‘It should be up to the boy’: Bloodstained Men bring anti-circumcision protest to downtown Northampton

NORTHAMPTON — Dressed in white with faux blood stains on the crotches of their pants, members of the California-based nonprofit Bloodstained Men brought their 40-year campaign against circumcision to the intersection of Pleasant and Main streets Monday afternoon.

Holding signs with slogans such as “End male genital mutilation” and “Circumcisers belong in prison,” the roughly 10 protesters lined the sidewalk to voice their opposition to the procedure. The group believes the practice is an affront to human rights and a violation of a child’s bodily autonomy.

While circumcision — the process of surgically removing the foreskin of a male’s penis, usually in a boy’s infancy — remains a common practice in numerous religions and countries, the protesters argued that the procedure defies a child’s autonomy before he can properly consent.

“The Bloodstained Men are focused on doing what you see here — spreading foreskin awareness in the general public as quickly as we can, to as many people as we can,” activist David Atkinson said. “It is illegal in the United States to cut the genitals of a baby girl, and we have this 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is supposed to guarantee equal protection under the law. We totally agree that it should be illegal to cut the genitals of a baby girl, but that law should not discriminate against babies based on the types of genitals that they happen to be born with.”

Bloodstained Men Founder Brother K said he first began advocating for an end to circumcision when he became sexually active as a young man and experienced genital discomfort afterward, a sensation that he believes was caused by his circumcision.

The movement, K explained, first gained media attention when a group of anti-circumcision protesters he led in 1980 was handcuffed and detained by police in Eureka, California. Since then, K said he and the Bloodstained Men have traveled to 49 of the 50 states to protest circumcision.

The group will continue its Massachusetts tour until May 4, stopping in cities and towns such as Greenfield, Boston, Cambridge, Lowell and Lynn. K explained that since he first began protesting, he has noticed a positive change in how the public receives his group’s message.

“Over the years, we are not cursed out as much. We don’t get as many middle fingers and we get a lot more people; we’ve already had a few moms here stop and say, ‘I did not circumcise my son, thank you for doing this,’” K said. “The circumcision rate in the United States is declining, but we’re not going to stop until all children, including all boys, are protected from genital mutilation.”

The activist group has attracted protesters from across the globe, including Thomas Mooney, who traveled from his home in Dublin, Ireland, to protest circumcisions in the United States. He said he was made aware of how common circumcision was in the U.S. when he met two American college-aged women who were traveling in Dublin.

“It should be up to the boy, unless it’s necessary, of course,” Mooney said. “In a hospital in Ireland, if you ask for your son to be circumcised, staff will call the authorities on you, because it’s something seen as torture almost.”

Others, such as protester Robin Graves of South Hadley, who chose not to circumcise her 13-year-old son when he was born, discussed the misconceptions and myths about circumcision, such as the myth that intact penises are inherently unhygienic.

“The biggest misconception is that it’s dirty or that it’s unclean, unhealthy. He is normal, healthy, never had any issues, and the decision is his. My husband and I left it up to him, so that if he ever wanted to be cut later in life, that’s his choice,” she said. “If not, it’s his body, and he can make that decision.”