When Dr Jennifer Bossio first published her study on penis sensitivity in 2016, she didn’t anticipate the barrage of abuse she’d come to receive from anti-circumcision campaigners, also often known as ‘intactivists’. “I believed how could anyone get indignant about this,” Bossio says of the study, which concluded that circumcision doesn’t reduce feeling within the penis. “But they lost their minds.”

Bossio said that the ‘intactivists’ (a portmanteau of ‘intact’ and ‘activist’) found her phone number and work address and sent her death threats, with messages resembling “I hope you get cancer” and flooded her University’s Facebook page with abusive comments “for years” after the study’s publication. In addition they sent messages to her partner’s number, with claims that she was “fucking other men”. “It was a extremely scary time,” she says. 

Beyond this dark corner of the Web, intactivism is a legitimate, growing movement that has been fighting to ban circumcision for years, equating the procedure with female genital mutilation and a violation of human rights. It’s had some recent boosts, with Netflix’s documentary American Circumcision presenting the case against circumcision, and public figures like Howard Stern and democratic candidate Andrew Yang recently declaring themselves intactivists, drawing mainstream attention to what has widely been considered a fringe movement. 

That is despite the proven fact that one in three men across the globe has been circumcised, making it probably the most common procedures on the earth. America has the very best variety of circumcisions, with 62 per cent of the male population reported having been circumcised (nonetheless, this rate appears to be declining).

Parents might decide to have their child circumcised for myriad reasons: aesthetics, hygiene, but overwhelmingly, it’s a case of the dad’s circumcision status. There are also religious reasons: in Muslim culture, circumcision is mentioned within the Sunna – the practice of the Prophet Muhammad – and has been custom for the reason that starting of Islam. In accordance with Jewish tradition, circumcision symbolises a covenant with God, and is one in every of the religion’s most important rituals. 

While there have been some movements inside religious groups to reject circumcision, with many Jewish parents now choosing Brit Shalom – a non-cutting naming ceremony – most high-profile intactivism has come from secular organisation. “The genital mutilation of youngsters, girls and boys, is the most important human rights issue of the twenty first century,” says Brother K, founding father of Bloodstained Men – the one anti-circumcision street protest group in America. Members of the organisation commonly gather on street corners, or outside medical conventions, clad in all-white apart from a conspicuous red stain across the crotch area, brandishing signs which read “FORESKIN THEFT!” and “NOBODY WANTS LESS PENIS”, in images subsequently proliferated across social media. 

Despite their efforts, circumcision still stays a taboo topic, which has allowed some intactivists to steer the narrative towards extremism – particularly online. Over recent years, the movement has develop into a breeding ground for antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and misinformation which threaten to undermine the critical conversations that should be had around circumcision.

Eli Ungar-Sargon, a Jewish filmmaker from Los Angeles, became heavily involved in intactivism after releasing his documentary Cut: Slicing Through The Myths of Circumcision in 2007, which aimed to debunk myths surrounding circumcision. He quickly became aware of the antisemitism rife on social media and web forums amongst some intactivists circles. It’s develop into so pervasive, he says, that a Facebook group has been set-up specifically for documenting instances of intactivist antisemitism, which is updated almost day by day.

One post sees a Facebook user accuse Jewish people of “sacrific(ing) their Jewish children to their fake demonic Jewish god”, while other posts draw on a well-trodden antisemitic trope, by condemning Jewish rabbis for circumcising children purely for profit. One other Facebook user goes thus far as to say that circumcision caused the Holocaust. Ungar-Sargon believes that the hateful language coming from some intactivists was accelerated within the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency, which gave rise to “a loosening of the reigns of what is acceptable to say”. 

When Ungar-Sargon tried to lift alarm concerning the antisemitism he’d encountered to senior intactivists, he claims he was swiftly shut down. “Sadly, there’s a type of negligent insensitivity to those concerns within the movement,” he says. He cites the instance of Georgeanne Chapman, leader of the biggest intactivist organisation, Intact America, who once publicly stated that “over-concern about antisemitism (in the intactivist movement) is misplaced”. 

“I don’t think an excellent person of conscience who cares about things like homophobia, racism, sexism, can take a look at a movement like this and take it seriously, when there’s absolutely no kind of sensitivity to those issues and people styles of prejudices are only allowed to run rampant with none type of official response,” Ungar-Sargon says. 

“One post sees a Facebook user accuse Jewish people of ‘sacrific(ing) their Jewish children to their fake demonic Jewish god’, while one other Facebook user goes thus far as to say that circumcision caused the Holocaust”

Why has the difficulty of circumcision, specifically, develop into such ripe territory for vitriol? “There’s plenty of damage that individuals feel, especially as men,” Ungar-Sargon explains, “and as men, they don’t feel they’ve the space to precise it, because they’re men, right? Men are presupposed to be tough and never complain about physical ailments.” He adds that the movement has develop into certain up with ‘men’s rights’ activism – a spot where misogyny often thrives as a type of “inverse feminism”.  

These vile sentiments have been detrimental to the movement as a complete, as has the refusal of some intactivists to simply accept any science that contradicts their beliefs. “The issue is there’s not plenty of high-quality research on circumcision,” Bossio says, who accomplished a PhD taking a look at circumcision in newborns. “For my part, the issue with the intactivists is that they go after researchers to the purpose where people don’t need to do the research anymore.” Bossio claims the harassment she faced is the rationale she is not any longer pursuing research in the sphere of circumcision, saying: “If I’d have known what I used to be moving into, I might not have done this vital research in the primary place.”

Most intactivists would adamantly reject this, blaming the medical industry for the dearth of research and misinformation around circumcision. David Atkinson, co-founder of  Bloodstained Men, gives the instance of a 2012 study published by the American Academy of Pediatric (AAP) which claimed that the “advantages“ of circumcision “outweigh the risks”, and the European Medical Community’s subsequent response, which denounced the AAP for recommending these procedures, and for his or her ignorance concerning the anatomy of the foreskin. The explanation doctors mislead parents, Atkinson says, is twofold: firstly, it is the profit gained from the procedure (“each time the doctors cut off the penis, they and the hospital receives a commission for having done so by the insurance firms”). Secondly, it’s because “they don’t desire to confess that they have been damaging the genitals of our kids for the past hundred years.”

These same intactivists would argue that their anger is at all times directed at doctors, somewhat than any religious group. Organisations like Bloodstained Men and Intact America claim to have many Jewish members and leaders of their ranks, and that, as Atkinson says, “it will be antisemitic if we were to disregard the suffering of Jewish boys.”

Nevertheless, when asked about antisemitism inside the intactivist movement, there’s, as Ungar-Sargon suggested, a general tendency to show a blind eye. “I’m not particularly aware of such things, I just attempt to give attention to human rights,’ says Atkinson in response. “Here and there I’ll see a comment, and I’ve banned people before,” says Brother K, “but I don’t see much of it.”

While their refusal to acknowledge the size of the issue that pervades their movement is deeply unsettling, that many intactivists feel real anguish over their circumcision, and an ethical imperative to save lots of future generations from trauma, is beyond doubt. “It was a profoundly destructive and soul-scorching experience,” Brother K says, recalling his circumcision as an infant as if describing events of just yesterday. He says he suffered recurring nightmares until the age of nine directly linked to his circumcision, followed by years of anger on the knowledge that “something vital had been taken away from me”. 

“A toddler subjected to genital mutilation is a victim, and has suffered profound physical and psychological damage,” continues Brother K. “Most of that damage lies buried, and that’s why there’s a default to disclaim or trivialise it. People say: ‘it will probably’t be that bad.’ Well, it’s worse than bad.”

For circumcision to not be ‘trivialised’, it can mean eliminating the shame and stigma surrounding men’s mental and physical health more broadly. Anti-circumcision campaigners must take a stand against barbaric language and create secure spaces for men to air their grievances, without descending into hateful language. As conversations around masculinity come into sharper focus, with recent years seeing a shift away from rigid perceptions of male ‘toughness’, now’s the time to reclaim and shape a recent narrative.