What crap. Someone (I am guessing privileged western and with a militant fem-nazi axe to grind) Didn’t bother to do any research and simply fabricated a meaning consistent with their ideology. I’m guessing that person wasn’t the author, but upon finding this spurious information the author gleefully and vehemently regurgitated it without bothering to do even rudimentary fact-checking. They are coils not rings, they are brass not steel. A fairly balanced account of this culture was presented in the national geographic series ‘Taboo’ (it appears as though some of these photos are from national geographic’s team, causes one to wonder if this was deliberate propaganda since the images would have been accompanied by the actual facts and not this tripe) In the documentary one can see a wearer of these rings with them off (they are periodically emoved and rewound numerous times over the course of it’s wearer’s life, not as punishment and certainly not resulting in death.) Katerina shows the same bias the author does, –what exactly does d**k have to do with it, this is a cultural standard of beauty that most of our species does not share, so how exactly is respecting that thinking with the male genitalia?– Madam you are a slave to dogma, it oozes from your every word, the summary dismissal of a comment because it was from a male without examining the validity, the easy acceptance of of complete hokum merely because it is consistent with your sexist ideological leanings, you have my congratulations, very few hypocrites ever manage to reach the lofty heights you have attained. This tradition may seem odd to westerners like myself, but I’m sure things like chastity rings, septum piercings, hair mascara, laser hair removal and breast implants seem pretty silly to a lot of the other cultures that don’t practice them.