VANCOUVER: CAN-FAP to protest at Gates talk

Metro News (Vancouver)
March 17, 2014

Vancouver activists to protest 'foreskin enemy #1' Bill Gates at TED

by Emily Jackson
Foreskin advocates plan to protest Bill Gates for funding circumcision programs in Africa when the Microsoft founder speaks at the Ted Talks conference in Vancouver on Tuesday.

The Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project hopes to label Gates as “foreskin enemy #1” for donating millions to circumcision programs in 14 countries to reduce the risk of HIV transmission, according to an event posting on Facebook.

Project founder Glen Callender calls into question the research that claims male circumcision reduces transmission of the virus. (There is “compelling evidence” it reduces heterosexual infections in men by about 60 per cent, according to the World Health Organization.)

“Soon it will be obvious that circumcision gave these men false confidence, not effective protection,” Callender said in the event posting. “Bill Gates is an intelligent man who certainly means well, but he really blew it this time.”

This isn’t Callender’s first time protesting the rich and famous over foreskin. He made headlines across North America last year when he protested Oprah for promoting face cream with ingredients derived from foreskin. (That particular product, SkinMedica, was derived from growth factors from a single donation [theft] of foreskin more than a decade ago.)

“If my foreskin and I don’t publicly challenge at least one world-famous pro-circumcision billionaire philanthropist each year, then we’re not doing our job as Canada’s premier man-foreskin circumcision-fighting team,” Callender said.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donates millions annually to help the 33 million people around the world living with HIV. They fund research on an HIV vaccine, the delivery of anti-retroviral treatment and the development of ways to reduce transmission, including contraception and circumcision.

The protesters will gather around the Vancouver Convention Centre before Bill and Melinda Gates take the stage at 6 p.m.

OTTAWA: Demonstration against Oprah's foreskin facecream

Ottawa Citizen
April 9, 2013

Foreskin Crusaders to protest against Oprah event

[The term "crusader" is as unfortunate as it was in the second Gulf War. Most infant circumcision in Canada is not religious.]

by Zev Singer

OTTAWA — While an expected 14,000 people stream into Scotiabank Place on Wednesday night to hear Oprah Winfrey speak, they will be greeted by a group of protesting foreskin activists looking to take the media mogul to task.

This will take a bit of explaining.

The group, the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project, or CAN-FAP, opposes the circumcision of baby boys. Oprah has become their target because, they say, she has endorsed an anti-aging skin product that was developed using skin cells harvested from a baby’s foreskin.

The product, made by SkinMedica, sells for around $250 per ounce.

The company could not be reached for comment Tuesday, but has previously explained that it does not use foreskins in the production of the cream, and has not since the original one was used to develop the line of cells nearly two decades ago. (There was actually nothing special about the foreskin — any baby skin would have worked, but foreskins were the available source).

[That is disingenous. There were issues of informed consent (and from the foreskin's owner, not just his parents) and medical ethics in the sale and re-use of human tissue even then. A man is walking round somewhere unaware that the cellular descendents of his foreskin are now adorning Oprah's face. There have been other notorious cases of the non-consented use of human tissue where availability was precisely what made its use so despicable. ]

However, CAN-FAP founder Glen Callender, a Vancouver resident who also staged a protest outside the Oprah event there in January, said Tuesday that in his eyes non-consensual male circumcision is a human rights violation that he equates with female genital mutilation.

“If you were to do that to me right now, today, as an adult, it would be aggravated sexual assault. You’d go to prison for 14 or 15 years,” Callender said. “I can’t see how that would be any different if you did that to me as a defenceless baby.”

Callender, a 39-year-old freelance writer and editor, said his main issue is the sexual pleasure that’s being taken away from men.

Oprah has had no comment.

Earlier story

VANCOUVER: Intactivists protest Oprah's foreskin facecream

Brandford Expositor (Canada)
January 23, 2013

Oprah protested for endorsing face cream made from foreskins

by Jim Morris

Picture by James Loewen

VANCOUVER – Her advice may be followed by hordes of people, but a Vancouver group wants Oprah Winfrey to explain why she has endorsed an anti-wrinkle cream made with human foreskins.

Winfrey makes her first appearance in Vancouver on Thursday before a sold-out crowd at Rogers Arena.

But as crowds pack into the stadium, Glen Callender, founder of the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project, will be outside with his supporters protesting Winfrey's support of SkinMedica.

Callender says it’s hypocritical of Winfrey to speak out against female genital mutilation, while saying it’s all right to use a face cream made from foreskins from circumcised infant males.

“Imagine how Oprah would respond if a skin cream for men went on the market that was made from parts of the genitalia of little girls,” Callender said. “That would be an outrage and rightly so.”

Callender expects “a dozen to two dozen people” to attend the protest.

Advertisements for SkinMedica say Winfrey has described the product as her “magic fountain of youth and miracle wrinkle solution.” Winfrey didn’t immediately respond to an email asking for comment.

The makers of SkinMedica have said they use foreskin fibroblast — a piece of human skin used as a culture to grow other skin or cells.

“I would like Oprah to come to her senses and realize that all children have a fundamental human right to keep all their genitalia and to decide for themselves if anything gets cut off,” Callender said Wednesday.

Callender describes the Foreskin Awareness Project as Canada's “feistiest pro-foreskin advocacy group” with the goal of “foreskin education and appreciation.”

VANCOUVER: Onlookers appreciate Foreskin Pride (video)

The Star (Vancouver)
August 5, 2012

Friends of the foreskin march against circumcision

By Petti Fong

VANCOUVER—A savvy street performer knows when another act is about to overshadow his own, so when placards proclaiming Foreskin is Fabulous began appearing across the street, Morgan “Wizardhawk” paid attention.

Morgan’s 7-year-old son Thomas has a stick-juggling act he performs in public, and on Saturday the two of them found themselves competing for attention with a dozen or so anti-circumcision protesters outside the Vancouver Art Gallery on Robson St.

It was another event in what organizers with the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project called the first annual Foreskin Pride March. Earlier, the protesters, holding signs proclaiming Circumcision is Mutilation, demonstrated outside a circumcision clinic and at the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons. Later, on Saturday night, there was an educational seminar extolling the virtues of foreskin.

Morgan and Thomas were unknowingly the circumcised and uncircumcised versions of what the group was demonstrating about.

“My sons aren’t circumcised and I was. So I had no control over what happened (to me), but I could control it with my boys and didn’t think circumcision was right any more,” said Morgan.

“It was interesting to hear these guys talk about foreskin and circumcision and stuff. That’s something you don’t hear every day on the streets of Vancouver.”

The protests coincided with Vancouver’s Pride parade, and on Sunday a pants-optional Foreskin Pride contingent marched in the main parade. The events were capped with a demonstration at Sunset Beach of which kind of fruit can be picked up with an uncircumcised penis (grapes).

Circumcision does have its defenders. Some religions dictate male infants should be circumcised, and Dr. Neil Pollock, a Vancouver surgeon specializing in circumcision, advocates the surgery on medical grounds. (It was his clinic that was the object of Saturday’s demonstration.)

Pollock has said circumcision reduces the risks of urinary tract and penile infections and the risk of some sexually transmitted diseases and penile cancer.

This issue grabbed headlines earlier this summer when a court in Cologne, Germany banned medically unnecessary circumcision of minors, ruling it is a criminal act.

Glen Callendar, founder of the Foreskin Awareness Project, and his supporters hope to eventually bring a similar case before Canada’s courts.

“For years, there was this idea that babies had to be circumcised because the thought was that boys couldn’t keep their penises clean,” Callendar said. “These are boys that will grow up to be doctors, lawyers, and the notion they can’t keep their penises clean on their own is just ridiculous.”

Canada has banned female genital mutilation, and he thinks it’s time to do the same for circumcision, a procedure he considers invasive.

Callendar, a comedian, said he’s not concerned about the scant turnout for Saturday’s protests.

“Every serious social movement starts with a lot of people making fun at you. They are threatened by what you’re doing,” he said. “Every group that has asked for equality has faced ridicule.”

Earlier story

VICTORIA, B.C.: Rally against private circumcision clinic

Monday Magazine (Victoria, B.C.)
April 12, 2012

Foreskin rally calls for ban on infant circumcision

Verbal battle erupts over specialized private clinic

By Danielle Pope

Have you hugged your foreskin today? A passionate rally this week is calling on the government and Victoria residents to show the normally shy body part a little bold love — or at least protection.

The “Whole World/Whole Children” rally is set to gather outside one of the newest private health-care offices to start offering circumcision, Diversified Health Clinic at 1063 Fort, on Friday, April 13, at 11:30 a.m. The group will then march to the legislature lawns and finish with a protest and speeches. But while foreskins may not be an issue paramount in the minds of many (save expectant parents), rally organizers say this affects all of us more than we think.

“What this really comes down to is a human rights issue,” says Glen Callender, speaker at the event and founder of the Canadian Foreskin Awareness Project. “When you consider that infant female circumcision was banned in Canada in 1997 and is now considered a criminal offence, why is the genital mutilation of an infant male any different?”

Kira Antinuk, a local mother and nursing student who organized the rally, says that the impetus for the protest came when her organization, Victoria Circumcision Resources, heard about Dr. Neil Pollock, a Vancouver-based physician who is known for being outspoken on the issue of circumcision, bringing his practice to the Island.

“We were really concerned to hear that Dr. Pollock . . . was planning on opening up a genital-cutting clinic in Victoria,” says Antinuk. “This is not acceptable on the Island, and it shouldn’t be acceptable in B.C. at all. I don’t think a lot of people are aware of this yet.”

Pollock says he has performed over 35,000 circumcisions —...

...

B.C. was the first province to pull Medicare funding from circumcision back in 1984, with all other provinces following suit after research showed it was no longer a necessary medical procedure. In 2009, the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons stated the procedure should be delayed until the child can make his own decision, and the Canadian Pediatric Society now states on its website the relative risks of the foreskin being left intact alongside the proven risks of removing it.

Since circumcisions are no longer covered provincially or performed in hospitals, private health clinics are left to pick up the slack from parents and some adults still wanting to perform the procedure. That privatized bias is exactly what concerns Callender, who says clinics are now preying on misinformed parents to push the invasive procedure onto children who cannot give their consent.

“Criminal law protects the foreskin of a girl, the hood of her clitoris, but not of a boy — yet it’s the same translated body part,” says Callender. “So much of what we hear about why circumcision is ‘good’ is misinformation from years ago, or even old wives tales, but the tales stick. We have to recognize the severe and detrimental impacts not only of making a decision for an individual who cannot consent, but that this is a form of assault, and we need the government to say ‘No more.’”

...

Callender emphasizes that the rally is not an effort to prevent circumcision on the whole — it’s a plea to halt the procedures on infants, ...

UPDATE
4/17/2012

A YouTube video of the rally (6:32).