The social status of piercings has changed a lot over the years. These days they're not particularly uncommon; many are pretty mainstream. But it wasn't all that long ago that most of them were still quite unusual. Genital piercings, especially, were pretty taboo and extraordinary even pretty recently.
It's my understanding that although many other parts of the world have piercings as part of their traditional culture, in 'the West', body piercings and especially genital piercings largely originated within queer culture. Most of the innovation and development of piercing practice in the early days was led by queer people and as little as twenty years ago, genital piercings were still largely the preserve of queer people or people for whom they were part of a kink: usually some flavour of BDSM, with only a minority of them belonging to hardcore enthusiasts whose interest in piercings was purely aesthetic. Even today, many trans people find piercings and other body modifications a way to combat dysphoria and take control and ownership of their bodies.
In the last couple of decades, the mainstream popularity of almost all piercings has grown considerably, and genital piercings are no exception, their rise in popularity helped by popular stories of the amazing sexual sensations the supposedly offer (many such stories are, of course, greatly exaggerated or even completely false).
All of which leads me to wonder: to what extent am I, a straight man who has several piercings including two in his genitals, appropriating from queer culture?