How I came to oppose circumcision
And ended up writing a book about it
I realised about halfway through my medical science degree I had made a huge mistake. The thought of doing shift work in a pathology lab with little social interaction, average pay, and limited career progression in an industry that would automate most of its workforce in a couple of decades suddenly dawned on me, and it wasn’t appealing.
I decided to salvage my degree with a research project, so in 2010 I started a two-year study of turtles and their immune systems. It was during this time, while reading in between lab tests, that I chanced upon an article by Christopher Hitchens on the subject of circumcision.
Hitchens described the Jewish practice of metzitzah b’peh, in which the mohel (who performs the circumcision) sucks the bleeding wound before spitting out the blood. At this point my eyebrows were so high they had probably left my forehead.
I was surprised not just to learn such a practice had existed, but that it continues to this day despite leaving babies brain damaged or dead as a result of herpes-infected mohels transmitting the virus. This harmful practice is thankfully only performed by a minority of Jewish people, but that it is performed at all remains deeply concerning.
My surprise prompted questions. How did metzitzah b’peh come about? Why are health authorities not doing anything to stop a practice that is resulting in babies dying? Come to think of it, why are we circumcising boys anyway? Can religious freedom really justify cutting off the healthy body parts of children? What about the supposed medical benefits of circumcision I’ve heard about in the media?
Every answer led to more questions. I wrote everything down, because I find writing the best way to clarify my thoughts. I continued doing this in my spare time for over a decade.
Few things have captured my attention for so long. I think I find this issue so interesting because more than 1.2 billion boys and men are circumcised, yet most of them didn’t choose to be. Baby boys die from this unnecessary procedure, and survivors are often left physically deformed as a result of complications, or psychologically scarred from the experience. And yet we rarely talk about it.
In 2014, I presented at the International Symposium on Genital Autonomy and Children’s Rights in Boulder, Colorado. It was inspiring to meet so many other people working to protect and promote the health and human rights of children by ending medically unnecessary circumcisions.
As a board member of the Rationalist Society of Australia, I pushed for the organisation to advocate on this issue. It resulted in a white paper on genital autonomy and human rights I coauthored with Travis Wisdom, and us both speaking at the Australian Humanist Convention in 2017. It was there I met Maxwell Roberts and James Wright, who would later ask me to join the board of AIGA following the passing of its founder and chair, Paul Mason. I have chaired the organisation, now called The Darbon Institute, since 2020.
Meeting so many wonderful people committed to this cause has been further motivation to keep going, and it certainly helped that I have a strong interest in several topics which intersect with circumcision: medicine, religion, morality and human rights. I ended up reading the literature on circumcision in all these areas, and before I knew it my notes had turned into a manuscript.
The Final Cut: The truth about circumcision was published in 2022. I pitched to a couple dozen agents and publishers and was rejected by all of them. They either didn’t want to take a risk on a book about the “niche” topic of circumcision, or they feared the wrath of religious extremists if it ever caught their attention. Oh well. At least there will always be the irony in pitching a book about circumcision to people with no balls.
Despite self-publishing over a year ago and spending nothing on marketing beyond a website I built myself, the book continues to sell, and has now been bought in over a dozen countries. In fact, it is selling as well as most non-fiction books do even when they are published and promoted by a publishing house. It’s a validation of what I always knew to be true: many people are uncomfortable talking about circumcision, but many of those same people are eager to read and learn about it.
If my book changes even one mind, and prevents the harms of even one unnecessary circumcision, then it has all been worth it.
Jonathan Meddings is the Chair of The Darbon Institute and author of The Final Cut: The truth about circumcision (Get your copy: Affiliate link)
This article was originally published in the December 2023 newsletter of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child. You can subscribe for updates on their website.
