Talk:Circumcision controversies/Archive 1

This talk-page is a merger of the talk pages of concept of Genital Integrity and the movement of Intactivism. Intactivistis base the movement of Intactivism on the concept of Genital Integrity.

Some thought that rather than have two articles, one analyzing the theoretical underpinnings of the concept of Genital Integrity and another covering the movement of Intactivism, perhaps, for the time being at least, one article would be better. The article could be called Intactivism, Genital Integrity, or perhaps something new like "the Movement for Genital Integrity" and and cover both the concept of Genital Integrity and the movement of Intactivism.

Wikipedians held a vote. The consensus was to merge the two articles. This talk=page is a merger of the talk-pages of Genital Integrity and Intactivism.

=	Premerge-Intactivism 	=

What about the copyright in the picture? Anyway, can't you get a smaller picture &mdash; this one loads very slowly. Lupo 23:59, 9 Jan 2004 (UTC)

About what intactivism is:

The ribbon comes from NoHarmm.Org which is for protecting male infants in the United States og America. NoHarmm.Org is in alliance of intactivistic organizations such as StudentsForGenitalntegrity.Org which is dedicated to protecting the genitals of all, ISNA.Org, which is dedicated to protecting intersexuals, SexuallyMutilatedChild.Org which has pictures about sexually mutilated boys and girls, NoCirc.Org for stopping genital mutilation world-wide, Cirp.Org for a reference (it has a huge library of peer-reviewed articles republished from medical journals), circumcisions.com where one can read about the stupid reasons people mutilated children, et cetera. I hope that this has cleared up confusion about whom intactivists protected.

?alabio 03:54, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

=	Talk of Intactivism when Wikipedians considered merger with Genital Integrity	=

Intact Day
"Intact Day, also known as the day 'Genital Integrity,' is July 1. Intactivists chose the date of July 1 because it is six months away and thus opposite of the Feast of the Circumcision which is on January 1."

The existance of a specific day celebrated as "Intact Day" was researched and was not able to be verified. See Votes for deletion/Intact Day for a discussion of the research that was attempted in August 2004. Please cite authoritative sources for the existance and widespread notability of this event before returning this text to the article. Rossami 04:41, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)




 * &#364;alabio 04:57, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)

New Picture
-

Assuming that the Sysops realize that Genital Integrity is a legitimate article, we will be able to finish forking Intactivism into Genital Integrity and Intactivism. If this will happen, Intactivism will be purely about Intactivism --  not Intactivism and Genital Intagrity crammed into the same article.

The current image is about Genital Integrity. I suggest that we get a picture about Intactivists  protesting outside of a greedy Hospital where the sick perverted circumcisiophiliacs, after lying to parents, sexually genitally mutilate poor defenseless babies.

&#364;alabio 21:05, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)

Improving Intactivism
-

Assuming that the Sysops allow Intactivism to fork into Genital Integrity and Intactivism, Intactivism will need a significant rewrite. If the circumcisiophiliacs win, Intactivism will still need a significant rewrite for integrating the information from Genital Integrity No matter what will happen,  Intactivism will need a significant rewrite.

&#364;alabio 21:05, 2004 Aug 7 (UTC)

=	Talk of Genital Integrity during consideration of merger with Intactivism	=

It appears that most of the content in this article was written to justify its own existence:

"However, the term 'Genital Integrity' does more than bring together the issues mentioned above. It treats question of genital cutting as a human rights concern, and states or implies that the right to bodily integrity, which is generally accepted in law, applies to people's genitals as well as the rest of them."

"Therefore the term 'Genital Integrity' challenges some traditional medical practices"

"Therefore the term 'genital integrity', which is evidence of this change of thinking, is likely to be resisted strongly by those who do not see things in this way."

"Some would argue that the term 'Genital Integrity' is too contentious to be used."

The supporters of this article are using straw men in their arguments. Nobody wants to delete this because they're "in favor of child abuse", or because the term is too contentious. The reason this should be deleted is because it's a neologism, it's already covered in Intactivism, and most of the article is basically "the reason this article should exist is..." Rhobite 15:13, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

In Defence of Neologisms
New words are created because the old words don't cover the concepts. I would guess that 'Inactivism' as a term would not stand the test of time as well as 'genital integrity' because the latter makes sense.

If all new words are to be rejected because there are new, then the language would ossify. I would guess that the problem with the term 'genital integrity' is not with its newness, but with its challenge to other ways of thinking about genital cutting.

User:Michael Glass


 * There's nothing wrong with neologisms, but they don't belong in Wikipedia until they become widespread. Isn't it a little pointless that most of this article is devoted to defending the existence of the term "genital integrity?" Wouldn't your effort be better spent writing useful content? This isn't a place for advocacy. Rhobite 04:03, Aug 5, 2004 (UTC)

To the Gatekeeper
Well, first of all I expanded what was already written to explain why the term has come into existence. I did not write to defend or attack the expression 'genital integrity' but to understand why it has come into existence and to explain how it is used. This, I believe, is in keeping with the 'neutral point of view' philosophy of Wikipedia.

I think the problem here is that the term 'genital integrity' carries with it a whole way of thinking about the body that challenges some conventional thinking. That is the thing that makes it so contentious, and so interesting.

I note that Rhobite says that neogolisms don't belong in Wikipedia until they become 'widespread'. Now who is the gatekeeper who defines 'widespread'? If a gatekeeper rejects 'genital integrity', what does it reveal about the preconceptions of the gatekeeper?

Certain words and phrases are contentious. Examples would be 'gay', 'right to life' and 'jihad'. All of these have articles in Wikipedia, and rightly so, and equally rightly, none of these articles advocate the causes that are associated with them. I hope that the same thing will happen with 'Genital Integrity'.

User:Michael Glass

Frequency of "Genital Integrity" according to Google.Com
These are the frequencies of the terms "Genital Integrity", "Intactivism", and as a control, "Pannotia", according to Google.Com:


 * "Genital Integrity":	2 370
 * "Intactivism":	1 580
 * "Pannotia":	509

"Genital Integrity" seems to be well represented on Google.Com.

&#364;alabio 05:34, 2004 Aug 5 (UTC)

Double Standards: "Genital Integrity" is questioned; "Subincision" is not.
Why should the gatekeepers be questioning 'genital integrity' while 'subincision', a blatant piece of promotion, with a direct link to a site that most would regard as very strange, if not obscene, remains unquestioned?

I would suggest that though subincision is a mutilation in the eyes of most people, an article on this subject does not challenge vested interests in the way the very term 'genital integrity does.


 * I don't see anything promotional or POV on the Subincision page, but if you think the article is unacceptable, please bring it up on that article's talk page. The linked site is indeed strange, but in no way is it obscene. Wikipedia doesn't censor explicit content in linked sites.


 * I'll describe the problem here. You folks are having trouble integrating into the culture of Wikipedia. You're acting like you own the content of your articles and any attempt to modify or delete them is an attack on you. Please don't use words like "gatekeepers" to describe the community - the scrutinization of questionable articles is a benefit, not a drawback, of Wikipedia. Rhobite 18:42, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the reason you find subincision acceptable is because I changed it. When I first read it it informed me that one of the advantages of subincision was greater sensitivity! I changed that to something that was 'claimed' . It also did not have any links to mutilation and self-harm. These changes transformed a blatantly promotional piece to something that at least had the appearance of NPOV. User:Michael Glass

An independent opinion
OK, I've read all of the talk on VFD and the various talk pages, and surfed about 20 external websites and here are my observations. I also don't give a rat's ass about any of the issues concerned, one way or the other.


 * First, we do not need seperate pages for Genital Integrity and Intactivism. They are merely different names for the same social movement. It will be difficult to choose one over the other however, as both names seem to be widely used. If needs be we can create a new page called Intactivism and Genital Integrity.


 * Second - the existing Genital Integrity article is not NPOV and claiming that it is in a talk section does not make it so. This article is clearly biased in favour of those who support the viewpoint and cannot be accepted. We're veterans of people with their own agenda claiming their writing is neutral - trust me, it isn't. It will be subjected to a big editing pen. Manning 22:36, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

=	The merging Genital Integrity and Intactivism	=

OK - the entire article has been rewritten. What is relevant has been preserved, what is covered elsewhere has been referenced (eg - we already have a lengthy debate on circumcision) and the loopy nonsense about paradigm shifts has been excised. There is now nothing on the Intactivist page that makes it worth keeping, in my opinion, so it can be redirected. Manning 00:28, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * Much better. You're probably still working on it so I won't hop in there right now, but remember the VfD tag - this hasn't been decided yet. Your rewrite is good, and it should be integrated into the new article if this article is deleted. Rhobite 00:38, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)

The Genital Integrity Ribbon
I think it should be returned to the article. The Genital Integrity Ribbon is described in Manning Bartlett's version; why not illustrate it? As for the question about copyright, I believe that this is was just convenient excuse for removing it. I am sure that the organisation who owned the copyright would be delighted to have it publicised.

We do not and have never published images of uncertain copyright. If the organisation were to release the image into the public domain, then we would use it. The image itself (viewable at noharm.org) clearly states that it is "copyright 1998". To make it public domain they would need to make that clear on their website. Manning 22:08, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * The license states:


 * "The blue and pink ribbon web image may only be used in conjunction with the text: Genital Integrity."
 * "(©) 1998 NOHARMM"
 * "(©) 1998 NOHARMM"


 * ¿Does this answer your questions?


 * &#364;alabio 01:17, 2004 Aug 10 (UTC)


 * Yeah, seems OK to me. Manning 02:09, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

Removal of excessive links
From what I can see, this article is very close to be a fine article. The only problem is the frankly excessive number of external links at the bottom. As such, I have edited the article to remove most of the links. I made the decision to keep the three links that are still there (The International Coalition for Genital Integrity, Students for Genital Integrity, and National Organization to Halt the Abuse and Routine Mutilation of Males (NOHARMM)) because the first two were the first results for the search "genital integrity" at Google, and the third was the site the ribbon picture was taken from. The clutter is gone, and there are still enough external links to provide interested people with a good start at finding out more. Modargo 06:07, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Votes for Deletion
The consensus on Votes for Deletion appeared to be to redirect this page to Intactivism, but it appears that the content from Intactivism has been merged over here. However, since Genital Integrity ought NOT capitalized the way that it is, and since Genital integrity alreaedy exists at the time of writing, here is the Solomon like solution I am pulling to this one. I am leaving Itactivism as a redirect, but to Genital integrity. Genital Integrity will be merged with Genital integrity, with the main article being at Genital integrity. An archive of the madness that led to this decision can be found atVotes for deletion/Genital Integrity. Thanks, and happy editing. Snowspinner 21:21, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

=	The talk of the postmerged article	=

New Name
Genital Integrity is a proper noun and should be capitalized and this this article is about both the concept of Genital Integrity and the movement Intactivism. The name of the article should reflect these facts. I propose that we rename the article to the movement Genital Integrity or something similar. This is my thinking:

Intactivists base the movement of Intactivism on the concept of Genital Integrity which is a proper noun with 2350 hits on Google.Com. The name the movement Genital Integrity reflects these facts.

If anyone has any comments or better name-suggestions, then please chime-in.

&#364;alabio 02:38, 2004 Aug 13 (UTC)

from VfD
On 1 August 2004, Genital Integrity (note capital I) was nominated for deletion. See Votes for deletion/Genital Integrity for a record of the debate. Rossami 22:50, 18 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Linking to Whose Body
The nature of the link to "Whose body? Whose rights?" seems rather dubious to me. A bittorrent source and xvid codec are typical means for sharing pirated movies. Does anyone know whether this is legitimate? - Jakew 12:13, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)