Top 10 Most Read of 2017

We're saying so-long to 2017, and looking ahead with positive aspirations for a fresh, new 2018!

In case you are new to Saving Our Sons, or missed one of these much-appreciated items along the way, the following articles are the Top 10 Most Read at SavingSons.org this past year. It is our hope that you find something empowering or useful while you're here at SOS.

Coming in at #10: The Plastibell Lie

#9: Cameron Diaz on Circumcision

#8: Intact or Circumcised: A Significant Difference in the Adult Penis 

#7: Fine Touch Pressure Thresholds of the Human Penis: Intact and Circumcised

#6: Painful Sex: How 8 Months of Foreskin Restoration Makes it Better

#5: If This Stained Circumstraint Could Talk

#4: Foreskin and its 16+ Functions: Not 'Just Skin'

#3: Should I Circumcise? The pros and cons of infant circumcision

A resource list for parents new to the topic

The second most read item at Saving Our Sons this year is a piece put together by our friend and fellow baby-saver, the late Jonathon Conte. His passing in May 2016 was heartbreaking for so many whose lives he touched, yet his influence lives on. Note that U.S. hospitals are not required to keep data on newborn genital cutting, nor are they required to report such things, making current year-to-year rates virtually impossible to know for certain. These are the most recent stats we have from research and computing that is as reliable and valid as it can be, given the circumstances.

#2: U.S. Hospital Circumcision Rates by State

Finally, the number one most read item at Saving Our Sons this year is a look at the method of Gomco circumcision, one of two most common forms of this unnecessary, and forced, surgery on healthy newborn babies in North America today.

#1: Neonatal Circumcision [A Video for Healthcare Professionals]

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Connect locally and join in discussions: 

Pro-intact Discussion Groups

Professionally produced intact materials for sharing:
Etsy.com/shop/SavingOurSons

SOS Odyssey: Florida Intact Rallies

INTACT ODYSSEY:

 • A voyage marked by fortunate changes
 • An intellectual quest

The SOS Odyssey is a national intact rally, with traveling billboards, making stops in cities across the nation. We host positive, proactive, family-friendly events that raise public awareness and open doors, open hearts, and change minds for the future wellbeing of the next generation. We disperse information along the way, and empower local advocates to keep the momentum going long after we've left town.

Join us in Florida this December when we host events in Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Gainesville, and Orlando!

We will have the giant traveling billboards, and signs for everyone to use, and (provided funding needs are met) materials for you to take home and move your intact seed-planting to new heights! Come out with your family for a fun, friendly, positive day of awareness raising. Each location has been chosen with meaningful public exposure and children's participation and safety in mind.

If you live in any of these 4 locations and are willing to host 1-2 responsible, adult men in your home for one night, please message the Saving Our Sons Facebook page or email SavingSons@gmail.com. These gentlemen do not need much except for a safe place to sleep.

If you're unable to join us for the Florida Odyssey, please support this event. Each of the adults heading this tour have taken an unpaid week off work to make this happen, and will be traveling to Florida at their own expense to host. The cost of putting on this Odyssey is $1100, with gas between rally locations, overnights, and materials to give away to attendees and passerbys at each event location. Odyssey hosts will need to cover anything that isn't funded on our own -- please help us if you can. Your gift will go a long way this month, and these are the most cost-effective billboards to reach the widest number of people across the nation at each SOS Odyssey.

Thank you for your support, and we will see many of you in Florida!

♥ To give:

SOS Odyssey Supporters

With sincere gratitude - we cannot make this happen without you!

★ Jeffery S.
★ Amy E.
★ Kayla C.
★ Jessica S.
★ Robert B.
★ Aneesa B.
★ Tracie H.
★ Michael E.
★ Danelle D.
★ Brian B.
★ Elana J.
★ Brittany G.
★ Christy S.
★ Suzanna T.
★ Dawny R.
★ Bracken H.
★ Nicole W.
★ Melissa D.
★ Ryan B.
★ Courtney B.

SOS Odyssey: Florida event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1961606707428662/

Saturday, December 16: Jacksonville Event details: https://www.facebook.com/events/2025815644329009/

Sunday, December 17: Tallahassee Event details: https://www.facebook.com/events/533065730388329/

Monday, December 18: Gainesville Event details: https://www.facebook.com/events/953764631442103/

Tuesday, December 19: Orlando Event details: https://www.facebook.com/events/165348337402766/

SOS Odyssey: Florida Route

SOS Odyssey: Florida Photo Gallery

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1761559353863178.1073741871.166998263319303&type=1&l=adaf58fb75

SOS Odyssey: In the News

(coming soon!)

The Truth Seeker: Circumcision

circumcision

we have broken a child's spirit

he looked at me

before we began

and knew me for who i am

hey he said to me

in his gentle smile of recognition

hey you are the same as me

you must be who i am

and then i held down his legs

as we cut off his foreskin

infinitely sore tender life of orgasm

we rejected his life

force

power

he could not fight us off

despite the fact

that he fought with all his might

he gave up the fight

his legs lay beneath the ten ton fire

of my hands

and stayed there

with all his might drained

even after i had let him up

i cannot believe

that it does not harm so tender a life

to have his spirit broken

at this tender time of his life

at my hands

who has ushered in his life

-Karen Hope Erlich
birth song

Originally published in The Truth Seeker, July/August 1989

Read more from parents who regret infant circumcision: DrMomma.org/2010/05/i-circumcised-my-son-healing-from.html

It Was Done To Me: Grocery Store Awareness Raising

By Michael Dulin

Yesterday at the grocery store a woman's voice from behind me said, "It's terrible that they do that to women..."

I turned.

She read the front of my T-shirt. "Oh, my God..." she said. She touched me on the shoulder, and then as if apologizing to me, she said, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." There was such sadness in her eyes. In that brief encounter, without argument or excuses, she simply understood. Her empathy was invoked because a Latin word wasn't encouraging her prejudice.

The words we use make a difference. This woman will never disregard what adults are doing to the bodies of children because she saw a man wearing a T-shirt, man who had the guts to call it what it is: Genital Mutilation and to say it was DONE to ME.

"Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak." -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Also by Dulin:

Stop using the Latin word for Genital Mutilation

Genital Mutilation Doesn't Only Happen to Women

Bearing Silent Witness in Boston

Speak Truth

Circumcised? Get over it!

i will not assume

Men Speak

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Bearing Silent Witness in Boston: Male Genital Mutilation

By Michael Dulin

This past week I spent a few days in Boston with my friend Edward Barron. We bore silent witness to the harm of Child Genital Mutilation, exposing the truth to thousands and thousands of people. Not a single person made any excuses, or challenged our message. A man dressed in scrubs stopped us on the street to say he agreed with us, "It is Genital Mutilation." A woman even volunteered on her own, "isn't only done to females..."

Nothing had to be explained, argued, or debated because the truth speaks for itself.

Don't give mutilators a word to hide behind. Maiming her healthy genitalia is called Female Genital Mutilation, because isn't that exactly what it is? Maiming his healthy genitalia is called Male Genital Mutilations, because isn't that exactly what it is? You cannot hide behind a word in the Bible or a medical text book when what you do is called exactly what it is - genital mutilation.


Also by Dulin:

Stop using the Latin word for Genital Mutilation

Genital Mutilation Doesn't Only Happen to Women

Speak Truth

Circumcised? Get over it!

i will not assume

Men Speak

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Ear Drum Rupture During Circumcision

Wondering why many hospitals ask whether or not a baby is circumcised during a hearing exam? Because all too often the ear drum can rupture from extreme pain that causes terrific crying (an unnatural cry for any baby) during infant circumcision.

A Saving Our Sons parent writes, "Took my son in today to get his infant hearing test done. Part of their medical questionnaire was if baby was a male, was he circumcised? I asked why that was a relevant question and was told because sometimes an ear drum can burst while they are crying during circumcision [surgery]. My heart sank."

If you have yet to observe how circumcision happens, these are the two most common forms in use today:

• Gomco - SavingSons.org/2011/01/neonatal-circumcision-video-for.html 

• Plastibell - DrMomma.org/2009/08/plastibell-infant-circumcision.html 

Question circumcision. Research the many benefits of keeping all babies intact.

#i2 #CuttingCulture IntactNetwork.org/research

Original Facebook (public) post.

Stickers and cards available for sharing at Etsy.

Routine Infant Circumcision: Dr. Szasz Responds

"[T]he practice of routine neonatal circumcision rests on the absurd premise that the only mammal in creation born in a condition requiring immediate surgical correction is the human male. If the penile foreskin is not merely nonfunctional, but a biological disadvantage so severe as to justify its immediate surgical ablation, then surely, it would have atrophied by now." -Thomas Szasz, M.D. (born into a Jewish family) as presented in a lecture 1996.

Szasz, T.S. “Routine neonatal circumcision: Symbol of the birth of the therapeutic state," Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, Vol. 21, April 1996, pp. 137-48.

Just as a newborn monkey responds to sensation, so also does a newborn baby.

"There is not one single medical reason to circumcise a baby." -Dr. Christiane Northrup

Hear more from physicians in the fields of medicine, pediatrics, and health:

Medical Professionals for Genital Autonomy

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