It certainly seems traumatic and in terms of framing up the topic what are some facts and statistics about circumcision you could tell us that might grease the wheels a bit and give us a general lay of the land I think one of the most shocking things that i learned in research for the documentary was that up until the late 1980s doctors believed that infants did not feel pain and would do the procedure without any anesthesia or pain relief. And you can imagine a newborn infant being, they actually strapped them down to a four-point restraint called a circumstraint it's essentially like a tiny rack for a baby and they will do this procedure on the child

09:16 Without any pain relief so the child is screaming throughout it i think a lot of people think that its done you know what's just a little snip as the culture likes to say. When in reality they use a clamp and it's an involved fifteen minute procedure and the force can use to head of the glands very gruesome, add shocking to look at many of the activists interview told me that just seen the procedure for the first time was what made them want to become an actress with made him feel like we have to change this Part of the challenge of this issue is that like you said it hits on a lot of identity level things for people. You know people will say about other procedures that they have like those i had no shoulder surgery or i had my tonsils out when it comes to circumcision they say i am circumcised, it's an identity thing its part of who they are the same way might say that your

10:12 white or black or gay and in reality circumcision is just another thing that happened to you. And it isn't necessarily an identity level thing, but we make it into that because it deals with the body because it deals with sexuality and genitals. And so I think if people were to shift their frame a little bit in that way and to look at it as just something that happened to them rather than a part of who they are then they would have a little more flexibility and thinking about the issue of okay well This is something that happened to me yes but is it really aligned with my values, i think a lot of people too regularly you know really accept the idea that you have the right to make your own choices about your sexuality and your body. And the argument activists against circumcision are making is that human beings have the right to make their own decisions about their body and cut off part of someone's body without their consent is a violation of basic human rights

11:08 And when i framed it people that way you know what i talk about the go yeah that makes sense and so we had a culture that just inertia has friends as a parental choice, is there parents have the right to decide what body parts their children keep. As opposed to an issue of human autonomy in human rights and sexual freedom now you mentioned the trauma That's sometimes a little difficult to talk about because you can't really do a double blind study where one group of people get circumcised and another group people don't, and then they have exactly the same life experiences and background. And all the other things in their life it's really hard to do a study like that. And even on types of trauma that we accept culturally as having an impact like someone experiencing sexual abuse or rape has an adult

11:59 It's even hard there to prove correlation yet i think we all sort of intuitively understand that someone who experiences those things will have trauma. And that trauma might manifest itself in strange ways and ways that are difficult for that person to deal with Now when it comes to circumcision there are some studies on the lasting impact of that pain. There was a study that we cover in the film, Anand and Hickey Pain Studies and Tatio Pain Studies which showed that there was a change in behavior from circumcision pain among infants And what they did was they tested children when they were being vaccinated, and they found that one group of infants being vaccinated responded much more dramatically to the pain. So they give a child vaccine, put the needle in for that some children you know it's uncomfortable for them but their able to endure it and others react dramatically. They act like this is the most horrible thing that happened to them. And so the researchers are trying to figure out why is one group of children responding so dramatically to the pain? You know where they're looking at breastfed or not breastfed

13:02 Do they come from a different background or birth style or something like that? And it was actually circumcision that was the defining factor. So children who were circumcised responded much more dramatically to the pain and the researchers attributed this to PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder meaning that they believed that the children had this very painful experience of circumcision where again at the time this study was done it was being performed without any anesthesia And when they felt pain again, there was a traumatic flashback to the pain of circumcision that they were reacting to in addition to the pain of that moment. So you know, again it is hard to sometimes put a one-to-one correlation or even talk about a particular person's pain without just simply accepting that that's their experience but there is research that by the way is accepted by both sides of the debate that indicates that there is posttraumatic stress disorder from circumcision

13:58 Right, I thought that was one of the most fascinating studies and it makes a lot of sense. It's kind of like... if you're in a room with someone who's been shot and you pull out they're gonna have a reaction that like get that thing away from me i know bad things happen when im involved with this kind of room environment start bringing some out to touch me what it makes sense i mean intuitively as you said you can see how, that kinda thing would happen and there is another moment the film that i think is interesting where one of the pro circumcision guy says Again downplaying it's no big deal in fact sometimes baby sleep through the procedure and then like you come back on this i'd say actually sometimes they go into shock from the procedure i wouldn't call it sleeping at caught a.

14:41 a protective haze to keep that pain threshold down or whatever it is. But yeah, I think that's just one of the issues surrounding the way people look at this thing and the language like you said, the cultural nick. It's more than a nick and it's just interesting that someone who's such an advocate for that would be ignorant to the fact that no this is a reaction to pain, this is going into shock Yeah, one of the things that I have found about this issue is that there seems to be a divide not just on people who are foreign against circumcision but people who are willing to accept the emotions and feelings of others as valid and people who aren't. And when you talk to a lot of pro-circumcision advocates

15:26 They feel like they have this data which indicates that circumcision is good and all of those human experiences and emotions and feelings can just be discounted because we don't know how to quantify them in An academic paper And so when they talk about the pain that infants experience and things like that To anyone who's in the room when this procedure is being done. It's clear The child is in pain But among doctors and academics, they say well we don't know how to quantify that so it must not exist. Which is a huge leap I mean there's no studies to indicate that it doesn't exist and even among things like the study I mentioned where they show that there is post-traumatic stress disorder amongst some infants who've experienced this They'll say well that obviously just goes away when they're older and doesn't affect adults And it's like how do you know that? There's no study to indicate that

16:18 If anything, the opposite would be true based on what we know about trauma and the way that affects people. That if it isn't healed or dealt with it grows worse or remains in the body so I think there's another layer there and that layer again if you understand the nature of trauma It makes sense that people want to discount this Or not admit it because that's a psychological defense against feeling those feelings. Because if they admit those feelings are valid in others, they might have to admit they're valid in themselves and what does that mean? Deep man yes we are funny creatures but that pattern seems to exist in so many different issues and this is definitely one of them. And what the main things that i learned one of the first things I learn, is about how they practice evolved or maybe we should say devolved over time because the amount of tissue that we remove today is a shockingly larger amount than was removed in the beginning right?

17:18 Yeah, I think one of the things that people think about this issue is they say well it's in the bible so it must be okay because we sort of have a cultural bias that things in the bible are probably okay and in reality the type of circumcision that was practiced in ancient Israel. In old testament you know Torah biblical times Is different than the practice that we do in modern america so used to be that they would only remove the very tip of the force can what's known as the rich band, the part that comes and hangs over the glands of the penis. And they did that because it was used to the head of the glance so this is your fingernail is fused your finger when a child born, the force can use views to their glands and make sense from biological perspective. Because newborn infant doesn't need to use their penis in the way that adult sexual being does

18:11 And usually in adolescence or when that child is older that barrier loosens and the force can able to glide up and down the penis but when the practice first began it was just a rich band. Add in the hellenistic period thousands of your hundreds of years later i should say there was a change in the practice and the change came because Jewish men wanted to participate in roman athletic events and roman athletic events were typically done in the nude. And having the glands of your penis exposed was considered lewd, you know if you think about it when the penis is flaccid when its not erect that skin is going to cover the head of the penis and so having it exposed would be seen as lewd and sexual because that will only happen if someone was getting erection

19:01 And so these jewish men would clip their foreskin for the essentially tired over the head of the penis so that they looked like romans cuz i didn't wanna look different and want to be single out as weird having had this strange surgery. And the Jewish priest, the rabbi didn't like that because this was supposed to make them look different. And so they were trying to pass as Romans rather than identify as Jews. So they changed the practice to remove not just the very tip of the foreskin but the entire foreskin and would break it away and pull it forward and do what we now think of his circumcision. And that's a lot more tissue and it's a lot more radical procedure

19:42 So I think when people talk about, you know for example biblical circumcision they don't realize that what they're practicing is not what happened in ancient Israel. It's something much more radical and it was done specifically to prevent Jewish men from passing as Gentiles Yeah i thought that little bit of history with the Roman games was really fascinating and its weird how little microcosms like that can explode into this tradition that most people in america have experience and just makes no sense it has no relation anything in their life, add the religious aspect is also interesting because i grew up in a catholic school where everyone i knew was circumcised except the one kid who was adopted from overseas and

20:32 And that's how i learned there even was a difference when i was a kid because we just had one example and you know he felt like the odd man out little did he know that we were all. Traumatized and damaged in a sense i mean i don't wanna be overly dramatic but when you watch the film you can help it have those kind of feelings about it and oddly its not a christian or catholic tradition and i guess the bible says that, no one should have the jesus sacrifice that you know longer have to make these kinda what sacrifices are alterations And that's a curious thing, because I guess it gets back to the point that it is more of an American tradition than it is religious one. We're the only western civilized country in the world that has this non-religious circumcision tradition which is why the film is called American Circumcision

21:21 Exactly. And I think a lot of people in America think of it as a Christian thing, when in reality the New Testament says that circumcision is a mutilation and you're not supposed to perform it. That essentially circumcision in the Jewish tradition is a blood sacrifice and in Christianity the idea is that Christ was the last blood sacrifice. You know he died for everyone's sins. So if you're performing blood sacrifices for some sort of reason In the christian tradition then you're sort of denying your faith in christ you saying well his sacrifice wasn't enough so we need to do this other stuff and. America is unique in this practice that is part of reason the film has the title that it does most of the world does not practice this,

22:07 It's practice in jewish nations and jewish culture and it's practice in muslim nations a muslim culture and some tribal parts of africa. What is really small i mean there's like a tiny percentage around the world for you know obvious reasons, the fact that there's a lot of people from different cultures living across the world but really it's uniquely american practiced to have routine infant circumcision and I think a lot of americans assume that this is something normal everyone does it in i've seen threads weather some. Boomer in the thread essentially saying why had the placenta cut and that's obviously the same thing and its not,

22:47 They just have this idea of standard routine thing that everyone does when in fact. Americans are in the minority here and actually even america at the rate of circumcision is dropping so a child born today, when they're an adult will probably be in the minority if their circumcised It's all just so interesting and getting back to the procedure itself in the tissue that's removed I thought this was really important and one of the film subjects Glenn Callender, founder of the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project. He says something that really stuck out me where he mentions the feminist movement and how one of the major points was that women were not getting enough sexual pleasure because the culture was so repressed but they didn't have enough knowledge about their own bodies of the clitoris, g-spot and all this sort of stuff

23:33 But the real irony is that men are actually further back than women are because we're so ignorant about what's actually cut off and how we're affected, and it's a big deal. Can you talk to us a little bit about this aspect? And the actual tissue that's removed in some of the other parts Right if you look at female sexuality and the way that we understand female sexuality now It's known that women have different parts that get different types of orgasm so for example, the orgasm that comes from the clitoris is different than the orgasm that comes from the g-spot and There is a cultural conversation Or at least a conversation among people who are talking about sexuality openly

24:14 That those are different and there are different types of pleasure whereas when we look at the way that we understand male pleasure it's this very simplistic, you know the penis goes in and it feels good on that part of the body. And we don't talk about different types of male pleasure or that the different parts of men's genitals might have different sensations which is where I see the penis all as one structure largely because the additional parts of that part of the body have been removed in american culture so if you actually look at the full intact male genitals there are multiple types of sensation you can get from different parts of it. There is the rich band which is the very tip of the foreskin, the axon was a drawstring that holds the foreskin over top of the edge of the glands

25:04 And if you look at the nerve endings there, they're some of the most concentrated in the male body. There's a high concentration of what are known as Meissner's corpuscles which are the kind of sensory touch nerves that are in your hand. They're also the kind that you have around your lips and all the openings of the body and if you think about it, it would make sense from a biological perspective that we would have a lot of nerve endings or on the openings of the body because if something is being put inside you, you know, you'd want to know about it right? So there's a lot of sensation there in the rich band of the foreskin there is a lot of sensation in the friend which is that part on the underside of the penis that holds the friend you let me hold your lip and place in your tongue down

25:46 And again, there's a lot of sensation there and depending on how someone was circumcised they may have more of that sensation left than others. Again it's not like there is a dotted line on men that says cut here right? So this procedure is done very unevenly person to person and there are some people who got to keep more of their sensation that they were born with and there are other who had more removed so some men may still have their frenulum and if they were too Run an experiment on themselves to see what they could feel with that part of the body. They would feel a lot more than they might fill in the head of the penis, the head of the penis is actually one of the least sensory parts of the man if you look at the number of nerve endings it's actually more so. The inner lining of the foreskin has more and again no if u r circumcised still be a scar line and there is tissue below that scar line that may be a little darker

26:39 and a little rougher, and tissue above it that's a little lighter. And if you were to just run your finger over that there would probably be more sensation on the remaining inner lining of the foreskin in the area above that scar line than there would be below. I know this may seem a bit graphic to some people but this is like a very in-depth discussion of sexuality and probably more than most men or really anyone has had about male sexuality before What i think it's important to have that conversation because we had a conversation around women. And think about where women would be and how much pleasure they get other sexuality,

27:18 If we live in a time when we didn't even acknowledge that women had orgasms. Which is there have been periods of history when i was the case right so we haven't had that conversation yet about men and if you're willing to have that conversation for willing to acknowledge these aspects of our biology or sexuality, then we could start to experience those types of pleasure and even if u r circumcised even if you don't have all those parts will be more aware of the pleasure you can get So instead of just having a generalized feeling that this is like, okay well when i have sex it feels good. You'll be aware of the places in your body it feels good and able to get more pleasure from them. Yes I definitely think it's important yet uncomfortable but through that lens of looking at women sexuality any guy who has investigated a lot about stuff in the interest of pleasing women

28:15 I think it creates a good template to think about the possibilities of the mail orgasm and stuff this guy when calendar he calls himself a professional for skin demonstrator apparently does these. Demonstrations will leave he'll even show videos of the different orgasms i mean cuz how else do you do it? You know, it might be embarrassing for him but. He's trying to do something positive and so you gotta show this stuff he shows videos of him having five different orgasms in two minutes all kinds of things that I think a lot of guys would find to be strange even guys who've had a lotta sex and thats whats really interesting to me is you can have sex hundreds of times

28:56 Without ever really thinking about this kind of stuff and it's just a weird way that the brain works Yeah, well if you think about how people's misconceptions about sex get challenged or changed I mean when you were a kid You probably had all sorts of misconceptions about sex right? Mm-hmm. And the way that you Change your perspective on those is usually either you learn through firsthand experience Or someone tells you And when it comes to the issue of circumcision and the foreskin, most people don't have experience with that part of the body. Especially if they're men especially if they're straight man, they only know the body that they have and the wider culture doesn't clear up those misconceptions in fact it reinforces misconceptions and creates new misconceptions so there's no point at which those childlike misconceptions about the body would ever be challenged

29:52 And so that's part of the reason you have to have a very direct conversation about things on this issue, because the wider culture isn't having that conversation. And we consider female circumcision so repulsive and barbaric like how could you remove the clitoris? But the frenulum, this area is similar to what could equate to a male clitoris and we're removing all of it or most of it or some of it like you said there's no standard which is scary enough But the sensitivity studies you talk about in the film prove that the most sensitive part was the foreskin and in circumcised men it's the ring from the scar. And that's interesting in itself but they say they could equate for 75% loss of fine touch sensation 80,000 to 100,000 of those Meissner corpuscles removed That's insane man!

30:46 It's a lot and i think to in western culture there is this narrative that female circumcision is this horrible thing designed to destroy women sexuality and that circumstance when basically can't even enjoy their bodies at all. Where is male circumcision is this, Medical procedure which somehow improves and makes men healthier. And there's a lot of sexism in that narrative is an idea in there that man and male sexuality is somehow born wrong in need of fixing And there's this idea that female bodies are somehow more to be protected and more special than male bodies. And there is also an idea in there, that American cultural practices are universally good and okay, and foreign practices, the practices of brown people and African people, are somehow really bad and awful and barbaric. When you actually look at the two procedures they're more similar then different

31:44 Because there's no culture that practices female circumcision that doesn't also practice male circumcision There are cultures that just practice male circumcision, but there's no culture. That just practices female circumcision and The circumcised women especially those I've interviewed in the film who have talked to almost always say That male circumcision is also wrong and they see the two practices as comparable and similar And it's really only Privilege white people and people from western nations who somehow make a distinction between the two because they want to see their version of general cutting as good. And beneficial and don't necessarily wanna look at the similarities between those practices

32:25 And let's do talk about some of the pro arguments or the common misconceptions, the things that people who are listening now might get faced with if they start trying to become advocates for this kind of stuff. What are the typical talking points and how accurate are they? So part of the challenge with pro circumcision talking points is that they fit in a headline and don't make a lot of sense when you start deconstructing them so when you say well it's cleaner Okay cleaner how do you mean less germs to like you have a study to back that up. Does soap and water not cure whatever cleanliness problems you think the best part of the body might have is there something inherently dirty about the genitals in sexuality that somehow different than say no the inside if your ear or mouth it doesn't make a lot of sense when you start breaking it down

33:22 And part of the reason these sort of cultural memes don't make a lot of sense when you trace them back. Their origin is different than the way that they're used now so when u hear me and it was cleaner somehow, that actually goes all the way back to an error when we thought sexuality was dirty in someway and when that cultural meme began it wasn't just circumcision Somehow made the genitals physically cleaner but also morally cleaner that there is something dirty about sexual pleasure that needed to be fixed and removing the most sensitive part of the body could fix this so people would not engage in a porn sexuality more and literally was actually even promoted as a cure for masturbation. That was one reason circumcision began in america and victoria as a cure for masturbation

34:15 So when someone says in modern times, well it's cleaner. They're obviously not coming from the same frame of mind as a Victorian trying to stop masturbation yet that cultural meme has gone through the culture so much that it just repeated sort of without thought and when you go into a lot of pro circumcision talking points they sorta fall apart under similar scrutiny. You know there is this idea sons need to match their fathers Do you remember comparing penis is with your father as a child this is something that like people do like that's absurd there's no young man who feels a deep need for him to match his father in that way. And i think that statement justification really comes from the insecurity of fathers who want their sons to look like them,

35:08 Pro circumcision groups will sometimes make medical arguments about circumcision they will say that it reduces. Sexually transmitted diseases that it reduces the spread of HIV which again these are diseases that adults get sexual adults not necessarily infants and when you go into the research of those when you actually break down the data There's a lot of inconsistencies and it doesn't look like good science but again in order to do that you have to go really deep into the data. And most people read the headline they don't even read the abstract at the scientific studies there is the headline, get the popular science news anything i'm circumcised and i want those things so that must be good when you get into the date on them its really suspicious

35:57 Right i thought that was interesting to me a lot of misconceptions are addressed and it makes me think about sexual abuse in general because a lot of times there's a pattern where the cycle continues or victims later life become offenders and is just interesting that this circumcision cycle. has kind of the same pattern. It could possibly be an element in the circumcision suit, but regardless with the HIV rates and STD rates that's something that I think people have heard this claim that circumcised men have 60% lower HIV rates it's something addressed in the film And then someone makes the point well that's interesting because America has the highest HIV and highest circumcision rates

36:42 So how can it really be preventative because clearly we're number one in both categories Yeah, I've heard it said that circumcision is a cure in search of a disease meaning that when this practice was started in America and HIV was not the reason it was done. It was done for other reasons, and when those reasons were disproved they found a new reason so there's a continual cycle to try to find a reason to keep doing this as the reasons we were doing it are disproved and don't make sense anymore. And HIV is the latest one because HIV is sort of one of the scariest medical things out there now right? Its' the big bad if you will but when you actually get into the data of that

37:24 The claim that it reduces HIV by 60% is a relative risk reduction. And the absolute risk reduction is closer to under 2%. So if you're outside and you go inside, you have reduced the relative risk of getting hit by a meteor by thousands percent yet what are the chances of that really happening? Right? So people will sort of jack up their statistics by talking about relative risk and it's worth mentioning to the studies that are used to justify this claim all carried out in sub-saharan africa, don't necessarily apply to united states so the reasons people get hiv in the united states. Are different than those in sub-saharan africa especially places where you know oftentimes there isn't clean running water

38:15 And on top of all that, even if we were to accept that circumcision reduced HIV by a certain percent. We wouldn't accept that claim in the case of female circumcision. We would say well adult women have the right to their own body and even if something done to their bodies would reduce the transmission of HIV they have the right to make their own decision about it and there are have been studies that suggest that female circumcision reduces HIV but those studies Very interestingly have been scrapped partway through because the researchers were afraid it would be used as a justification for female circumcision So the cultural double standards play here, too And the sequence I had on the HIV studies in its first version was about an hour long. I could do a whole documentary just on those studies and The problems and challenges with them there's the fact that

39:06 More people left the study than stayed in it there is the fact that the group that was circumcised got medical counseling that the other group didn't medical counseling by the way which they were told to use condoms and the circumcise group used condoms at a higher rate so right there. Do the studies show that circumcision has an effect on HIV or a group that uses condoms at higher rates gets HIV at lower rate. I mean this people involved were paid you can go down the list of different challenges with these studies and there's also another conversation about the amount of money that went through them so,

39:45 Forty million dollars from pet far from you the taxpayer went to circumcision campaigns in africa to stop the spread of HIV and there's been significant money contributed from the gates foundation and from the clinton foundation all these big groups that ought to be able to know that the data involved does not really justify this. And a lot of people have suggested that there might be something strange going on there but again, There's not a lot that comes out of these circumcision campaigns in africa that isn't from the people that are doing them and it would require further investigation to really understand. Why all this money is going to that

40:29 What would you cover the documentary is weather not those studies are true and applicable to america. And i think if you go through the data it doesn't make a lot of sense, do you even apply those american setting where i just don't think that most people when they're making decisions for their children's health are really worried about HIV so much that they're going to hold their child down and rip part of their body off as they scream in pain. Like it does not make sense under scrutiny I agree and interestingly enough before i ever heard of this documentary, I was in a conversation with some friends and one of them disclosed to me that they had to have an adult circumcision for medical reasons. I didn't pry too much but they did say that it is night-and-day different the sexual experience and the feeling and I thought it was just very unique to get that insight from

41:26 Person who would have that procedure at adulthood so they actually could compare and it stuck out to me and then this documentary confirmed a lot of what he was saying. Man when i'm listening to it just can't get over the, the question of who cares, like what kind of person or organization is passionate about making sure this happens. Like you mentioned, you have these clips of politicians like Hillary Clinton announcing millions of dollars dedicated to circumcising Africans and everybody just stands up and applauds. And it's like why do you care? How about getting them running water or something like that I mean it's just an odd thing to be preoccupied with

42:07 Unless there's some kind of other agenda i'm not aware of so i've heard two theories on why organizations are pushing circumcision as a practice the first and probably most likely is medical liability. So the organization involved have practice circumcision as a medical practice for a long time in particular the american academy pediatrics which is one largest pediatric trade organizations in the country And if they were to say that this practice they've been doing a long time is actually harmful, is not necessary. Then they would open themselves up to lawsuit and malpractice insurance is one of the biggest expenses for any doctor and any doctors organization. If they were to say that there's a possibility that every circumcised man in America would have a potential lawsuit against them which is a lot of money so it would financially destroy them

43:10 And so the theory is that their legal team has said you absolutely can never condemn circumcision. You can say, well maybe there's some benefits and there are some risks but we leave it up to the parents to decide what you can't say is wrong. So that's one theory and then the other is that if circumcision were to be challenged on moral and ethical grounds medical circumcision where to be challenged that would also threaten religious circumcision If you say, well you don't have the right to cut off part of a child's body without his consent in a medical setting then that might also apply to religious settings because people have religious freedom. You know if your christian and can tattoo across on your child you can practice female circumcision on your daughter if thats your religion why would you be allowed to do something as invasive or more invasive to your male child?

44:06 So there is also a theory that there are Jewish interest groups who really do not want to see this practice compromised and might not even want to be singled out in that way because circumcision is designed as a mark, in Jewish culture, to identify Jewish people as different in some way. And there's a fear among some Jewish people of being seen as different or singled out or targeted or persecuted And so if everyone is circumcised, they don't stand out in that way. But they're not going to give up their practice which they've identified with which they see as a religious right So the two theories that I've heard are most plausible are that groups doing circumcision don't want to give up money involved and get sued at business

44:58 And religious groups don't want to give up what they see as their religious right and also don't want their practice to be seen as different or wrong in some way. I think you're definitely on something with the malpractice issue because if all the money on most things and that's where gonna find motivations and a part of me does think of it as like something we take for granted, just an outpatient procedure for babies. Like recommended tire rotation with your oil change is just another line item on this massive bill given to new parents and on both sides that you don't want to get sued the lose the money and you don't wanna forego the money you're gaining from this extra unnecessary practice I mean definitely think thats probably a good majority of why this happens

45:48 Yeah, there's also a third possibility I've heard which is there's a lot of money made in the commercial sale of four skins. So if you circumcise a child and he saved the foreskin that has tissue that can be used commercially including in stem cells because a child that young still has some stem cell tissue in them and there was a new story that came out recently about beauty products that use infant force can in the rich celebrities are using people like sandra bullock and kate beckinsdale oprah has even sold these products on her show i've heard that the money made in the commercial sale of four skins is really high i wanted to find someone who will speak about that on camera but there understandably shy about that

46:36 There's one person i was talking to you i said no i would make him anonymous i change his voice backlight him so that you can see who he was absolutely not he is not about talk about that on camera. But i have heard that the money involved in that is very significant. I don't doubt it yeah you're right i've seen those same clips of those celebrities endorsing that kind of stuff and beauty products but, let's also give some time to the resistance movement what's going on there talk just a little bit about intactivism which i think is clever wordplay and this movement that's pushing back how large are they effective have they been

47:13 So the in fact this movement is a movement that believes all human beings have the right to their own body and cut off apart of someone's body without their consent is a violation of basic human rights. When are you so the word is a plan where it intact an activist activists for the intact body i want to hear them refer to as the general autonomy movement yet do you have Autonomy of your own body including your genitals and they oppose male circumcision the post female circumcision and the oppose intersex general cutting. Which is a whole nother topic that we can get into at some point but for the sake of this focus on male circumcision they have,

47:53 Done a lot with very little so if you look at the movement when they began there was a number of doctors and nurses who had objections to practice would seen it done. If you think about it what's only been recently that we've been able to even get images usually the child is sent away in most people don't see what happens to their child, when this procedure is done So a lot of the early people who are involved were former nurses and doctors who had seen the procedure and thought this is wrong we should not be doing this there were a lot of parents and men, especially a lot of gay man had the comparative experience in between both bodies but wait like why does my partner have this weird scar here. Why does this person i know how about you some kind that doesn't make sense

48:42 And they just basically took every opportunity they could to talk about this and speak in public about it. They also published academic literature, they made media you know everything that you would expect an activist movement to do. I think the thing that a lot of people don't understand about activism is that it takes time to change culture It has been a slow process over 30 or 40 years But now we've gone from a circumcision rate that was above ninety percent to one that is around fifty percent and maybe even lower. And again these organizations don't have a lot of money they have,

49:21 What you and i have essentially the ability to talk and share their message i think that things like this things like social media things like the ability that we have now to create our own media have been incredibly useful for them because before, the only time they were able to get through on this issue was three traditional media. which often was reluctant to talk about something this controversial. And I think they've also benefited from other movements that have made it more okay to talk publicly about sexuality and to, you know, accept the idea that you have the right to your own body. I mean there's a lot of other movements that have pushed something similar to that idea that they've benefited from

50:03 Now that we are a much more sexually open society that we have the means of communication to share this message to a wider audience I think that they are on the cusp of breaking through into the mainstream and again if you look at activist movements cultural change happens very slowly and then all it wants its not like there was a point that you could point to where you know things like the civil rights movement or gay rights movement are other movements, where was a gradual point that they got to it was a slow burn and that suddenly had a moment in culture what is the thing everyone was talking about. And i think that moment is coming with this issue and its coming very soon right we might be near that tipping point

50:51 The film has been out for a couple of months how would you compare the reactions you've gotten to maybe your expectations that had in your mind. You know i wasn't sure what sort of reaction this would get and i think we have is a slow build where are, the more people who see them from the more people recommend it And what's interesting is I sort of thought most films they come out they make a splash and then they kind of disappear. And this film has sort of steadily reached people and we've been expanding our audience bit by bit so in some way i think that's better instead of

51:29 One hit and then it's gone from the culture. It's becoming a thing that people Recommend to friends who are having kids or people who want to understand this issue And that's kind of what I wanted it to be I wanted to be something that ten years later is still relevant for people Who want to understand this issue? So my hope is that it's only going to continue to grow Mm-hmm. I'm also curious has there been any response from the critics or the American Academy of Pediatrics So we had a couple people respond in interesting ways i kind of like different reactions to the film i've gotten a couple hater reviews and really entertaining to me. You know if someone is triggered enough to write a really crazy insane review that the film affected them some way and thats interesting to me, and there's a few others out there actually had screening at oxford town hall recently and i got

52:30 request from a reporter for comment that there are people who are gonna protest the film and basically say that it was anti semitic cuz i was criticizing circumcision. I replied that we interviewed jewish men on both sides in the phone, end up these jewish man so they feel really hard by the practice anyone protesting our phone should be seen as an antihuman rights activist trying to silence jewish man And so that article ran and then no one showed up to protest the film. So I think my quote was a little too effective, but the AP is aware of the film and it's funny because they haven't said anything about it publicly there national convention was a couple months ago or I think it was late October early November and I tried to place an ad for the film there for their conference you know you go to a conference you get a bag and has

53:25 All sorts of free giveaways and then sometimes there's ads in the back is an info card for different groups right. So four five thousand five hundred dollars you get an info card everyone's bag for one day, enter ten thousand dollars to get a card never was bad for two days so i made it in for that said film featuring multiple members of the american academy pediatrics poster and i tried to place it as an ad And they said no absolutely not and didn't give me a reason beyond that so i literally could not pay the organization thousands of dollars to talk about my phone but they are aware of it. When is this at the conference there were people there who are very high up in your organization, who recognized me on site so i made eye contact with one of the members of the

54:19 American academy pediatrics task force on circumcision and like his eyes when why the moment he saw me which means they're paying enough attention to it. That there able to recognize me just from my face let me saying anything or anything like that i think you really threatened by but also where did engaging publicly on this issue, Is a challenge for them and so i'm hundred percent certain they had meetings about the phone. But there right now keeping publicly silent on it what's gonna make you feel good little bit of identify the troublemaker and i think you got all the arguments on your side, you know this apartment that likes being dangerous artists and there is another part of me that's like just a guy talking about the facts and whats their

55:09 There's a way which i don't see myself as very threatening and also feel like i'm willing to work with them. I think that their concerns around legal liability or preserving the face of the organization are legitimate and i'm going to have a conversation about this i'm going to find a solution where these activists are heard And their concerns are addressed and the organization is able to get what it needs but they're not interested in having a conversation i think they see this whole thing as annoying and would rather. throw money at the problem more or try to avoid it as much as possible, or personally attack the people involved which is unfortunate. Yeah oh man boy it seems really tough to try to navigate those waters and try to correct this tradition and also not have them admit to causing harm that seems very delicate in a hard tightrope to walk

56:09 It is but i think it's possible and again like part of the challenges that they don't talk publicly about these concerns because. Then they would have to admit that there is financial reasons they want continue practice or legal liability reasons they can talk about why its bad so even having the conversation or admitting interest they have is not something you wanna do right on man so As we're kinda getting to the end of the road here, the film ends with a dedication and I was kind of curious what is the story behind that dedication? So at the end we have a dedication to jonathan conti is one of the people who appears in the film. Jonathan was a member of bay area and activists and attack this group in san francisco, and for a lot of people he was public face of the movement he was very well spoken young man who had a lot of grief over his circumcision and spoke eloquently about it and about two years ago ended his own life

57:12 And it was a very clear deliberate choice the way he did it was something that he had planned and you had a lot of grief over this issue if you felt like there is wrong but who's harmed. And that there was no way of changing things and i think, if there is a recipe for suicide its feeling intense sadness in grief and feeling like your alone in it and that no one in the larger world as willing to listen to you and feeling like it will never change and so He was someone who meant a lot to people involved on this issue he was someone i interviewed in the phone and i felt like it would be meaningful to honor him by putting that dedication at the end. I agree it is very sad and it's nice that you did that,

58:02 Well man we pretty much covered it i really thank you for making the film i certainly learned a lot and i think the people listen today did as well please give me info they need to find and watch american circumcision themselves as well anything else might be working on or my wanna tell him before we close out. So you can find the film on circumcision movie dot com its available on amazon and iTunes and vimeo, We are at circ movie on all social media you can find me at brendan marotta dot com and add bd murata be the m a r o t e a on all social media i feel like this issue is something that's gonna continue to grow. And i have some other phone projects in the works but i can't really talk about them yet so you just have to follow me and see for yourself

58:56 Right on. Well again, very informative super important issue as odd and uncomfortable as it might be for some Big thanks to you again and keep up the great work keep stirring pots Thank you, and thanks for having me on You got it Sweet Jesus people give yourselves a hand! You're still with me We did it A full THC dedicated to dicks Seriously though, I did learn quite a bit and I absolutely think we should stop doing this rather than just trying to downplay it after the fact. So I was really happy to do it and try to maintain professional manner but its also a little comical that THC now has a dick show That's just the reality of it

59:46 And to be honest, for several years I was one of those people of the mindset that yeah we probably don't need to do it anymore but i'll get my kid circumcised for the cosmetic reason. Like he's being prepared for some kind of dog show or something But I think that is probably the most common mindset out there and I hope now people who are of that mindset are reconsidering because when you get into the severity of it, cosmetics just isn't a good enough reason anymore. There's actually something that happened on this show way back in the day probably in the first year even but I had a guest by the name of Lennon Honor and he was speaking in reference to circumcision and vaccines but he felt deeply about the idea that it is a father's duty to protect their kids from harm

1:00:47 pretty simple premise, but he took it to a deep philosophical and spiritual level. And his passion was pretty convincing and he saw both of those things vaccines and circumcision as a violation of that protection. And that's fair right? Because you're giving your newborn over to strangers who you don't know to perform procedures you don't know much about on blind faith...and I'm sorry That's just not good enough. And I have agreed ever since, especially on this issue a father should step up and say no any parent really but you know matters of the penis i think it's okay to defer to dad at least on this one and don't be afraid to buck the trend as brendan said the trends are going the other way anyway so you might do something so your kid's not the odd man out and make him the odd man out

1:01:49 You want to have that conversation with a 12 year old? I just thought your penis would look better. I don't want to have that conversation, i'll tell you that! Brendan definitely gave us plenty of reasons to avoid it but It is really a multi-layered issue the psychological piece Is no small thing this attitude that well...I had one and I'm fine so let's just keep doing it to everyone else It's no good Yeah, to actually stop means maybe there is something wrong with it. And that might mean something wrong was done to you or your brother or your son...or me! I guess I'm okay saying that? I was wronged?! But I don't want guys out there thinking, yeah, I am a victim and start tracing all their issues back to the big slice For me my response is

1:02:49 I'm probably not going to restore my foreskin. But after i saw all the things that can go wrong, and we know the medical system fucks up! I see it as an unnecessary risk and a pointless procedure And what I learned was that us guys who were cut as kids We really are ignorant of what we're missing. We really cannot speak from any kind of informed position Imagine instead of foreskins, we had some arbitrary tradition of cutting off pinky fingers. Now pinky fingers feel like a big deal no doubt but you can still hold fork or pen You can still drive. You go through life feeling as if you didn't really lose anything until someone who stil has their pinky finger comes around and says hey wait a second having this extra finger is actually really useful for my life

1:03:48 And when I look back, if I didn't have it... that would've been a real shame. Maybe listen to that person? Or imagine we put drops in babies' eyes that make them go colorblind! Yeah you could still get through life but you'd never really know the full extent of what you're missing If most people had it done You never knew color yourself and a doctor recommended it A lot of people would just do it and the full spectrum of what a person would be losing Would just be an idea I'm only saying you don't know about what you don't have. You don't know what you're missing, if everyone else around you is also missing it that doesn't help and i didn't realize the foreskin was more than just a skin sheath and I'M PISSED! Pissed might be a little strong but I definitely am not happy about it and anyone who's circumcised should probably watch the documentary and really look at those parts where they describe the differences and what it's like to...be natural

1:04:52 I'm probably not gonna lose sleep about it, but it's definitely interesting. And for that reason, I consider this a pretty good episode. Very off-the radar topic—who is going to be talking about this kind of thing if not THC? But all real glory goes to the guest and his film, and its documentary worth watching! Even if it doesn't change your mind exactly, you should not take the decision so lightly that you can't dedicate 90 minutes in a follow-up conversation with your partner before pulling such a fragile trigger. And if you only heard the first free hour today, you probably think you heard enough but that is not true folks! There's always more and I had a very specific place in mind when splitting this episode and crafting the pathway through The Line of Questioning

1:05:43 And that was just before the botched circumcision conversation. I reserve that for only the hardcore plus people because what i saw in that documentary, in a segment on botches fucked me up and even a one percent risk of that is not worth doing it and just to run through the other plus portion topics we covered You will find a section on forced extraction. We also talked about the Dr. Winslow approach to circumcision, how it affects and changes sexual interactions that was quite interesting And of course foreskin restoration techniques and the results as well as the political situation There's a lot more there than you might expect So like I said there are many more layers to this then might appear obvious at first

1:06:42 Kudos to Brendan for being so bold as to go there. And, so that's the show! Tell your friends we also have a joint session on the 20th at 7 p.m Pacific do try to be there So you can tell me about all your weird experiences and local conspiracies and out-there theories Free for anyone to be a part of live and always archived for Plus people. Sign up for Plus, please if you appreciate what I do it's really all i ask in the grand scheme of things and if you're already here i can pretty much guarantee that you'll like it as an added occasional bonus i always do make guests a free lifetime plus account and sometimes they do show up to engage with people in the plus comments

1:07:28 Big thanks to Robert Bonomo for doing that recently. If you liked his appearance and talk on the tarot, do check out that plus comment section to find him! And that pretty much does it for me next week we're talking to one of the greats a major horse in the THC stable giving us his end-of-the-year assessment And then we have a medical conspiracy themed show aimed at the ladies to counterbalance today's for the guys. So stay tuned or at least come back I guess you're free to go do other things in the meantime but until then, i've done my part your move dick cutters your fucking move oh no you see love

1:08:17 The world isn't random, it's attached to puppet strings Control over a thing The 9-to-5 is trying to steal ya Now don't that job seem silly? Hello Can you hear me Or should I play back recordings From some spying agency Wish we were younger I'll be thankful when it's all exposed A vast conspiracy There is such a difference Between Nina and the Denver child Hollow from the highest high Calling out a thousand cries They'll turn you, the stars

1:09:26 Of everything that's been done And they'll call out deception For the web that's been spun Hollow from the higher side The earth is hollow I will tell you about Something That no one else will have you heard about Have you heard about the real since the wrong? People know they're cartoons It's so typical of me to talk about this stuff I'm sorry, that's good and well Did you ever hear the argument That nothing really happens it's no secret

1:10:32 And that the best is plugged It's doubling your time Hello from the higher side They're calling out a thousand cards They'll tell you something elite have done and they'll call out deception on the web that's been spawned Hello from the higher

1:11:08 I'm challenging your path. And I'll tell you something, that the battle's begun but we can't fight it with violence. The mind where is one has no war. Hello from a higher side they're calling out of their minds

1:12:04 They'll tell you what the elite have done And they'll call out deception Of the web that's been spun from the higher side Challenging your paradigm, and I'll tell you That the battle's begun But we can't fight it with violence The mind's where it is won, that's the rule