Undoctrinate Yourself - #51 - Sounding the Alarm on Mass Genital Mutilation

Episode Date: April 26, 2026

In this episode, I sat down with Ben Howard (bitcoiner and men's health advocate) to discuss the pressing issue of mass genital mutilation, specifically circumcision. With over 70% of American men and boys circumcised non-consensually shortly after birth, and the myriad physical and mental health implications of this blood ritual, Ben has dedicated himself to shedding light on this issue and educating the public on the roots and harms of circumcision and solutions for those men and boys already affected.Resources:https://www.foregen.org/Restoration Beginners Guide:https://www.reddit.com/r/foreskin_restoration/comments/g4ghc2/welcome_read_to_get_started_restoring/Restoration Devices:https://www.reddit.com/r/foreskin_restoration/wiki/methods/Intact Global (Eric Clopper):https://www.intactglobal.org/

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Undoctrinate Yourself. Today I have a very special guest for you, somebody that I actually connected with at Bitcoin Prague when I was there in June. This is Ben Howard. He is the founder of Pay BTC, which he'll tell us all about. It's a Bitcoin based startup slash company that's based out of Australia that's really helping people to be able to plug in and get involved with Bitcoin at a pretty kind of like entry level so that people don't feel intimidated or, you know, overwhelmed with information that could be out there around self-custody and just like getting involved in Bitcoin. So doing the Lord's work in that area. Outside of that, we actually connected at Bitcoin Prague over a pretty interesting topic that a lot of people don't think about. And actually, when I first spoke with Ben, kind of the pitch was like, do you know about the mass genital mutilation that's going on? And I assumed that he meant like the trans issue and like the children getting these, you know, genital manipulation surgeries and hormone blockers and things. things like this, but it turned out that he was actually talking about circumcision. And then over the

next 30, 45 minutes, he kind of split my head open with all of these facts and figures around circumcision and the history of this practice and this ritual, frankly. And it completely changed my perspective on this topic. And I went down the rabbit hole myself. And I've just been kind of low-key horrified. Actually, not even low-key. I've just been horrified. The more I look into this, the more I just am sickened at the fact that so many baby boys are impacted by this and, and, you know, young boys and men in general, because it can happen at any age as well. So I'm really, really excited today to dive in with Ben about, you know, not only circumcision, but Bitcoin as well, his journey into Bitcoin and maybe we'll start there.

And then also his journey into getting interested in this circumcision issue as well and what he's doing to help, you know, support those. who have been affected. But first of all, just welcome to the show, Ben. I'm really excited to have you on and chat today. Thanks to have me on Alexis. I'm really grateful we're doing this. Yeah, yeah, me too. I think both really important topics, Bitcoin, circumcision and health freedom in general. It's also very much in the same vein as like, you know, decentralizing your finance. You also want to be decentralizing your health and thinking critically and asking good questions, getting curious. So I think the topics kind of weave in together really

nicely as well. Maybe we can start, just as a little bit of background, since I met you at Bitcoin Prague. How did you get interested in Bitcoin? Like, when did you get interested in Bitcoin? And how did you end up, you know, at Prague at the moment that we happened to, you know, intersect? And then we can start talking about the more health-related part of the story. Yeah, sure. So I guess I really got started in Bitcoin in 2013. It took me a couple years to really realize that it was important. You know, back then it was just magic internet money for a while and uh yeah definitely uh went down the rabbit hole and fully understood it in 2015 i feel um but yeah i don't know how i first discovered it uh it must have been somehow on the internet and yeah i can never really pinpoint the moment but the fact is i did

discover it and it happened and then i learned the truth um but yeah it's it's been a journey um watching it evolve over the decade plus. When did you get interested in building out like a startup or tech or business in this space realizing that like this could really help other people, what motivated you to want to do that? Yeah, so I started out as a UX UI designer, so user interfaces and apps and brand identity and stuff like that. I worked full time in 2016 for a year and then I realized full-time work was not for me.

I couldn't have a boss. So left that and traveled around the world for two years. And I lived in Berlin for three months in late 2018. And during that time, I was going, okay, my savings are dwindling. I don't have an income. And I probably need to figure that one out pretty soon. Otherwise, I'm not going to be able to do this fun stuff anymore. So, yeah, I came back home.

Over there, I decided to start a Bitcoin exchange. I came back home and built it and then launched it in March, 19 and it wasn't your regular Bitcoin exchange. It was a self-custodial, privacy-centric exchange that essentially prioritizes all the things that other exchanges didn't seem to do. You know, real Bitcoin adoption, so holding your own keys, education, so teaching people how to actually do the best practices and secure their wealth for the long term. You know, we don't encourage trading. We encourage accumulation, long-term holding. all that sort of stuff.

And, you know, most importantly, we do manual KYC, so it's all offline. And, yeah, no third party's involved. So people appreciate those elements and also the minimalistic approach to the platform as well. But, yeah, that was all. Did. Yeah. When did pay BTC launch? March 2019.

Got it. And is that just for Australians, or is it, like, a global thing? Yeah, so it's for Australians at the moment. Um, yeah. Very good. I'm sure I know I have some listeners over there so they can benefit from that. So, okay, your company launched in 2019. Have you been going to Bitcoin conferences for a while? Quite a while. Yeah. And quite a few. So kind of lost count of how many I've been to. Um, but yeah, I think I've been going to conferences since 2017. Okay. Amazing. Yeah, I was really, so Prague wasn't the first one I had been to and I felt like

the type of people that gravitate towards. going are just like very, you know, like-minded, open-minded, curious, just passionate people, which is just like my tribe. So I'm really excited to continue going now and connecting and speaking as well. And hopefully you'll be able to speak also next year at Prague. That would be amazing. Yeah, hopefully. I've been speaking with Matthias. And yeah, I think openings start in October, if I'm not mistaken. Yep. Yep. So we'll see how that goes. Yeah, hopefully. I am planning to get an actual spot versus being recruited five minutes in advance to speak on stage this time, which was fine. Like it was still great, but in some ways, it's kind of better to not have notice

than I didn't have time to get in my head about it. I was like, I'm just doing this. Exactly, right? Sometimes just on the fly is the best. Yeah, exactly. So I was connecting with actually Kevin McCurnum, who's also been on the podcast at the time that you were connecting with Jack and then Jack pulled me and he was like, you need to talk to Ben and you need to have him on the podcast. And so here we are. And maybe with that, let's start pivoting into like the more health-oriented part of the story and related to genital mutilation circumcision. I mean, maybe to start how you got interested in this issue and then we can branch into talking about, you know, the history and the statistics around this and also, of course,

the solutions, which will be a good way to kind of give people hope because I feel like it can be very disconcerting and disheartening to learn about some really terrible things without having a way forward per se, but I do think there actually is, you know, a potential way forward here. So I'm excited to share that with the listeners as well. Absolutely. So, yeah, I first opened up about this on One Spitten, Daniel Prince's podcast. And the response was really, really powerful. And it showed me how many men are quietly carrying this.

You know, and when someone breaks the silence, the, you know, opening up to it quite suddenly, which was really good to see. I've spoken, as you know, about Bitcoin freedom and systemic corruption and how that works through Fiat currency and,

but yeah, this is the most personal and most confronting topic for me to do publicly. You know, my story briefly, I guess, would be that I was circumcised when I was seven

without consent. And, you know, the reason was Fiamosis. which is a, you know, slightly tight foreskin, which happens. It's very common about 50% of boys get some form of tight foreskin when they're growing and developing. Wait, just a brief aside, does it seem a little bit counterintuitive to circumcise somebody that already has a tight foreskin? Or am I not thinking about this correctly? Yeah, it is counterintuitive because, you know, the skin is still growing.

And then if you do cut it off, it makes it even tighter. So, yeah, it's very counterintuitive. Okay. But yeah, the medical establishment is heavily misinformed for certain reasons, which we'll get into. But yeah, that's my story in a nutshell. You know, they took me to this place and then same day, just for a checkup, and then same day they managed to separate me from my parents and, you know, get me on a bed and put me on a general anesthetic.

And the last thing I remember is counting down from 10 and getting to about 7. But yeah, it was not ideal. and yeah the people involved I've managed to uncover some documents and stuff and you know even the consent form wasn't properly signed and all that sort of stuff so it's quite interesting to see how sloppy the actual operation was and what about like so immediately after and like in the days and weeks following like what was your experience like yeah so you know I thought it was normal you know I was told that it was getting fixed and I I wasn't really told that I was going to surgery.

It was just getting fixed, you know. And, yeah, it was painful. You know, urination and just general life was painful and everything was sensitive. So I didn't really understand what was going on. But as I got older, I started to wake up to the bigger systems at play, like the medical, cultural, institutional stuff, how it all sort of came to be

and where the ancient origins of this practice, I don't really want to call it a practice, but it's more like a... Blood ritual? Yeah, or a step down from child sacrifice. Yeah, it comes from some pretty ancient stuff. And it's been perpetuated through, you know, tradition and habit. You know, people do it because they had it done to them and stuff like that. So it becomes normalized.

And, you know, what I realize when I look deeper is it, wasn't tradition. It was mutilation. You know, the more I learned, the more furious I became. And it was not just at what was taken, but how hidden and normalized it still is. You know? 100%. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I was, so I went down the rabbit hole in this after we spoke and thought it was just so ironic that the World Health Organization characterizes

female genital mutilation as like a, you know, a crisis, a human rights violation. and yet simultaneously condones the same thing, essentially, to happen to, you know, baby boys who also, you know, can't consent. It would be one thing if this was consenting adults that were, you know, having the opportunity or the option to do this, but this is not the case. Yeah, if this were done to girls at birth, the world would burn. But because it's boys, we just call it parental choice. So it's highly, highly, you know, sexist. Yeah, it is. And with regards to like the roots, so I mean, from what I've read, this is like one of the most ancient medical, I don't know if I want to even call medical procedures, but like most ancient body modification procedures that have like been documented. And it's honestly pretty interesting to see how like there is a lot of occult things that influence even modern society and like don't actually have a rationale for. But I'm curious. Like,

In Australia, what are the circumcision rates compared to the U.S.? Because apparently here it's like upwards of even close to 80%. Yeah, I believe it's 81 or so percent of living men in the U.S. are circumcised. But in Australia, I believe it's more around the 30 to 40 percent. But the current circumcision rates are slightly lower than they used to be, which is good, like the new circumcision rates. But yeah, over the next decade, it's estimated another 200 million men are going to be circumcised at the current rates.

And a lot of people say it's tradition, you know, and it's always been done, but so is footbinding, you know. And so is clitoridectomy. We don't protect traditions that violate bodies. Exactly. And the confusing thing when I was looking into this as well is like, it would be one thing if it was predominantly in like, you know, Muslim and Jewish countries, like people who have these traditional practices and that's part of their like religious right of passage or whatever versus like a medical procedure. But in the U.S. it has been really like propped up as a like

justifiable medical procedure that even insurance covers, I guess, in some cases. I'm not entirely sure about that piece. But the fact that, you know, our country is rooted in Christian if anything, obviously there's freedom of to practice whatever religion, but as a Christian nation, it seems preposterous that we have over 80% of men in this country being circumcised and it being classified as a medical procedure. It just seems extremely nefarious. And we can maybe talk about it based on like what your research has shown as well. But like I was looking into like Kellogg and like other people around that same time period who are basically trying to more or less like make men, you know, just basically have no libido. Basically domesticating the male population is

kind of the gist that I got out of it. But what did you see when you began looking into this? Yeah, absolutely. So that's all accurate. You know, Kellogg was not the best human being. And yeah, he's essentially numbed a population with these bland foods. And back in the day, to circumcise boys without anesthesia in order to stop them from ever even wanting to touch their body, little alone have enjoyment or any sexual pleasure. So very, very dark person. I'm surprised all of these products are so far reaching and so entrenched in society. But another point I wanted to make is that this is not rare. It's a mass-scale genital mutilation event. It's been ongoing for, you know, hundreds of years and especially quite a lot recently.

There's over 1.4 billion men alive today that have been mutilated, and almost all of them are without consent. You know, they've had it done to them before they've even been able to make a choice about it. And it's usually done with a smile in hospitals and religious ceremonies like Bristmaa. And to get into what the actual impact is, you know, 50 to 70% of the peanut skin tissue is removed. And about 10 to 20,000 nerve endings are severed that connect directly to the brain. And the specialized structures of the foreskin is lost as well. So the ridge band, the frenulum, the mucosa. Everything that makes the penis a functional sexual organ is essentially removed.

And you're left with a numb, mutilated, exposed. dried stick, essentially, compared to a fully functional, you know, sexual organ. So, yeah, it's, you get reduced sensation, sexual dysfunction, identity trauma, lifelong grief with no language to express it because nobody is accepting that it's a, you know, a bad thing. And that leaves people quite isolated and they can feel very, you know, alone in this because nobody accepts their pain and their loss. They just get told that it's normal and that they need to move on and accept the state that

their body is in, which is an unnatural, you know, mutilated state, you know. Yeah, I had so many ideas for like, at least like library research topics came up in my head as I was reading about this issue because I was thinking on one hand, such a strong stressor for a very young baby for sure has lasting effects on the brain and particularly the amygdala so like this stress responsive part of the brain that is really attuned both in utero and like immediately after birth as well attuned to that environment to understand okay am I going to have to be able to persist in a very stressful environment or I'm in a safe environment and that strong

stressful experience that such a young age could you know in theory could could lead to hypertrophy of the amygdala for a lifetime, which would increase hyper-reactivity and, you know, mood disorders, mood swings, like an inability to have, like, quote-unquote, self-control, let's say, these types of things. And also just, like, just general feeling of safety versus being in this constant state of survival, basically. I don't know if any studies have been done on, like, amygdala size across circumcised and uncircumcised populations, but I imagine there could certainly be something there. Yeah.

In other words, it's, you know, permanent brain damage. You know, we're inflicting on all these baby boys. And it needs to stop. We need to stop accepting it. Yeah, I have one of my good friends as a NICU nurse, and she was telling me about how when the baby boys go to be circumcised, they're basically like strapped down on these plastic, like, trays. and, you know, they're given local anesthesia,

but oftentimes apparently it's not, they don't wait long enough for it to actually kick in. So they're literally like screaming bloody murder while it's happening and just like unconsolably crying afterwards and whimpering. And it's almost unfathomable. Like I feel like if I saw that, I would just like, I don't know, burn the hospital down or something because it's unconscionable what's happening. and yet it's the status quo.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, people, the medical establishments claim it's cleaner and it's safer for STIs, but why do in tech countries have lower STI rates and better sexual health? You know, they can't answer that question. And the studies that they did to support these claims of less HIV were all skewed. The data was completely skewed. If you look into it, you'll find the truth. They cherry-picked the data.

and excluded anything that went against the narrative. And then a lot of men that I speak to, some of them completely shut down and go, I'm fine. It's never been a problem for me, but that's exactly how trauma hides. You know, I'm not saying you're broken. I'm saying you deserve to know what was taken.

You know, you deserve to know the truth. And that's why I'm here. Yeah, exactly. And also, like, because you didn't consent to that procedure and it happened at such a young age, you have no idea what you're missing out on because you never experienced it, right? So it's really hard to say, I'm fine, I'm fine

when you don't actually have a comparison point. And what I will say, though, is, like, I made a carousel on Instagram a couple weeks ago of, like, a lot of the information that I found when I was digging into this. And by and large, the response was mostly mothers who were horrified that they did it, mothers who are grateful that they decided not to do it,

men who said that they could vouch for like loss of sensitivity and dysregulation and a couple men who were like, you know, I'm fine and it's not an issue. But I would say by and large, it was mostly people who were genuinely concerned and alarmed at the issue, which is pretty encouraging. Like, I didn't get very much pushback on it. So that is giving me a little bit of hope at least. Yeah, yeah. And there's, there is, you know, definitely hope, which we'll get into. But yeah, this conversation definitely needs to be unavoidable. Yeah, completely. And there was one other interesting kind of theory that popped in my mind when I was looking

at the different demographics and countries who are primarily affected that I'd like to get your take on. So I was thinking about, you know, if we're thinking about like nervous system, dysregulation and stress and like poor self-control, let's say, in circumcised men versus uncircumcised men, then I was looking at the maps. And I was thinking, I wonder if there's a relationship between. circumcision rates and the war hawkishness of a country, like how eager and willing they are to come into conflict either domestically or with foreign nations. And I'm like, there could be something there.

Because it's like the Middle East, Israel, the U.S., and these are like hotbeds, right? And if we look at, you know, Northern Europe and China, for example, which they basically have no circumcision at all, we see much more kind of just chilled out populations, I would say. There's, of course, still some level of deception happening and political moves happening, but it's not so flagrant. Yeah, well, I believe circumcision really attacks the spiritual center of the body, right? It's the male sexual center, right? And when you take that away, you create a huge imbalance in the human, right, or the man. and who knows the extended effects of what that's actually doing,

but the pattern is there, you're not wrong. You can see clearly on the map that more war is correlated with more circumcision. So there's definitely something there, and it's worth looking into to see if there's actually something we can, you know, construct that people can then go, yeah, this is actually the case. Yeah, and something you mentioned to me when we met in Prague that I was in disbelief over and when I looked into it, I just couldn't believe that it was actually true, was that in the traditional Jewish ceremony that the moyle would put his mouth on the baby's penis and suck the blood off. Like, I had never heard that in my life. And actually, when I learned about that and then I was posting in my stories about this, like, some people were reaching out being like, this is anti-Semitic.

And I'm like, I wish this was anti-Semitic propaganda. but this is actually factual and was done up until the 1800s and it's still done in very like, you know, more the strict subsets of the Jewish population. It's done all over the world in hotels and it's a public event. So everyone attends it has canapes and drinks while they're watching their child get mutilated. And not only do they do it in such a brutal fashion, but the act itself, it's this giant celebration almost of mutilation. You know, that this old man essentially peels back the foreskin with his fingernails it from the fused state that it's meant to be in until you're in an older age, rips it back with his fingernails, and then slices it off with a knife and then sucks on it.

So, yeah, it's completely disgusting and beyond anyone's possible imagination when it comes to an evil act to do to a, you know, living baby. Honestly, when I came across Brisbane Allah, I couldn't even fathom that human beings on this planet are doing this, not only doing it, but are encouraged to do it and are supported by these hotels that are supporting these. events and other venues. I just, I have no comprehension of how that's even possible in this day and age for, you know, mutilation to occur in a public setting in these countries. Wow. And also kind of ironically and sickeningly, one of the only reasons that I believe that it has become less popular over time is due to the transmission of like herpes virus to the baby from the Moyle's mouth, which was able to actually kill some babies, but could also just make them very sick.

So it was simply for like a sanitation reasons that it kind of tapered off versus just the mere like evil of the act itself. Like that isn't even factored into the equation. And one thing I was thinking also when I was reading about that is like, would you want to worship a God that requires you to do this to a helpless baby? Like what are we doing here?

Like nobody's questioning this. It just seems. This seems like the most occult type of ritual that you can imagine, not something that would come out of like a civilized, you know, religion that is still practiced to this day. Yeah, yeah. Well, the fact is that the American Pediatrics Association has been heavily taken over or populated with Jewish actors.

So they, you know, push the agenda of mass circumcision because it is part of their religion. It is part of sort of the rite of passage into Judaism. So it's not the only source of circumcision. There's other religions that push it as well, but also just cultural norms and traditions. You know, I had it done to me, so I'm going to do it to my child. Some people just do that, right? It's normal, you know, all that sort of stuff. It's not normal.

Mutilation is never normal. And we need to stop accepting it. Yeah, I think if mothers who were, to give birth to male children were even to just watch a single circumcision, they would probably never consider it ever again as even an option. Because I think there's like, obviously you just gave birth to this being and you don't want it to be in any more pain and suffering that it already is going to experience coming into the world just as part of being human.

But like imagine just the unnecessary suffering and potentially lifelong damage that you're causing just by trying to fit into a cultural norm. Yeah. And for people who say they're fine and, you know, they've never had an issue with it, I asked them, you do know that you're going to live the rest of your life in this state, right? There's no way you're going to know what it is going to feel like to actually have sex, you know, to actually experience the full human sexual experience. You'll live and die not knowing what that feels like. And it's been taken from you by force, you know, without your consent. I don't know how people aren't more upset about this because just that alone should matter more than anything they're doing in their life. You know, bodily autonomy is everything. If you don't have ownership and control of your body, you don't know anything else in the world. Everything else is taxed and confiscated and controlled and regulated. But they're attacking our bodies.

They're taking our biological freedom. And it's disgraceful, disgusting. very dark. It's pretty ironic that the left here in the U.S. claims to be all about bodily autonomy, but they don't say a word on this issue, even though there are some voices that are not really amplified here that are talking about this,

that I've found on X and other platforms that have been actually bringing awareness to this issue for a while. But you know, you would think it got picked up, it would get picked up by the left, but clearly they just have their own agenda around what they're going to cherry pick to support and talk about. Yeah, this isn't a fringe issue.

Male genital mutilation is the largest, largest unacknowledged human rights violation in modern history. It's beyond what people, it's so deeply buried in people's minds because of the trauma that they're in denial and they push it out of their consciousness. But as soon as they start to look at it and accept it for what it is, that's when things can change. Absolutely. I actually remember one of my colleagues reached out after I was talking about this issue online and said that one of his mentors was talking about circumcision and described it as like the original mother wound that a boy will experience coming into the world that really kind of breaks down that relationship of trust because once that has happened that the mother's allowed that to happen, that there is this kind of irreconcilable break in the relationship.

that can happen at just like a subconscious level. Yeah, I've experienced that myself. So my mother was actually the person who sort of triggered it to happen, you know, suggested the consultation and went along with it. So I found that I've got a much deeper relationship with my dad rather than my mom. And a way I could tell is I've got her full name in my contacts and I've got my dad just as dad. And that really hit me when I realized that. And I was like, why is that?

And I said, oh, maybe this is the case, right? Maybe I don't have that deeper connection that I should have because of decisions she made on my behalf as a child to mutilate me. Yeah, that's a betrayal. Even if, of course, it's out of ignorance and, you know, they think they're doing it. Yeah, it's not. The worst evils are done with the best intentions, right? that's just the fact the matter and it's it's very dark and they were tricked by the system they were told that it was healthy they were told that it had to be done otherwise i'd lose my penis

but that's not possible nobody's ever lost a penis due to tights foreskin like it's not physically possible body can't do that to itself we can't just lose its penis so it's all lies and i'm seeing through as many as i can i'm still understanding uncovering more lies as I dive deeper. But yeah, I really do have to reiterate that male genital mutilation is the largest unacknowledged human rights violation in modern history. There is no roundabout way of saying it. It's just the fact.

And people need to start accepting that. Otherwise, it will never stop. And it'll just continue. And the suffering will pass generation onto generation. it's a war crime against humanity. And it's a huge industry as well. Did you read the book or heard about the book? I think it's called This Penis Business that's about circumcision.

And it was something that came up when I was looking into this. But they talked about some of the figures around how much money hospitals and physicians are making from routinely doing these procedures. And it's pretty crazy. And the other thing that I don't have much data. on, but I would not be surprised to hear if there's actually an economy for foreskins. Like if something is being done with them and they're being harvested in some way and used and repurposed, kind of like the placentas are as well after birth. Apparently the placental stem cells are being used in, you know, different skin care products and like other, you know,

stem cell therapies as well. So do you know anything? Like, have you heard anything about like a foreskin economy or do you think that's something that's not likely happening? I believe it is happening. Yeah, there's even, you know, mainstream media has covered it. You know, this woman, I forgot her name, but she's getting the foreskin facial, you know, and basically it's baby foreskin stem cells injected into her face, and that's what she likes to do to look younger. So if she's doing it, I can only imagine how many other people are doing it.

But yeah, what happens to this? these pieces of our body when they're removed. I doubt they go straight into the bin. You know, these are specialized tissues with highly enervated structures and enzymes and cells that can be used in the medical establishment. So I highly doubt that they're completely thrown away like that. Yeah, I also highly doubt it. And maybe one of the, I'll give my friend who's a NICU nurse a little assignment. I'll see if she can do a little bit of digging and see what happens to these because I'm sure it's happening all the time in the hospital and, you know, she can only do so much to, like, educate, you know, patients and new parents on the truth around

this issue. But I do know that at least she and a couple of my other nurse friends at least will tell people, you know, this is just a cosmetic thing. There's no sound research showing that this is related to health in any way. But I think we need to go even a step further and be like, there is no utility for this procedure whatsoever. It is, you know, completely cultural and religious in nature. And if that is, you know, not relevant to you, then there's no reason to even consider it. Yeah, it's all bad. There is not one good thing about circumcision. It's like saying, you know, cutting off your hand is a good thing to do because at least you won't be able to break your hand, you know, it's the same sort of logic. You know, they say cut it off so it doesn't

get infected or cut it off so it doesn't get dirty, right? It's the same, you know, just learn how to clean your body, learn how to do basic body maintenance, accept your body for what it is, do not try and, you know, mutilate it and change it in order to fit into a cultural norm. We need to have intact men believing that and knowing the truth that they are perfect as is and they don't need to cut half their penis off to fit into society. It's just insanity. Yeah. And I remember reading something about back in the original Olympics when I guess the people from the Middle East who were of Jewish faith were going to represent their nation states.

And they wanted to be seen as like a distinct from the other people who were competing. And then having the circumcision was a way to distinguish because they were competing nude. So I don't, I don't know. Have you heard anything about that? I don't know if that's actually the roots of the procedure itself or maybe just more the widespread use of it. But I think in ancient Egypt, there was also some recollection that they may have been doing this as well. Yeah, so there's a few cases, especially during Roman times. There was some circumcision during Roman times.

And then when everything changed and they realized that, you know, the glands needed to be covered and all that sort of stuff, people would actually attach rocks to the end to actually grow their foreskin's back to, you know, cover it up during battles and stuff like that. So, you know, that leads into some of the solutions that we'll get into. But, yeah, there's been a lot of this happening in many different cultures in many different ways. But, you know, the type of circumcision has changed over the years. You know, it used to just be the tip of the foreskin. But now modern circumcision removes the entire foreskin, including some of the outer foreskin as well. So there's basically no tissue left. It's just the external foreskin and the glands.

And the glands just mostly have sensory responses to pain. They don't actually have pleasure responses. So all the tissue that was designed to deliver pleasure have been excised. And it's by design. It's not a mistake. It's not a mistake. this is all by design similar to the fiat system that we're living in 100%. And to reiterate, something you mentioned earlier, this is a highly specialized tissue in the same way that we have, you know, liver tissue and immune cells and gallbladder and brain tissue, neurons. Like, it's a highly specialized tissue with a specific function. It's not just skin. Like, it's a special type of tissue that has, you know, like you mentioned, a lot of sensory functions, tons of nerves,

mechanosensing, like there's a lot going on there that is, you know, it's not just disposable. And this is like a recurring theme in Western and allopathic medicine, but just maybe medicine, centralized medicine in general, is that like organs and tissues are expendable and you can just cut them off and cut them out and like, you know, take this drug instead or, you know, just become a forever client or patient of, you know, the system and don't worry about it. Like in the same way that a lot of people will go to the doctor with abdominal pain. they'll take their gallbladder out and they still have abdominal pain. Like it wasn't the gallbladder.

I know so many people who had their gallbladder removed in their early teen years and it was, you know, for naught. There was no actual benefit of getting that out. And in fact, there's a lot of harms to removing organs and tissues. And there's, I think it also almost just stems back to like this battle of humans with nature, thinking that we can somehow outsmart nature when it's already, like, the body's already been perfected. Like, if we come at it from that perspective, like,

then everything is sacred. You don't want to cut any part of that off. It's serving a unique function. And I think modern medicine just does not have any reverence for the sanctity of life and of the body whatsoever. Yeah, we've stopped respecting the human body. We've started altering it without any sort of consideration to the human being itself. And another way I sort of explain it to men who are circumcised and just to give them an idea of what they're, missing out on. There's a little exercise you can do, which is touching the back of your hand versus touching the palm of your hand. There's certain nerves called myzenous corpuscles in the palm and the fingers that are also the main sort of sensory system in the foreskin. But once the foreskin is removed, you lose all of that fine touch receptor activity.

but yeah a good way is to rub your back your hands together and you can't really feel much data or detail and then you rub your fingertips together and you get a lot more information and that's because of those mycinoscopusals alone they do that and give more data to the brain and more pleasure and more more regulation of the sexual response and i should also mention that uh women also suffer from this greatly too it's not just the men even though the women are not mutilated, when they have sex with a mutilated partner, the friction is, you know, orders of magnitude greater than it should have been because the foreskin is a bilayer tissue and it glides in and out on itself. And the reason it does that is to reduce the pain

a woman experiences during sexual intercourse, but also increase the pleasure because it allows the male to, you know, connect with the woman more, you know, without having to create all this friction and all this damage to the vagina. But, yeah, there's a lot of women that are suffering from partners that, you know, can't feel anything. So they have to be much more violent and much more aggressive in their sexual response to even start to have a hint of any sensation. And yeah, this greatly affects women's mental health and sexual well-being, not just men. Yeah, you know, that's a really good point. And I'm thinking, like, whenever you have nerves in general, like, the nerves are a way to sense your environment, but also a way to sense

other beings in your environment as well. So, like, I think if you're removing 10 to 20,000 specialized nerve endings that are able to connect with another person's nervous system and be able to have this heightened level of sensation, so there's like a dynamic interplay between the two people that actually creates like a very unique experience during sex. Like you're totally missing out on that like you said. And then you might need to ramp up the intensity like you said. And then that can become uncomfortable for the woman like you were mentioning. And so I think that's a really important issue.

I mean, when it comes to those nerve endings, does that relate to like how much skin is removed or no matter how much skin is removed are the same amount going to be lost? So there's different types of self-concision. there's five levels. I went through the worst, the punishment cut, so level one. And yeah, level one is basically, everything's gone. There's no sort of inner foreskin remnant, and you've just got a very tiny amount of sensation.

But then, yeah, depending on the type of device to use, whether it was a plastic bowel or, you know, manual surgery with scissors and a knife, which I went through the scissors and the knife so they're able to pull the skin and actually you know surgically remove everything and you think that would have any sort of sensation but now

mostly it's Plasty Bell and other things like that so some men have like you know a third to 20% of their inner foreskin remaining but because it's been severed the nerves are there but they don't have a way to

really connect through the scar tissue that's being created. So, you know, they may have slightly more skin, but that skin is heavily degraded from the trauma that took place. So really, it's just all bad. As soon as you start slicing the penis, it's never the same again. That makes sense. And so to talk about something you alluded to a moment ago, with regards to like back in the day, they were using like rocks to stretch the skin. So can you talk a little bit about the like, stretching modalities that people will do and like how efficacious it is relative to like doing nothing at all or maybe relative to some other approaches if anything yeah so i guess we'll move into the next part which is the hope you know that this isn't completely a hopeless situation there is

solutions um you know one of them is restoration uh it's not a complete solution but it's a way to improve your sexual performance and function um So restoration essentially is manual tension, which triggers mitosis. Mitosis is when the existing cells divide and duplicate, creating more skin. But it doesn't create what was taken, it creates more of what you have. So depending on what you have left, you can create more of that, whatever the remnant skin you have. It can take three, five, even ten years to actually fully cover the glands. with the skin flap. It is not a foreskin. It is not functional like a foreskin. It doesn't have

the mucosa. It doesn't have the ridge band or the mycernus corpuscles. It's just a skin flap. But it protects the glands. It helps them to rejuvenate and become an internal organ again, rather than an external organ, which they were never meant to be. Because the glands becomes keratinized, right, once it's exposed for all great time. So you lose sensitivity. Is that correct? Yeah. So the more keratinized it becomes, the less sensitivity you have because it's a thick layer of, you know, dead skin essentially that forms over the glands so they become, you know, very numb.

And so does, it happens to the rest of the inner foreskin if you have any left because that's meant to be internal as well. It's meant to be a mucosa tissue. So as soon as it's exposed to air, it's like keeping your mouth open all the time, essentially. Yeah. And that's what it's like after you get circumcised. It's like having an open mouth, but down. there while it slowly desensitized and keratinizes to protect itself. Some men don't do very well when they get circumcised later in life. There's a book called A's for Alex and he was a very intelligent mid-20s guy based out of Canada I believe and he was traveling, living his life, having a great time. He was the happiest kid alive and

And eventually he decided to go see a urologist about his tight foreskin because it had been bothering him for a while. And his computer broke, so he wasn't able to do proper research. So he was doing everything on his phone. But he went into this urologist and trusted him. And the urologist said you absolutely have to remove it. There's no other way. We can book you in for an appointment next week.

And he went ahead with that. And he trusted this. establishment, right? He trusted this person that he was telling him the truth because why wouldn't he, right? He's been told his whole life to trust the medical professionals. He did say he did some research on his phone, but it was very limited and it was Google, so it was very heavily, you know, censored and controlled information from the medical establishment itself, which was very supportive. He went ahead with it and he instantly regretted it afterwards and he couldn't stand the low level of stimulation. all the time because everything was exposed to his underwear when walking around and moving in

normal life. It was constant low-level stimulation that he could not ever escape. And unfortunately, he was not informed enough about the hope parts of it, you know, how he can restore and for Jen, which we'll get into. But he chose to end his life a year later. Oh, my gosh. How old was he when he had the procedure? I think he was 21. Oh, my God. For memory, that might not be correct, but I think he was 21. And yeah, his mom was left the note about why he did this. And it was very, very clearly written in his, you know, intelligent way. And yeah, it scared me because he was very, very, very, very, intelligent you know he had a he had a brilliant mind and so he you know decided just to opt out

and not participate in this this mutilated state he wanted to to move on and um yeah i don't blame him but i don't think it's a solution it's it's it's giving up it's it's it's doing exactly what they want you to do um death stops the program it stops the the suffering but it all also stops everything else. And I wish there was someone there to tell him that because it's so final and you don't get a second chance. So, yeah, A is for Alex is the book and I highly recommend checking it out. If you want to know, like, a single case of this act, and then you can only imagine how many other cases there are when there's 1.4 billion plus. men worldwide living in this state as well. Some do we understand what's happened. Some don't,

but it's only a matter of time until they actually figure it out. You know, most men know that something's different, that something's not right, but they don't know the full extent, and it's a slow discovery process. But the people that get circumcised later in life, They know the difference between being intact and being mutilated. And that's what happened to Alex. And that's what scares me because I don't know what I'm missing. And Alex obviously did, and he chose to end his life over that. So I'm sort of grateful that I wasn't done at a later age and went through what he went through.

But at the same time, yeah, it does scare me that he knows something that I don't. And he chose to make that decision. It seems like it would be very interesting to, like, I'm sure there is probably support groups out there for men who were circumcised later in life. But I'd be so curious to hear, like, their, like, them recount their experiences of, like, the differences before and after and, like, what they noticed. Not only, like, within their sexual function, but in their neurological function. Because I imagine with Alex, it wasn't simply just that, like, he felt despair over the contrast. It was probably a physiological response to those nerves. being, you know, basically severed and killed in a way that was creating a change in his neurochemistry

that would drive him to literally end his entire life. Like, it seems like that should be something that's studied and not something written off just, it's not like just a mental health. Like, I feel like mental health is physiological health. It has, you can't separate them from each other. And given that that procedure is so invasive in life changing in many ways, like, I think we really need to understand the implications of that. Yeah. Yeah. And again, if he had these sources of hope like restoration and for Jan, he probably wouldn't have made that decision to do that.

But the fact is, he just didn't. And if he did, he just probably didn't have the patience. But yeah, it was mainly the low-level stimulation that he couldn't get over. Like his entire life was that. But if he knew to retain or cover the glands or something like that, that could have really helped him escape that low-level stimulation. Are there like specific tools that people have developed to help with that process or is it kind of still pretty like, I don't know, basic in the approach or are there people actually working on solutions with regards to helping with the regeneration? Yeah, so there's a wide range of tools.

There's the foreskinned air. There's the TLC Togger. There's a bunch of different restoration devices that you can use to stretch the skin over time. you can wear these for you know four to eight hours a day whatever you sort of want to do some people do 12 hours a day which is quite a lot it's quite the endeavor becomes your life essentially it can it can get quite tiring i did try it for a few years but now i've decided personally to wait for four gens procedure and just to get into more of the hope sort of thing um 4-gen is real.

They are progressing and they're entering, they're aiming to enter human clinical trials later this year, worst case early next year. But they've been running for over a decade now. And the team behind it is incredibly passionate at providing an escape for people who are in this state and not just, you know, a mild solution, but a fully functional foreskin

with all of its nerve endings and functions and sensation. They're using an extracellular matrix, which has been decelerized. This is from cadaver tissue or donor tissue from people who have consented to the process. There's a large supply of, on four skins available. So this is how they're able to source that,

but they have to specifically source ones that have been verified as consensual. Or if it's from cadaver tissue, it's, you know, the person's already deceased, so they're not needing it anymore. And they use, they attach this extracellular matrix to the penis and then use stem cells to then allow the,

the skin to grow into itself and actually grow your own foreskin, which is very close to what would have been there, because it's your own DNA and own cells going into that extra cell in a matrix to create what was missing, which is bizarre. And people think that it's not achievable, but we've regenerated retinas and many other parts of the body.

Like we've done hand transplants. You know, if we can do these things, why can't we reattach the foreskin and have it grow as it should have been. So, you know, they've been working really hard. They've gone through animal trials, rat trials, sheep trials. And they're working with some of the best minds in this space from all around the world. So they're an amazing organization and they do need support. They're relying completely on individual donors and supporters.

and they're currently running on around, you know, 20 to 30 grand a month, which is really, really low when you think about the scale of the issue and the amount of capital that's actually being allocated to this issue is incredibly disconnected with reality. Not enough people know about 4Gen, not enough people know about the problem itself. We need to make sure that changes and give people a roxylose. sense of hope when they come into this information rather than just, you know, stretch it over five years and, you know, you'll be okay. It's not the same as getting it back and getting what was taken. Yeah, and the thing about the naysayers who say that it's not going to be possible,

I mean, when it comes to specialized tissues like that, especially once it's like actually given and like surgically applied to an individual, the environment itself is going to really help to regulate. I mean, once your own cells can, and the stem cells help to stimulate your own cells to go into that tissue, gene expression is primarily dictated by the environment that that tissue's in. So there's going to be, you know, relative proximity to blood flow versus to, you know, the external environment, temperature, you know, a variety of factors will help stimulate the gene expression needed for the mechanosensors, for example, or, you know, whatever that specialized tissue is meant to express, I think it is feasible. I mean, my background's molecular biology and

obviously not an expert on this specific tissue, but just given my understanding of like tissue regeneration in general and developmental biology, like that is really dictated by its position on the body. So once it's applied, I do see that that should be possible actually to get that tissue to express the genes in the way that an actual foreskin would. and the other really good thing about that too is that like unlike organ transplants where you need to take rejection meds for the rest of your life this is actually your own cells so you don't have to you know take immunosuppressants in order to keep that tissue on your body in a longstanding way yeah yeah they initially were going to go with a skin bearing method to have the body fully become familiar with the ECM the extracellium the extracellium matrix but they figured out a way to actually skip that step entirely so they can just attach it directly. So that's what they're going to be going into the human clinical trials with, which is fantastic. It's just a whole extra step that we didn't need to go through.

And plus not having to have rejection meds is a huge plus and makes it way less risky. Totally. And so are they already recruiting for the human stuff or is that coming down the pipeline? Yeah, so they've already released a sound-up form if you want to apply for it. the human clinical trials. I personally did. I think it'd be the least risky thing I've ever done in my life compared to getting a cut off. It's nothing. So yeah, the human clinical trials are not for everyone. You know, there's certain risks you're taking, but, you know, if you put your hand up, you're going to be pioneering the future of this space and the future of this human rights frontier. You know, we're taking back bodily autonomy on a mass scale.

And once this procedure has been standardized and spread far and wide, that 1.4 billion people will start to reduce. And hopefully the people that are getting circumcised will start to see that people are reversing this procedure. And why are they doing that? Oh, maybe it's not the right thing to do. It will all sort of lead to that reversal of this normalization. it'll become abnormal to be mutilated rather than being normally mutilated. It doesn't make any sense to say that. But yeah, the bigger mission is that this conversation really needs to be unavoidable.

It's been hidden by shame, silence, and medicalized language for far too long. But more men are waking up and I see it in my immediate circle, but also other people's circle that I know. And leaders really need to speak up. I had a conversation with, I was really fortunate to have a conversation with Jack Dorsey in Madeira last year, during Bitcoin Atlantis.

And he heard me over about five minutes, just on the conference floor there. And, yeah, he was looking in my eyes and I could hear that he was really hearing me. I didn't have much time to explain it. I didn't have this whole, you know, Aaron Haff to explain it with you. But he did hear me.

I believe he understood that it was a big problem, widespread, and needs to stop and there needs to be a solution. But, you know, he needs that other touch point to sort of, because his life is very busy, I'd imagine, and, you know, things can get pretty crazy. But he definitely did hear me. So I hope he runs into this podcast. and I hope if he doesn't run into it directly, that someone shares it with him,

you know, someone that knows him, because it would be really good to have a conversation with him to see what's really possible here, how we could scale for Jen even more to actually bring this procedure to a wider array of companies rather than just trying to do it in this small scale with 30 grand a month. It's just, you know, I'm amazed and I'm actually

deeply impressed of how they've been able to progress so far with the small amount of funding that they have. But I can only imagine if their team was 10 times a size and they had, you know, five to 10 million dollars to do, you know, even better human clinical trials and even even more in-depth research to make sure all the bases are covered. You know, we shouldn't be doing this on economy mode. This should be, you know, high, you know, high. priority, a lot of capital going into it and making sure that the solution we're providing for these 1.4 billion men is actually the best it can be, rather than, you know, 30 grand a month and, you know, struggling to sort of fund everything. So I think, I think it's deeply important

that people like Jack Dorsey hear about this stuff and have time to consider it and understand it, and spread the word. Yeah, I'll, of course, send this to Dr. Cruz, and he's very good friends with Jack, so hopefully he'll share it with him. I also share it with Nicole Shanahan because, I mean, she's a girl mom, but I mean, I imagine she just cares about human rights in general and human health. So she could also be a good person to at least be aware of this issue and what Forgian's working on. Outside of like the immediate goals of Forgen, though, I think it's actually very important to get this company funded as a proof of concept that can be. used in many other contexts. Like this is actually a molecular biological feat what they're accomplishing. And if they can get this done in a really successful way, this could be, you know,

the new standard for like instead of organ transplants in general, we can use this platform. And that would be completely, you know, that would radicalize the entire medical field, to be honest. So I think what they're doing is really important and what they're pioneering needs to be really heavily funded, like you, like you said. yeah it's critical right for the the people that are trapped in this state you know there's no other escape other than death uh so i want to make that i want to change that you know i want to provide or at least be a part of creating that solution because it's you know i feel it's one of my reasons for being you know is to stop what happened to me happening to other

the people. Yeah, and I hope as part of their clinical trials, I was messaging them, letting them know, like, if they need any support or anything I can do to help, I would be more than happy. But I hope as, like, some secondary outcomes, they're going to look at, like, psychological markers and other aspects of physical health outside of just, you know, whether the foreskin was successfully incorporated into the body and is serving as its, you know, tissue function intended, that there could be these other benefits and other areas of the health that you wouldn't necessarily connect the dots on that could be quite meaningful for people. people.

Yeah. There's so much that we don't know, right? And we need funding to be able to access that we need more minds on this project. We need the best of the best and that costs money. It takes capital and the small amount of, I think there's about a thousand individual supporters of 4Gen currently. But even combined with that many people, the energy and the capital from those people isn't you know, quite enough to really make it an abundant process.

You know, they're still having to, you know, make sure everything's sufficient and, you know, and not go hard and fast. And I think, you know, this couldn't happen soon enough. There's so many men that are suffering in this state and they need a solution. And four gens and not-for-profit 501C, but they're based out of Italy. So the US not-for-profit as well. And, you know, what that means is people can, you know, donate before tax and, you know, have their money go further. But I'm working currently to get 4-Gen on the DGI register in Australia, which is the tax officer's system here that allows you to donate before tax.

But it's usually quite difficult to do international companies or not-for-profits. but I'm working hard with a third-party company to make that happen and get that accepted. So Australians can donate to this before tax rather than having to pay tax and then donate. So it makes it much more efficient to move capital to support this. Yeah, I mean, also, you said they're only using like 20 to 30,000 per month, which is literally crazy because I know how expensive animal studies are. And once they move into humans, that price is going to skyrocket even more. And so the fact that they're able even to like push things forward and make things work and get the success they have on that little money shows that they're actually, you know, a very solid team that is able to allocate money in an effective ways, which is a really good sign for them as, you know, a company and a group of people in the long term.

So, yeah, infusing capital in would, I'm sure, would just, you know, make a night and day difference with regards to the pace of the results and also the quality as well. Yeah, yeah. And the team is just stunning. I know some of the team quite closely. I know Ryan, who's the CEO, and Enzo, who's the founder and CEO, both incredible men that have also gone through this process. that and they're essentially giving their lives to this process they're giving their lives to this solution they've dedicated everything they've got it really is a labor of love and a labor of hope for a better future for humanity and people who are in this state you know it's really an escape you know as much as bitcoin is an escape from the fiat system for gen is an escape from the mutilation system that's spread far and wide, as I said, to over 1.4 billion. So it's not a small scale. This isn't a small issue. I think I really want to bring that point

home. Like, this is not a small problem. This is massive and widespread. It's happening every day. There's baby boys being mutilated right now. And those devices that you mentioned, those plastic strap-down devices, it's real. It's happening without anesthesia 24-7. Needs to stop, and the people who've had it happen to them need a solution. So that's what I'm bashing about. Thank goodness for you and for getting this message out and for Forgeon, for being at the forefront of making these solutions. Is there anything else that, you know, is on your harder mind to share while we're still here?

Do you think we did a pretty good job? Yeah, I think we did a pretty good job if I conclude, I guess we're not Perukin. We're remembering what it means to be alive. Let's make this conversation unavoidable. Let's bring it to the forefront and let's fund it. Let's make the solution real and widely accessible and affordable. Yes, beautiful. Thank you so much.

And if you have any resources in particular that you would like me to share with men or women who have men who are affected in their lives in the audience. I would be happy to put those in the show notes as well. I'll put a link to the posts that I made on Instagram and X because I had a list of some references in there that people can check out if they want to learn more. But I would just say, like, to tell people and kind of reiterate what you said, just get curious about this issue and start questioning everything. I mean, this is one of those things that kind of boils down to that.

Question the status quo. Think about like why this is happening and look into things for yourself. don't go along with it because, you know, other people are doing it or it's been, you know, normalized within your culture, your generation. I think, you know, with more information comes like a greater responsibility to actually understand the information that we're interfacing with and do better for ourselves and our children and our families and for the next generation of young boys who could be, you know, spared of this, given that we, you know, take the initiative to educate ourselves and make what's,

you know, the best decision for them and for ultimately society because of these, you know, widestanding, longstanding issues that these baby boys will experience throughout their lives. Think about how much different and better society could look like if we had, you know, 90% of men were walking around regulated and comfortable in their bodies and secure in their bodies. Like this, this could really change everything. So I just implore people to look into it a little bit more and just start asking questions and sharing this podcast if you feel compelled because we, like Ben said, need to get the word out on this issue and just start to get people waking up to the fact

that, you know, this isn't actually normal and it's not good and it's not for health reasons, that there's something more going on here. Yeah. And I guess I'll also say once the silence is broken, I noticed that people really spoke up, like after I did Daniel's podcast, so many men reached out to me. Some men even told me that they've chosen not to mutilate their son because of my podcast, which hit really hard, and it changed my life.

It showed me that I can actually have real impact on people's lives and their futures by speaking. So this is why I'm doing it. I know that I can have an actual impact by doing things like this and speaking the truth because nobody else is willing to. Nobody's talking out about this in this space. So that's why I feel compelled. and obligated to actually do this, it is the next frontier of human rights.

We must stop this, and we must heal the ones who've had it done to them. Couldn't agree more. Ben, thank you so much for your time. This was just incredible. You're a fount of knowledge on this issue, and I'm really excited to see, you know, what's to come for you and for Forgeon,

so definitely keep us posted. and I'll of course share this everywhere and help get the word out. And just thank you so much for your time. And let me know if you ever want to come back. If there's any updates you want to share, I'm happy to have you on any time. Thanks, Alexis. I really appreciate it. It was a pleasure chatting with you.

It was. Have a great day. Thank you so much. Cheers. Bye-bye. Bye.