Body Mod, or Illness?

One of my favorite web-surf’s is BME-Zine’s “Mod Blog”. Although I have yet to decide on exactly how I’d like to whittle on this temple of flesh I call home, Mod Blog is great “reading”/looking and inspirational. Often enough, it can have other effects and I will be the first to admit I rather enjoy seeing the attractive female figure nude decorated with ink, piercings, needles, and scars (the proviso being she has to be enjoying those things as well).
I’ve gone ahead and added a link to the Mod-Blog over there on the right, just to expand the eccentricity of my recommended reading. It’s not for the faint of heart, and I’m sure some people will be offended by it, and even I do not like everything there, but to each their own. Check it out before you make your decision.

Its that very realm of not digging some of the work people have done, or do to themselves, I’m writing about when I ask “Body mod, or illness?”
Now, I have a fairly liberal mindset about bodymods – I think tattoos, piercings, scarifications, brandings, and some re-shaping (I.E. tongue splitting) are cool. Would I do all of them? No. Not all of them appeal to me. I am a blacksmith, I will eventually get branded somehow – but I wont go out of my way to do it, and I like my tongue exactly as it is, thank you.
I am of a questionable attitude about the more extreme forms of modification, however. Once you start cutting things, or removing them, in a manner that begins to affect your natural, normal, function as a human being I begin to question your sanity.
Penile bisection. Nullo. Amputations. These are not taking an artistic approach to personal appearance – This is wanton destruction of the body.
While I believe the body is a shell for the…. Whatever - Soul, spirit, mind, whatever – I think it is a psychologically important shell. For most of us, our self image is connected to our physical reality. And the functionality of our self, is limited by the functionality of our physicality. We may like sex – We may like hiking – But if we have cut off our cock we are no longer having sex, and if we have amputated one of our legs we are no longer going for hikes. We are also fundamentally attacking the physical of our self.

I was looking through mod-blog earlier today, and as I scrolled down a picture of a woman with multiple flower scarifications on her back arose. Each scarification (together they covered her back) was pierced with multiple needles, one after the other with no room between for the entirety of each scar. 100+ some-odd needles in all. Very little blood. Blossoms of needles. My breath caught in my throat to see it. It was not shocking to me, I just had not expected it quite – Probably because of the fecundity of needles. But I liked it. It was beautiful.
Shortly there-after I came to a picture of a woman in a very heavy BDSM scene, involving serious clamping and skewering of the breasts. Yes, skewering – Stainless spikes, larger than the average #2 pencil lead driven through the flesh of her chest. I was nonplussed. It didn’t bother me – They’re her tits – but its not my scene either. I like some admittedly heavy stuff, but that in particular trips not my trigger. It doesn’t even interest me from an artistic perspective. But it doesn’t upset me either.
Then I came to the pictures of the guy with a DIY (that’s right, do it yourself) finger amputation. In the description of his pictures it was noted that he is also (voluntarily) bilaterally amputated above the knee, and has one arm amputated below the elbow. And now he is cutting more pieces off?
As far as I am concerned, this is a sickness. Same for those cutting other pieces off, be it toes, genitals, ears, whatever. It alters the permanent functionality of the body in a negative and irreversible way. No tattoo, piercing, scar, burn, implant, or even BDSM practice ala skewering does that – It may change the appearance, or cause temporary injury, but it is not permanent nor debilitating.
Advocates for these folks can say all they want to about how “freeing” it is to remove a piece of their body they never identified with, or to experience life as a “handicapable” person, and I still wont buy it. Past a point, I remain a square – A tool of the establishment, in that all of my psychology training reinforces my common sense, gut instinct, that this is a mental illness.
There are people who like to cut open their abdomen, and push objects inside. Either for the pure enjoyment of the act, or to get advanced medical attention/surgery. They enjoy this. There was a gentleman in Albuquerque, NM, a frequent flyer of the EMS system there – as they were the ones who had to take him from the county lockup where he invariably was to the hospital when he did this – who did this repeatedly, to the point of putting an entire package of Bic pens into himself, and finally, stuffing his abdomen full of feces. The latter act caused peritonitis, and killed him – In excruciating pain (as he was in most times when he did this). Presumably he enjoyed even that. I cannot imagine anyone would advocate for that man (and those like him) as healthy participants of “body modification” culture. So why do so for people who have parts off themselves? They may be incredibly smart, wonderful, enjoyable, human beings – As are many people with severe mental illnesses – But that does not change the fact that they are ill.

Of course – I’ll defend to the death their right to do that to themselves. It is, after all, their own body and they are not hurting anyone else to do it to themselves. Although perhaps they are hurting others with the same mental conditions, when they post pictures of their removals online and advocate the practice.
But I wont like it – And I wont claim it is sane or healthy. I defend peoples right to take drugs, or to jump off really tall buildings without parachutes – But I’ll never claim its healthy. Because its not. Some things are simply ill – Some people are simply ill. They don’t need encouragement, they don’t need to be “understood” and made members of a supportive/loving community that supports/loves their illness – They need psychological/psychiatric help, and a great deal of it.
And I have to wonder at the people who do support those with this illness, if their interest is not solely macabre in nature. If their enthusiasm is not for the individual, not for the “modification”, but for the suffering at the heart of it. Schadenfruede?