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I did a report on FGM in hs. One of the things I found out is sometimes they sew the vagina in order to preserve the virginity of the woman. Which can lead to massive infection, infertility and death.

Just thinking aloud here but the fact male circumcision is vastly safer than the equivalent performed on female people due to the procedures and the circumstances under which it occurs and far fewer deaths are attributable to it may have to do with the greater condemnation of it.

Routine infant circumcision is fucked up. Fucked up hardcore. The attitude it’s totes OK boggles the mind. Kids do die as a result of it. One unnecessary death is too many. The circumstances surrounding it still justify differing attitudes towards it and female circumcision.

Type Ia is actually removal of the clitoral hood. Type Ib, which is FAR more prevalent, is clitoridectomy. Even if more female circumcisions WERE Type Ia, the circumstances under which they’re performed and the methods utilised would still differentiate female circumcision from routine infant circumcision in the West and would still warrant differing attitudes. Both should be condemned. One is immediately causing a great deal more harm to people.

I have refered to female genital cutting in past as FGM, and have been asked not to do so on the basis that some of the women affected by FGC do not wish to be refered to as “mutilated”. Has anyone else come across this?

And I think that we should probably not be tampering with infant genetalia under any circumstances outside of an actual medical emergency. My daughters outer labia was fused when she was born. We tampered as little as possible (hormonal lotion). And I am so happy that there were options other than surgery.

After reading that exchange, I feel that Mr. Eryemil would have a more coherent argument if he just posted the dog dick picture rather than the nonsense he wrote.

First, regarding whether any FGC like procedures are done for medical reasons, there’s the sort of thing Shaun said, and I’ve heard of teen // adult labia havers with larger labia minor (the inner ones) having them reduced because they were uncomfortable // painful. Also, clitoral hood removal is a cosmetic procedure in the US (and likely other places) because the lack of covering supposedly increases sexual sensation. Of course…sexually active female bodied person desiring a cosmetic procedure, probably getting it done sterile and with anesthesia …child with no say in the matter having functional (or at least not unhealthy, just to cover my terms here) parts removed in a likely unsterile environment, with, at best, herbal anesthesia (utterly tangentially, a dab of vanilla is good for a toothache if you don’t want to // can’t do a dab of whiskey [relatedly, Falconer, my mother says I was mistaken, the family trick is to pour a shot of whiskey, stick your finger in it, dab the new tooth, and then down the shot, the last part is Very Important XD ])

Long paragraph is long, and I’m about to get much longer. I apologize in advance but something struck a long standing question of mine. Warning, this is about to turn into a discussion of self-injury, eating disorders and drug/alcohol abuse (mostly the former, the latter two in passing)

“I also heard one person say adult men who elect to be circumcised for reasons of preference should be denied on the basis of mental illness.”

So, why isn’t it a symptom of a mental illness? I’m utterly serious, because we al know viscerally that it isn’t. Nor are piercingly and tattoos. But self-injury, no matter what particular sort, is de facto not just a symptom of a mental illness, but borderline personality disorder in particular (that is a rant for another time). The answer seems to be (counter)cultural norms — scarification is a form of body modification, and while psych would probably look down on it, there are certainly a fair number of people who cut themselves (and others) with the intent to cause scars in some design or such. It’s done for aesthetics. So is that the difference? Aesthetics is okay but emotional reasons are a symptom? Because “cultural norms” can kindly go fuck off.

And if it is that emotional reasons are bad, then what about people, like, say, Kitteh or LBT, who get tattoos for positive emotional reasons? Nobody I know of would consider that a symptom of mental illness. So then it’s that expressing negative // painful emotions physically is a symptom? But only if it’s injuring yourself, since crying is, by any logic, a physical response to emotions and isn’t de facto a symptom of mental illness (it certainly can be, but merely crying does not make people, psychs even [psychs particularly] assume you’re mentally ill…it’s certainly shamed with “boys don’t cry” but that’s toxic masculinity, nobody’s saying they’re mentally ill [well, somebody probably is, but it isn’t the norm])

So, where’s the line here? Anorexia is its own disorder, as as drug abuse, binge drinking, etc — but those are, or can be, far more dangerous. That is, anorexia is also automatically serious, but it’s one of, if not the, most deadly mentally illnesses, so automatically serious makes sense. Drug abuse…”just say no”, and to a degree, it is stigmatized well beyond what is warranted. Binge drinking gets attention because college students, among others, manage to drink themselves to death that way. So all three get attention because they may kill you…but are called their own disorders and not generally labelled as self-injury. Whereas the closest I’ve ever gotten to an answer to think is that self-injury is…

An act induced by negative emotions
That isn’t otherwise culturally acceptable (since things such as crying fit the above but aren’t considered self-injury)
That is likely, or at least potentially, going to scar or do lasting harm
And isn’t elsewise classified

This is, uh, a rather strange set of premises. Like, masochist and thus people who are willing (and even happy) to cause me sexytimes pain, and lots of people who are quite fine with my sexytimes causing me pain (and yes, potentially scarring, or, as we were discussing over dinner [don’t ask] cause proper serious injury…my kink is beyond pecunium’s hard limit for that reason, but if I like it…[abstract convo, we are not involved]) — this is fine though, if pain that may scar, and is, actually, potentially infinitely more likely to get infected, causes sexual pleasure, this is fine. If pain that is more likely to scar, but with caution very very unlikely to get infected or otherwise be worse than a scar, is done to deal with negative emotions, this is bad and a symptom of mental illness.

Now, I know damned well that masochism was considered such until fairly recently, and still is by some. But this seems to hold among most of the BDSM and body mod folks I know — aesthetic or sexytimes okay, emotional bad. And it just…I have three few options at this point — either it’s a side effect of negative emotions being considered bad, a side effect of most people who self-injure being women and patronizing, or a side effect of it being publicly seen as something teenagers do for attention. I honestly cannot come up with a hard line between what is acceptable and what isn’t — play piercing is fine (maybe not your kink, but in those circles nobody freaks out that you’re nuts), stabbing yourself with a needle, fundamentally the same thing, if done to cause pain because negative emotions, versus cuz pain feels good (um, may I say that at least on paper there ain’t much difference there?)…well then you’re mentally ill and engaging in masochism may also be a symptom. And even, in a few things I’ve seen, you’re giving BDSM and/or body mod a bad name by associating it with the mentally ill.

Ok, that was very very long, but I know we have some philosophers around here, and that quote was an excellent lead into one of my biggest philosophical (and, of course, personal) questions. So seriously guys, what do you think?

Relatedly, my pastor, years ago, assigned me the homework of reciting that “my body is a temple” verse whenever I felt like cutting. As I told pecunium awhile back, it was like Hail Mary but without the beads, whereas the hand motion of working a rosary may’ve actually helped as a distraction. He, as you can guess, had choice words about the pastor, because he rocks and that pastor is a horrible person (note, before That Discussion, this is not a comment on religion but a comment on one religious person being fucking stupid)

Anyone who made it this far, thank you for amusing my digression and you may now return to whatever you got to talking about while I was typing.

It’s actually a really good question though. What is self-harm and what does it mean?

Because there’s a large amount of people who see that in a negative light, and for many cases, for good reason.

I guess what I think the negative version of self-harm is “an unhealthy obsession with self-injury that might not exist otherwise”.

I’m trying to word it in a way that won’t stigmatize BDSM (because kink is cool and normal and not harmful if done safely), or I guess any other group where self-harm is used in a positive light. If I screwed up, sorry about that.

Maybe a better definition would the definition of negation. Negative self harm is not BDSM, it’s not tattoos, it’s not piercings, it’s not damage done to your skin for aesthetics or for sexy times, it’s not something you turn to when you’re upset for some reason.

But are those definitions good enough?

I’m gonna say I concur with kitteh in regards to self injury.

“it’s not something you turn to when you’re upset for some reason.”

Except exactly that is the usual “but it isn’t healthy!” Cuz you’re supposed to deal with that in healthier manners (but what “healthier” means is more than sorta a social construct)

And the sterile part only makes people less worried that I’m really risking my health (I am fucking meticulous about sterility)

Maybe it’s the doing it to oneself part, but people give themselves piercings and that’s usually just considered stupid. Some combination of all of the above?

And food for thought before I attempt sleep — the rubber band around your wrist that’s recommended to deal with cravings (including ones to self-injure…so snapping a rubber band into your wrist is preferable to ANY self-injury…but somehow isn’t itself self-injury…)

Or, another weird one — fire. Playing with wax cuz sexytimes is fine with proper fire precautions; presumably playing with wax solo for sexytimes // naughty photos is more or less as ok, and the issues are related to the fire part, not the pain part; careful applications of fire to be hot, painfully so, but not actually burn, are nearly as ok (I mean, sorta, candle wax is kinda common and fire can be considered edgeplay, but this is BDSM in detail here and again, the issues are safety not mental illness)…but playing with fire to cause pain, but not burn, because distressed is a symptom.

Maybe it’s more the people I’ve dealt with than anything…and, to be fair, outside the idiots the difference is often that sexytimes good, emotional pain bad. As in, “I like you, you are in pain, that is bad, I am sorry” bad, not “this is unacceptable” bad. But they aren’t the ones defaulting to it being a symptom of me being nuts.

And now I’m going to attempt to get some sleep, g’night.

Hmmm. WRT self-harm distinction, internally I feel the distinction lies somewhere between “are you doing this out of self-hatred/to punish yourself?” and “is this going to cause you more hurt long term?”

I guess clinically it’s like most symptoms of anything – in the context of other symptoms you can come to a diagnosis. Neck pain and headaches can be the first signs of meningitis that could kill you in 48 hours (had a case like that a couple of years ago here); or you could be stressed/have slept funny.

Even in cases that are blatant self-harm don’t think it’s 100% clear. Eg: When you’re suicidal, and cutting alleviates that, and it may be the only thing holding you back from the edge and potentially getting you to a place where you’re ready to benefit from getting help, is it OK? The lesser evil? If there were not serious social repurcussions to being scarred, would it be less harmful to use pain stimulus to deal with psychological pain?

Obviously that’s getting very theoretical. In practical terms, if someone is coping with life by causing themselves pain, you want to help them feel like they have better options than that.

It is hard though – my friend’s wife was very traumatised and when she started cutting again my friend didn’t know what to do: she ended up “letting” her, since she seemed to be better after self-harm than if she stopped her. :/ (It was very complicated obviously, but in the reality of the situation she didn’t know what else to do.)

I feel stupid asking this but how does male circumcision stop the man who is circumcised masturbating? Male circumcision is really common in the US I don’t understand it.

I’ve been with both circumcised and uncircumcised men. Circumcision didn’t stop any man I knew from having a healthy sex life… including masturbation.

Kellogg definitely thought that it would stop men from wanking, I’m just not quite sure why.