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Circumcision Scar: My Foreskin Restoration, Neonatal Circumcision Memories and How Christian Doctors Duped a Nation (2020) by Jay J. Jackson. Hookona Books. 388 pp. ISBN-10: 1734555807; ISBN-13: 978-1734555806.
"We have to confess that there have been no major studies, no large-scale studies, no really analytic studies that I know anything about, to prove what the consequences might be later in life from infant circumcision."
- APPPAH Past President David Chamberlain interviewed in the film Whose Body, Whose Rights? (1995)
"It's clear my circumcision didn't just hack my prepuce, it gashed my psyche" (p. 216).
- Jay J. Jackson
In 2014, well before Jackson published Circumcision Scar (2020), Watson authored Unspeakable Mutilations: Circumcised Men Speak Out (2014), a groundbreaking collection of 50 men's stories detailing the lifelong harm they continue to endure from childhood genital cutting to which they did not consent. In that landmark book, Watson wrote:
[T]he process of grieving for a lost foreskin closely parallels the experiences of those who have suffered amputation, rape, body dysmorphic disorder, the death of a loved-one, or delayed posttraumatic stress. Circumcision advocates assert that the pain of circumcision is trivial and momentary; these accounts show that the pain of foreskin loss may last a lifetime. (back cover)
Now comes another landmark book recounting the personal life experiences of circumcision sufferer Jay J. Jackson. A metaphorical 'canary in the coal mine' of circumcision, Jackson's book offers intensely personal and often times gut-wrenching insight into the lasting harm of imposing the American social custom of medically unnecessary genital cutting onto boys' bodies. Based on my three decades of listening to such men, his journey is not uncommon. In Jackson's own words, "The first cut is truly the deepest" (p. iii).
Psychologist Ron Goldman, author of Circumcision: The Hidden Trauma (1997), posits that infant circumcision "has potential effects not only on men and sexuality, but also on mother-child relationships, malefemale relationships, and societal traits and problems" (p. 184). Jackson (2020) embodies many of these problems in a life journey he distills into a lengthy passage, abridged by this reviewer for space considerations:
We all know the common meaning of the word rape, and circumcision is not forcible sex. Yet by its very nature, circumcision is a sexualized act-the male genitalia...