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Jonathon Conte discusses his awakening understanding about genital integrity and autonomy, developing skills for talking with people about the issue, and how it affects everyone.

We have a perfectly designed genital structure, the foreskin, and cutting it off is to me a major violation of boys' human rights... I found out that 3/4 of the nerve endings were missing, and this was only recently discovered. Only one study has been done comparing about 160 men in two groups, circumcised and intact, and found that the most sensitive part of the penis is the foreskin... by miles.

A doctor advising circumcision of a healthy infant for any reason is going against the recommendations of the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), the Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) and every other medical association in the world.

At the Vancouver Pride Festival foreskin awareness is growing as people discuss their personal experiences and opinions of circumcision, genital integrity and the rights of all children to the genitals they were born with.

I don't imagine my foreskin could be [removed] and I remain with a whole body... "It's madness, it's bizarre" to suggest that circumcision would suddenly reduce HIV/AIDS infection... instead of focusing on the real problems...

"The [American Academy of Pediatrics] Task Force [on circumcision] admits that the minor forms of [female genital mutilation]... which are extremely common... are much less harmful than what we do to our boys... Not a single word of [our briefs] ended up in your 'impartial analysis.'"

"The initiative that was being circulated simply says that circumcisions could not occur with the city and county of San Francisco, right? I mean, somebody circumcised could still be there?"

Thousands of rural communities in Senegal have held public rallies declaring an end to female circumcision. This report originally aired on Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.

At the San Francisco Pride Celebration conversations around the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project and Bay Area Intactivists were about genital integrity and autonomy.

Filmmaker Eli Ungar-Sargon debates Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on the subject of circumcision.