Here is an example of what another sexophobic American doctor had to say about masturbation in 1903:

• "It (self abuse) lays the foundation for consumption, paralysis and heart disease. It weakens the memory, makes a boy careless, negligent and listless. It even makes many lose their minds; others, when grown, commit suicide.... Don't think it does no harm to your boy because he does not suffer now, for the effects of this vice come on so slowly that the victim is often very near death before you realize that he has done himself harm. It is worthy of note that many eminent physicians now advocate the custom of circumcision... " --Mary R. Melendy, MD.

These irrational arguments will sound bizarre and ludicrous to most parents today. However, such ideas haven't disappeared in modern American society, they've just taken on a different form. Sexophobics today use a variation on this same argument to promote the sexual mutilation of children. They say now that child circumcision relieves parents from touching the child's genitals to clean him, thus avoiding "unnecessary" stimulation. Frightened of these normal parental duties, sexophobic parents seek instead to impose an unnatural sexual neglect. If cutting the child's genitals for one's own convenience is itself child abuse, so is the resulting sexual neglect. Yet in such a parent's fear we see the same old hysteria chain at work: sex, abuse, child victim, and a vague list of horrible curses that will follow. The formula hasn't changed much. The sexophobics of today remain people who would much rather cut a penis than touch it. In doing so they may pass on their irrational fears to their children.

The Puritan heritage and the more recent American hysteria about issues surrounding child sexuality suggest that a large segment of the US population will enjoy the sexual mutilation of children for some time to come.

American activists are to be commended for their work in bringing attention to and taking action against female circumcision in other countries. Meanwhile, the rest of the world sees that in America male children are often the victims of sexual mutilation practices that were institutionalized by sexual extremists 100 years ago.

Fred Hayward of Men's Rights, Inc., tells the story of one activist who, ...knowledgeable about research into the learning process of preborns (let alone newborns) and a real advocate against sexual abuse, tried to squirm her way out of the issue by suggesting: "How do we really know that there is any long-term memory of this?" Yet, this woman would be the first to prosecute a dentist who fondled an unconscious patient, or, even worse, a man who masturbated into the face of an infant girl. The whole issue of 'memory' is a red herring." -- Circ Info Network 941116

We are correct in questioning the true motivation of any activist who claims to care about children, and yet is busy with enabling the sexual mutilation and sexual neglect of children in the US. With an "all sex is abuse" approach, there has always been the suspicion that some child sex abuse activists are really more sex-negative than they are abuse-negative.

Such sex-negative people are the very ones who may be attracted to the idea of mutilating the sex organs of children, so of course they are not acting to stop it. That the child sex abuse activists now seem so comfortable with the idea of cutting at the sexual organs of forcibly restrained, bloody, screaming children is a powerful confirmation of these suspicions.

Persons with a child circumcision fetish find the acting-out of their fantasies is facilitated in the US by the sexophobics. The activists fighting child sex abuse have taught us that enablers share the guilt of the perpetrators, and must be held morally responsible. Let us remind them of this as we try to judge their credibility and their issues. If these people are not humanists, then their issues are not important to those of us who are concerned about children's rights.