Steven Svoboda is an active member of the Commission to Establish a White House Commission on Boys and Men. The Commission has been active since 2007 and to date it has succeeded in helping bring into existence men’s commissions in New Hampshire (though the New Hampshire one is now defunct), potentially next year in Virginia, and now, we recently learned, in California.
On July 30, 2025, Governor Newsom signed an Executive Order creating a Men’s and Boys’ Workgroup designed to address various difficulties faced by California’s men and boys. A bill to create a Virginia Advisory Commission for Men and Boys was announced in October 2025 and will be introduced in 2026.
Attorneys for the Rights of the Child believes that while this new Workgroup is focused more broadly than genital autonomy, it may greatly help our cause by expanding public sympathy for challenges that males confront. The Workgroup could in fact signal a continuation of a trend (also seen with the proposal for the Virginia Advisory Commission for Men and Boys) toward a more flexible, open, truly egalitarian path toward genuine gender equity encompassing equity in treatment of all forms of childhood genital cutting.