By day, Brett Johnson, 45, works in a steel yard, but by evenings and weekends he marches to protect foreskins.
Johnson is the director of Cockfight, an organization that advocates banning circumcision. You may have seen his irreverent signs at parades or around town such as "A Grinch Stole My Inch" or "Let Your Sons Keep Their Lucky Charms."
Though the organization is based in Lawrence, Kansas, Cockfight and its volunteers travel across the Midwest to large events to spread the word. You may have seen them at a Mizzou football game or the Grand Pride Parade downtown. Johnson is also working to open satellite offices in Missouri to keep spreading the word.
How did you become anti-circumcision?
I first had the epiphany that circumcision is genital mutilation when I was actually reading an article, probably like 15 years ago, about female genital mutilation in Africa. And they surveyed some of the African women, and they reported that [the majority of] the women whose genitals were mutilated were happy that it was done to them. I made the connection that these women can be deceived about something so horrific. I thought to myself, could American men be similarly deceived about circumcision? [This is not the same article, but discusses the topic.]
Isn't female genital mutilation much more extreme?
It is, but the foreskin is not, as is popularly believed in American culture, just a useless piece of skin. That's one of the myths. It's full of nerves. It has something like three times as many nerves as the rest of the penis. It's the same kind of nerves that's in your fingertips. So when you cut that off, you're drastically changing the mechanics of sex as nature intended it.
How did you start Cockfight?
I traveled around with the Bloodstained Men. Their volunteers are from all over the country, and they just pick a different region or state of the country every couple of months, and protest mainly at street intersections. As we went around, we were reaching audiences of all ages. And I'd constantly hear from parents who would say, "Oh, if only I had known, I would not have circumcised my son."
I got frustrated hearing that all the time. I was like, "We need to be reaching people before they start families." We tried to come up with a brand that would appeal to young people that is kind of edgy. It's kind of irreverent. It's funny. I do feel like we are on the right track.
You have some interesting signs!
Our message can be depressing. It's not every day that a man finds out that the best part of his penis was stolen from him before he was a few days old, and before he could even object. But we do our best to make it fun and educate them on this issue as painlessly as possible. We've got one that's like, "Circumcision is unnecessary roughness" for football games. For Pride month we came up with "Celebrate, don't amputate. Stop circumcision."
What's your ultimate goal?
We do want to ban circumcision. We feel like it's such an egregious human rights violation because we are talking about a person's genitals, and to be cutting off a healthy body part is just unconscionable to us. It's going to require a mass movement. And so that's what we're trying to start.
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