Severe body modification is never good, whether it’s done for Islamic reasons or trans reasons.
There is a question about body modification among the young that nobody wants to ask, let alone try to answer. But it’s time we put it out there. Why is it ‘mutilation’ when a young woman’s vagina is cut for religious reasons, but ‘affirmation’ when it is done for trans reasons? Why do we balk in horror at the ritualistic removal of parts of the outer vagina in young women in certain countries in Africa, but we cheer ‘bottom surgery’ as a form of ‘trans healthcare’ in the West? We need a reckoning with this moral disparity in how we view the ideological alteration of women’s bodies. We live in a world in which you can be arrested for subjecting your daughter to body modification for Islamic reasons but you will become a star on TikTok for allowing your daughter to have her breasts removed for gender-affirmation reasons. And we need to talk about that.
