Reflections from a recovering intactivist
Anonymous June 1, 2020 I've been doing a lot of self-reflection and meditation during this quarantine. I don't think being an intactivist has been healthy to me. I'm always anti-circumcision but I am not going to be making posts and such any more. I simply lost the passion and ran out of ideas. It's not healthy for me to worry about what other people do with their children.
Recognizing my own toxic behaviors is part of becoming a better person all around. I would like to apologize to any of my friends and family members that I have hurt by my intactivism over the past couple of years. There's nothing wrong with being against circumcision, but there's everything wrong with being a shitty person about it.
In December 2018 I shared an article to my personal account that got over 1,000 comments from intactivists and my personal friends and family. It wasn’t a public post, so the only comments were from people on my friends list. I allowed people to say horrible things to and about my grandmother, my aunt, and other family members. Didn’t care and thought it was fine because I wasn’t the one saying it. I can’t control others. One of those aunts was commenting about her Christian beliefs and saying something about the people saying mean things to her were going to Hell. I wrote a comment telling her that she would go to Hell for circumcising her three boys when it is in the New Testament not to. We stopped speaking to each other.
A month later she got very ill and ended up in the hospital. We found out she had cancer pretty much all over her body and it was so far gone, there wasn’t anything they could do. I apologized to her in the hospital, but she was not in a cognitive state where I feel like I was able to truly make amends. That mean comment was the last thing I remember saying to her and I will have to live with that forever. A beloved family member that I treated so horribly. I feel horrible about it, but I can only move on from here.
A quote that was used by this website was something that I had said to my friend D---. She was like a sister to me for 16 years, and unfortunately my intactivism ruined our friendship. I will probably be reaching out to her to attempt to apologize, but I'm embarrassed, honestly. I treated her poorly. I was very consumed during that time and she was pregnant. All I could think of was the worst case scenario and was worrying myself sick over her child. He's a year old now, he's fine. I have no idea what she ended up doing as we stopped talking a couple of months before she had her son. Not like it's my business anyways.
I will always be against circumcision, but I will no longer be heavily involved in the intactivist community. I met a lot of awesome people on this journey, and I have respect for a lot of you. No hard feelings, and I am on good terms with all of you.
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