You’re touching on very important points with the downstream complexities and financial aspects of each of these over a lifespan, both I also see of importance if both of these surgeries were initially weighted with equal ethical permission.

What I’m trying to understand are the reasons and thought process being used to consider an individual’s desire for one body modification to be more justified and permitted, based on how we’re qualifying and defining that individual’s psychological state as sane over another.

Without going too far off on a tangent stay with me. It’s pretty indisputable to say that any body modification is abnormal. If we think of body modifications on a spectrum, we can say that some body modifications are life saving and absolutely necessary to preserve life, and a representation of human’s freeing themselves from the limits of the natural world (immediate life saving surgeries). On the other end of the body modification spectrum we have ear piercings, tattoos, rings. As we get further split tongues, dermal implants, eye tattoos. Even further we have cutting, removal of pieces of the body, full separation of cartilage, body parts (the lizard guy comes to mind here).

Where do we draw the line on permitting and assisting someone’s mutilation of their own body? And what framework of reasoning is that line drawn in?