…Alan Cumming, of course!
This post by ARC board member David Wilton is also published on his platform here.
Earlier this year, Steven Svoboda, director of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC), asked me to attend Intact America’s (IA) first Skin in the Game Award ceremony to take place on April 30, 2025, honoring Alan Cumming.
It won’t come as a surprise that ARC and IA often support and comment on each other’s work. Georganne Chapin, the co-founder of IA, is also after all an ARC board member.
Therefore, I was pleased to be asked by Steven to go on ARC’s behalf and to write this piece for ARC’s website.
New York City (New York) is the perfect place to host an award ceremony to honor intactivist allies. Whether in the arts or in activism, New York and a handful of other US cities are ground zero for many cultural issues.
New York is special to me because I, like nearly every LGBTQ person, aspired long ago to move there one day. In my case, it was after I was exposed to New York’s centrality to gay people around the time I graduated high school through a New York-centered LGBTQ book, called Saul’s Book. This gritty love story had gotten some attention after it won the first Pushcart Press Editor’s Book Award in the early 1980s. Pushcart Press created their award to boost awareness of authors overlooked by mainstream publishers.1
Intact America’s Skin in the Game Award has a similar objective. That is to bring attention to people whose work is largely overlooked, especially in a time of so many distractions and other worthy causes.
Like publishers searching for new writers, intactivism is always searching for people and organizations who are listening, speaking out, and reaching new audiences. IA, by giving this recognition, is seeking to encourage overlooked activists and their efforts.
The ubiquitous Alan Cumming, known for his many causes, graciously accepted the first such award, having come to the attention of the intactivist world through his one man cabaret show, Uncut. As every intactivist can tell you, we all dream of someone famous, like Alan, speaking up for our particular cause.
Uncut is a show that covers a lot of ground, but the title comes from Alan’s discovery that American men are circumcised almost entirely for cultural reasons. As he explained in his acceptance speech, he felt he had to do something as a Scottish man very much still in possession of his foreskin.
That something has been to use his platform in entertainment to highlight the humor, absurdity, and tragedy of routine circumcision of children for no other reason than conformity, and frankly ego and money.
In his acceptance speech, he said he felt bad for us, which is amusing when you think about it. I’m happy for the empathy, to be honest.
Before Alan was introduced and took to the podium, a large crowd of around a 150 guests mingled and enjoyed wine, cocktails, and hors d’oeuvres. Many familiar faces were present, but I was extremely happy to see so many who were new to me.
Georganne Chapin, who as mentioned above is co-founder of IA and an ARC board member, hosted a VIP audience with Alan an hour before the main event. Subsequent to the Award presentation and a brief acceptance speech, Alan took to the DJ booth and regaled the crowd with a joyful DJ set.
It’s important to highlight that Alan’s efforts are serious but also humorous. IA’s event was likewise serious but also joyful. At a time of such horrors in the world, bringing joy to the table is so important to draw in the uninitiated.
Although Alan didn’t mingle with those not invited to the VIP reception, we were still very pleased to be in the same room with him as he addressed an issue so important to this crowd.
All that said, I have one little quibble with Alan’s participation and acceptance of this award.
Despite searching, I have seen very little attention outside of intactivism spaces of the award and Alan’s involvement. Georganne says that it was a very intensive process to have him present because of his busy schedule and stature in the entertainment world.
However, I hope he’ll find the right opportunity to mention it casually out in the wild. He certainly does that with the transgender issue that he’s very vocal about. But alas, I’m sure the publicity from the event will trickle out over time.
It’s also worth noting that one of the more recent themes in intactivism has been to make our outreach and advocacy more fun. This award presentation was clearly an effort to do just that by pushing the subject matter into a more forward looking posture with a hint of glamour. Alan Cumming was there after all!
And just outside the venue, Poster House, was NYC, America’s first city of striving and succeeding, and arguably America’s second city of glamor after Los Angeles.
Returning to the Editor’s Book Award for a moment, the gritty New York of Saul’s Book no longer exists. New York of today is cleaned up, tourist friendly, and Disney-fied, probably in no small part to how books like this one portrayed, rather accurately, New York of the 1980s. That’s not entirely a bad thing.
What’s good about it is that it’s an easy place to attend an event like the Skin in the Game Award. Expensive, but safe, navigable, and fun. Hopefully more events like this one promoting intactivism will draw more people in until one day the tipping point will arrive.
Intact America’s Mission Statement: Our mission is to protect newborns from the pain and trauma of circumcision, parents from a lifetime of regret, men from the complications and consequences of the genital surgery, and to guarantee open sexual futures for everyone. We do this through creative messaging, advocacy, education, public policy reform, and the empowerment of our supporters, partners, and volunteers to move America to a social-change tipping point.
ARC’s Mission Statement: To secure equal protection for, and broaden public and legal recognition of, children’s legal and human rights to bodily integrity and self-determination that are violated by unnecessary genital cutting of male, female and intersex children.
- It’s easy to understand why Saul’s Book might be overlooked, given its dark milieu. It is set in the heart of New York, specifically Times Square, during a gritty period for the Big Apple. The story is a romance between the narrator, Sinbad, and both the City of that time and the antagonist, Saul. As of the publication date of this post, it’s out of print, but you can read a synopsis on Goodreads.