Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting.

This week's list is short. I have been busy and I regret that I cannot identify all the great posts that were written this week.
 

Sunday, January 15, 2012

On Line Opinion: Circumcision in Australia: neither needed nor ethical
Australian medical authorities have given a firm thumbs down to routine circumcision of male infants and boys. But some still insist on cutting the sex organs of their sons. Some parents insist on male infant circumcision, even though there is no real evidence that circumcised boys are healthier than intact boys.
 

Monday, January 16, 2012

Babies, Boobs, & Blasphemy: Basketball, Religion, and Penises
Seeing Jewish boys reminds the author of the Jewish rite of Brit Milah. Those boys were circumcised. Their foreskins were sacrificed by others, not by them. Like many others, Erin is against male infant circumcision for any reason, including religous reasons.
 

Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting. I must say, Thursday was a busy day for intactivists in the blogosphere.
 

Sunday, January 8, 2012

End Routine Infant Circumcision: Message from Franny Destined for Parents Considering Circumcision
Franny lists many reasons why male infant circumcision should be avoided by all parents. She provides links to some great resources that would be helpful to parents who are undecided about leaving their newborn son whole.

Vix Fact.com: Circumcision’s 10 Lamest Justifications
Many of the reasons given to justify cutting off part of a baby boy's penis are lame. Like penis cancer, which is less rare than male breast cancer and only affects old guys. Doing it for tradition is pretty lame, as is doing it for hygiene.
 

Monday, January 9, 2012

Mama Raw: Culture is the culprit
An insightful post about how our culture shapes our actions and beliefs. Take male infant circumcision, for example. The culture in the United States is about the only culture in the Western world that supports male infant circumcision. Most other countries consider the practice barbaric, or at least unwarranted. It is the culture in the United States that allows male infant circumcision to continue, although that culture is slowly changing thanks to intactivists.
 

Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting.
 

Monday, January 2, 2012

Saving Our Sons: Finland Parents and Circumciser Charged with Assault and Battery and Fined for Sons' Circumcision
Dr. Momma peaceful parenting: Finland Parents and Circumciser Charged with Assault and Battery and Fined for Sons' Circumcision
HELSINGIN SANOMAT: Circumcision assault case brings fine – conviction but no punishment for parents
Finland cracks down on male circumcisions performed on children without any medical indication. Both the parents and the man doing the circumcision were fined with the two boys receiving payment for being circumcised.
 

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

My Foreskin Restoration Experience: Happy New Year!
A brief update by a man restoring his foreskin. He is using the DTR and is happy with the results so far.

Circumcision Insanity: "Mya" from Florida
A blog discussing posts from Facebook where parents talk about their son's circumcision. This post has the mother calling her baby boy a "trooper." He is a baby, just days old. Why is he a trooper? Because his parents decided to have the most sensitive part of his body cut off and he survived?

Circoncisione Infantile Maschile: Jewish Voices: The Current Judaic Movement to End Circumcision
A collection of quotes by Jewish scholars, historians, activists, and parents. Their collective voice says that male infant circumcision is a practice that has no place in the modern world.

Women's Health Planet: Child Circumcision: An Elephant in the Hospital
Ryan McAllister, PhD, is a parent, a biophysicist, an Assistant Professor of Physics and Oncology at Georgetown University, and also a volunteer who supports parents and families. The post includes a video of his class presentation about genital cutting of boys and girls. A very informative video laying out the facts about circumcision.
 

Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting.
 

Sunday, December 25, 2011

End Routine Infant Circumcision: NY Man Likens Circumcision To Genital Mutilation
Anthony Losquadro speaks out, via the Wall Street Journal, about the harm of male infant circumcision. He says that, when it comes to male circumcision, it is his body, his choice.
 

Monday, December 26, 2011

Awesatious: Stupidity abounds in the pro-circumcision camp
A post venting about those who advocate to cut the sex organs of baby boys, otherwise known as circumcision. "First, it is hard (if not impossible) to have a civilized conversation with someone who likes to mutilate baby boys, and second, it seems that it isn’t merely ignorance fueling that desire to maim. It is pure unadulterated stupidity."
 

This week ends on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, my time has been limited this week. It appears I am not alone in having a lot going on this week. There are fewer intactivist posts to report.

Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting.
 

Sunday, December 18, 2011

End Routine Infant Circumcision: Friend Speaks to Best Friend Against Circumcision
A mother whose son is intact informs her friend, who has a circumcised son, of the benefits of leaving a baby boy whole, just as he was born. Circumcision is unnecessary. And circumcision is harmful both during the surgery and afterwards when the baby sits with a wound in a dirty diaper.

Dr. Momma Peaceful Parenting: Urine Samples and Catheter Insertion for Intact Boys
Far too often, intact baby boys have their foreskins forcibly retracted. An infant's foreskin is fused to his glans. The average age where the foreskin becomes naturally retractable is around 10 years. But many falsely believe that the foreskin has to be forcibly retracted for cleaning. Leave it alone! But sometimes it is necessary for a clean urine sample to be taken from an intact baby boy.
 

Monday, December 19, 2011

The WHOLE Network: Jewish Intactivists Write on Circumcision
A collection of quotes from prominent Jewish intactivists. They collectively provide much information on male infant circumcision and how, as a ritual, it is time to find a replacement.
 

I went to bed last night (actually, early this morning) with high hopes that the DNS would finish propagating and RestoringForeskin.org would be accessible to all. Sadly, I woke to a continued mess.

After more looking and reading and examining and experimenting and checking and pulling my hair out, I discovered a typo in the nameserver DNS zone record. The IP address for ns2.tnameserver.info had one digit off.

I corrected the typo and within minutes I noticed a difference. Checking the name servers, I saw that they started reporting the correct address for the site. Traffic to the site grew to normal levels within an hour. This is how I remember DNS propagation working.

I am a happy camper, again.

click to embiggen

In addition to Restoring Tally.com, I also run the RestoringForeskin.org website. RestoringForeskin.org offers foreskin restoration information to everyone and it has a private on-line community for restorers. The private side has restoring blogs, foreskin restoration progress pictures uploaded by our members, a chat room, and a forum.

Restoring Foreskin.org is growing by several hundred members a month. We have over 1,000 visitors to the site every day. Drupal is the content management software that makes the site work. As popular as the site has become, we have outgrown the shared web server we had been using.

For the past several weeks I have been setting up a virtual private server (VPS), which is a virtual machine (VM) dedicated to being a web server. A VPS is like a bare-bones computer that has to setup. It is powerful, but requires knowledge and work to install and configure everything. In contrast, a shared web server is like oatmeal. All you have to do is add the website. It will work, maybe not well and maybe not fast, but it works.

Late Saturday night (early Sunday morning) I finished my testing of the VPS. I was satisfied everything worked well enough to move the site. It was after 2am and only a few were on the site. They were all in the chat room, so I announced that I was going to move the site. The chat room would still work because it is hosted on another server.

It took me less than an hour to move the site to the new VPS. As part of the move, I had to change the DNS information for the restoringforeskin.org domain name. The new web server has a private name server and I had to change the DNS to refer to the new name server.

When you go to a website on the Internet, the address or domain is sent. The ISP (Internet service provider) that provides internet service also has a DNS name server that looks up the IP address from the domain address. The IP address is needed to travel the Internet. If the ISP cannot find the address (because of change like we made), you are at the mercy of the ISP. The ISP can pass the request on to another name server, return an error page, or put up a spammy parking page in the hopes they can make some money if anyone is fool enough to click on one of the links.

Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting.
 

Sunday, December 11, 2011

The Streeter Reader: Circumcision: A Complete Rip-Off
A student posts her research paper about male infant circumcision. In her paper, she notes that Americans are one of the few cultural groups that will make the decision on whether they will electively circumcise their newborn sons. She concludes, "Circumcision should not be performed on infants unless there is a medical need." She predicts that the end of non-therapeutic male circumcision is near by relying on the fact that fewer parents are opting for the unnecessary surgery on their baby boys.
 

Monday, December 12, 2011

Andrew Sullivan: The Dish: Ask Me Anything: Why I'm Opposed To Infant Circumcision
A video response by Andrew Sullivan to the question about why he is opposed to male infant circumcision. Besides the obvious reason that he is not happy that he is circumcised, he does not like that his bodily integrity was compromised by removal of part of his healthy body. He parts company with many Intactivists because he believes in a religious exemption. I disagree with him because my parents religion should have no influence over my bodily autonomy. It is their religion, not mine (at least not mine as a baby).

Awesatious: Mothers, do not leave circumcision decision to the fathers!
Before her son was born, this blogging mom thought that her husband should make the circumcision decision. He wanted his son's penis cut, just like his. This was not a good enough reason for her, so she did her homework. She found that male infant circumcision can permanently alter a baby's brain, infant circumcision is painful, and infant circumcision violates the baby's right to a whole body.
 

Wednesday, December 1, 2011

The WHOLE Network: Uncommon Sense from a Common Dad
A father tells of his transformation. He is circumcised and he had his son circumcised. He now knows better. He explains the reasons why infant circumcision is wrong and every boy deserves to grow up whole, just as he was born.
 

Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting.

Monday, December 5, 2011

Foreskin-Restoration / Intactivism Network: How Male Circumcision Harms Women
A forum post reprinting Ronald Goldman's story about How Male Circumcision Harms Women. Marilyn Milos was converted to intactivism after witnessing an infant circumcision in nursing school. She saw firsthand the pain suffered by the baby boy as the most sensitive part of his body was cut up. Male infant circumcision affects the bond between the baby boy and his mother. Male circumcision also affects the sex life of the boy who grows up to be a man, even though many men refuse to admit that there is anything wrong with having less than the whole penis they were born with.

The Guerrilla Intactivist: Printable Fliers - fixed!
Intactivist information card suitable to post wherever people can see it. Intactivist K lists many places and ways for posting the information card. Lots of good ideas on how to get the word out that male infant circumcision is unnecessary and harmful.
 

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The Guardian: Infant male circumcision is genital mutilation
"Men should have the right to choose circumcision, not have the choice forced upon them. Infant circumcision without consent or immediate medical justification is an unjustified violation of basic human rights, that shares more in common with ancient coming-of-age rituals than responsible medical practice."

Awesatious: The evolution of activism
A mother blogs about her evolution as an intactivist. A year ago she thought that all it would take to convince others was to present accurate information on the harms of infant circumcision. She has since learned that many are firmly entrenched believing the various myths of circumcision.

Intact America Blog: The Problem with a Religious Exemption to an Anti-Circumcision Ban
Georganne Chapin discusses the many reasons why there should not be any exemption to a ban on genital cutting of children. She argues that the rights of the person with the genitalia supersedes everyone else's rights. After all, it is the child's body, not anyone else's.

Parents, protect your babies. Support intactivism. The following list includes blogs, articles, and websites of interest to Intactivists that were published in the past week. This is a running tally of the ones I found interesting.
 

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Birth Without Fear: The Circumcision Decision
A mother describes her circumcision decision. While doing her circumcision research, she watched a video of an infant circumcision. That convinced her that her baby did not need genital cutting. She lists all the common excuses used to justify male infant circumcision, along with the reasons why those excuses to circumcise do not stand up to scrutiny.

Joseph4GI: CIRCUMCISION: Another Baby Dies
Although doctors do their best to discount it, baby boys die from being circumcised. Last week a two-day old infant died from complications after being circumcised. How many babies must die before parents realize that male infant circumcision puts their babies in needless risk.
 

Monday, November 28, 2011

Zimbabwe Times Live: Circumcision does not stop HIV infections: HIV
A plea for Africa to stop the male circumcision campaign because male circumcision does not prevent HIV. Links to various sources are provided.

Intact News: San Francisco Vigil for Lives Lost to Circumcision
Bay Area Intactivists is holding a candlelight vigil in remembrance of the male, female, and intersex children who have lost their lives due to complications of circumcision or other non-therapeutic forms of genital cutting. The vigil will take place outside Or Shalom in response to a circumcision panel discussion which will extol the genital cutting of children.