J. Steven Svoboda is a patent lawyer who has been an attorney since 1991. 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.
Svoboda graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991, the same year Barack Obama graduated. Previously, he received a Bachelor's Degree in Physics and English from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), receiving awards as an Outstanding Student in each of his two majors. He then received a Master's Degree in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley.
His publications include "A Rose By Any Other Name: Rethinking the Similarities and Differences between Male and Female Genital Cutting," 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; http://www.cirp.org/library/ethics/hodges3/ "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 175 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 has also been a contributor to the web site Men's News Daily.
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 former performance artist and a tournament chess player rated as an expert (the ranking below master) by the United States Chess Federation.
His wife is a pediatrician. They have two children, a boy and a girl.
He is the senior board member of and Public Relations Director for the National Coalition For Men, which claims to be the world's oldest and largest non-profit devoted to educating the world about the harm done to men and boys by gender discrimination.