What is a Man?

By Vernon Meigs

In late June I had published my article Biogynocentric Hypocrisy: TERF Edition (War on the Biological Male) in which I had made the following statement:

When I was noticing sponsored posts on Facebook by Matt Walsh’s page abut his new film What Is A Woman?, what grabbed my attention was the text on one of them: ‘One of the surgeons I interviewed for this documentary confessed to having mutilated the genitals of a 16 year old boy. The Left says this isn’t happening. They’re lying, as always.’

I admitted surprise at his choice of words: ‘mutilated the genitals of a 16 year old boy’. I wondered aloud, how much does he actually care about a child’s genital integrity across the board? What are Mr. Walsh’s attitudes towards routine infant circumcision? Assuming that he is just another traditional conservative, I had thought that he couldn’t give a shit about male genital mutilation and the serious consequences of it. However, I left it at that because that was all it was: an assumption. I wouldn’t speak more on it until I had concrete proof of what would be his hypocritical stance, and I’d be completely open to be proven wrong as well, delighted to be in fact.

About a week ago, I got my answer.

For clarity, the quote reads thus:

You lose credibility when you call circumcision “elective amputation”. Particularly because “amputation”, in the medical sense, generally refers to the removal of a limb. Make your point without being ridiculous. And parents frequently make decision for their infants. In fact, I’m not sure how else to raise an infant. You aren’t “infringing on their liberty.” Come on, that’s just absurd. Make your point without resorting to laughably hysterical rhetoric.

This screenshot was shared by a mutual follower on Twitter, Nikos Anti-MGM, who imparted to me that it in itself was originally something a Facebook friend of his posted. Regardless, the importance of sharing it cannot be understated. Matt Walsh, who grandstands that he is “obsessed with stopping people from mutilating and sterilizing children”, is proven to be yet another high-profile hypocrite regarding what kind of child is on the receiving end of the genital mutilation, and what ideology conducts it.

And yes, those were Walsh’s own words. Clearly he’s either not obsessed enough, or in fact obsessed strictly with refusing to admit that Americans have been making a mistake in eviscerating infant male foreskins for generations:

Some may be asking why I am spending a lot of energy going after these specific individuals who are open in their double standards about the genital mutilation of children. After all, too many Americans casually buy into the scam that calling all of them out one by one would be wasted effort. My response would be that anybody directly talking about the genital mutilation of children, especially when those are the exact terms that are used, must be consistent and deplore every context and every situation that this happens.

When they aren’t, and the likes of Walsh go forth and mock intactivists and hurl the same fallacies used to justify male infant genital mutilation, they absolutely deserve to be called out. They must be put to question whether they actually are against all forms of child mutilation, or are just tailoring their narrative to appease their large conservative fanbase that still thinks nothing about what trauma they put their infant sons through in an environment completely normalized for that.

As the backlash against woke nonsense gains more momentum and high-profile personalities such as Walsh, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson become ever-increasingly influential voices, it is crucial to expose their shortsightedness when they are being disingenuous in their given advocacies. This is of grave concern because the mindset they are smuggling in is not only a matter of a difference of opinion, but a genuine, serious risk for infant boys’ well-being.

This is why I think we must get more serious in scrutinizing the attitudes of these personalities, and dismantle their hypocritical takes. As more of these gynocentric acts of throwing the male of the species under the bus while white knights plead for FtM trans surgery victims more so than the more numerous MtFs, if not exclusively the former, we will be on the track of casting into broad daylight the truth about their motives, none of which bode well for men and boys.

Anyway, it’s time to get into the intended focus of this article, to dissect and analyze Matt Walsh’s crude remark regarding the male foreskin and the amputation thereof. Speaking of, the subject of amputation is the first thing he blunders on.

You lose credibility when you call circumcision “elective amputation”. Particularly because “amputation”, in the medical sense, generally refers to the removal of a limb. Make your point without being ridiculous.

According to the featured expert on the subject of amputation from John Hopkins Medicine, Jaime Troyal Shores, M.D, “Amputation is the loss of removal of a body part such as a finger, to, hand, foot, arm or leg.” While the examples he immediately references include limbs because that is what tends to be in the forefront of the minds of those thinking about amputations, he appears to be clear enough that he is talking about a removal of any body part – and not exclusive to limbs. In the same web page under the entry for Amputation, under ‘Types of Lower Extremity Amputation’ a reference to pelvic amputation (hemipelvectomy) is made; last I checked, a pelvis is not itself a limb.

If this was not convincing enough, the Wikipedia page on amputations clearly states the different amputations that aren’t limbs, and unequivocally listed is the removal of the foreskin.

To add to that, a search on scholar.google.com for “amputation of the foreskin” and “foreskin amputation” would yield you over 100 results and over 70 results respectively. In short, the very act of referring to foreskin removal as an amputation is neither ridiculous nor non-credible.

For all his mockery on those who use the term “amputation” for MGM, I wonder if Walsh would at least entertain the idea that it is in fact closer to castration, especially since slaves or men on the losing side of a war have been so circumcised in lieu of actual castration. Also would he consider that children have literally lost or had their genitalia horribly damaged beyond saving due to a “botched” operation?

Recalling Walsh’s preoccupation about amputations being for limbs only; by his own logic, neither is breast removal an amputation, then. Does he not know that the breast is but a modified sweat gland to begin with? Furthermore in response to the common attitude that alleges that circumcisions are like inoculations that you do for children as a part of medical practice you generally do in caring for your infant; if circumcision makes sense so his rate of diseases can lower, then by that logic those mastectomies that these girls are having would be great things, since they’d be reducing the risk of breast cancer!

Since we’re on the subject of the argument for genital mutilation on the basis of alleged medical parental care, the next error:

And parents frequently make decision for their infants. In fact, I’m not sure how else to raise an infant.

Does that make piercing an infant girls’ ears during infancy an acceptable act? Does that qualify as raising an infant?

Let’s take a deep dive into this “decision” parents are making for their infants. Let’s make it so that even Matt Walsh can understand.

  • The decision to remove not “just the tip” as commonly and falsely advertised, but 33-50% of penile skin along with the sensitive nerve endings for fine touch as well as protection of the glans which then becomes thickened like a callus.
  • The decision to put the male infant through literal extreme pain resulting in brain changes due to high levels of cortisol as well as neurogenic shock (what circumcisers and their nurses euphemistically refer to as “sleeping through the operation”)
  • The decision to leave the male infant with a wound that is left alone and open to infections, including but not limited to herpesmeningitis, sepsis and cysts.
  • The decision to doom so early in life the prospects of a proper sexual experience during his adulthood onwards, by removing the functional gliding and sensitive component.
  • The decision to consign the male infant to the increased likelihood of sexual dysfunction during his adulthood, loss of sensation, and alexithymia – “the inability to recognize or describe one’s own emotions” which is connected to depression, and even suicide if the truth about what you’ve done to him comes to light. Next time a guy tells you he’s fine after being circumcised as an infant, that’s probably the alexithymia talking.
  • The decision to play American Roulette with your infant male. 

By the last part, I mean risking dying just for being born male. It’s not a gun but a knife that you play American Roulette with, and it never misses. The gamble is whether he actually dies of  infection, the blood loss, or other ensuing complications that get brushed off euphemistically as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome so the circumcisers aren’t held accountable.

If you think you’re practicing a medical act for your son by doing this, for example if you think it reduces your son’s chances of an STD or if it’s cleaner, then once again the same can be said about mastectomies, or even your run-of-the-mill female genital mutilation. And if you think you’re going to make him more appealing to ignorant American women cruel enough to self and others to prefer a “cut” penis, then you’re a sexual groomer of your own son; there is nothing else to describe you.

And finally it’s time to pick apart the last mistake of Mr. Walsh:

You aren’t “infringing on their liberty.” Come on, that’s just absurd. Make your point without resorting to laughably hysterical rhetoric.

I’ll refer back to the fact that a parent precludes his son’s ownership of his own intact sex organ before he even has developed the ability to exercise his own volition. Does Walsh understand the actual meaning and message of liberty or is he just too much of a conservative to look past his own neotraditionalist priorities and how liberty applied at large doesn’t always go the way he may want to?

Once again, let’s make clear this so even Matt Walsh can understand it:

  • Self-ownership is a crucial, integral component to the philosophy of liberty.
  • Self-ownership as a value applies to the human individual.
  • A human is valued as such upon, and even before, birth.
  • Self-ownership therefore is already in effect at infancy.

Let us also debunk the problem with the often-touted “parent’s choice”.

  • Liberty is about negative rights; entitlements are positive rights.
  • Negative rights are in line with self-ownership, and the right to be uninfringed by the force of others.
  • Positive rights presume the “right” over another individual. Reminder that this is the opposite of liberty.
  • The responsibility to the life you bring into the world is consistent with self-ownership; personal accountability and liberty are not in conflict.
  • Legitimate medical practices as well as raising and caring for the child are both consistent with the aforementioned responsibility and the fact that you are cultivating the child into a being that can exercise and become aware of his own self-ownership.
  • Non-medical or cosmetic acts do not count towards raising the child and depending on the lasting effect is tantamount to abuse of the child.
  • Male genital mutilation is a non-medical, cosmetic, and downright harmful act – by all definitions acts of entitlement over another being.
  • Self-ownership of the child is under assault by MGM as it includes both damage and theft of a crucial part of the male anatomy at a point in his life in which he is neither mentally or physically able to resist.
  • The child’s liberty is infringed via the assault on his self-ownership.

In short, there is no such thing as a “parent’s choice” aside from the best practices of raising one’s own child and the responsibility to his safety. Routine infant circumcision is a betrayal of that trust, safety, and the respect of self-ownership.

Also by Walsh’s own logic, anyone who practices FGM are not assaulting girls’ liberties. Oh wait, chances may be high that he may in fact consider it such an assault. What’s the big difference in this case: “It’s much worse for a girl”, “Infants have no rights”, “We must protect the girls but boys got to learn to take it”? Gynocentrists are so predictable.

The reader may be wondering right now whether the title I gave this article, “What is a Man?”, was nothing more than a way to grab attention as well as a pastiche of Walsh’s film “What is a Woman?” I confess that my intents leaned towards provocation in this regard, but if we think about it, we can very well ask and then answer the question “What is a Man?” in the context of the subject of the intact, whole, and unsacrificed male.

“What is a man?” may as well be a question that Walsh could ask himself, but I cannot trust any answer he may have.

So what is a man, anyway? I’m not here to give you a comprehensive answer on that at this moment, furthermore as individuals a man cannot afford to be condensed to one definition or even one archetype. For that matter, women as individuals likewise cannot afford to be so condensed (so much for “What is a woman?” am I right?). However the question of archetypes and the permutation of models for men and women is a subject I will save for a future article. In the meantime, let’s clarify a few things that we can:

A man has his liberty, and his self-ownership, his free will to exercise himself in this world as an individual as well as his own expression of masculinity.

As a masculine, self-owning free being, a man has his desires – including prospects of pairing with a woman counterpart, which under proper circumstances include his expression of sexual desire. (We are speaking of the heterosexual world for the moment, though it is clear that those that aren’t have their own such expressions and desire)

A man is fully equipped with everything he needs anatomically to exercise his sexual desires peacefully. He has a foreskin that is in no way a minor detail of this anatomy, but a crucially functional one. It is not an accident of birth.

Here we now have the conceptualization of the anatomically intact man, and answers the question in this respect. The act of routine infant circumcision, then, boils down to a mitigation of the qualities that make one a male. If foreskin amputations were regarded indeed as a form of “castration lite”, it is an act that translates into making the male less of one. The answer to “What is a man?” is not “something you cut the anatomy of”. “Man up” has been the go-to form of goading and shaming to advertise the circumcision industry and cultural practice. Routine infant circumcision is not the response to “What is a man?” but rather “How to destroy a man?”

What grand irony that it is the conservative that continues to moralize and defend this practice in the same breath as he decries the trans agenda for child operations. What irony, that the conservative who talks about “real men” and how masculinity is important to keep society going is the same one who wishes to surgically lower how much of a male someone is, so early in life. This is nothing short of punishment for males for being male – the radical feminists would be proud. It is no surprise to me why conservatives like Walsh and Tucker Carlson are so eager to “establish dialogue” with Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists just to own the biological males.

A few more thoughts to close off on:

I am betting everybody in the men’s movement and intactivist movement who read this, if they aren’t instead incensed by Walsh’s hypocrisy, are howling with laughter at the prospect of him demanding “rallies outside of hospitals that butcher children” as if it were a brilliant new proposition. Clearly he hasn’t heard of Bloodstained Men and Their Friends before…or maybe he has but is instead opting to screech with eyes closed and fingers in his ears whenever someone reminds him of it. In short, Mr. Walsh – there already is a movement of which you speak of. The ball is already rolling. Frankly, you’re proving to be just an obstacle without a good point to make.

I can only hope that we can bring this hypocrisy into light so much that the likes of Matt Walsh will have no choice but to stop ignoring it. They should be made to admit their blundering attitude on the subject and the fact that they’ve disingenuously grandstanded on a subject that goes deeper than they are willing to admit themselves. It is a travesty that what is a toxic fad by comparison is the specific type of child mutilation given disproportionately more attention than the vastly practiced, normalized and casually encouraged child mutilation that is MGM. This mutilation runs so deep in the cultural practice that the men who survive it are like most male domestic abuse victims: in denial, perhaps feeling like they deserved it, and do not consider what happened to them as abuse.

If anybody takes a stand against child mutilation, routine infant circumcision is rightfully the forefront issue. Matt Walsh symbolically and literally mocks the intactivist movement as he envisions himself as the forerunner against the kind of mutilation he can conveniently strike a crusade against. Consider these points the next time you think of Walsh as “brave” for speaking out myopically on an issue he has no moral authority on.

My thanks to the following links for sources on the damage of MGM:

https://breakingtheglasses.blogspot.com/p/intactivist-links.html#.YvsaNxTMJD_

https://menarehuman.com/mgm/embed/#?secret=85aFUwMFkk#?secret=Uh2tvSjFu5

Also thanks to Peter Wright for his input as well as Nikos Anti-MGM from Twitter.