Professor of Psychology: Negative Ramifications Of Forced Circumcisions [Video]

Gregory Boyle, former Professor of Psychology at Bond University in Queensland has spoken out against forced circumcision in a shocking video. In the 12 minute and 39 second video, Professor Boyle speaks very frankly about the practice of forced genital cutting and reveals his own personal struggles with his own forced infant circumcision.

Professor Boyle talks about the possible psychological motivations behind routine infant circumcision. Boyle is a renowned professor and has written many articles on a variety of subjects pertaining to the field of psychology. He is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at The University of Melbourne. Co-authored by George Hill, Boyle wrote the article, “Circumcision-generated emotions boas medical literature” which was published in 2012 in BJU International.

“Invariably, when biased opinions promoting [male circumcision] are published by doctors trying to justify their own psychosexual wounding, uncircumcised doctors (who mostly see no need for amputating anatomically normal healthy erogenous tissue) are quick to refute such overstated claims,” Hill and Boyle wrote.

In the video, Boyle explains one of the numerous studies conducted on the psychological effects of circumcision.

“For example, one study was conducted in the Philippines,” Boyle said. Boyle explains a study where three and one-half thousand boys who were circumcised either by medical or ritual (tuli) procedures were examined for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. “All of these boys that were circumcised in that particular study in the Philippines were administered the Watson Post Traumatic Stress Disorder questionnaire, and we found that the rate of post traumatic stress as measured qualitatively on this questionnaire was in excess of 50 percent of the boys circumcised via medical procedure and I think in excess of 80 percent of the boys circumcised by the ritual tuli procedure.”

Professor Boyle stressed that even circumcisions performed on infants in the pre-verbal stage will have a traumatic effect on the child’s psyche and nervous system.

Jamed Kityo, author of “HIV/AIDS: integrating medical male circumcision (MMC) into developing countries’ health systems – Perspective of Uganda’s HIV/AIDS policy” accused Boyle of what he calls a “Wakefield effect” pertaining to circumcision in an article in Key Correspondents. Kityo believes that circumcision can help prevent HIV.

“My only major worry to date is that, Boyle and Hill’s claims on medical male circumcision, which I have observed being conducted in sterile hospital settings, will do a lot of harm to medicine, just as Andrew Wakefield’s opinions have already done,” Kityo wrote. He is referring to Dr. Andrew Wakefield who authored a retracted article linking autism with a disturbance in gut bacteria that was found in children after receiving their MMR vaccines. Last month, Wakefield made the news again after he was involved in the CDC whistleblower’s revelation that top CDC researchers and officials had deliberately removed data that was deemed unfavorable for the MMR vaccine from a vaccine-autism study.

The video was uploaded to YouTube on the heels of the Kenyan ritual circumcision season. This August, journalists reported men in Kenya hiding in fields and police stations avoiding forced circumcision. Recently, the psychological ramifications of routine infant circumcisions was explored with a social media campaign using the hashtag #SinceIWasABoy.

[Photo via YouTube video uploaded by James Loewen]

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