Piracy is okay: ship or augment?

Playing FTL Captain's Edition, with the Mantis Cruiser, I get involved in a lot of piracy.

I noticed that the Mantis Pheromones augment's description has been altered to include text about it being essentially a badge for my ship, proving that pirating is all good.

But the blue event option saying that it's okay states "(Mantis Ship)" as the source.

Basically, what I'd like to know is, if I sell my Mantis Pheromones augment to make room for something more useful, will I then lose the ability to pirate at will, or is it indeed the ship itself that makes it cool?

Mantis Pheromones are controversial and interesting, while amplifying one of the better strategies of the game (The 4 man teleport with Mantis ship), some users find it useless even with this strategy so you can simply pawn it off for some free scrap, which is always lovely

In answer to your question:

Pawning the augment for scrap should have no effect on your ability to 'pirate' ships that you come across via any blue event, you merely will not receive the speed bonus to your crew.

In addition, it is worthy of note that this is one of the only, if not the only augment that works onboard another vessel your crew still get their speed bonus, when transported