In 2009, Ryan ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald, now half of the popular ‘Fitzy and Wippa’ team on Sydney’s Nova FM radio station, decided to circumcise his baby boy. Obviously we are against the forced circumcision of children where there is no medical need, but we don’t usually single out the parents who have made this decision for ridicule. Often the decision is made under pressure from family members and doctors, or due to a lack of research and understanding of just how damaging this procedure is. However, while inflicting unneccessary and damaging cosmetic surgery on his defenceless son was bad enough, Ryan’s actions in the days following the operation took the abuse to a whole new level, and so has earnt him our inaugural Australian Circumcision Stupidity award.

Holding down a perfecty healthy newborn and slicing off the most intimate and sensitive part of his body is bad enough. But in a feeble attempt at ‘entertainment’ Ryan took his son’s amputated foreskin into the radio station and passed it around to his then co-presenters, Julian ‘Jules’ Schiller and Claire Murphy, to get their reactions on air.

To see what happened check out the clip below:

On two occasions Ryan seems to gloat about just how much tissue has been removed from his baby. On one of these occasions he quips “That’s a fair bit of skin, hey?” Yes, it is a lot of skin. But what he may fail to realise is that this is only the amount of skin (and other specialised tissue) that is lost to the baby. When his baby grows into a fully developed man he will be missing up to 15 square inches of highly sensitive and functional genital tissue, which is about the size of the palm of your hand.

Ryan’s colleagues appear to be slightly less enthusiastic about the stunt, with Claire commenting “That’s the whole top of a willy. It’s not what I was expecting.” I’m not sure what she was expecting to see. If you cut off the end of someone’s penis, that is exactly what you will get. Perhaps this was a realisation for Claire of the harsh reality of this procedure. It is something that was so readily accepted by our culture until recently that it is difficult to fully comprehend what we have been doing, until coming face to face with the raw results.

The saddest side to this is that this boy will one day grow up and may find this video when looking through his father’s career. How will he feel when he sees that the most intimate part of his body not only taken from him, but then trivialised and disrespected in such a public way by someone who should have protected him?

For this shameful act, Ryan not only takes home the award but also a copy of the book ‘The Joy of Uncircumcising‘, in which he can learn about the functions of the foreskin, and how restoring his own foreskin could improve his sexual experiences. In fact, through reading this book and sharing his experience, Ryan has a chance to redeem himself. We all know people make mistakes. The growing movement against forced infant circumcision is well represented by parents who did not know the truth at the time they made the decision to circumcise their sons. If Ryan takes on the techniques outlined in this book (or more modern techniques from restoration forums) for a period of two months, and then shares his experience with his listeners, in Lance Armstrong style we will re-write history strike his name from the record books.

Who knows, like many men who have restored their foreskins and now understand what they were missing, Ryan too may join us in becoming an Intactivist and help protect the rights of future generations of baby boys.