Vancouver’s Glen Callender loves his foreskin. Callender, founder of the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project, just loves foreskin in general, actually, and he’ll be on campus talking all about it on November 16 when he brings his What a Dick! A Men’s Sexual Health Workshop to Camosun. But there’s a cause behind what he’s doing: he’s crusading for the end of circumcision, which he considers sexual violence.
“Expect an X-rated sex-ed class for the 21st century,” says Callender about his upcoming talk (which, as a heads-up, will contain graphic nudity). “If you are interested in penises, sex, or human rights, you should come. If you are circumcised, or if you know someone who is circumcised, you should come. Yes, that means pretty much everyone should come. I guarantee it will be an hour of your life you will never forget. Don’t forget to bring your rabbi.”
Speaking of which, one hot-button issue around the circumcision debate is religion. Callender, however, isn’t buying it. He says one person’s religious freedom ends where another person’s body begins, and he feels that religion is not justification for sexual violence.
“Canada has, thankfully, criminalized all forms of forced female religious circumcision including varieties that are far less invasive and harmful than male circumcision on human-rights grounds, but the job isn’t over yet,” he says. “If a girl has a human right to keep all of her genitalia and decide for herself if anything gets cut off, then so does a boy, and so does an intersex child. Human rights are for everyone, not just one gender. That’s why we call them human rights.”
Event organizer Daphne Shaed says that one person should never be making decisions over someone else’s body when it’s not a medically necessary procedure.
“I don’t think we should be taking agency over an infant and altering their genitals or any parts of their bodies when it’s not medically necessary for their survival,” says Shaed. “Circumcision is not necessary for the infant to survive. And if it is a religious procedure, then wait for the infant to come of age where they can make their own informed decision.”
Shaed feels that everyone should go to this event, so if the time comes when they need to make a decision to have a child circumcised they at least are prepared to choose one way or the other.
“Men who have been circumcised should go to the event,” she says, “so in the future when they have children they can understand what circumcision is and make an informed decision whether or not to have their child circumcised. And women or people that maybe down the road are going to have children should come too, so they can say, ‘Don’t circumcise my baby; I don’t believe it, I don’t want it.’”
Callender who says the “intactivist” movement respects people’s religious choices but doesn’t feel those choices should be forced upon infants realizes that not everyone is going to be on his side in regards to this issue, as Shaed is.
“Those who are threatened by this movement will attempt to dismiss it any way they can,” he says, “but the reality is that the institutionalized genital mutilation of children is one of the most barbaric and horrible abuses of human beings in the world today.”
What a Dick! A Men’s Sexual Health Workshop
6 pm Friday, November 16
Young 216, Lansdowne
can-fap.net
Four people have showed up! I am disappointed in events attendance this semester.