Atlantic piece from 2000 on people obsessed with becoming amputees

[ScreamingMeMe]

Saw this on twitter:

twitter.com/AnechoicMedia_/status/1499385493871595522?s=20&t=p0p7BtKcDP0znf6xrEA7_w

Atlantic piece from 2000 on people obsessed with becoming amputees:

• "stuck in the wrong body"
• uses "the language of identity"; "this is who I am"
• socially contagious; exposure to the idea of the condition, spreads the condition
• Internet grooming

theatlantic.com
A New Way to Be Mad

www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/

• doctors perform voluntary amputations: "no doubt was doing the correct thing"
• belief that surgery is necessary to avoid self-harm if patient's desires unfulfilled

The article draws the comparison to transsexualism, and notes an overlap between people with both disorders.

The article's content is no longer shocking to us in 2022.

What is surprising is the tone, which is empathetic but regards the subjects as doubtlessly mentally ill. The condition is clearly treated as a social one, rather than a question of being "born that way".

Online I have seen people with both conditions; MtF trans and also obsessed with becoming disabled.

Despite the similar nature and language of these aspirations, polite society now requires you regard one as a clear disorder, but the other as a natural and correct belief.

"the language of identity and selfhood surrounds us"

Extremely accurate observation here too

I started reading this as a time capsule but it actually turned out to be a great article. Comprehensive, well-researched, and completely applicable to understanding identity issues today.

"One answer ... [is] this is an ancient condition ... there have always been people [desiring SRS] ...

But it is possible to imagine ... that once 'transsexual' became common linguistic currency, more people began ... interpreting their experience in these terms."

Interestingly enough, one of the reasons surgeons are not allowed to amputate is because it appears for many people with this condition the origin of it is sexual: they want to become amputees to fulfil a fetish. The medical community balked at the idea of disabling someone all for sexual reasons. And another worry was that if the medical community made elective amputation happen it would increase in demand. The number of people who seek amputation is currently tiny, but there’s some evidence to suggest that once a procedure becomes known and is available then uptake massively increases. If things had been a little different we could have lived in a world full of voluntary amputees.

I don't think there is any difference between these people and someone who is trans. It's all in the space of extreme body dysphoria and I'm surprised doctors do not see being trans as a mental illness any more. There was an article recently about a man who died when someone he asked to cut off his leg did so. It was widely accepted that he had a mental illness.

@DrDetriment

I don't think there is any difference between these people and someone who is trans. It's all in the space of extreme body dysphoria and I'm surprised doctors do not see being trans as a mental illness any more. There was an article recently about a man who died when someone he asked to cut off his leg did so. It was widely accepted that he had a mental illness.

Many of the young people who are going to end up sterile and sexually unable to function and with shortened lifespans are those from the same social groups who in the 20th century... well, I probably can't say it here but Adam Rutherford has just written a book about it.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_integrity_dysphoria

'Apotemnophilia was first described in a 1977 article by psychologists Gregg Furth and John Money as primarily sexually oriented. In 1986 Money described a similar condition he called acrotomophilia; namely, sexual arousal in response to a partner's amputation. Publications before 2004 were generally case studies.[15] The condition received public attention in the late 1990s after Scottish surgeon Robert Smith amputated limbs of two otherwise healthy people who were desperate to have this done.[15'

John Money was of course a major figure in transgenderism. (content warning, abuse, CSA)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money

Thank you for this. What could be clearer even for those determined not to see?

There was a man in Australia who died recently after persuading someone to chop his leg off (he bled to death). His family confirmed that he had been obsessed with becoming an amputee.

I remember reading an article where a woman was obsessed with becoming wheelchair bound (this was a theme in one of the stroke nicely). The end of the piece stayed that she had found a souvenir who was billing to sever her spinal cord…

I remember reading an article where a woman was obsessed with becoming wheelchair bound

It wasn't Chloe Jennings-White was it? 'Chloe' is also transgender and used to be called Clive.

This article doesn't make that clear.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/chloe-jennings-white_n_3625033

This one does.

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/spinal-column-no-truck-with-transableists-r3qrr3glx73" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">archive.ph/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/spinal-column-no-truck-with-transableists-r3qrr3glx73

I remember reading an article where a woman was obsessed with becoming wheelchair bound

It wasn't Chloe Jennings-White was it? 'Chloe' is also transgender and used to be called Clive.

This article doesn't make that clear.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/chloe-jennings-white_n_3625033

This one does.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/spinal-column-no-truck-with-transableists-r3qrr3glx73

Search in the archive sites if you don't have a subscription - my previous post was deleted because I posted a direct link.

Oh. My first post reappeared while I was reposting.

Oh I’m. It sure - I’d need to see a photo (I think I’d recognise them)

Another article with photos.
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/17/body-integrity-identity-disorder-disabled-woman-chloe-jennings-white_n_3609392.html

No I don’t think that’s the woman I read about… I had a look online and came across this one that I’d forgotten - she was blinded on purpose www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/psychologist-blinds-woman-drain-cleaner-6552282.amp

I am not a scientist or an HCP, so open to correction, as ever, but my impression is that psychology and psychiatry are still in the Dark Ages compared to many other branches of science/medicine. We know so little about how the brain works. This sort of thing illustrates clearly that we are groping in the dark, reacting to weird things people want to do do themselves, and not always by any means getting it right.

I have no way of knowing whether Ray Blanchard was right, or if his theory was widely accepted by his peers. All I know is that decades ago he said that after a long career as a clinician and researcher on gender issues he believed there were two main reasons why males wanted to transition. One was gender dysphoria and the other was something MN doesn't like us to talk about here, but it's easy to google it. I think I can say it was for complex sexual reasons, not because of any kind of body dysmorphia, and as we all know people with a sexual fetish are not shy about involving others in it, quite the contrary.

This, I assume, is why when the GRA was introduced Parliament stipulated that to get a GRC you needed a professional diagnosis of gender dysphoria. They grasped (dimly, perhaps, but I assume they'd been advised about this) that without that criterion they'd be making it possible to get a GRC for some pretty insalubrious reasons.

18 years on, guess what the Scottish government's just done? Yup! We're all tired of experts after all, aren't we.

As far as I recall Blanchard has said he believes that transitioning for HSTS is also sexually motivated. In that they want to attract heterosexual partners, presumably due to internalised homophobia, and see transition as the means.

And yes, I'd also heard that cutting off limbs is a fetish. I wonder if it's the same for women. Or whether it's mostly men who do it anyway.

That rings a bell. I recall Blanchard saying homosexual males transition due to a desire to become the sort of women they think heterosexual men will want. While heterosexual / bisexual males transition due to a desire to become the sort of women they themselves fantasize about.

Someone here posted an old bbc documentary called Complete Obsession, and I just searched for the link. It's about wannabe amputees. It's so, so interesting

www.veoh.com/watch/v15555821DTx4AaNp

I can’t remember which book it is but this comes up in one of the Cormoran Strike books by JKR.

Yes - the last one wasn’t it?

@KittenKong

There was a man in Australia who died recently after persuading someone to chop his leg off (he bled to death). His family confirmed that he had been obsessed with becoming an amputee.

I remember reading an article where a woman was obsessed with becoming wheelchair bound (this was a theme in one of the stroke nicely). The end of the piece stayed that she had found a souvenir who was billing to sever her spinal cord…

7news.com.au/news/qld/queensland-man-whose-leg-was-sawn-off-in-alleged-murder-may-have-suffered-rare-disorder-c-5891726

Totally bizarre and I have no idea how the courts are going to handle prosecuting the man who cut the victim’s leg off with the victim’s consent.

I suppose very few people on the planet would actually think that taking a chain saw to someone’s leg is a good idea (both had zero medical training).

The amp groups I'm in on FB frequently havewarnings about 'wannabees' and 'devotees'whom might try and befriend us. They post freaky photos of themselves with their legs bandaged up behind them . We mostly just think they're mentally ill.

Excuse sausage finger typos

I bet you don’t get thrown out of the groups for bot believing them.

No, we don't let them in. Our groups (like some women's groups) are heavily guarded.

And you don’t get backlash for doing this.