In Georgia, a law was passed that bars women from getting a piercing on their genitals. According to FOXNews.com, the state senate passed a bill, 160-zero without debate, which would disallow any kind of mutilation to a woman’s genital area, regardless if an adult woman made the decision as a free choice. The consequence of violating the law is a jail sentence of two to 20 years. The law does not apply to genital piercings for men, only women.

As reported by the Associated Press, Bill Heath, R-Bremen, who sponsored the amendment, said when he first heard about vaginal piercings: “What? I’ve never seen such a thing. I, uh, I wouldn’t approve of anyone doing it. I don’t think that’s an appropriate thing to be doing.”

I’m curious to find out why exactly it matters that Heath thinks female genital piercings are inappropriate and why an individual’s decision on how to adorn their bodies should be made into a prohibitive law.

For me, this new attack on individuality works on more than one level of outrage. There’s the obvious – that a group of politicians elected to represent our best interests would have the gall to place a ban on personal expression. But there’s also the dismaying fact that the law isn’t geared toward making this act illegal for both sexes. What angers me more is that it bans only women.

Look around you. This so-called modern age – an age of enlightened “liberal” attitudes and mores, an age where freedoms are more easily available and taboos are busted one at a time – it doesn’t really exist. We live in a world where puritanical values – under the guise of reclaiming “decency” and “morality” – are encroaching on our lives and where sexism is still rampant, albeit in a form so subtle and inconspicuous that sometimes we play right into its hand.

Let’s delve into the little subject of morality and decency, shall we? Who’s right is it to decide what is moral and decent? Who makes the decisions that judge our lifestyles as right or wrong? And why do we allow them? If we do not understand something, than why do we make attempts to destroy it?

Heath does not understand the act of a young woman, someone capable of making her own decisions, going to get her clitoris or labia pierced. Therefore, he must take offense to it, and therefore he must outlaw it. Sadly, every one of his cohorts in the Georgia senate agreed and banned it. Heath calls female genital piercing “inappropriate.” Who’s he to declaim the appropriateness of that? Heath can’t fathom doing it himself and therefore can’t believe that any “respectable” woman would engage in such an “immoral” act. But morality shouldn’t be judged by what you pierce, the music you like, whom you marry or what kind of sex you like having – or how much of it you have. Morality is based on how you treat people, not on your own personal preferences.

But what’s even more astounding, more dismaying and more terrible is the misogynistic slant of this ruling. It’s the kind of low-key sexism that has infected this country ever since the new fundamentalist conservatives have taken office. The current Republican administrations on abortion rights, this current ruling in Georgia – it’s a slow process designed to subjugate women and “free” them of the basic rights they’ve accrued over the years since Suffragettes fought for women’s right to vote. These “men” – and I use the term rather loosely – see a need to tell women how to treat their bodies and their lives.

Obviously, our current political “heroes” see the male species as superior sex worthy of bullying and bossing the “inferior” females around. They see a patriarchal need to swoop in and make personal judgments for the women that surround them, to say what body parts they can have pierced and when they can have babies.

It’s a sexism that has been informed by the media – this I have elaborated on in the past – by claiming it as sexual liberation, and informed by the politicos who are making decisions out of what is “morally responsible.” The only ones being “morally irresponsible” are the politicians like Heath, who employ decency as a cover for chauvinist supreme rule.

Johnny Donaldson is a Collegian columnist.