| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76808 | |
| dc.description.sponsorship | This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree. | en_US |
| dc.format | Monograph | |
| dc.format.medium | Electronic Resource | en_US |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | |
| dc.publisher | The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY. | |
| dc.type | Dissertation | |
| dcterms.abstract | While in the U.S. routine medical circumcision of male infants has long been justified on medical grounds, scholars have also pointed to surrounding discourses that suggest deeply held cultural prejudices, fears of sexuality, and racial contagion. However, little scholarship has addressed the questions of masculinity, despite a massive polemical literature that swirls around it. This dissertation takes those polemics, and several organizational efforts, as its source of data to understand the “Intactivist†movement as a social movement. Like all social movements, the Intactivist movement has many branches, is organizationally diverse and rhetorically diverse. So, how does the movement coalesce, and where are its fissures? How do they plan to achieve their aims? This dissertation relies on organizational literature, participant observation in meetings and at demonstrations, and in-depth interviews with members of Intactivist organizations to trace the movement’s emergence as well as its relationship to American medical thought and other ongoing social movements. To date, the Intactivist movement has been largely unsuccessful in generating social change. In fact, it’s had the opposite effect, often galvanizing opposition and legislation. Even though circumcision rates have fallen, this is likely the result of changing insurance coverage and costs, not movement rhetoric. But, Intactivists have had some influence on a shifting sense of the masculine self, and centering the foreskin as a political question. Indeed, this dissertation argues that the movement has generated a kind of “embodied success,†specifically through the politicization of the foreskin. Intactivist men, who initially define themselves as circumcision’s mutilated victims, reinvent themselves through movement participation. They transform themselves (literally and figuratively) into phallic heroes, defenders of human rights and also of masculinity. This politicization ties the masculine values traditionally associated with the penis/phallus to the intact (or restored) foreskin. Thus, Intactivism proves the flexibility of masculinity. Even as Intactivists challenge dominant masculine bodily norms, they adhere to mainstream masculine values of lifelong penetrative sexuality, complete independence/ autonomy, and scientific rationality. | |
| dcterms.available | 2017-09-20T16:51:13Z | |
| dcterms.contributor | Kimmel, Michael S | en_US |
| dcterms.contributor | Marrone, Catherine | en_US |
| dcterms.contributor | Forbis, Melissa | en_US |
| dcterms.contributor | Njambi, Wairimu. | en_US |
| dcterms.creator | Kennedy, Amanda Owyn | |
| dcterms.dateAccepted | 2017-09-20T16:51:13Z | |
| dcterms.dateSubmitted | 2017-09-20T16:51:13Z | |
| dcterms.description | Department of Sociology | en_US |
| dcterms.extent | 189 pg. | en_US |
| dcterms.format | Monograph | |
| dcterms.format | Application/PDF | en_US |
| dcterms.identifier | http://hdl.handle.net/11401/76808 | |
| dcterms.issued | 2016-12-01 | |
| dcterms.language | en_US | |
| dcterms.provenance | Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-20T16:51:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1
Kennedy_grad.sunysb_0771E_12778.pdf: 1633266 bytes, checksum: ca8b5c856541f29d34675e98da53c4ae (MD5)
Previous issue date: 1 | en |
| dcterms.publisher | The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY. | |
| dcterms.subject | male circumcision, masculinity, medicalization, sexuality, social movements | |
| dcterms.subject | Sociology -- Gender studies | |
| dcterms.title | Intactivism: Understanding Anti-Male Circumcision Organizing in the U.S. | |
| dcterms.type | Dissertation | |
