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Point 75: An Ethnography of the Stretched Earlobe Piercing as Site – Paul King

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The Point Issue 75 Cover

PaulKingPaul King
Treasure, Association of Professional Piercers

Acknowledgments
The author would like to express appreciation for the guidance from Matthew Kennedy, Joshua Craze, Laurence Cohen, Arpita Roy, and Justin Underhill. He offers his deepest gratitude to the research participants for their generosity of time and trust.

Abstract
“Sweet Gauges!” is an ethnography of the stretched earlobe piercing as a site of investigation. Often, social scientists attempt to assign “fixed identities.” These are inscribed onto individuals within designated social groups in a way that seeks to support the scientists’ theoretical claims. Research of body modification practices often inductively simplifies an entire range of corporeal processes into an over-generalized in-group signifier. I wish to elucidate a more comprehensive perspective of the individual from a more focused site of the body. What are the ideas that stretched earlobes communicate about one’s identity? How successful are these transmissions within and outside one’s social groups? Most importantly, how do intended communications and their corresponding interpretations change over time? This paper explores the subtleties and the complexities of the changing significations of stretched earlobe piercing for individuals, especially when positioned with self-identified social groups, authority figures, and random strangers. It finds that over time individuals with stretched ears transition through various and sometimes overlapping social roles and social groups. In-depth interviews revealed varied and complex experiences with unique insights into understandings of selfhood, agency, sexuality, ethnicity, and age, many of which are divergent from categorical tropes of “self-mutilation.”

Keywords: body piercing, stretched earlobes, enlarged earlobes, gauged earlobes, gauges, body modification, modern primitives, earlobe piercing, ear piercing, body art.

The Stretched Earlobe Piercing as Site
Since the early 1990s, the phrase ‘body piercing’ has become widely known in Western popular culture. This term encompasses all forms of the mechanical process of perforating the skin’s surface to install jewelry. However, among people living in the United States, the earlobe is a unique piercing site. An examination of the history of pierced earlobes in the U.S. reveals it as a corporeal site embodied with changing ideas about naturalness, privilege, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class.

Since the 1990s, there has been a significant increase in the stretching of earlobe piercings. The physiology of an enlarged earlobe piercing resists seasonal fashion trends and behavioral normative shifts. Unlike the immediacy of piercing, sustained stretching cannot be impulsive. Stretching requires an enduring commitment of time, care, and often finances. Usually this process takes years to reach the exceptionally large sizes, those that allow for gazing through the earlobe.1 With the larger stretched earlobes, to change one’s mind and reverse the process requires expensive surgery.

Often, social scientists attempt to assign “fixed identities.” These are inscribed onto individuals within designated social groups in a way that seeks to support the scientists’ theoretical claims. With few exceptions, social science research inductively simplifies an entire range of corporeal processes into an over-generalized, in-group signifier. However, from a diachronic perspective, individuals with stretched ears transition through various and sometimes overlapping social roles and social groups.

I interviewed 16 people for this paper. In total, I collected approximately 60 pages of transcript, which spanned 30 hours of conversation. I talked to friends, colleagues, and strangers. This sample includes diverse ethnicities from a spectrum of young and old, males, females, and one self-identified sexually indeterminate individual.

From a more focused site of the body, I wish to elucidate a more comprehensive perspective of the individual by asking several questions: What are the ideas that stretched earlobes communicate about one’s identity? How successful are these transmissions within and outside one’s social groups? Most importantly, how do intended communications and their corresponding interpretations change over time? This paper explores the subtleties and complexities of the changing significations of the stretched earlobe piercing for individuals when positioned with self-identified social groups, authority figures, and random strangers.

Stretched Earlobe Piercings and cartilage piercingsThe American Pierced Earlobe
This research emphasizes the variable of time. Symbolic meanings shift with time. To gain an understanding of the significance of the stretched earlobe piercing as a symbol for an individual, for an intended audience, and for an unintended audience, the symbol and the individual must be considered together within the historical context of relevant social norms of ear piercing, status, gender, and sexuality.

Today, for a vast majority of Americans, females with pierced ears are acceptable. Data vary widely; however, somewhere up to 80% of adult American females have had their ears pierced (Laumann et al., 2006). Since 1974, Inverness’ piercing stud guns have pierced 400 million earlobes (“Customer Service FAQs,” 2012). Inverness is just one of several major piercing gun manufacturers. Their statistics provide a sense of the prevalence of earlobe piercing today.

However, the “normal” pierced earlobe has been subject to cycles of fluctuating acceptance. The most significant shift of social norms for pierced ears in the last 100 years began a few days prior to June 2, 1953. Queen Elizabeth II had her ears pierced to wear the heirloom regalia during her coronation. This highly publicized affair was seminal in changing public opinion (Wruck, 1980, p. 193). In 1957, Life magazine ran an article on the new fad of ear piercing that had spread to America from the United Kingdom. Prior to this, females with earlobe piercings were negatively viewed through the prevailing dominant social norms as low class, sexually promiscuous, non-white, and foreign (Wruck, p. 84–90). However, by the 1960s, mainstream magazines such as Time, ABCs of Beauty, Ladies’ Circle, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour enthusiastically encouraged women and girls to pierce their earlobes (Wruck, p. 192).

Stretched Lobe PiercingsFor Becky and Morgan, pierced ears signaled to the world that they were females. Neither of these two women knows each other, although both share a strikingly similar childhood story. At the age of nine (for Becky in 1994, and for Morgan in 1983), they experienced responses of gender confusion from strangers. They had received short haircuts, preferred to wear pants, and had not yet developed the secondary sexual characteristics of puberty. Morgan’s gender-ambiguous first name added to strangers’ confusion. Both of their mothers decided having the young girls’ ears pierced would clarify for all that their children were not little boys. For Morgan, the piercing was a sweet victory. Morgan had wanted to get her ears pierced previously, but her mom had forbidden it until she was in high school. For Morgan’s family, the social pressure to have their child accurately and clearly signal gender normalcy took priority over their values and ideas of age appropriateness for this feminine, sensuous display. For Becky, the experience was somewhat traumatic: “I screamed and cried; the experience was awful… I didn’t want to do it and was pushed into it.”

For males, historical trends of acceptability and meaning have been markedly different. Dr. Samuel Steward(1990), author and professor-turned-tattooist, reports of only thugs and sailors with pierced ears, as well the subsection of homosexual men who fetishized and emulated these hyper-masculine males. Following the 1953 release of The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando, Steward marks a noticeable increase in homosexual men requesting tattoos while wearing biker leather and a single earring (p. 92). During the 1960s, the incidence of males with pierced earlobes increased in marginalized groups such as homosexuals and bikers. However, in actual numbers, male earlobe piercing remained rare.

The initial challenges to the popular culture and the dominant social structures which defined the 1960s, strengthened and spread in the 1970s. The mainstream media started to take notice of males with pierced earlobes in the Gay liberation and Punk Rock movements. During the 1960s, East Coast Gays and West Coast Gays had opposite in-group signifiers for dominant and passive roles within sexual relations. Accessories such as bandanas, keys, and earrings worn on the left or right could mean a “top” or a “bottom” sexual role preference depending on locality. By the mid-1970s, most American Gay males agreed that a right ear piercing signified you were publicly “out.” Some in the straight world started to say: “Left is right, right is wrong.” By the early 1980s, males started to pierce both earlobes. This remained risky. A single lobe piercing on the “wrong” side, might be interpreted as “Gay,” but having both ears pierced violated widely entrenched gendered visual cues. With the growing occurrence among high profile music and sport celebrities in the late 1980s and through the 1990s, a more general acceptance gradually built for both or either male lobes being pierced. Jody tells of his experience:

It was my 15th birthday; I had my left ear pierced, in the mall at Spenser’s gifts, with a gun. It was a gold stud in my left ear. This was the mid to late 80s [1988]. At that time, it was very important that I got my ear pierced because it was what my peers were doing, but it wasn’t peer pressure. It was a popular mythology that if you got your left ear pierced you’d not be seen as a homosexual. My dad had his left ear pierced. My desire to have it done was more a reflection of the male kids I was hanging with and male celebrities like George Michael and Prince. I had both ears pierced by like 3 years later; it was the early 90s. The right ear was definitely after I moved out of the house, after turning 18. It was a statement for me, part of my coming out process, and certainly from that it was how I expressed my sexuality, because I knew I’d be identified as gay.

Jody’s story implies a more personal definition of peer pressure, which probably is similar to coercion. However, social norms and role models clearly influence his choices.

When the earlobe piercing is contextualized with personal experiences and historical writings, broader understandings begin to take shape. The sociologist Victoria Pitts (2003) has recognized that “instead of one truth of the body or of ontology, there are competing truths that are productions of time, place, space, geography, and culture” (p. 28).

Stretched Earlobe Piercing with stone geode jewelryExpanding Holes
Stretching is the most common method for the enlargement of the healed channel of scar tissue or fistula known as a “piercing.” Stretching is a gradual process. Depending on the method, the tissue’s condition, and the individual’s preference, stretching up one size in the established category can take seconds or days.2 Allowing for the ear piercing to heal and produce more skin cells generally takes several months. It can take many months, or even years, to get to a size that registers with an onlooker’s gaze as outside of the ordinary.3 Drawing from Roy Baumeister’s and P.L. Callero’s earlier works, the sociologist Lisiunia Romanienko (2011) distinguishes piercings that are exposed and readily available to the public gaze, such as the enlarged earlobe, as a “public self-symbolizer.” The individual with a public self-symbolizing piercing asserts self-autonomy of his or her body while simultaneously opening oneself to unpredictable visual, verbal, and sometimes physical responses of approval or disapproval from others. In contrast, piercings as “private symbols” are covered by clothing, which allows the pierced individual some control in selecting who may know of and when another may gaze at the piercing (Romanienko, 2011, p. 5). My interview with Brian illustrates the dichotomy of private versus public self-symbolizers:

I pierced my lobes when I was 17 [1991], but they were not my first piercings…I’d seen magazines of tribal/traditional peoples. I was pushing my limits and piercing my genitals and nipples just to have the intense experience. In an area like Atlanta, [with] the moral majority, the Southern Bible belt, there is going to be people rebelling against that. I didn’t do my lobes first because I lived in a town where I got shit for long hair already. I ended up getting more shit for having my hair long than pierced ears. I pierced my ears after I felt I had already undergone some rites of passage. Before I pierced my ears, I wasn’t ready to talk about it publicly. Piercing was attractive in a sensual, not necessarily sexual way, and [in] a self-reliance [way], in terms of what you need in your character to be able to step off that bridge, to stand in front of people and say this is who I am…

Even as a teenager, Brian’s experience reveals a complex series of “who I am” explorations. Both private and public self-symbolizers work as part of a continuous process for testing ideas of the self and the self’s place in society.

Brian studied magazines for alternatives to non-Western styles and significations of body adornment. Prior to the 1970s, public self- symbolizing piercings that were unconventional in size, in gender, or in quantity, were extremely rare. The “self-made freak” Rasmus Neilson, a circus sideshow performer, is one of the only known examples in American history. From the 1930s through the 1950s, Rasmus toured extensively with Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey circuses, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. His act included swinging 10-pound hammers from the rings through his distended earlobes. His act was seen by tens of thousands of people and influenced some of the earliest pioneers of the modern body piercing movement. In 1977, the periodical Piercing Fans International Quarterly (PFIQ) disseminated images of stretched earlobes to a broader, receptive audience. In one of the earliest issues, Fakir Musafar coined the phrase “Modern Primitive.” Vale’s and Juno’s book RE/Search Modern Primitives (1989) coalesced a loose network of individuals exploring identity, spirituality, art, and sexuality through their bodies, into a bona fide movement. Musafar and other Modern Primitives describe their practices as reverent of other cultures and as an integrative narrative for a self-determined aesthetic beauty and spirituality through engagement with and manipulation of the body. For many, Modern Primitivism is seen as an alternative to dominant norms of sacred naturalness and/or the intrinsic sinfulness of the body. Pitt (2003) notes some academics criticize Modern Primitives as privileged white Westerners, exoticizing and even symbolically colonizing the third world. Pitt and others contend: “Rather than establishing believable ‘tribal’ identities and communities, the gestures of modern primitivism call into question the fixity of identity as such” (p. 133).

Late 1993 marks the rise of the significantly enlarged earlobe piercing among non-indigenous peoples of the United States. It transitioned from an individual’s action, as practiced by less than a dozen people, to a collective behavior, as practiced by thousands.4 Blake Perlingieri (2003) and Kristian White teamed together to open Nomad’s in San Francisco. Nomad’s was the first shop to specialize in enlarging earlobe piercings. They fostered relationships with local artisans to produce large earrings for a fledgling market. They displayed beautiful antique ‘tribal’ earrings and decorated the shop in traditional designs of Borneo. The idyllic ambiance was completed with exotic birds, plants, and reptiles. The Modern Primitive aesthetic wasn’t a contrived marketing ploy but rather a genuine pursuit of passionate ideals. Kristian and Blake pioneered the practice of scalpeling the earlobe.5 Innovations in the enlargement process and the jewelry selection resulted in dramatic increases in the population of enlarged earlobe piercings in San Francisco (pp. 59-76).

The high visibility of stretched earlobes attracted the media and subsequently the local phenomenon went global. Back in the early 1980s, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, performance artist, musician, and self- described “cultural engineer,” was the first celebrity to have stretched his earlobe piercing. Most Americans have been exposed to enlarged earlobe piercings by celebrities such as Travie McCoy, Davey Havoc, Lil Wayne, Brandon Boyd, Adam Lambert, and Chester Bennington, films such as Apocalypto, and chain stores such as Hot Topic, which sells stretched earlobe jewelry and supplies to the youth masses. In March of 2013, a YouTube search yielded over 1200 instructional videos of “How to Stretch Your Ear Piercing.” As in the beginning, the professional body piercer displaying the latest developments in jewelry styles and demonstrating the anatomical possibilities of sizes is still the best advertisement for stretched ears. Jody from San Francisco shares: “I started stretching in 2003-2004. It mirrors like when I got my ears pierced when I was 15; it was something I saw happening, something I thought was attractive, and something I wanted to be a part of.”

Locating Symbol
Some ideas of self can be expressed quite clearly in non-verbal symbolism. Abigail exemplifies such a readily apparent communication, “The bicycles engraved on my earplugs represent [that] I agree with the green movement, sustainability, and it’s my main mode of transport.” In 2012, most of her San Franciscan co-habitants could probably deduce this message. In contrast, Becky’s expressions and reflections of identity are more complex to decipher:

There was a lot of soul searching on the journey of stretching my ears, “Who am I? Do I want to go past the point of no return?” I didn’t want to cut myself off from other options; but stretching my ears, the commitment helped to solidify and support my resolve. Over the years I was stretching, I would ask myself, “Who am I, What am I? What do I want to do with my life?” Looking in the mirror, after 5/8 inch, I saw myself as a person with stretched ears and I’m continuing as a person with stretched ears… my overall journey will end at the person I really am.

Examination of Becky’s statements reveals an alignment with Wicklund and Gollwitzer’s (1982) symbolic self-completion theory. Romanienko’s (2011) asserts that in symbolic self-completion theory, “individuals strive emphatically toward their identity goals, which often requires the use of symbols to most comprehensively construct the intended self one aspires to present” (pg. 3). The importance and complexity of how Becky situates herself in society and of how she is situated by society shapes her symbolic image production. Currently, Becky’s earlobe sizes are holding at 11/16″.

Weston situates his stretched earlobes within his identity as an indigenous ethnic minority even though the relative size of his lobe piercings puts him outside the current practices of his group:

Stretched lobes with Diablo Organic plugsI was born into Caddo, so it’s just how it is. It’s not a chosen community. I’m just tattooed and pierced; I didn’t stretch my ears to be part of a group. I’m not “Mod Prim” [Modern Primitive] or “Bod Mod” [Body Modification community]. I don’t want to be associated with that. Stretching was the impetus for my aunts to tell me the stories of the Caddo’s body art history. The Osage people had a sign language and for the Caddo they would have the bent index finger horizontally move back and forth in front of the septum, symbolizing the Caddo’s pierced septum and thus a sign for the entire tribe. At the annual powwow, the elders would say, “Hey, you look like an old timer.” I started stretching because I liked the look of the jewelry. And today it’s the same. The bigger jewelry is more decorative and detailed with better designs. The meaning of my stretched ears hasn’t evolved into anything, just like any other ear piercings, maybe that’s because I’ve had my ears pierced my whole life.

Weston adeptly reconciles his identification with the past traditions of his people while enjoying the current aesthetics of non-traditional sizes and jewelry designs. Weston goes on to share a proud memory of his father’s protection of the family’s traditional practices against an institutional authority:

When I was in school, they tried to make me take them out. My dad went to school, wearing his turquoise studs and won! He told them it was our peoples’ way. Then we, me and my brother, were cool.”

From a very young age, a female named “Danny,” realized that earlobe piercing was an act of asserting herself and demonstrating agency:

I remember the first pierced earlobes I saw on one of my mom’s biker friends. I was about 6 years old. I probably saw them earlier, but this was the age when I realized they did that to themselves. They WANTED it, and I like it and I want it too. I’ve been a fatty since birth, and had issues early on, “you mean you can control what you look like? You can have a say in it?”

Danny’s awareness of her weight difference at such a young age reveals the social mechanisms at work by which the individual internalizes social pressures to conform to norms of beauty and self-worth. For Danny, earlobe piercing and the subsequent stretching may demonstrate adaptive behaviors of psychological healing and self-esteem building.

By 15 years old, Christian’s earlobe piercings were stretched to ½”. He discusses his exuberant process of exploring meditative traditions and the interconnectivity of the mind-body relationship:

I developed an interest in the Tibetan culture, emotionally and religiously. I honestly think then is when everything became more sentimental and serious. I was a freakin’ hippie. I was practicing and learning about different religions; spirituality became a huge influence. At 17, it became an obsession overall to see what the human body could willingly withstand, you know, how the Tibetan monks would go out into the snow and embracing physical challenges during meditation. To make a long story short, I just stretched the hell out of them.

Engaging Others
Whether self-reported or academically studied, interpretations of what is being communicated can be highly subjective. For this paper, I am most concerned with self-reported evaluations of the individual’s public self-symbolizing when considered with intended as well as unintended observers. According to the ideas of Pitts (2003) what is at stake for those who stretch their ears resides in Alberto Melucci’s concept of the “power of naming” (1996). In her book Mutilating the Body, the academic Kim Hewitt defends her choice of naming all forms of body piercing as “self-mutilation” in order to situate, compare, and contrast this practice with eating disorders and Non-Suicidal Self Injuries (NSSI), such as cutting and head-banging. (She does not name acts such as weightlifting, dieting, or teeth straightening as “self-mutilation.”) In contrast, the psychiatrist Armando Favazza (2011) reserves the label of “self mutilation” for “self-injury involving a major, significant body part such as enucleation of an eye or limb amputation” (p. 71). Naming matters; the opinions of the general public and of the policy makers are influenced through taxonomic associations particularly when asserted by persons in positions of authority and expertise. When we resist the urge to reduce complex behaviors and associations into discreet categories, we avoid the construction of artificially fixed identities and, in this case, pathologized behaviors.

Thaoe’s family history shares the ongoing tensions between in- group beliefs and the normative social policies set by dominant institutions:

My grandfather had approximately 00ga earlobes. Traditionally, stretched ears are a sign of age, status, and wisdom. His father [Thaoe’s paternal great grandfather] took out his own earrings when he worked for the US government, and then put them back in. My uncle took them out when he was the tribal sheriff, then put them back in afterwards. Two other uncles had stretched lobes. My great uncle went to a US government boarding school and couldn’t speak the native language and didn’t have stretched earlobes. My other great uncle, the other one’s brother, went to boarding school too, but had an illness, and went deaf. My deaf uncle got pierced after boarding school and engaged in other rituals. The family believes this was because since he was deaf he couldn’t hear the school’s teachings.

Thaoe receives positive and negative responses from unintended observers. He shares a memorable interaction that asserts his ideas of class, ethnicity, sovereignty, and authenticity:

“I was with a friend on the subway and a yuppie lady said, ‘Oh I’ve been to Africa where people actually do that.’ I told her, ‘You’re standing on my ancestors’ land and WE did this too.’”

As a single young adult living in San Francisco, Thaoe’s intersecting communities are complex. He has a Spanish last name and self- identities as a tattooist, artist, and musician. Those who don’t know his story may never consider the richness and uniqueness of his belief associations with his stretched earlobes. Thaoe recognizes that living and working in the city affords him greater access to jewelry choice. The old people still living on the reservation will react in awe, “…because they don’t have shit.”

Becky’s story discusses the complexity of family members’, intended observers’, and unintended observers’ reactions that correlate to the continuum of size:

I remember ALWAYS getting compliments until I hit 5/8″, comments like, “I really like your size, it’s not too big.” My mom was SO funny, “Oh that’s perfect! That’s the perfect size, you don’t need to go ANY bigger!” [Laughter] Now today, “Are your ears BIGGER?” or “Why are you going bigger?” Dad never was a fan, but they’re supportive of me, of course they wish I’d been a doctor. [Laughter] Up until 5/8″, I’d get compliments from the general public, from everyone, but past that, only from people in the industry, or compliments just about the jewelry or the dedication [to stretching], but not as often and not about how beautiful my ears were.

Becky’s experience reflects a distinct size at which she noticed a change in observers’ reactions. However, descriptions such as “large,” “small,” “noticeable,” or “too big,” are all relative to an observer’s exposure and knowledge of stretched ears, aesthetic preference, and relationship to the individual with stretched earlobes.

After stretching too fast, Christian offers a cautionary tale of physical and emotional harm:

I had some complications… People were doing lobe repairs, but it just wasn’t an option. I went to two different surgeons; a Fort Collins’ doctor said, “No” to fixing them, so I flew back home to LA, and that surgeon also said, “No.” My career goal at the time was to become a medical doctor and at the time I felt a little bit pressured, by my career goal, the doctors, and my family to remove them [his 2″ stretched earlobes]. I know medical doctors that are fully sleeved [tattooed] and could be in the O.R., but I, with my ears stretched, couldn’t be? It’s almost like social conformity has a dress code. I was told by numerous surgeons that I couldn’t have stretched earlobes in the O.R. I distinctly remember a plastic surgeon had a half hour consultation with me about it; he was even from Africa! I think Kenya? He was calm and even-toned but very offensive. At 23, I had my ears reconstructed by a plastic surgeon in Pasadena. I cried in the car after the operation. A piece of me was gone, that’s how it felt. It’s weird how you mourn over that [he pulls his reconstructed ear] but I paid someone to cut off a piece of that [he points to his adominoplasty]…. Everyone was very shocked after the operation, some even mentioned they liked the old me, even to this day. Most of my interactions are with people without stretched ears.

There is little doubt that the surgeons were doing what they thought was best for Christian. Christian’s medical condition may be incomprehensible to these surgeons who exclusively construct normative ideals of Western beauty. Therefore his desires to keep his stretched earlobes were dismissed with encumbered medical categorizations such as “self-inflicted, cosmetic, and elective.”

Christian’s case appears indicative of a more general problem, in which doctors confuse their morality for beneficence and override a patient’s autonomy. As more people stretch their earlobes, more people will seek earlobe reconstructions resulting from physical problems such as structural tears, infections, and scars or personal choices such as social pressures, career decisions, and aesthetic preferences. The topic of earlobe reconstruction entails difficult questions of economics, access, and ethics. Professional body modifiers offer an affordable option for people who don’t have health care or money, or have health care but want a procedure that’s not covered because it is medically defined as “elective surgery.” Body modifiers charge approximately $400 while surgeons can charge $4000 and up. The procedure supplements the income for body modifiers who are generally at the lower end of middle-class earnings.

So far my research suggests that procedural outcomes are usually better when performed by the body modifiers than by plastic surgeons. These better outcomes correlate with elite body modifiers that are highly networked, specialized, and experienced with this particular procedure.

But what about the ethics of performing what could be considered “plastic surgery” outside the legally sanctioned medical field? What of the ethical consequences of my investigating this activity? Bringing an apparently adaptive system of underground services under scrutiny could have far-reaching repercussions for practitioners trying to make a living, for clients trying to access affordable alternatives, and for my professional and personal relationships.

 Stretched Lobe Piercing - AnatometalConsidering Change
To form more durable understandings of human behaviors, this research must consider the effects of time. Humans change. The impulse and the act of piercing the earlobe can transpire in moments. In fact, most people can leave the jewelry out for months or even years at a time and the hole will remain open, without consideration or action. But the physiology of the stretched earlobe is different. The moment jewelry is removed, the process of shrinking starts. For many, this appears glacially slow, taking days or weeks to “lose a stretch” and to have to go down in size. But for others this process starts to happen in hours or even in minutes. Over time, innumerable variables shift: finances, style preferences, jobs, relationships, responsibilities, hobbies, and social groups, so what choices factor in keeping stretched earlobes? Melody’s long relationship with her stretched earlobes traces such life changes and her corresponding choices to stretch or not:

[In 1990] When I got to 4 gauge, I stopped because I didn’t think I could go any bigger and have it look right…. At that time, people were JUST starting to do crazy body modifications; some looked awesome while others seemed ugly and deforming. As a piercer, I was really aware that some people were modifying their bodies for aesthetics and others were modifying without that regard. I was 4 gauge for years and years. I stopped being a piercer and got another career entirely. Going into a more professional, straight job, I wanted to maintain my individuality in a way. It’s funny, at work, I see myself edgy as compared with my colleagues and clients. And they see me as edgy, because of my ears… even though I tone it down. Even though at the same time from 1990 to 2012, body modification has become commonplace, and now I’m TOTALLY tame compared to some people. I get questions like… “Didn’t that hurt?” It hasn’t gone away, it’s such a funny question. I understand the question isn’t really “does that hurt,” but rather, “even though it does hurt, why did you subject yourself to that pain? Help me to understand.” In addition to maintaining my individual style and it being an aesthetic decision, as I’ve gotten older, I feel I’ve been pigeonholed and disregarded. As a woman who is almost 50, I’ve disappeared in some ways. So the stretched ears, in some way, counter balance that, if not for anybody else, then for me. I’ve had a LOT of body modification over the years, and then undone a lot over the next years, and this bout or period of changing things on my body has been very much about grounding and solidifying my own identity… my ears seem to be a way, to make a statement about who I am while at the same time balancing the confines of how I need to look as a professional, to be taken seriously and treated respectfully.

My lifestyle has been punk rock, radical lesbian, SM, Mod Prim, radically political and Queer; it’s been a LOT of different things that [were] far, FAR outside the norm and to a great extent I don’t practice that anymore but it’s still a part of me an integral part of that.

It’s almost as if age trumps everything else.

For Thaoe, the custom of stretched earlobes sustains his connection to his grandfather, to his identity as Native American and to his reservation. His traditions teach him the importance of an evolving relationship one should have with enlarged earlobe piercings:

Stretching is a time thing; when plugs fall out you go up. I’m guessing I was 8 gauge by junior high. The stretching is not forced; it happens with time. It’s natural. There is no stopping stretching until you die, unless they stay at a certain size. You should never push it; they’re the size they’re supposed to be. If there is a problem, then maybe you need to go down in size, think about what’s going on in your life, and reflect on your mental state. It’s time to slow down, time to think and reflect.

Stretched Lobes - Piercings by AJConcluding Thoughts
This ethnography of people’s self-reported stories unfolds diverse experiences, ethnicities, communities, and motivations, all of which inform and evolve the choices to stretch and to have enlarged earlobe piercings. As a research tool, ethnography allows for depth, dimension, variation, and personalization within a research cohort that shares commonalities, such as persons with stretched earlobe piercings.

From the stretched earlobe as a locus of study, interviewees revealed varied and complex experiences. These unique insights diverge from categorical generalizations that attempt to aggregate all body modification outside the current social norm as “self-mutilation”. For example, Weston and Thaoe shared their evolving indigenous understandings of stretched earlobe traditions. For Abigail and Jody, the stretched earlobe signified a classic sociological understanding of ingroup affiliation. Jody, Becky, and Morgan each presented the pierced and stretched earlobe as a demonstration of selfhood; however, each original ear piercing was initiated by external pressures of gender inscription. Brian reflected back on a younger self with sophisticated understandings of his personal explorations of earlobe modification within his particular social landscape of place and time. Danny’s earlobe piercing and the subsequent stretching appeared to be a successful ongoing reinforcement of psychological healing and self-esteem building. Christian revealed his emotional pain from being pressured into an unwanted surgical removal of stretched earlobe tissue presented as imperative to conform to a prevalent moral bias within the medical field. Melody eloquently examined her shifting relationship to her stretched earlobes, transformed by her growing age and increasing socioeconomic status.

Seeking out alternative narratives to a chosen hypothesis may be a more holistic approach to studying difficult social systems and psychological behaviors. Including the richness of diversity may give balance to otherwise reductive and essentialized research conclusions.

References

Burton, B.W. (2001). Culture and the Human Body: An Anthropological Perspective. Long Grove: Waveland Press, Inc.
Customer Service FAQs. Inverness Safe Ear Piercing. Retrieved from: https://www.invernesscorp.com/customerService/index.asp#how_ many. Accessed: 09/29/2012.
Favazza, A. (2011). Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation, Nonsuicidal Self- Injury, and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry (3rd ed.). Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Halliburton, M. (2002). Rethinking Anthropological Studies of the Body: Manas and Bōdham in Kerala. American Anthropologist, New Series, 104(4), pp. 1123-1134. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3567101. Accessed: 08/09/2012 11:53
Hayes, M.O., & Harness, G.A. (2001). Body Piercing as a Risk Factor for Viral Hepatitis: An Integrative Research Review. American Journal of Infection Control. University of New Hampshire, School of Health and Human Services.doi: 10.1067/ mic.2001.114402
Hewitt, K. (1997). Mutilating the Body: Identity in Blood and Ink. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. Inverness Corporation. (n.d.)
Lemma, A. (2010). Under the Skin: A Psychoanalytic Study of Body Modification. New York: Routledge.
Melucci, A. (1996). Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Moglen, H. & Chen, N. (2006). Bodies—Inside and Out. In N.N. Chen, & H. Moglen (eds.), Bodies in the Making: Transgressions and Transformations (pp. ix-xvi). Santa Cruz: New Pacific Press.
Perlingieri, B.A. (2003). A Brief History of the Evolution of Body Adornment in Western Culture: Ancient Origins and Today. Eugene: Tribalife Publications.
Pitts, V. (2003). In the Flesh: The Cultural Politics of Body Modification. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pitts, V. (2006).The Body, Beauty, and Psychosocial Power. In N.N. Chen, & H. Moglen (eds.), Bodies in the Making: Transgressions and Transformations (pp. 28-46). Santa Cruz: New Pacific Press.
Romanienko, L. A. (2011). Body Piercing and Identity Construction: A Comparative Perspective – New York, New Orleans, Wroclaw. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ruben, A. (1988). Marks of Civilization. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California, Los Angeles.
Shilling, C. (2003). The Body and Social Theory, (2nd ed.). London: SAGE.
Steiner, C.B. (1990). Body Personal and Body Politic. Adornment and Leadership in Cross Cultural Perspective. Anthropos, Bd. 85, H. 4/6, pp. 431-445. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/40463569. Accessed: 08/09/2012 11:44
Steward, S. M. (1990). Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos: A Social History of the Tattoo with Gangs, Sailors, and Street-Corner Punks, 1950-1965.New York: Harrington Park Press.
Thomas, H. & Ahmed, J. (eds.) (2008). Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK.
Vale, V. & Juno, A. (1989). RE/Search #12: Modern Primitives. San Francisco: RE/Search Publications.
Wicklund, R. A., & Gollwizter, P. M. (1982). Symbolic Self-completion. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Wruck, C. (1980). Jewels for Their Ears: Why Earrings Are as Popular Today as They Were Ten Thousand Years Ago. New York: Vantage Press, Inc.

Article reprinted with the author’s permission from https://media.wix.com/ugd/1a898c_e2c18ac54e744150be8a3c71b20332f9.pdf

Point #72: Sailor Sid Update – Paul King

1 Comment read In Memorium, Issue 72

PaulKingPaul King
Committee Chairperson & APP Treasurer

 

The Leather Archive and Museum and the Association of Professional Piercers are thrilled with the success of the Sailor Sid Diller Photographic Archive fundraising campaign!

This project began in September 2014, when Elayne Angel forwarded an email to the APP from the Leather Archive, a non-profit museum[1], requesting a grant of $10,000 to preserve a fragile collection of Sailor Sid Diller’s ephemera, letters, photographs, and films, that had been passed on to the LA&M by Jim Ward.

The Officers and Board of Directors of the APP thought it would be best to share this undertaking with the greater piercing community. The goals of the fundraiser were to raise a considerable sum of money for preservation expenses, as well as educate folks in the piercing community who may have never heard of or knew very little about our communities’ historical figure “Sailor Sid.” the LA&M loved the idea of a fundraising campaign and worked closely with the APP in every step of the process. The financial goal was upped to $11,000 to cover most of the costs of gifts to those that would contribute to the campaign. The online Indiegogo portion would be $6000 with the APP committing to match up to another $5000. The campaign was a resounding success exceeding all expectations!

Badur Ramji with Sailor Sid in the 2015 Body Piercing Archives
Badur Ramji with Sailor Sid in the 2015 Body Piercing Archives

The Indiegogo online campaign raised $12,286, with 102 registered contributors.[2] The largest contributors were Badur Ramji (Punkmedics) and Vaughn Body Arts (Cody Vaughn) at $2,500 each, Tiffany Diamond (DV8 Body Art) at $1,000, and 3 additional contributors: James Weber, Metamorphosis (Kristin and Joe Otter), and Billy Wood Jr., at $500 each. If you see these folks out and about or online, please thank them! In addition to the online Indiegogo campaign, the APP raised another $2,654 onsite at Conference and LA&M raised $3,824 from a business donor. Altogether, we were able to raise funds totalling $23,764!

Originally, the scope of this endeavor was focused on preservation with the intent to share a representative selection of the digitized photographs and films online. However, as a result of the exceptional support, the LA&M has committed to digitizing the entirety of Sailor Sid’s archive, making it all available online! This will be a huge and unprecedented undertaking for our communities.

In addition, this project raised enough funds to cover the expense of an exhibition featuring original materials and film screenings during the next annual APP Conference and Exposition. [3]LA&M’s archivist, Jakob Vanlammeren, will be in person to oversee the exhibit and lead small groups on tours.

Both the LA&M and the APP are excited about the possibilities for future projects that will save precious collections that are historically significant to both communities.

The campaign would like to acknowledge the efforts of the individual team members that helped make this happen: from LA&M—Rick Storer (executive director), Jakob Vanlammeren (archivist and project lead), Jeffrey Storer (social media), and Christina Court (reviewer), as well as from the APP—Paul King (advisor), Miro Hernandez (social media), and Dannielle Greenwood (designer), Matte Erickson (BPA), Becky Dill (BPA), and Kendra Jane Berndt (BPA).

Point #71: Help Save Sailor Sid! – Paul King

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PaulKingPaul King
Committee Chairperson & APP Treasurer

Over Memorial Day Weekend, the Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M), with cooperation from the Association of Professional Piercer’s Body Piercing Archive (APP, BPA) launched a month-long fundraising campaign for the preservation of piercing pioneer Sailor Sid’s archive.

LA&M logoThrough our joined efforts, the project will achieve:
1. Creation of an online exhibit. This project will put an immense amount of “paper only” photographs, films and documents online, available for research and casual use.
2. Preservation and conservation of important history. The Sailor Sid collection at the LA&M is currently in a fragile physical state. Many hours of carefully removing photographs from harmful photo pages and cataloging papers will be required to keep this collection available for generations to come.
3. Digitization. Photographs, films, letters to and from Sailor Sid and other records will be digitized using archival quality scanners. The project will also allow for reel films to be sent to digital facilities to make them available online.

Recognizing the urgency for saving this fragile historical piercing collection, the APP’s Board of Directors has committed to assisting LA&M in this common cause. This support includes a generous matching grant of up to $5,000. While the archival work, digitization, and exhibit creation will be conducted by the LA&M, the amazing resources in Sailor Sid’s collection will benefit leather and piercing aficionados alike. By joining forces, the LA&M and APP are both excited to see this collection come to life as well as be protected for future generations.

Sailor Sid—photo courtesy of Leather Archives and Museum
Sailor Sid—photo courtesy of Leather Archives and Museum

About Sailor Sid…

Sid Diller, better known as “Sailor Sid,” got his first tattoos and piercings while serving in the Coast Guard during World War II. Famous for his extensive genital piercings (reportedly over 100 in the penis and scrotum), Sid worked predominantly on gay men, mainly from his Silver Anchor studio in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Sailor Sid did it all: Prince Alberts, ampallangs and apadravyas, frenums, lorums, and any other part of the male anatomy. When Sailor Sid passed away in 1990, his collection of personal papers and effects related to his piercing career were entrusted to Jim Ward, founder of the original piercing studio, Gauntlet. Ward donated the collection to LA&M in 1997, where it has remained in climatecontrolled storage ever since, largely inaccessible due to lack of processing resources.

The collection itself is extraordinary in its scope. Sid kept meticulous records of his piercing work, documenting his procedures with hundreds of Polaroid photos, many identified with time, place, and subject neatly typed on labels. In a testament to Sid’s seemingly endless creativity, these pictures are stored in hand-made “binders,” crafted by Sid out of wood, string, bolts, and wingnuts. In addition to the photographs, the collection includes pages of his personal correspondence (Sid was a tireless letter-writer), various magazine and newspaper clippings on the history of piercing from publications as diverse as The New York Times, National Geographic, and Fetish Times, piercing instructions, 8mm films from his travels, floppy disks, slides, and even comic strips he saved.

Sailor Sid
Sailor Sid—photo courtesy of Jim Ward

But the collection is in urgent need of protection. Based on a cursory inspection of the collection, it has already become clear that there are some pressing preservation concerns due to its age:
• Homemade photo albums are an impressive display of ingenuity, but they aren’t the best option for long-term storage and preservation.
• Yellowing newspaper articles and correspondences need to be photocopied
• Photographs need to be transferred to archival quality sleeves
• Digitization of the 8mm films is an increasing concern due to their delicate condition.
• Importantly, the collection remains unprocessed and uncatalogued. The accessibility of the collection is extremely limited.

Sailor Sid—photos by Doug Malloy
Sailor Sid—photos by Doug Malloy

Info about the LA&M:
The Mission of the Leather Archives & Museum is: “The compilation, preservation and maintenance of leather lifestyle and related lifestyles [including but not limited to the Gay and Lesbian communities], history, archives and memorabilia for historical, educational and research purposes.”

The Leather Archives & Museum is a library, museum and archives pertaining to leather, fetishism, sadomasochism, and alternative sexual culture and practices.

The museum is located in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood on the far north side of the city. The 10,000 sq. foot facility houses a collection containing original erotic art from artists as diverse as muralist Dom Orejudos (who worked under the name Etienne), Robert Bishop, Tom of Finland, and Robert Mapplethorpe and artifacts from individuals, groups, sex clubs and events, such as The Mineshaft in NYC, Fakir Musafar, and San Francisco’s legendary Catacombs, just to name a few. Other features of the museum include:
• Eight exhibition galleries
• The 164-seat Etienne auditorium
• The Leather SINS Screening Room
• A 600 sq. foot reading library to house the research collections (published books, magazines, scholarly publications, films and electronic resources)
• A 1,425 sq. foot climate controlled storage space for archival contents (unpublished papers and records from notable activists, artists, businesses, and organizations)

Sailor Sid Diller—photo courtesy of Leather Archives and Museum
Sailor Sid Diller—photo courtesy of Leather Archives and Museum

The institution was founded in the early 1990’s with the motto, “Located in Chicago and serving the world”. Today, LA&M’s programs continue to uphold this dictum by making collections available outside of Chicago through social networking, digitization, traveling exhibitions, and loaned exhibitions. Social media also plays an integral role in LA&M’s outreach, with a combined audience of over 20,000 followers though its presence on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, Pinterest, FetLife, and YouTube, or through the website www.leatherarchives.org.

LA&M’s Jakob VanLammeren (Archivist/Collections Librarian) holds a Master’s in Library and Information Science with a focus in Archives from Dominican Uni-versity. Since being hired full-time in July 2013, Jakob —has established priorities, completed the arranging and describing, and/or managed the completion for over a dozen collections; developed, revised and created written procedures for archival processing and work plans; created catalog records, provided ongoing supervision and management of volunteers and interns, and given tours and presentations to student groups and/or organizations.

— article co-authored by Leather Archives & Museum and Body Piercing Archive

Sailor Sid Diller—photo courtesy of Charles Gatewood
Sailor Sid Diller—photo courtesy of Charles Gatewood

Point #70: BPA PHOTO CONTEST

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Photo Contest!

The Association of Professional Piercers and the Body Piercing Archive are excited to see what photos you have in your collection. Please submit your single all-time favorite photo from the APP Conference & Exposition. This photo can be old, new, beautiful, artsy, embarrassing, hilarious, sexy, silly, of an individual or of a group, whatever… but only one.

The winner’s photo will appear on the cover of The Point!

These photos will be on display inside the APP 20th Anniversary Exhibit. All past attendees are welcome to submit (membership is not required). All 2015 attendees may cast one vote for their favorite picture. Submissions must be high res digital, at least 300 dpi.

Submit your photo to archive@safepiercing.org by April 30, 2015

By entering, participants agree to indemnify, defend and hold harmless The Association of Professional Piercers and the Body Piercing Archive, its respective subsidiaries, affiliates, directors, officers, employees, attorneys, agents and representatives, from any and all third party liability for any injuries, loss, claim, action, demand or damage of any kind arising from or in connection with the competition (collectively, “Losses”), including without limitation any third party claim for copyright infringement or a violation of an individual’s right to privacy and/or publicity right. The Contest is void where prohibited by law.

Each entrant in the Contest is responsible for ensuring that he/she/they has the right to submit the photos that he/she/they submits to the Contest per these rules.

Point #70: Announcement of Body Piercing Archive

1 Comment read Issue 70, Lifestyle, News

ANNOUNCING THE APP BODY PIERCING ARCHIVE

Paul KingPaul King
Committee Chairperson and APP Treasurer

Anyone who has sat in on one of my classes knows my passion for recovering and preserving our community’s history. Historic Western attitudes of pathology and shame led to the loss of much of our history. I am filled with honor and excitement to publicly announcement the Association of Professional Piercer’s newest committee, the Body Piercing Archive (BPA). The formation of the Body Piercing Archive was authorized by the Association of Professional Piercers’ Board of Directors in June 2014. We have been working behind the scenes on establishing a committed team of workers, an organizational structure, and some preliminary goals.

Mission Statement:

“The mission of the Body Piercing Archive is to select, collect, document, preserve, exhibit, and interpret the personal, social, and material evolving histories of Body Piercing to ensure these artifacts are available to present and successive generations.”

For those familiar with archival collections, the goals laid out in this mission statement are daunting, requiring a commitment of time, training, and resources. We are proceeding methodically by rolling out the archive as manageable and contained projects.

Our first major short-term projects will be the organizing and cataloging of the APP’s corporate internal records as well as developing two public exhibits during the APP 2015 conference. In honoring the APP’s 20th anniversary, we will display the last 20 years’ development of our conference, outreach, and education. In addition, we will honor the passing of a piercing pioneer, Raelyn Gallina, with a memorial exhibit.

At this time, we are actively seeking loaned or donated items of importance pertaining to the APP’s history as well as Raelyn Gallina’s personal life and piercing career. Please contact us if you have any images, material items, ephemera, correspondences, and/or stories that you feel may be of interest to the BPA.

Some archives place a greater emphasis and dedication of resources to preserving and protecting objects at the expense of creating access to historical knowledge. Preservation will certainly be an important element of our efforts; however, early on we decided we wanted to focus our initial attention on projects that allow for community usage. Someday, the BPA committee and APP Board of Directors may consider a permanent facility; however, this is not a realistic goal today. For now, we will busy ourselves with getting a digital online archive developed for and promoted to the body piercing community, including professionals, researchers, and the general public. If the inaugural exhibitions of 2015 are well received, we will continue each year with new display themes as part of the annual conference experience.

Additionally, part of our medium-range goals is to form and build alliances with established archives that already have or are committed to receive collections of our history. We will be announcing some exciting collaborative developments very soon!

The Body Piercing Archive committee would like to give a special thank you to Barry Blanchard and Tod Almighty for their service and support. The richness and diversity of the history of body piercing can only be preserved and shared with community participation.

Contact information:

Please direct all general inquiries to:

Current Committee members:

  • Paul R. King – Committee Chair & APP Treasurer
  • Brian Skellie – Committee Member & APP President
  • Matte Erickson – Committee Member
  • Becky Dill – Committee Member
  • Kendra Berndt – Committee Member & The Point Co-Editor

Point #70: When is Piercing Mutilation? – Paul King

3 Comments read International, Issue 70, Legislation, Medical, News

PKing photo for conference 2011By Paul King
APP Treasurer

Considering Female Genital Piercing as “Female Genital Mutilation” in the United Kingdom

The Current UK Situation

On March 19, 2015, the London Evening Standard published Martin Bentham’s article online, “Women with Vagina Piercings to be Classed as FGM.”[1] The tabloid article is claiming that the United Kingdom’s (UK) Department of Health is requiring that healthcare professionals report known incidences of female genital piercing as “female genital mutilation.” This article was and is still being widely shared in social media and has proliferated through various copycat online articles through sites such as BBC and Huffington Post, etc.[2] The response has been an incredulous outcry from UK piercers,  other piercers worldwide, piercing enthusiasts, and even UK nurses.[3]

In this article, I will outline some pertinent history on the topic of “Female Genital Mutilation,” particularly in the UK and how it relates to female genital piercing; explain some key legal definitions and concepts; illuminate legal and ethical concerns; and suggest options for immediate responses and longer range strategies potentially affecting the Association of Professional Piercers (APP), UK piercers, global body altering industries, and other body modification communities.

A Brief Overview of “Female Genital Mutilation

To some degree, most of us have an idea of what “female genital mutilation” is and what it is not. However, “Female Genital Mutilation” (“FGM”) is a very complex subject containing passionate and sometimes conflicting beliefs. Within individuals as well as between groups, “Female Genital Mutilation” includes diverse and sometimes contradictory understandings of “Human Rights,” patriarchy, feminism(s), xenophobia, Islamophobia, sexism, racism, colonialism, Western ideology, economics, etc. I have studied this subject intensely for several years; I  am still learning and therefore I make few claims.[4] Most of the complexities of “FGM” are outside the scope of this article.

Throughout this paper, I use “FGM” and “female genital mutilation” in quotations. I believe the phrase and acronym are popularly recognized so I perpetuate their usage, however, with great ambivalence. I prefer and generally use “female genital alteration,” (“FGA”), or even more neutral, “genital alteration.”[5] These are less biased and less reductive ways to talk about diverse procedures of the genitals that contain debated and complicated social meanings and motivations, as well as a wide range of psychological and physical outcomes. Even the term “female genital piercing” carries problems of vagueness, which leads to confusion. As any professional and experienced piercer can tell you, not all piercings are the same; a “clit piercing” is not a “clitoral hood piercing.”[6]

The language and visual images used by the programs to eradicate “FGM” are so compelling and horrifying for the majority of Westerners that it becomes unimaginable to call into question data, rhetoric, or effects of this authoritative campaign.[7] Although the United Nations (UN) agencies including the World Health Organization (WHO) have made four separate categories to differentiate the “FGM” practices, their literature describes all “FGM” practices as having the exact same physical and emotional traumas. As a result, the most invasive infibulation with clitoral excision carries the same description of trauma as the most benign prick.[8] The UN et al. understands what they’re doing, they’re not looking for compromise; they are seeking complete eradication of all practices within one generation.[9] Setting aside further ethical considerations of UN et al.’s campaign for the eradication of “FGM,” we will only address the repercussions from the overreaching definition of “Type IV female genital mutilation.”

Illustrations by Jennifer Klepacki from The Piercing Bible: The Definitive Guide to Safe Body Piercing by Elayne Angel www.piercingbible.com
Illustrations by Jennifer Klepacki from The Piercing Bible: The Definitive
Guide to Safe Body Piercing by Elayne Angel www.piercingbible.com

The legal definitions of “FGM” includes: “Type IV is a category that subsumes all other harmful, or potentially harmful, practices that are performed on the genitalia of girls and women.”[10] The UN and therefore the UK provide no qualitative or quantitative scale for “harm.” A rash, abrasion, puncture, burn, and/or contusion, etc., any injury that is a result of a deliberate action, no matter how temporary or permanent is technically “harm.”[11] The UN/WHO’s own documents acknowledge their definitional language for “female genital mutilation” was deliberately broad to close any potential legal “loopholes” for the practices they were trying to target.[12] 

The UN/WHO have identified “female genital mutilation” as occurring in ethnic groups in or immigrated from 28 African countries as well as Iraq, Israel, Oman, United Arab Emirates, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan. I would assert that the UN/WHO never intended or considered for their definitions to include Western “normal” personal grooming practices on adult female bodies that frequently result in injuries. The UN/WHO’s stance on Western women altering their genitalia for aesthetics using cosmetic surgical procedures was intentionally left ambiguous.[13] To further complicate the ethics in this issue, other  UN policies do not consider “traditional” genital modifications of the male body as “mutilation,” in fact, the UN agencies UNAIDS and WHO, fund and promote medicalized male genital alteration in the same African communities in which they seek to eradicate female genital alteration.[14]

Important History Relevant to the UK

The trending tabloid articles take out of context an issue with a long history. For perspective, Ioffer some background on the development of the UK’s “FGM”campaign. This historical timeline is by no means exhaustive:

In 1985, the UK passed its first regulation on the prohibition of mutilating female genitalia. “Mutilation” is never defined.[15]

In 1987, UK authorities conducted “Operation Spanner.” This investigation targeted adult male homosexuals engaged in consensual BDSM.[16] Among the arrested was one of the UK’s most prominent and historically important professional body piercers, Alan Oversby, a.k.a. “Mr. Sebastian.” His criminal activity included, “performing a [Prince Albert] piercing for the purposes of sexual pleasure….”[17] All defendants pled guilty and lost all appeals, both in the UK and EU courts.[18] For this article, the crucial point to understand is that UK law will disregard adult consent to criminally convict a body piercer. In the Spanner Case, guilt was determined on the subjective ideas of “harm.” Current understandings are that one can pierce at least male genitals for adornment, but not for sexual gratification.[19]

In 2003, the UK replaced its first anti-“FGM” law of 1985, with the “Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003,” but they still did not clearly defined “mutilation.” In addition, the act refers to “child abuse” and the protection of “girls” throughout the document, then concludes under the definitions section 6 (1), “Girl includes woman.”[20] Obviously, this muddles the understanding of what constitutes “child,” “girl,” “child abuse” as well as a consenting (female) adult.[21] 

In 2008, The United Nations (UN) and the World Health Agency (WHO) released an UN inter-agency seminal work on the subject of “FGM.”[22] This document contains their standpoint on the issue, definitions, and candid rationale for their language choices. This is the document that most national governments refer to when considering definitions and implementing their own programs. It is the source document from which the National Health Services (NHS) and the Information Standards Board’s program ISB 1600 draw their global statistics, UK statistical projections, and legal definitions.[23] 

UN et al.’s Type IV female genital mutilation is defined as “All other harmful procedures to the female genitalia for non-medical purposes, for example pricking, piercing, incising, scraping, and cauterization.” This is where Western-style female genital piercing would be classed. The term “Medical” includes any procedure not necessary for physical and psychological health. Cultural and religious necessities are explicitly excluded as medically necessary. The UN et al. also specifically includes “stretching” and “harmful substances.” It also states “herbs” as well as implying chemical bleaches, depilatory creams, hot waxes, etc. when they cause any injury fall into this category.[24] The UN explains that they use such broad language to “close loopholes” in their campaign against “FGM.”[25] Of course the problem of this slippery slope argument is that they have included ANYTHING that causes ANY degree of injury to the female genitalia.  This includes female genital body piercing and potentially the reinsertion or stretching of a female genital piercing.[26] Looking through medical reports for the US and Europe reveals thousands of female genital injuries, annually. Research reveals that most of these emergency room visits and treatments are for procedures we would never label “mutilation”such as “personal grooming” with razors, scissors, and clippers; skin bleaching; electrolysis; “Brazilian” waxing; pubic hair dyeing; and pubic hair removal with lasers or depilatory creams; etc.[27] Presented this way, Type IV’s all inclusiveness may seem absurd. However, the UN categories were not intended to understand and document “our” bodies and practices; this descriptive system was intended to scrutinize “their” bodies and practices. For the law to make any sense, the allegation of “female genital mutilation” must be kept in context with the bodies being targeted as “FGM-affect.”

        

The 2013 UK Intercollegiate FGM report instructs authorities, including healthcare professionals, on how to identify, record, and report “FGM.”[28] This includes explanations for “FGM-affected” immigrant communities from the previously mentioned UN/WHO listed countries. The UK draws from this list for their statistics of probable “FGM” risk in the UK, since authorities admit there had been no prosecutions and little actual evidence to support concerns of widespread “female genital mutilation.”[29]

On April 1, 2014, the Information Standards Board released directive ISB 1610. This document detailed information on standardized codes and procedures for healthcare workers to report incidences of “female genital mutilation” in the UK. This guide includes UN/WHO definitions for Type I, II, and III. However, Type IV, which covers anything else, now includes “unknown” as ISB Type 9. “Type 9” mutilation means some sort of injury and/or scarring has occurred but it can’t be identified or there isn’t a clear ISB code for it. Type 9 is how “piercing” should be categorized.[30]

In July 2014, the Department of Health issued “Recording FGM in the Patient Healthcare Record” reminding healthcare providers, particularly General Practitioners, that ISB 1610 requires mandatory reporting of “FGM” byall healthcare staff effective Sept. 1, 2014. The Department of Health has been collecting and reporting this data since then.[31]

In Jan 2015, the Secretary of State and Parliament released a comprehensive report, in response to a July 2014 summit, requesting greater cooperation between the departments of law enforcement, education, and healthcare to escalate the campaign against FGM in the UK.[32]

Female Genital diagram TexOn March 10, 2015, the House of Commons released a report titled, “Female Mutilation: Follow Up.” The Home Affairs Committee demanded that laws be clarified to include all UK female genital cosmetic surgeries on the grounds that it is hypocritical to specifically target the eradication of female genital procedures of “FGM” -identified communities both located inside and outside the UK, while allowing the rest of UK females to modify their genitals.[33] This report is likely the impetus for the Evening Standard’s article of March 17, 2015.

On March 17, 2015, The London Evening Standard’s website posted the article “Women with Vagina Piercings to be Classed as FGM.” This article appears to have ignited the current public awareness that female genital piercing could be, and perhaps have been, categorized as “female genital mutilation.” Requests have been made of the author and the paper to see if they have knowledge of any evidence that the government specifically addresses Western-style practices of female genital piercing, so far, without reply. Most likely, the author was drawing from previous documents that generally include “piercing” as a standard example of the UN Type IV / ISB Type 9 “FGM.”[34]

Concluding Thoughts

At the time of this writing, I have no evidence that UK authorities would interpret the piercing of a white indigenous adult female’s genitals for adornment as “female genital mutilation.” The protection of the genitals of all minors under the age of 16 is already enforced by strict regulations. The UK has cultural views and therefore legal guidelines on young persons that differ from many states in the US. In the UK, persons 16 and older can consent to sex and medical treatments, without the necessity of parental consent.[35]Although, internationally, there exists a widely held professional ethical standard that only persons considered adults, at the “age of majority,” should have their genitals pierced. However, if a UK body piercer performed a female genital piercing on an adult woman from a UN/WHO/UK recognized “FGM-affected community” the legal outcome gets trickier to predict.[36] If the piercing were discovered by a healthcare provider, the situation would create an ethical dilemma for the healthcare worker, compelled by law to report any alterations. If the reported incident were investigated by law enforcement, it could lead to criminal prosecution of the body piercer, counter staff, shop owner, and/or a friend(s) that accompanied the piercing client (anyone that “aids, abets, [counsels] or procures”) for violation of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 carrying a penalty of a fine with up to 14 years imprisonment.[37] To mitigate risk, a UK piercer could refuse to pierce female genitalia, while continuing to pierce male genitalia. As another option, UK piercers could sort clients by using the same geographical criteria as the National Health Services and law enforcement; however, in practice, I doubt denying services based on country of origin would go  over well. It would probably lead to accusations of xenophobia and racism.

Therein lies the crux of an ethical dilemma. Most people will not believe that every injury of the female genitals is “mutilation.” “Female genital mutilation” is understood to only happen in “FGM-affected communities.” It’s common sense that Janet Jackson’s, Christina Aguilera’s, or Lady Gaga’s pierced genitalia is not “female genital mutilation,” and as such the definitions of and rules for “female genital mutilation” should not apply.[38] However, “common sense” is not universal; it is influenced by life experience, education, class, economics, religion, ethnicity, sex, gender, country of origin, etc. Healthcare workers, police, legislators, and the public operate under this blind bias.[39] Few want to admit that they see and treat others differently, that is because it directly clashes with other deeply held Western values of tolerance, decency, and fairness.

In March 2015, the UK Home Affairs Committee recognized the “double standard” of pressuring other communities to stop their “mutilation” practices while allowing UK females to have genital cosmetic surgeries. They have appealed to parliament to amend the 2003 law in order to criminalize female genital cosmetic surgery.[40] This action will likely meet allegations of patriarchy and sexism. Many Westerners fail to realize that our understandings of medicine and science (such as “necessary” or “not necessary”) as well as violence, mutilation, harm, pain, etc. are always shaped by culture. Ones most deeply held religious and moral beliefs, including notions of what is “right” or “wrong” are shaped by the culture one is born into. The dominant culture within any particular nation is in a more powerful position to propagate its beliefs.

The UK government and anti-“FGM” organizations genuinely desire to protect immigrant women and their daughters. Most Westerners, this author included, would find it repugnant to defend the most commonly told story of a practice that physically restrains a very young girl crying against her will, to have her clitoris cut out and her vagina sewn shut, a procedure that endangers her life, sexual pleasure, and ability to procreate. However, the anti-“FGM” campaigners risk weakening their public support when they overreach their claims to consider all practices regardless of invasiveness, all females regardless of age, and all physical and psychological consequences regardless of the wide range of experiences and perceptions, as the same. Once the UN et al. labels a community as practicing “FGM,” then at the international level, those community adult women’s legal “rights” to consent to any genital alteration are stripped away.[41] 

I’m not saying we should do nothing for individuals that want to be helped, or that we should not impose policies to protect minors, particularly in our own countries, but I do believe definitions and regulations that could specifically deny a female adult the choice to consent or not to consent to altering her genitals, whether by: piercing the genital tissue; or shaving, trimming, bleaching, dyeing, lasering, or waxing the pubic hair; or surgically altering the appearance, etc., violate current commonly-held notions of sexual equality and fairness. 

So what can be done in the UK?  Ultimately, the course of action is best decided by the piercers and the women of the UK, although international piercing communities should assist when asked. Currently, an e-petition is circulating that UK citizens can sign requesting that the government legally recognizes female genital piercing is not mutilation.[42] UK citizens can write and call their elected officials. They can email responses to all names and department heads associated with the anti-”FGM” regulations.Everyone can email news agencies that spread the story. At its source, this is an international issue that will keep occurring as a result of the definitions and policies of United Nations and the World Health Organization. Since the medical field and personal grooming industries may be affected, alliances should be sought. Body piercing communities and their allies should simultaneously apply pressure for legislative changes at both the local as well as the international levels.

As I conclude this article, I am reminded of the small group of piercers that came together in 1994, to stand up against a misguided California state bill that was going to unnecessarily burden our industry. The Association of Professional Piercers was born from this handful of determined activists. Twenty years later, the APP has educated thousands of piercers and has helped shaped numerous city, county, state/province, and national regulations around the world. My concerns about this current issue in the UK are somewhat eased by the excitement of what the future may hold with this opportunity for the UK piercing community to unite behind a common cause.

Author’s note: This article was written on a very tight deadline. I am filled with deep gratitude for Nici Holmes, Kendra Jane, Marina Pecorino, and Elayne Angel for their incredible assistance during this process, filled with last-minute questions and requests.

 

The Association of Professional Piercers’ Official Response on the UK Categorization of “Piercing” as “Female Genital Mutilation.”

The Association of Professional Piercers does not consider elective female genital piercing to be mutilation or “Female Genital Mutilation” (“FGM”). We support the right for all adults to pierce their bodies in a safe, informed, and consensual manner when performed by a qualified practitioner under appropriate asepsis.

We are urging UK government officials to readdress the language of the current laws and regulations to clarify the confusion arising from the current definitions, including definitional section 6 (1) of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, in which “Girl includes woman,” as well as any “FGM” regulations that include the term “pierce,” such as ISB 1610 of 2014. We are available to assist in this process.

The Association of Professional Piercers is an international non-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination of vital health and safety information about body piercing to piercers, health care professionals, legislators, and the general public. Socially and legislatively, body piercing is situated within the greater body modification community. As a result, we recognize that our role extends beyond the discipline of body piercing. Our position on body art practices such as tattooing, cosmetic tattooing, branding, scarification, suspension, and other forms of body modification is as follows:

We support the right for all adults to adorn or modify their bodies in a safe, informed, and consensual manner when performed by a qualified practitioner under appropriate asepsis. While the APP does not directly regulate, perform outreach, or offer procedural guidelines on practices other than body piercing, we support health and safety organizations that do. Our most fundamental principles as expressed in our environmental criteria and ethical standards extend to the greater body modification community and its practices.

 

Bibliography

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    DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2010.01935.x
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  34. Yoder, Stanley P., Noureddine Abderrahim, and Arlinda Zhuzhuni. “Female Genital Cutting in the Demographic and health Surveys: A Critical and Comparative Analysis.”DHS Comparative Reports no. 7, (2004). Calverton, Maryland: ORC Macro.
    http://www.measuredhs.com/publications/publication-cr7-comparative-reports.cfm
  35. Young, Cathy, Myrna L. Armstrong, Alden E. Roberts, Inola Mello, and Elayne Angel. “A Triad of Evidence for Care of Women with Genital Piercings.”Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, (2010). DOI: 10.1111/j.1745.7599.2009.0479.x

 

[1] My article won’t digress into an anatomy lesson, but it is noteworthy that Western-style piercers do not pierce “vaginas.” http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/women-with-vagina-piercings-to-be-classed-as-suffering-from-fgm-10113202.html

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/31938409; http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/03/18/vaginal-piercings-classed-fgm-new-nhs-guidelines_n_6892376.html; http://www.thefrisky.com/2015-03-19/nhs-genital-piercings-count-as-female-genital-mutilation/; http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/women-with-vaginal-piercings-will-be-recorded-as-suffering-fgm-under-new-nhs-rules-10116464.html; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2999462/Women-vaginal-piercings-classed-having-suffered-female-genital-mutilation-says-Department-Health.html; http://www.infowars.com/uk-regulation-to-label-women-with-vagina-piercings-victims-of-genital-mutilation/; http://www.prisonplanet.com/uk-regulation-to-label-women-with-vagina-piercings-victims-of-genital-mutilation.htm; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/11480359/FGM-Vaginal-piercing-to-be-recorded-as-female-genital-mutilation.html; http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fgm-women-vaginal-piercings-classed-5356141; http://guernseypress.com/news/uk-news/2015/03/17/vaginal-piercings-classed-as-fgm/

[4] A 60-page excerpt of my 2014 honors thesis, “Investigations of Female Genital Alteration in the US Within Nonimmigrant Communities” is pending publication for this Fall 2015, in the UC Berkeley Undergraduate Journal.  http://escholarship.org/uc/our_buj

[5] I only use the language of “female genital mutilation” when specifically addressing the UN et al.’s “FGM eradication campaign.”

[6] Refer to the anatomical drawings showing the variety of female genital piercings. Illustrations by Jennifer Klepacki. Used with permission of The Piercing Bible: The Definitive Guide to Safe Body Piercing. www.piercingbible.com.

[7] World Health Organization, “Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation: an Interagency Statement: UNAIDS, UNDP, UNECA, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNHCHR, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNIFEM, WHO,” World Health Organization, (2008), 11, http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/fgm/9789241596442/en/; UNICEF, “Eradication of Female Genital Mutilation in Somalia,” United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, 2004, www.unicef.org/somalia/SOM_FGM_Advocacy_Paper.pdf‎; (For alternative narratives and standpoints to the anti-”FGM” campaign, see: Lori Leonard, “‘We Did It for Pleasure Only’: Hearing Alternative Tales of Female Circumcision,” Qualitative Inquiry 6, no. 2, 2000: 212-228, DOI: 10.1177/107780040000600203; and Hastings Center, “Seven Things You Should Know About Female Genital Surgeries in Africa,” Hasting Center Report 42, no. 6 (2012): 19-27, DOI: 10.1002/hast.81

[8] Ibid, 9, 11, 24.

[9] UNFPA-UNICEF, “Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting: Accelerating Change (Joint Funding Proposal),” UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting. E-book, 2012, 12, http://www.unfpa.org/publications/female-genital-mutilationcutting-accelerating-change2012.

[10] WHO, Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation…2008, 26.

[11] Ibid., 26-28.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., 28.

[14] UNAIDS & World Health Organization, “Male Circumcision,” Technical Guidance Note for Global Fund HIV Proposals, 2011. http://www.unaids.org/en/media/unaids/contentassets/documents/programmes/programmeeffectivenessandcountrysupportdepartment/gfresourcekit/20110831_Technical_Guidance_Male_Circumcision_en.pdf

[15] Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985, Chapter 38, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1985/38

[16] “BDSM” is the acronym for Bondage and Discipline, Sadomasochism. It is an umbrella term for a wide range of sexual play and expression considered outside mainstream sexual norms.

[17] Bibbings, Lois, and Peter Alldridge, “Sexual Expression, Body Alteration, and the Defence of

Consent,” Journal of Law and Society 20,no. 3 (1993): 361, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1410312

[19] Ibid.

[20] Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003, Chapter 31, http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/31/pdfs/ukpga_20030031_en.pdf

[21] Since the age of sexual consent and medical consent is 16 in the UK, clearer language that addresses the specific  age would correct this problem, as an example: “under 16,” “16 through 17 years of age,” “under 18 years of age,” or  “18 years of age and older.”

[22] WHO, Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation…, 2008.. (I critique this document in much greater depth in my thesis, “Investigations of Female Genital Alteration…”.)

[23] As an aside from our immediate issue, the 2008 UN Interagency statement on FGM is the source of the UK’s ongoing issue of whether female cosmetic surgeries are mutilation or not. (The document takes the stance those “elective” surgeries such as vaginal rejuvenation and hymen repair ARE mutilation while acknowledging many Western countries may not agree).

[24] WHO, “Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation…., 2008, 27, 28.

[25] Ibid., 28.

[26] All italic emphasis in this paragraph was added by the author. I include “reinsertion” since when jewelry has been taken out of a piercing, the piercing fistula starts to shrink, reinsertion in some instances may stretch the piercing channel. Generally, in a well-healed piercing and executed by an experienced piercer, changing female genital jewelry carries a remote possibility of tissue trauma; as such I did not include “jewelry changes” under Type IV.

[27] Bjerring, Peter, Henrik Egekvist, and Thomas Blake. “Comparison of the Efficacy and Safety of

Three Different Depilatory Methods.” Skin Research and Technology 4, no. 4 (1998): 196-199. DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0846.1998.tb00110.x; Brunn Poulse, Pia, and Maria Strandesen, “Survey and Occurrence of PPD, PTD and OtherAllergenic Hair Dye Substances in Hair Dyes,” The Danish Environmental Protection Agency, 2013, http://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2013/02/978-87-92903-92-1.pdf; Glass, Allison S., Herman S. Bagga, Gregory E. Tasian, Patrick B. Fisher, Charles E. McCulloch, Sarah D. Baschko, Jack W. McAninch, and Benjamin N. Breyer, “Pubic Hair Grooming Injuries Presenting to US Emergency Departments,” Urology 80, no. 6 (2012): 1187-1191, DOI: 10.1016/j.urology.2012.08.025; Herbenick, Debby, Venessa Schick, Michael Reece, Stephanie A. Sanders, and J. Dennis Fortenberry, “Pubic Hair Removal among Women in the United States; Prevalence, Methods, and Characteristics,” Journal of Sexual Medicine 7, no. 10 (2010): 3322-30, DOI: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2010.01935.x; Trager, Jonathan D.K. “Pubic Hair Removal: Pearls and Pitfalls.” Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology 19, no. 2 (2006): 117-23. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S108331880600060X

[28] “Tackling FGM in the UK: an Intercollegiate Recommendations for Identifying, Recording, and Reporting,” 2013.

[29] Ibid., 12.

[30] Information Health and Standards Board for Health and Social Care, “ISB 1610,” 2014, http://www.isb.nhs.uk/documents/isb-1610

[32] Secretary of State, “Female Genital Mutilation: The Case for a National Action Plan,“ https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/384349/FGMresponseWeb.pdf

[34] I use the APP’s definition of “body piercing” to mean: “Western-style practices of female genital piercing.”

[36] There could also be a legal issue of Actual Bodily Harm, “ABH” (not related to “FGM”) if the client or piercer received sexual pleasure from the piercing process or if the piercing were performed in the context of a BDSM sexual scene. See information on the Spanner Case.

[37] “Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003,” sections 2 and 5.

[38] These three celebrities have all gone public with their genital piercings; no “outings” were done for this article. (Vibe Magazine interview with Serena Kim) http://brownsista.com/janet-jacksons-interview-with-vibe-vixen/; ((christina Aguilera’s Vertical clitoral hood piercing was confirmed with Taj Waggaman, body piercer, in a personal communication, March 23, 2015); (Lady Gaga, September 12, 2011), http://www.thesuperficial.com/photos/lady-gagas-about-to-feel-a-breeze/0913-lady-gaga-upskirt-01

[39] This is a link to a forum with nurses discussing the London Evening Standard “FGM” article. They expressed personal opinions on how they should interpret female genital piercing and the law. http://www.practicenursing.co.uk/forum/topic.aspx?TOPIC_ID=23989

[40] House of Commons, “Female Genital Mutilation: Follow Up,” 2015, 6, 7. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmhaff/961/961.pdf

[41] WHO, “Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation…,” 2008, 10.

Point #65: International Suspension Alliance (ISA)

Comments Off on Point #65: International Suspension Alliance (ISA) read Features, International

PKing photo for conference 2011By Paul King
APP Treasurer

In the summer of 2012 Allen Falkner contacted me, requesting help from the APP for a member of the suspension community. A woman was having a legal custody battle over her children. The other party’s attorney was using her participation in hook suspension as evidence that she was an unfit mother. I recommended that he take the issue to the APP Board, as  I was sure they would help in some way. But I wasn’t sure exactly what help would look like and what the implications, would be.

The APP’s primary purpose is laid out in the mission statement: The Association of Professional Piercers (APP) is an international health and safety organization. It is a nonprofit voluntary alliance dedicated to the dissemination of information about body piercing.

As a modern adaptation, (hook) suspension utilizes body piercing needles to pierce the tissue rather ISA_2than the actual hook. However, after this commonality, the differences start to outweigh the similarities: Suspension is temporary without the complication of trying to heal the body with a foreign object present. Suspension requires knowledge of, and experience with, placements and configurations with considerations for differences in weight and torque bearing tissues. This must all be done in tandem with an expertise of the support rigging that rivals that of a mountaineer. Body piercing is almost always performed by a single practitioner while suspension is usually done with well-practiced and coordinated teams.

The mission statement goes on to say: the APP is a united group of piercing professionals…

Anyone that looks around the APP’s annual conference, online forums, or The Point publications will see faces of people that suspend and those of people that pierce. However, not everyone that professionally pierces suspends, and vice versa. Many people that are active in the suspension community participate within teams without needing to learn or to perform piercing. These are two distinct-yet-overlapping communities that have independent jargon, histories, skill sets, social norms, and motivations.

Body piercing has become a professional industry. While there are some who perform suspensions professionally, I’m unaware of a single person that financially sustains themselves on suspension. For most in the suspension community the words “paid professional” have no place. Although some appreciate donations to cover costs, most practitioners perform the services out of love of the experience, the benefits of gathering together, and the privilege of being entrusted to guide another through this powerful process.

The APP has political clout, but does it have the legitimacy and the authority to represent the suspension community before judicial, legislative, and public health officials? I don’t think so, and some veterans of the suspension community agree. On March 28, 2013, leaders from all the teams present during the Dallas Suscon met for dinner to discuss openly if they felt there was a need for greater community-wide coordination and cooperation, and what that might look like. Some of the needs that emerged were safety standardization, legislative representation, international cooperation, and contact consolidation. Simply put, there is a need for a common, stable, and readily accessible location that anyone, anywhere, can go to for reliable information and help.

ISA_1A small work group formed from the initial Dallas meeting. This group’s primary tasks are to solicit feedback and ideas from teams and individuals within the suspension community at various Suscons around the world, investigate these community-proposed options, organize and delegate viable plans, work their butts off, and continue to hold meetings to report on progress. At present, the group includes seven workers: Allen Falkner, team member of Traumatic Stress Discipline (TSD), USA; Bruno Valsecchi, member of APTPI, Italy; Eden Thomson, team member of Skindependent, New Zealand; Håvve Fjell, team member of Wings of Desire (WoD), Norway; Mike Coons, team member of Hooked, USA; Misty Forsberg, team member of Hanging City, USA; and Steve Joyner, team member of Constructs of Ritual Evolution (CoRE), USA.

On June 12, 2013, while at the APP conference, suspension teams and individuals came together for the second forum. During this meeting, the group submitted a working mission statement for a proposed new organization, to be known as the International Suspension Alliance (ISA): The International Suspension Alliance (ISA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the unification of the body suspension community through education, outreach, and the dissemination of information pertaining to the safe practice of human suspension to practitioners, the general public, and health care professionals.

86 people attended the open meeting. The entire meeting, including presentation and Q&A, was videotaped and is available for everyone to see here.

The third open meeting occurred in Oslo, Norway, July 24, 2013. Transparency and solid communication with the greater suspension community remain paramount for the work group. Allen Falkner et al. compiled a list of concerns and addressed them frankly. A complete video of this meeting is also available.

Over the next several months, more open meeting times and locations are scheduled:

September 2013 – Livorno Italy during Italian Suscon
September 2013 – Omaha, Nebraska during Mecca
April 2014 – Dallas, Texas during Dallas Suscon

The need for community organization is not theoretical; it is very real. In some U.S. cities, counties,602361_530168800353022_1022412352_n and states legislation is circulating that—if passed—will dictate, restrict, and in some cases, prohibit hook suspension. On December 6, 2002, the Florida Board of Medicine determined and then ratified that hook suspension was a medical procedure and therefore requires an M.D. to be present for and approve of all suspensions performed in the state.  In 2010, the city of Minneapolis prohibited all suspension practices. December 5, 2012, Coconino County Public Health Department, AZ implemented the revised Body Art Code, which banned suspension. The Coconino regulation acknowledges that suspension could be motivated by the desire for a “spiritualistic ritual.” It seems easy to imagine that any law blatantly banning what in some circumstances is an expression of religious belief and in other circumstances is performance art could be defeated in a U.S. court under First Amendment protections, but this of course assumes that the community has the resources and organization to challenge such discrimination.

Time and time again, body modification (tattooing, piercing, scarification, suspension, and extreme/heavy) communities are at the mercy of legislators, medical and mental health professionals, local law enforcement, and health inspectors. The people in power have their perspectives, informed by their own biases and agendas. We can let them establish whether or not these practices are legal or illegal, ethical or unethical, healthy and cathartic, or emotionally unstable and dangerous—or we can establish our own. Operating only from a position of defense and reaction to what they do is inefficient and garners as many defeats as victories. It’s exhausting and we’re always fighting these battles on their terms and their turfs. Like it or not, much of this comes down to good old fashion PR. How we talk about our practices and how we portray and organize ourselves in person, in the media, and on the internet does matter in shaping the minds of policymakers and the greater public opinion.

I talked to Allen about the group’s progress. His words sum this article up best: The future is really up to the suspension community.  The work group’s only function is to set up and establish the organization.  Once we have membership, the real work begins.  At this point I cannot speak for the organization. I am simply one person, but it is my hope that we will soon have one unified voice that will work to help those within our community.

1  There is at least one other documented custody battle in which suspension participation was used as evidence that a parent was unfit for custody. In the second case this tactic was applied towards the father. In both of these instances, the individuals requested to remain publicly anonymous.
2 Steve Joyner, Allen Falkner, and www.suspension.org are credible resources.
3 http://www.floridahealth.gov/Environment/community/body-piercing/newinfo.htm
4 minneapolismn.gov/www/groups/public/@council/documents/webcontent/convert_260915.pdf
5 http://www.coconino.az.gov/DocumentCenter/View/1044