Women’s Studies has become more than just a baccalaureate major in college and from it I have been able to structure my own feminist politic that has blossomed since my freshman year of high school. Reading the literature of the second-wavers is what started it all, and as I hear, the rest is herstory. Or perhaps queerstory. I had a unique desire to learn about feminism and theory, and I wanted to know its relevance to both the world, and to myself as a gay male. After volunteering for the Rape Crisis Center, I was able to preliminarily put some of the theory to practice (praxis); and through this venue I gained consciousness of genital surgeries imposed on females without consent. My western eye immediately deplored female genital mutilation, and it wasn’t until college that I was challenged on my ethnocentrism. My introductory English professor, an Italian-Aussie, said to me that among my work on FGM, I was missing the other half of the genital mutilation problem. In retrospect, I think I gave her the look that all of us intactivists have seen many times throughout our work for genital integrity. As the two of us were conversing at a local café, she began to educate me on a couple of things: that you can’t be anti-FGM without any understanding of it, and also by pointing out male circumcision as genital mutilation. Not long thereafter, she discussed genital mutilation in class and showed her students a circumcision video. The sadistic violence depicted in that film, first sent me to the little boy’s room, but more importantly, stroked my curiosity.
Two years have passed – and many emotions, brainstorming, and writings later, – and I can now say that I have certainly dedicated a very large part of my personal and academic time, if not my life, to making a substantial mark in the genital autonomy movement, and on the world, by promoting integrity and protection from invasive and damaging non-therapeutic and religious circumcisions on children.
I am proud to state that, in my short time as an active participant in genital autonomy, I have been a research assistant for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and I have written about the benefits and functions of the intact penis for the Childbirth and Postpartum Professionals Association (CAPPA). In addition to landing an internship program with the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC), I have founded the first NOCIRC chapter in Las Vegas, Nevada, and it has been equally rewarding to talk with people in the community who have much to say about this very serious issue.
While my feminism has developed throughout the years, my intactivism has been instrumentally structured through feminism. My feminist praxis has been important to promote social justice, and genital autonomy is very much a large part of my vision for justice. My readers will quickly notice that I ground a lot of my writings in a consciousness of social location and experience. Social location – race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.–, are all crucial to intactivism because they each place a face to our experiences, but also they offer ways to understand the complexities surrounding the integrity, knowledge, and awareness, we promote and the horrific practices and ideologies we wish to end.
I hope you all find my body of writings in The Whole Network’s Demystifying the Foreskin: Challenging Dominant Discourses, including academic articles and creative writing, to be unique and interesting, valuable and inspiring.
Travis Wisdom currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.
He can be contacted at: wisdom4241942@yahoo.com
Two years have passed – and many emotions, brainstorming, and writings later, – and I can now say that I have certainly dedicated a very large part of my personal and academic time, if not my life, to making a substantial mark in the genital autonomy movement, and on the world, by promoting integrity and protection from invasive and damaging non-therapeutic and religious circumcisions on children.
I am proud to state that, in my short time as an active participant in genital autonomy, I have been a research assistant for Doctors Opposing Circumcision and I have written about the benefits and functions of the intact penis for the Childbirth and Postpartum Professionals Association (CAPPA). In addition to landing an internship program with the National Organization of Circumcision Information Resource Centers (NOCIRC), I have founded the first NOCIRC chapter in Las Vegas, Nevada, and it has been equally rewarding to talk with people in the community who have much to say about this very serious issue.
While my feminism has developed throughout the years, my intactivism has been instrumentally structured through feminism. My feminist praxis has been important to promote social justice, and genital autonomy is very much a large part of my vision for justice. My readers will quickly notice that I ground a lot of my writings in a consciousness of social location and experience. Social location – race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.–, are all crucial to intactivism because they each place a face to our experiences, but also they offer ways to understand the complexities surrounding the integrity, knowledge, and awareness, we promote and the horrific practices and ideologies we wish to end.
I hope you all find my body of writings in The Whole Network’s Demystifying the Foreskin: Challenging Dominant Discourses, including academic articles and creative writing, to be unique and interesting, valuable and inspiring.
Travis Wisdom currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.
He can be contacted at: wisdom4241942@yahoo.com
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