The Art of the Essay and Thinking About Labiaplasty

[elfs]

I have been feeling significantly unwriterly recently. (Actually, I've been feeling a lot of 'un-'s recently, but we'll talk about those later.) This morning during the commute, I pulled up my 'topics' list, which includes both things I want to write blog entries about, and ideas that might spark a story.

The topic I stumbled upon was 'Labiaplasty': surgical modification of the labia to meet a popular ideal of beauty.

Now, here's the funny thing: I'm not sure how I feel about the topic. I'm just not shrill enough on the topic, one way or the other. The Atlantic Monthly magazine had a great article recently entitled First Person Plural, about the multiplicity of personalities each one of us carries in our heads, and how those personas interact through time. Read it if you have time; I'll be recommending it several times in the next couple of months, I'm sure.

On the subject of labiaplasty, though: the civil libertarian in me thinks that people ought to be able to modify their bodies in whatever way they choose. The hound-dog bioconservative (but not bioluddite) me is shocked and horrified, experiencing a Kassian 'Wisdom of Repugnance' moment, mostly because I happen to think that the generic photoshopped, hacked-back labia of most porn starlets is pretty boring and uninteresting compared to what I've encountered "in the wild." The biolibertarian thinks that the practice ought to be legal everywhere, because attempting to limit it while continuing to permit transsexual reassignment surgery would be a legislative and judicial nightmare. The father in my wants my daughters to never, ever have to even think about this kind of thing. The humanitarian in me sees a difference between the deep identity issues of sexual identity and the fashion-driven loathe-your-body memes that encourage labiaplasty.

Unfortunately, "I think it's an unnecessary mutilation of a body part that unsder no circumstances deserves the attention of the knife for purely aesthetic purposes, the popularity of which is driven by a vicious fashionability that dislikes the natural variance of the female body, but I don't think it ought to be illegal," really kind of falls apart there at the end with its lack of vehemence. It gets the crowd all riled up about a problem and then at the end says, "But nothing should be done. Go about your business as normal."

Which is to say that writing an essay about labiaplasty means, essentially, trying to figure out how I feel about it. My feelings are too mixed up to do so effectively. I'm apalled by labiaplasty; I'm also driven by principle not to interfere with those women who want it for aesthetic reasons. I want desperately to convince them that their ladyparts are just fine, even gorgeous, in their natural diversity, and I want to convince myself that my loathing isn't merely a feeling, the consequences of acting on which would be tragic-- which is how I understand the Kassian moral universe.

Comments

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

I Do Not Get It - but I can't get worked up about it. I've known about this, but I view it pretty much like any other elective, self-inflicted extreme body mod. Self-elective circumcision (not something inflicted on infants who have no say), major piercings, the extreme types who do freaky shit like having their penis splayed and braided, etc. NMK, but don't let me stop you.

Where is the line? Being an oral fetishist I enjoy a shaved pudendum. Some women have electrolysis and permanently remove the hair - that's a permanent body mod in the service of a self image. Less extreme than a knife and flesh, but along the curve.

I tend to fall into the "Your body, do with it as you will - as long as it doesn't interfere with someone else's rights to do with their body as they will" camp. Even if some of the practices squick me personally.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

See, I'm an oral fetishist and I love pubic hair. It traps the scent, and makes it prominent, and I like it that way.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

Different strokes for different folks. Pun intended. ;-)

I love the feeling of smooth skin. I like pretty much any skin on skin contact actually. And I'm probably a hypocrite because I'm a fuzzy guy in general, though if I had a partner and she wanted me to remove it I probably would. I just don't care about it myself.

Scent has never been a big thing for me, other than 'clean'. Sometimes people just smell 'dirty', and that turns me off. There are scents I love, but that's more scented candles and the like. Most perfumes do little for me, or people use too much. Most of my senses are fairly strong, so scent can be overwhelming at times.

I'm kind of rambling since I've been awake for well over a day now and I didn't plan to be.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Not something for me (never mind my general hospital/surgery phobia).

However, I don't see anything intrinsically wrong with it, provided it really is her choice.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

I think that's exactly why it bothers me. In terms of it being her choice - an expression of powerful self-care - rather the expression of a weakness, such as a desire to follow a fashion or please one possible lover with his particular kink.

In an ideal world, women would be far more likely to express self-care than be pushed around meekly and weakly. In the actual world, the reverse is true. Therefore, I would argue for a law linking the medical permission to performance of procedures from such a class until certain markers of gender-equal power are met - and with the obvious exceptions (body dysphoria unresponsive to CBT).

Once the markers of power equality are achieved, public safety would be less likely to be harmed by surgery motivated by external pressure and the risks of surgery would therefore become more acceptable to my mind.

Specifically, about those risks: no woman is an island. If surgery leaves her dead or disabled, society is left to care for her or her dependents. Society should not be made to bear that risk if she is entering into the procedure under duress. If she enters into it willingly, the risk seems more likely to be worthwhile for the gain.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

I really, really need to sleep soon. I spent several seconds puzzling over how cock & ball torture is used to treat body dysphoria.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Doing it under general anesthetic or requiring a medical license would *seriously* miss the point of it, wouldn't it?

My objections are to two things: using medical procedures inappropriately and taking an unfair or unwanted share of the medical risk involved in labiaplasty. Non-medical? Not a problem for me. Not bearing the kind of risk that surgery does? Not a problem for me.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I guess the return question is, how do you define "inappropriately" in a way that doesn't discredit tattooing on the one hand, and gender reassignment surgery on the other? Note that I think it's arbitrary to describe the repeated penetration of the skin with a high-speed needle to permanently embed a substance a 'non-medical' usage.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Indeed, though, the word medical is not-well defined. I think I draw the boundary between recreational body-mod and medical procedures at anesthetics, perhaps because of their riskiness. When you need an anesthesiologist to support your vital functions because you can't do that yourself, you're doing something medical.

As to how I define "inappropriately" - that's easy. Doing medical body-mod with long-term effects because someone else wants you to and you're succumbing to their pressure despite your own feelings about the procedure would be inappropriate. Doing the very same body-mod because that's what you want is appropriate.

I think extra caution is needed because of the permanent nature of that sort of thing - far more permanent than many relationships.

I'm thinking of my cousin, who dropped from a size 22 to a size 0 because her boyfriend insisted (bullied her into it, more like). She put back all those pounds when they separated, and had to figure out whether or not she wanted to live with a healthy body (and how to achieve that, and just what weight worked for her). Since weight loss is the ultimate non-permanent body-mod, and usually requires no medical intervention, the locus of the consent did not matter too much - she spent time but didn't get into a huge amount of risk of disability in the process.

Had the boyfriend wanted her to modify herself surgically, the process of discovering that "oh, oops, that doesn't actually work for me" would have been rather more difficult, and that the social situation at the moment is that too many women get involved in relationships where they are powerless to withstand the desires of their male partners. Until that changes, there is too much of a danger of medically assisted, externally motivated behavior.

(Do I feel very strongly about this? not really. It's pretty low on my agenda of social ills to rectify. But it certainly is interesting to think about!)

[mundens.livejournal.com]

I thought exactly the same thing, and I've only been up for a couple of hours :)

[statreed.livejournal.com]

Psych 101 lecture is hell that way.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

For me, the issue is not whether or not the woman makes the choice; it's the cultural baggage that encourages her to choose to undergo a permanent and irreversable procedure.

Most porn starlets have had this procedure because large labia don't get in the way of the camera. I hate the idea that along with every other pressure to "be beautiful" that women (including my daughters) are under, this is going to become much more commonplace, even vogue, in the same way that breast augmentation procedures became vogue.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

PS - are you behind on your posting topics or did you actually go into work today, Saturday?

"This morning during the commute..."

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I'm just a little behind in my posting. But then, it's not uncommon for me to write something topical but not necessarily time-sensitive (the recent increase in the popularity of labiaplasty's not going to go away quickly).

[edichka2.livejournal.com]

I appreciate it when someone can not only see but feel multiple, mutually conflicting sides of an issue.

But then, I believed for years that the term "equivocal" was connotatively a good thing.

- E

[codeamazon.livejournal.com]

I have a general philosophy that nothing should be legislated unless every single person who wants to move in that direction has first been facilitated.

Put another way : don't like abortion? Work to insure every woman who wants to have the child isn't stopped by finances or social condemnation. ;-)

Or, don't like body mods? Work towards a world where people won't feel the need.

That said, the notion gives me shivers.

[nbarnes.livejournal.com]

I'm really with you on this one, Elf. For me, I'm not sure how to feel about labiaplasty (it's amazingly awful that any woman should feel pressured into it, Goddess help our little girls) given my usual line of thinking about body mods (it's great to be able to control our physical expression. We are the owners of our body, not the other way around).

One perspective is that I'm all in favor of John Varley-esque radical body sculpt medicine. You get to choose what you look like, what sex you are, all of that becomes part of how you present yourself, a bit like how you get to pick your wardrobe. Now, this necessarily entails labiaplasty-like program activities, so I'm clearly not opposed to labiaplasty in the abstract. But our society is so fucked up about women's bodies and sex that I can't imagine that we can go anywhere very good with it until we get some of our shit worked out.

[pteryxx.livejournal.com]

I submit that whatever the procedure or choice - tattooing, wardrobe, boob jobs, whatever - there is a fundamental difference between the individual's choice to look different and the choice to look the same. If a person chooses to alter their appearance in order to conform with some ideal, then I for one am already suspicious that social pressure is involved.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Cutting beautiful lips

[slutdiary.livejournal.com]

This has been a topic of ongoing angst amongst the teens who come to Heather's site Scarleteen. In November she was mentioned in this piece in Time Magazine on the topic.

My mother had one boob slightly smaller than the other [as do most women]. My pubic hair grows faster and longer on one side than the other. Some folks have long lips and some have short. These and other similar are all normal variants. I think it is tragic that people are going to such lengths to meet an artificial standard of "beauty".

Oh - and put me on the list that just loves to nibble on protruding lips.