A cutter is an underground practitioner who performs voluntary surgical or quasi-surgical procedures that formal medical practitioners are unwilling or legally or ethically unable to perform. The procedures may be illegal in the particular jurisdiction in which they are performed, or of questionable legality. Procedures performed by cutters include castration, subincision, tongue splitting, ear reshaping, and decorative implants.
Cutters may have some medical training, though not all do. They rarely advertise their services or their real names, and generally do their business via word of mouth.