I contacted ten genital autonomy organizations in July 2026 and asked a simple question: does your organization have a policy regarding communication, coordination, or funding relationships with organizations whose positions on genital cutting conflict with your own? None did.
The question was prompted by my reporting on Bruchim, a Jewish organization inside the genital autonomy movement, whose board member and director of education Max DuBoff co-authored a paper with Dena S. Davis, author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ 2010 policy statement recommending that physicians be permitted to perform a “ritual nick” on girls’ genitals.
The AAP retracted the recommendation within weeks after public outcry. Davis told me she does not believe the AAP should have retracted it. “No, I did not think AAP should have retracted the policy statement,” she wrote. “Still don’t.”
She also stated that the paper she co-authored with a member of Bruchim, “B’rit shalom: a Jewish ritual alternative to newborn male circumcision,” did not represent a change in perspective from her work on the ritual nick. "No, I don't think the Brit Shalom paper was a change."
Given that intactivist organizations have historically opposed female genital cutting, a board member of an organization inside the genital autonomy movement co-authoring a paper with a scholar who wrote a policy recommending a form of FGM on girls and still defends it sixteen years later represents a change in the movement.
However, intactivist organizations currently have no policy against such pro-genital cutting collaborations.
John Geisheker, executive director and general counsel of Doctors Opposing Circumcision, wrote that DOC has “no formal written policy.” Geisheker makes funding and collaboration decisions himself, “on a case-by-case basis.”
He went further. The late Dr. Mark Reiss, DOC’s vice president, “used his former annual DOC ‘donation’ to fund the more recent Bruchim, which more clearly fit his interests, and ours, as DOC supports the Bruchim mission.” Geisheker characterized his foregoing of Reiss’s donation as “an indirect donation by DOC to Bruchim.”
DOC exists to oppose circumcision. Bruchim does not. DOC sent money to that organization. No policy required anyone to check whether its board members were working with pro-genital cutting figures or disclose to donors that their money might find its way to those collaborators.
Geisheker described a shared donor base circulating money across intactivist organizations, noting that donors “spread their donations over a number of intactivist organizations.” He said DOC is “fine with that as it keeps the money ‘in the family.’” He volunteered that he could not “think of an intactivist organization we would NOT donate to on principal.”
I sent Geisheker the article describing Bruchim’s collaboration with AAP ritual nick author Dena S. Davis and referenced his statement that DOC supports the Bruchim mission. He had offered to chat by phone. He did not respond.
Nicolas Maubert of the French organization Droit au Corps wrote that Droit au Corps has no such policy. “I haven’t had a chance to read your latest newsletters about Bruchim, etc.,” he wrote, “but I understand that you’ve been in a conflict, and I regret that. I hope things will calm down.” I sent him the article and asked him to read it. He did not respond.
Norm Cohen, executive director of NOCIRC of Michigan, wrote the same. “NOCIRC of Michigan doesn’t have a policy about working with other organizations.” Cohen referenced an “Intactivist Guide to Giving” he built in 2017 “to expose financial mismanagement” across intactivist organizations. “I have not kept it up to date,” he wrote. The guide tracked revenue, expenses, and executive compensation. It did not track inter-organizational funding relationships, board member affiliations, or policy alignment between organizations. DOC declined Cohen’s survey in 2019. Bruchim is not listed in the guide at all.
Ronald Goldman, who founded the Circumcision Resource Center, did not address the question. “No,” he wrote. “My focus is on ronaldgoldmanphd.com and my book The Empathy Evolution.” The organization’s founder declined to speak on its behalf.
Tim Hammond, who runs GALDEF, told me he “can’t fathom that ANY genital autonomy organization would view it as beneficial to communicate, coordinate or fund any organization whose position conflicts with their own.” He said there are “no conflicts among any of our present day groups.”
He asked for specific examples. I gave him one. I sent him the article and asked for his perspective on whether the movement should address the documented connection. “The article documents a situation where that happened,” I wrote. “I’d be curious what you think after reading it, and whether you see something the movement should address.” Hammond did not respond.
Georganne Chapin, executive director of Intact America, did not respond to the July question at all. Chapin had been engaging with Hegemon Media articles on Substack — liking each article under her name — through approximately the publication of the Bruchim ritual nick collaboration article. After that article, the engagement stopped.
In August, I sent Chapin a more specific question: does Intact America have a policy on working with organizations whose collaborators have publicly supported a form of FGM? Chapin responded the same day. She did not answer the question. “Can you give me an example of such an organization, Brendon?” she wrote. “I can’t think of being asked to collaborate with an organization that supports fgm.”
The question asked about collaborators who have publicly supported a form of FGM. Chapin’s response reframed the question to an organization that supports FGM. The question asked whether Intact America has a policy. Chapin asked for an example. I sent her the Bruchim ritual nick collaboration article and restated the original question. She did not respond.
Your Whole Baby and Bloodstained Men were each contacted with the same question in both July and August. Neither responded to either.
Eric Clopper, president of Intact Global, responded by pointing to policies published on the organization’s website and noting compliance with public filing requirements. He said the organization’s policies are “not as granular as the question suggests” and invited specific follow-up questions.
I sent a follow-up quoting Intact Global’s own published coalition and partnerships policy and its disavowal clause, and asked two questions: would an organization working with the author of the AAP ritual nick statement be aligned with Intact Global’s mission, and was Clopper aware of the collaboration before I shared it?
Clopper responded that Intact Global is “strictly focused on preventing medically unnecessary, non-religious genital cutting of minors” and that “discussions regarding the propriety or lack thereof of religious genital cutting are outside the purview of Intact Global as an organization.”
I responded that my question was not about religious genital cutting. “The AAP ritual nick statement was a medical policy issued by a medical organization,” I wrote. “Its author, Dena Davis, is a bioethicist. The collaboration I’m asking about is between an intactivist organization and the author of that medical policy.”
Clopper answered both questions directly. “Mission alignment at Intact Global is measured by one test: an entity’s support for ending forced, non-religious genital cutting of minors,” he wrote. “It is a positional test, not an associational one. We do not screen collaborators’ co-authors, advisors, or publication histories.”
Would an organization that worked with the author of the ritual nick statement be aligned with Intact Global’s mission? “So yes,” he wrote, “an organization that has worked with the author of the 2010 AAP statement can be aligned with our mission, if it supports our issue.” He confirmed he was not aware of the collaboration before receiving my email.
Bruchim’s FAQ states that the organization “exists to serve those who already feel uncertain about circumcision or who have decided not to circumcise.” It does not advocate for ending circumcision. By Intact Global’s own positional test, Bruchim would not qualify.
Clopper was the only respondent who articulated a framework for how his organization evaluates alignment. That framework explicitly excludes associational screening — the kind of vetting that would have surfaced the Davis connection.
Hammond, responding separately for the Global Survey of Circumcision Harm, rejected the premise of the question entirely. Global Survey is “solely an informational website for publishing research,” he wrote, and “not a formally structured ‘genital autonomy organization.’” The same person gave two categorically different responses for two organizations: a flat premise rejection for Global Survey and a substantive challenge for GALDEF.
A review of publicly available organizational policies across the broader genital autonomy movement confirmed the pattern. No organization I found has a public policy that prohibits communication, coordination, collaboration, or funding relationships with pro-circumcision or pro-FGM organizations or individuals.
The closest public frameworks are the Genital Autonomy Collective’s partnership standard, which limits partnerships and promotions to organizations “explicitly supporting intersectional genital autonomy,” and Intact Global’s gift acceptance policy, which says gifts must align with the organization’s mission and values. Neither requires vetting of partner organizations’ leadership, board members, or their published positions on genital cutting.
While the intactivist movement has no public policy on collaborations with pro-genital cutting figures, the policy they did create points in the opposite direction.
In 2022, Bruchim’s leadership — David Balashinsky, Rebecca Wald, Lisa Braver Moss, and Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon — authored a “Statement Opposing Antisemitism Within the Genital Autonomy Movement,” published on Wald’s site Beyond the Bris. The statement urged movement leaders to “reject bigotry, monitor forums, and refuse to collaborate with the culprits, including refusing to give them the floor at organized gatherings.” Its signatories included several of the organizations I contacted for this article: DOC, Droit au Corps, and GALDEF. Tim Hammond is listed as one of the authors.
The statement polices the speech and conduct of people who oppose circumcision. It tells them who they cannot collaborate with, who they cannot platform, and what they cannot say. It was written by the leadership of the organization whose board member co-authored a paper with the author of the AAP’s ritual nick policy.
No equivalent statement exists for the other direction. No policy asks whether intactivist money is going to organizations that do not oppose circumcision. No policy asks whether the leadership of a funded organization has published scholarship supporting forms of genital cutting. No policy asks whether an organization receiving anti-circumcision donations is, in fact, anti-circumcision.
Four respondents — Geisheker, Maubert, Hammond, and Chapin — went silent after receiving or encountering the Bruchim ritual nick collaboration article.
It would be relatively easy for intactivist organizations to address this: A basic transparency policy could require disclosure of collaborations with individuals or organizations whose published positions on genital cutting conflict with the movement’s stated mission. It could require that meetings with such individuals or organizations be disclosed to the membership. It could require that funding relationships — incoming and outgoing — be reported alongside any relevant affiliations of the parties involved.
These are standard nonprofit governance and anti-corruption practices that advocacy organizations in other fields maintain. Intactivist organizations have already shown that they can collaborate and create policy for the movement when it comes to policing the speech of their own supporters, using more severe language for this than mere transparency.
The antisemitism statement urges leaders to “refuse to collaborate with the culprits, including refusing to give them the floor at organized gatherings.” No equivalent standard has been applied to collaborations with pro-genital cutting figures. At present, there is exclusion for opposition to genital cutting deemed problematic, but not even transparency for those who support it through collaboration.
Since no intactivist organization contacted for this article has adopted any comparable transparency or organizational vetting policy, anyone who donates to an intactivist organization has no way of knowing whether their money will reach pro-genital cutting figures, like the author of the AAP’s ritual nick policy or organizations that collaborate with them.
I have a disclosed prior lawsuit against Bruchim, Rebecca Wald, and Eliyahu Ungar-Sargon, filed in 2023 and dismissed in 2024.