This Penis Business

In her eye-opening memoir, Georganne Chapin exposes the business of medical circumcision. This unnecessary and 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 1.5 million baby boys are assaulted in American hospitals and doctors' offices, subjecting them to pain, functional and psychological damage, and a forever-altered sexual experience. Chapin 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 that is rare or unknown in Europe, non-Muslim Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Finally, she shows 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, and how they refuse to acknowledge the procedure as a gross violation of basic medical ethics. 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. This book is a punch-in-the-gut wake-up call that will enrage and empower anyone impacted by the multi-billion-dollar penis business.