Overview

CIRCUMCISION CUTS THROUGH US ALL. In her eye-opening memoir, Georganne Chapin exposes the business of medical circumcision. This unnecessary yet most common pediatric surgery in the United States permanently reduces the size and alters the function of a boy's penis for the rest of his life. Every year, nearly 1.4 million baby boys are assaulted in American hospitals and doctors' offices where their foreskins are surgically amputated, subjecting them to pain, functional and psychological damage, and a forever-altered sexual experience. (Less than 2 percent of all circumcisions in the U.S. are done for religious reasons.) A long-time healthcare executive, Chapin serves as the founding executive director of Intact America, a nonprofit dedicated to ending the unethical genital cutting of all children. She weaves in her unusual upbringing and background as she chronicles how she got into ""this penis business."" As a preteen, Chapin was traumatized by the sight of her newborn brother's penis after two surgeries in his first week of life and her mother's resulting deep grief. When her own son was born, there was never a question that she and her Argentine husband would keep his genitals intact. At age eighteen, her son thanked her for that decision, and she knew she'd found the cause to which she would devote her life. After getting her law degree and becoming an adjunct professor at Pace Law School, she taught a health law course on bioethics and medical malpractice, part of which was a three-week mini course about infant circumcision that served as a case study of cognitive dissonance, medical fraud, and ethical bankruptcy. After meeting several of the leaders in the intactivist movement, including Marilyn Fayre Milos, known as the ""mother of the movement,"" the innovative executive director of one of the first managed health care organizations in the country ended up accepting the responsibility of leading Intact America, which launched in 2008. In her memoir, she traces circumcision's U.S. roots from 19th Century fears of masturbation to stereotypes about race, class, religion, and male sexuality. She describes how what started as a way to keep men and women from enjoying sex morphed into a for-profit medical practice-one that is rare or unknown in Europe, non-Muslim Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. She reveals how physician organizations, especially the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), have worked for decades to fraudulently promote circumcision's supposed benefits and suppress facts about circumcision harm and deaths. Indeed, the AAP now characterizes male genital mutilation as a matter of ""culture"" and ""parental preference""-a position that, conveniently, shields trade associations and their physician members from legal and financial liability. Chapin has listened to hundreds of stories about the trauma and harm caused by circumcision. She shares some of these stories to show how circumcision affects not only male children, but the men they become and those in their intimate circle, who love them. This thought-provoking book educates readers on how they can help put an end circumcision perpetuated by the fee-for-service medical machine. It is a punch-in-the-gut wake-up call that will enrage and empower anyone impacted by the multi-billion-dollar penis business. Those who would benefit from this book include: expectant parents, men who have suffered injuries, medical professionals, midwives, doulas, lactation specialists, librarians, and academics. ""This Penis Business"" should be required reading in fields ranging from bioethics to human sexuality to trauma-informed psychology to gender studies and more.

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9781950495450

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Reviews

"""I have known Georganne Chapin for over 50 years as a friend, occasional colleague, and always a fierce advocate for health care justice. This engaging, witty memoir has shown me how much I had missed. Thanks for bringing me up to speed.""-Henry Ehrlich, ""A Time to Search: The Moving and Dramatic Stories of Adoptees in Search of Their Natural Parents"" ""With this book, Georganne Chapin is doing the heavy lifting of helping parents make informed decisions around an almost exclusively cosmetic, yet shockingly normalized surgery.""-Nathan Riley, MD, ""The Holistic OB/GYN"" ""When I was a new journalist, Georganne Chapin opened my eyes to a shocking truth: Many medical procedures have no clinical evidence to support them, especially infant male circumcision. 'This Penis Business' charts her path to becoming the nation's leading voice in ending this unnecessary and often harmful practice.""-Joy Victory, writer and health journalist ""I dare you to read this book. The United States is the only country in the western world where medical professionals aggressively promote the removal of the most sensitive part of the penis. Be prepared to be shocked by Georganne Chapin's memoir as she unveils the irrational beliefs and corrupt motives underlying the national tragedy of 'routine' circumcision. If you are a circumcised male, you are going to be upset. If you are the partner of a circumcised male, you will realize that the sexual problems between you may not be his fault. And if it's not too late, you will protect your son. Circumcision is an issue whose time has come. What are you going to do about it? Who will you tell? Whose side are you on?"" -Dean Edell, MD, American physician and broadcaster"

Author Information

Georganne Chapin is a healthcare expert, attorney, social justice advocate, and founding executive director of Intact America, the nation's most influential organization opposing the U.S. medical industry's common practice of surgically altering (""circumcising"") the genitals of male children. Growing up with socially aware, college professor parents, exposed to people from many backgrounds, and motivated by an innate sense of justice, Georganne received a BA in Anthropology, magna cum laude, from Barnard College, and a Master's degree in Sociomedical Sciences from Columbia University. For 25 years, she served as chief executive officer of Hudson Health Plan, one of New York's original Medicaid managed care organizations, taking the award-winning nonprofit insurer from a few hundred patients and a handful of staff members in 1989, to 150,000 patients, nearly 350 employees, and annual revenue of nearly $800 million when the company was acquired in 2014. She also founded the nonprofit Hudson Center for Health Equity and Quality, a company that creates software and provides consulting services designed to reduce administrative complexities, streamline and integrate data collection and reporting, and enhance access to healthcare for those in need. When mid-career Georganne enrolled in an evening program at Pace University School of Law, she set about to explore the legal, ethical, and cultural issues underlying routine male circumcision, a subject that had interested her since witnessing the traumatic aftermath of the surgery conducted on her younger brother. In 2004, she graduated from Pace cum laude, with certificates in Health Law and International Law. Following her graduation, she taught Bioethics and Medicaid and Disability Law at Pace, and Bioethics in Dominican College's doctoral program for advanced practice nurses. Mentored by pioneers in the intactivist (anti-circumcision) movement, in 2008, Chapin co-founded Intact America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting boys from the routine amputation of their normal penile foreskins. Under her leadership, Intact America has become the leading voice defending the rights of all children to be free from medically unnecessary genital surgery to which they cannot consent. In addition, Intact America's nationwide surveys have definitively documented tactics used by U.S. doctors and healthcare facilities to pathologize the male foreskin, pressure parents into circumcising their sons, and forcibly retract the foreskins of intact boys-all of this creating potentially lifelong, iatrogenic harm. Chapin has published many articles and op-ed essays and has been interviewed widely on local, national and international television, radio, and podcasts about ways the U.S. healthcare system exploits vulnerable patients, prioritizing profits over people's basic healthcare needs. She cites routine, non-therapeutic infant circumcision as a glaring example of a practice that wastes money, harms boys and the men they will become, and compromises the well-being of their family members and intimate partners. ""This Penis Business: A Social Activist's Memoir"" is her first book. Journalist Echo Montgomery Garrett has spent her career finding and writing stories that matter. From the moment she and Georganne Chapin first spoke about ""this penis business,"" Echo knew this project was a social justice issue that had the potential to change millions of lives. As the mother of two sons, she had questioned the routine practice of circumcision when they were born but couldn't find anyone among her peers who had not had their sons cut. She later joined the sisterhood of regret moms, who were pressured by medical professionals to circumcise, and has since dedicated herself to getting the truth about this medically bogus surgery that irreversibly harms boys and the men they will become into the American public's conscience. A graduate of Auburn University, Echo has co-authored, contributed to, or ghostwritten twenty-five nonfiction books, including ""Why Don't They Just Get a Job: One Couple's Mission to End Poverty in their Community,"" by Liane Phillips, which won the Independent Book Publishers Association Benjamin Franklin Award in the Social Issues category. Liane and her husband Dave, co-founded Cincinnati Works, an award-winning nonprofit. Echo also co-authored with Sam Bracken ""My Orange Duffel Bag: A Journey to Radical Change."" She co-founded the Orange Duffel Bag Initiative (ODBI), a nonprofit that provides life plan coaching and ongoing advocacy to young people ages 14-24, who are experiencing poverty, homelessness or aging out of foster care. The book won two international awards for best book design, and five awards for best young adult non-fiction and best self-help, including the American Society of Journalist and Authors Arlene Eisenberg Award for Writing that Makes a Difference. Echo is co-founder (with her son Connor Judson Garrett) and CEO of Lucid House Publishing, LLC, publisher of both ""This Penis Business"" and Marilyn Milos's ""Please Don't Cut the Baby!"" She and her husband Kevin Garrett, who photographed the ""Skin in the Game: Circumcision Cuts Through Us All"" campaign, reside in Marietta, Georgia.

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