Berkeley, CA
Telephone: 510-827-5771
E-mail: arc at post dot harvard.edu

Mr. Svoboda is the Historian and active member of the Legal Group for the National Coalition For Men, the world’s oldest and largest non-profit devoted to educating the world about the harm done to men and boys by gender discrimination. Steven is NCFM’s book reviewer and his articles are available through our bi-monthly newsletter Transitions. Current editions of Transitions are available by snail mail to only NCFM members. However, you may read some of Steven’s excellent book reviews in back issues of Transitions by clicking here: Transitions Back Issues.

Mr. Svoboda’s day job is as a patent lawyer.

J. Steven Svoboda is the founder of California-based organization, Attorneys for the Rights of the Child. As an attorney, Svoboda is involved in educating and litigating on behalf of genital integrity issues. He is a strong opponent of male circumcision. He also works as a patent lawyer. His publications include “A Rose By Any Other Name: Rethinking the Similarities and Differences between Male and Female Genital Cutting,” forthcoming in Fearful Symmetries: Essays and Testimonies Around Excision and Circumcision, edited by Chantal Zabus (Rodopi, 2009); Van Howe R, Svoboda JS, “Neonatal pain relief and the Helsinki Declaration,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 2008: 36: 803-823;”Prophylactic Interventions on Children: Balancing Human Rights with Public Health” (Journal of Medical Ethics 2002), and “The Limits of the Law: Comparative Analysis of Legal and Extralegal Methods to Control Child Body Mutilation Practices” (2001). He has published over 150 reviews of books relating to men, boys, and gender. For eight years, he wrote a column for Everyman magazine titled, “Gender, Law, and Society,” which he renamed after his first child’s birth, “Gender, Law, and Fatherhood.” He is co-author, with Warren Farrell and James Sterba, of the gender studies textbook, “Does Feminism Discriminate Against Men?” (Oxford University Press, 2007).

He was interviewed on Penn and Teller’s television program Bullshit! on Showtime, where he explained his view of some of the legal aspects concerning male circumcision in the United States.

He is also the founder of the Bus Stop Co-op, a vegetarian organic cooperative in Berkeley, California.

He is a performance artist and a tournament chess player rated as an expert (the ranking below master) by the United States Chess Federation. He has two children. Mr. Svoboda speaks and writes fluently in Spanish.