You Didn't Fail: Thank you for speaking up

By James Ketter © 2016

To all my intactivist friends who know what it is like to try with all your heart to educate expecting parents, to try and spare a child from genital cutting, only to learn later that his parents had him cut anyway...

I thank you. 

You should never, ever feel like YOU failed or did anything wrong.

Let me tell you, as a victim of genital cutting myself, what you did for that baby boy:

You were the only one who spoke for him at his most vulnerable.

Do you know how incredibly HUGE that is?

Do you know how important that will one day be to him?

What it will mean to him?

Let me answer that.

No one spoke out for me.
No one.
Not one single person in my entire family, group of family friends, or even my community spoke even one single word for my sake when I was vulnerable and needed protection.
Not one damn soul.
Not a syllable of protest.

YOU didn't stay silent.

YOU cared enough to make your feelings and facts known.

You were the person who put the needs of those babies ahead of your own.

You were the only one who truly granted them their humanity.

Do you know what I would give to have just one person in my life to have given me a gift like that? Just one single person in my family, or my community, who wasn't complicit, silent, or uninterested in my fate at as a human being. Do you know what it would mean to me to have just one single person in my life who actually TRIED to save me? It would mean the world.

I actually have tears in my eyes thinking about this. I have no one who even tried to speak for me. To everyone else I was nothing more than disposable property. I would kill to have someone like you in my life. Someone who cared. Even if she didn't succeed in saving me. Just to know one single person cared enough to try might be enough to change things for me immeasurably.

You didn't fail.

You are a HERO.

I love you for speaking out. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for trying so hard. You've given those poor boys a voice when they had none. And that means so much more than you can possibly imagine.

"Any time you speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, you are heroically impacting lives and changing the world." -Danelle Day

Also by James Ketter:

Foreskin is Better: From a man who has experienced both
http://www.SavingSons.org/2016/04/foreskin-is-better-from-man-who-has.html

I Researched Circumcision! ...Did you REALLY?
http://www.SavingSons.org/2014/10/i-researched-circumcision-did-you-really.html

Meatal Stenosis: Growing up with circumcision pain
http://www.SavingSons.org/2014/09/meatal-stenosis-growing-up-with.html


Related Reading:

Why I Speak Up
http://www.SavingSons.org/2012/05/why-i-speak-up.html

You Made a Difference for That ONE
http://www.SavingSons.org/2010/01/you-made-difference-for-that-one.html

Example Letter for a Friend
http://www.SavingSons.org/2014/03/example-letter-for-friend-relative.html

Carding a Store: Tips for Effective Seed Planting
http://www.SavingSons.org/2015/01/carding-store-tips-and-locations-for.html

I tried (MGM Memorial)
http://www.SavingSons.org/2007/01/mgm-memorial.html


Communities:

Saving Our Sons Community:
FB.com/groups/SavingOurSons

Intact: Healthy, Happy, Whole:
FB.com/groups/IntactHealthy

Intactivists:
FB.com/groups/Intactivists

Peaceful Intact Education:
FB.com/groups/PeacefulEducation

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