The British Civil Service, Folks! Give It A Big Hand!

The mandatory reporting regulations, sent to medical staff by the Department of Health, say that any woman whose labia or clitoris has been pierced must be classed as suffering FGM.

But surely this won’t apply to…

Oh.

The rules will apply even when women have consented to the piercing and had the procedure in the belief that it will improve their sex lives and enhance their attractiveness.

As Tim Worstall points out: “The very same people who insist that a woman can and should be able to do anything she likes with her own pregnancy seem to be the same people who insist that she cannot do what she wants with her own fanny.”

Indeed. But that’s the price you pay for insisting on blanket legislation to avoid pointing fingers at the people who are doing things you want to stop, isn’t it?

It means that each of the women will also be classed as a potential crime victim and that those responsible for carrying out the piercing could be deemed guilty of an offence under legislation banning FGM.

/facepalm

A Department of Health spokesman confirmed the move and said that piercings were a form of FGM even when performed on consenting adult women.

He added: “While there are challenges in this area and adult women may have genital piercings, in some communities girls are forced to have them.

“The World Health Organisation has quite rightly defined this as a form of FGM. We are taking every precaution to record genital piercings that have been done within an abusive context.”

And that’s subject to interpretation and over-zealousness and all the other things we’ve come to expect from agents of the benevolent State, isn’t it?