This research project describes, compares, and contrasts six genital cutting practices: Girl circumcision, boy circumcision, operations on intersex infants, intimate cosmetic surgery, gender confirming surgery, and cutting/piercing for aesthetics or as part of erotic activity. The theoretical research literature highlight several dilemmas around these practices: Do the benefits outweigh the risks? Is the cutting an attempt to align social and anatomical understandings of gender and sex? Can consent separate between childhood and adulthood genital cutting practices? Who makes decisions and how are decisions made in regard to the right to genital integrity and autonomy? This research project seeks to gain an empirical understanding of actors and experiences before, during and after each cutting. A total of 53 persons have participated in interviews, 27 of these have experienced one of the cutting practices, and the rest are actors that influence or are influenced by this person (health workers, parents, religious leaders, romantic partner, legal rulings, health guidelines, piercing artists). The aim is to publish the results as a popularized book where experiences, thoughts and opinions are shared. Through an in-depth insight into these highly personal stories, the aim of the book is also to describe a society that has developed a strong view of the importance of the natural body while adults are encouraged to do as they please. The stories are about who has and who does not have the right to decide over their own body, and how the state, medicine, culture, the individual, the family and religion decide what normal and abnormal genitals are. "Tyranny or freedom" is more than just a critical and compassionate account of body ideals, human rights, and health, it is a book about how othering - not otherness - can do at least as much damage as the cutting practices themselves.
