I would draw a fairly large distinction between social pressure to have a (relatively) safe surgical procedure...

...and the extremely hazardous and horribly painful (unanesthetized) procedure forced on children as part of some sort of "cultural norm."

If a consenting adult want to undergo that kind of thing out of some sense that it will make them look more attractive -- younger -- whatever, they're pretty much free to do what they want.  And if the doctor botches the job, they've got some form of recourse (except for the woman I knew years ago who was dating a total quack -- and thot it was a good idea to directly inject silicon into various parts of her face.  20 years and 17 operations later, she looked pretty hideous.)

Maybe it is all part of the same underlying thing.

A friend of mine is fond of saying (about "life") that it's "all about the rut" -- and he has a point.

Go back 3,500 years and you'll see "God's covenant with man" -- in the form of cutting off the foreskin of the penis.

Excuse me .... but that is just fucking weird.

And seems to indicate nothing other than humankind's chronic pre-occupation with procreation/sex.

I mean, really ... WTF does "God" want with a FORESKIN?????

(And the practice did not, in fact, originate with the Hebrew tribes.  Some subcultures within the Babylonian era were known to do that long before the apocryphal Abraham).

It's strange enough that it's commonplace now that western men routinely undergo that thing (maybe there is some hygienic benefit -- dunno)...

But when it spills into the horrors inflicted on women (young girls, actually), that's just raw and ugly domination and control by a grotesquely patriarchal society.

And I'm not sure that this issue should be diluted by comparison to a hospital procedure performed at the request of adult women in Silicon Valley.


Nice little hackle farm you've got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
~Reph