![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
syredronningSpent half the night reading the German book Body-Modification.
In many respects, it's a very good book. I know a lot about bodymod and a fair share about self-injuries (not my ones, thankfully), but the chapter about amputations was really enlightening. It's a theme that fascinates me from a distance, but I never understood the motivations. Now they are a lot clearer to me.
The chapter about branding, however, is really small and bad and I think the author really hates that method ;) It makes me want to get some more brandings, maybe next weekend which we spend with kinky friends.
The discussion about self-injury, bodymod and their possible correlation are...hmmm... I would have wished for clearer lines here. I understand that it's not easy to draw them, but there were several moments where I thought "sorry, no, I'm not overly aggressive or depressive and I wasn't sexually abused either and I have a good job" when the statistics were flying around (some based on the gorgeous number of 6(!) people, which is laughable). The citations are sometimes a rather random mixture of people with self-destructive cutting right next to people with a (nowadays) standard piercing peppered into the text. It left me wondering where (if anywhere) the author was heading to. Many of the examples are of the "how to make everything totally wrong" category, which doesn't speak against the respective mod (as he makes it read), but against that way of doing it IMO.
Still, he has done lots of research, and included much material from the net, including the Body Modification Ezine, which is definitely not for the weak of heart. I think the book has his dissertation as basis, and it reads a bit like that.
All in all, the book is really good and I'd rec it to every German reader interested in body modification and its motivations (and the areas where you should take a second and third look at those motivations). I'll give it a more detailed read in some areas, and will probably refer to it in future discussions with friends (and foes).
In many respects, it's a very good book. I know a lot about bodymod and a fair share about self-injuries (not my ones, thankfully), but the chapter about amputations was really enlightening. It's a theme that fascinates me from a distance, but I never understood the motivations. Now they are a lot clearer to me.
The chapter about branding, however, is really small and bad and I think the author really hates that method ;) It makes me want to get some more brandings, maybe next weekend which we spend with kinky friends.
The discussion about self-injury, bodymod and their possible correlation are...hmmm... I would have wished for clearer lines here. I understand that it's not easy to draw them, but there were several moments where I thought "sorry, no, I'm not overly aggressive or depressive and I wasn't sexually abused either and I have a good job" when the statistics were flying around (some based on the gorgeous number of 6(!) people, which is laughable). The citations are sometimes a rather random mixture of people with self-destructive cutting right next to people with a (nowadays) standard piercing peppered into the text. It left me wondering where (if anywhere) the author was heading to. Many of the examples are of the "how to make everything totally wrong" category, which doesn't speak against the respective mod (as he makes it read), but against that way of doing it IMO.
Still, he has done lots of research, and included much material from the net, including the Body Modification Ezine, which is definitely not for the weak of heart. I think the book has his dissertation as basis, and it reads a bit like that.
All in all, the book is really good and I'd rec it to every German reader interested in body modification and its motivations (and the areas where you should take a second and third look at those motivations). I'll give it a more detailed read in some areas, and will probably refer to it in future discussions with friends (and foes).
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-06 07:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-06 12:47 pm (UTC)Ah well. Someone else in the amazon review claimed that the author seemed too excusing and lenient to him in regards to the bodymod. You can't make it right for everyone, and people with bodymods will read this book in a different way to people without any.
BTW, your tattoos belong to the best looking ones I know, and they are beautiful and make me wanna jump you *G* So you did a good job on the aesthetics :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-06 11:42 pm (UTC)Yes, people have really strong feelings all over the scale for body mods. What do you do... But they're definitely becoming more accepted. You see tattoos and large piercings in large corporations now, where they would have been utterly unacceptable in the '80s.