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The Forum > Article Comments > Body modification as self-mutilation by proxy > Comments

Body modification as self-mutilation by proxy : Comments

By Sheila Jeffreys, published 10/4/2006

Cosmetic surgeons, piercers, cutters and sadists are all parasites profiteering from those with low self esteem.

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Every Person has a right to do whatever with their own bodies.

It is not up to you or me to analyse.

Find something better to do, like shave your legs.
Posted by Realist, Tuesday, 11 April 2006 8:13:50 AM
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Interesting point of view. I have always been uncomfortable with body surgery and this article puts the arguments against it succinctly. However, freedom means risk. It means taking responsibility for our bodies and watching out for those who would use us. We are misled by all manner of nutters from politicians down. Being sent off as cannon fodder is pretty sadistic. Medicine is full of charlatans and quacks. Some of the most horrible things happen from the side effects of drugs doctors prescibe us. The pharamaceutical industry is out of control causing untold misery to make a fortune from their substances. Alcohol, tobacco and prescribed mood changers cause massive harm.
The people who yearn for happiness through body modification are on a spiritual journey, its just that they have been misled my media money makers. Lets face it, all around is mayhem and lies. We are tube fed crud daily. Even the brightest of us succumb to the confusion of misinformation and consumer advertising lies. No one out there we can trust is showing us how to live healthy lives. All the sadists say trust us we know what we are doing. In the meantime the suckers and the sick will part with their money to find reief and happiness...not. Let's face it, we live in a sick society built on trickery, lies and money.
Posted by Barfenzie, Tuesday, 11 April 2006 12:12:50 PM
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Excerpt: "I call the practices in which women, and some men, request others to cut up their bodies - as in cosmetic surgery, transsexual surgery...and other forms of sadomasochism - self-mutilation by proxy."

I note that Sheila Jeffreys is an associate professor of political science. She's not qualified to have an expert opinion on the subject of transsexualism, neither being transsexual nor a qualified medical authority -- such as a member of The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association, Inc

Per the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care:

-- Sex Reassignment is Effective and Medically Indicated in Severe GID. In persons diagnosed with transsexualism or profound GID, sex reassignment surgery, along with hormone therapy and real-life experience, is a treatment that has proven to be effective. Such a therapeutic regimen, when prescribed or recommended by qualified practitioners, is medically indicated and medically necessary. Sex reassignment is not "experimental," "investigational," "elective," "cosmetic," or optional in any meaningful sense. It constitutes very effective and appropriate treatment for transsexualism or profound GID. --

Opinion is one thing, expert opinion another. Sheila Jeffreys isn't a qualified expert on transsexuality, and lumping transsexual surgeries with other activities she considers self-mutilation brings into question her basic arguments. In fact, the mainstream medical community disagrees with her at least on the point of transsexual surgeries. Her article therefore reads to me as a biased, preconceived conclusion, formed without required, significant fact-checking outside of her field of expertise that cancels whatever truth there is to her biased conclusion. Removing the transsexual surgery card from her house of cards seems to me to collapse the whole house.
Posted by autumn_leaves259, Tuesday, 11 April 2006 1:30:36 PM
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Still wheeling out the same tired old mantra, Sheila, strong on rhetoric and weak on fact.

Arm-slashing as a reaction to lost self-esteem and depressive illness is a sad phenomenon often associated with rejection. I’ve been there!

It’s doubly sad if done in response to abuse. But abuse isn't gender specific and, as Ann Mitchell’s recent report on GL health shows, violence against domestic partners isn't confined to heterosexual couples.

Apart from pierced ears, I have no personal interest in other forms of body modification.

I agree that practices involving true mutilation through sadomasochistic practices are abhorrent. They should be prosecuted to the full extent of those laws that already exist to vitiate a purported personal consent to be assaulted in such circumstances.

I am disturbed, as you are, by the rise of the BIID diagnosis and the willingness of even a very few doctors to treat an extreme psychiatric disorder with irreversible and physically debilitating amputations.

But it’s a quantum leap backwards from there to your allegations that transsexualism shares common ground with either sadomasochistic ritual or apotemnophilia. Medical experts have now concluded what we who experience transsexualism have always known; that the sex of our brain is opposite that predicted by our phenotype. Transsexualism is a biological condition – a disorder of human sexual formation. Australian law has accepted this concept of brain sex, and its role in forming every individual’s sexual identity, as a fact proven to the civil standard.

A variation of the narrow and prejudiced view you have of transsexualism, vis à vis BIID, is documented at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_identity_disorder where apotemnophiles describe their disorder to be ‘an unconscious genetic decision, much like sexual orientation’ and likewise argue that ‘no one would choose to have something this difficult.’ Their advocates also point out that ‘as little as 30 years ago, being…gay or bisexual or anything relating to that was considered just as wrong as BIID is today, and this should change in the future.’

Perhaps they are right, Sheila? Perhaps you and they are really just the same?

Kaz
Posted by kaz3g, Tuesday, 11 April 2006 10:05:11 PM
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I am a 15 year old girl, I have several peircings (lip madonna and rook), I find this article to be unfair, I didn't get peirced to show that I hate myself, or rather that I was abused as a child, I liked it and thought it would look "nice" on me. I recently took one out, does this now mean I hate myself anyless, no, because I never hated myself, I have a great life, a great family, and the best relationship with my family and friends a girl could ever have, and this article infuriates me. I'm sure many of your have your ears peirced. There is no really difference, other then location. Am I to believe that everyone with their ears peirced have some emotional disorder that have made then want to go out and get their ears peirced? No. I didn't think so.
Posted by Bonnie Leigh, Wednesday, 12 April 2006 1:35:03 PM
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Brilliant Sheila Jeffreys. Now just give the rest of us 10 -20 years to catch up with what you say, which is bloody obvious. Thank you for your courage in speaking out.
Posted by Edithpr, Tuesday, 18 April 2006 4:30:00 PM
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