Wednesday, 24 March 2004

TMI about FGM

Kelley is shocked to learn that the Georgia legislature is proposing a law that will ban not only the barbaric practice known as “female genital mutilation” or FGM (which I’ll spare you the details of), but also female genital piercings.

Saith Kelley:

This bill would be fine by me, if they left the piercing part out of it. In my opinion, the State does have a certain responsibility to make laws to protect those who can’t protect themselves, such as children who cannot refuse or flee a situation like the one described above. But an adult, rational female? Who am I to tell a grown person not to put a stud in her muffin? I didn’t take ‘em to raise, and neither did the State.

All I can say about the matter, as someone who participated in a senior seminar (on the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy) with not one but two students who did projects on FGM, I welcome any and all laws against the practice. But I don’t think banning adults from getting labia piercings makes much sense, unless we’re also going to ban all the other silly piercings going around (I draw the line just below “ears and belly button,” personally, but if people want to poke holes in their eyebrows, tongues, scrotums, nipples, and God knows what else, more power to them).