Gender incongruence in surgeon who amputated legs

[ArabellaScott]

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/surgeon-neil-hoppers-twisted-world-10476298

'The case of double amputee surgeon Andrew Neil Hopper, who infected his own legs with dry ice so they could be amputated because he had a fetish for amputations has opened a window into a truly bizarre world of dark web pornography and weird sexual fantasies for cut-off limbs and "stumps that look so sexy".
At a sentencing hearing at Truro Crown Court today (Thursday September 4) it was heard how Hopper had throughout his life felt that he was in the wrong body and wanted to be a woman, but could not talk to anyone about it in the small rural village in Wales where he grew up.
The court was told how Hopper went to medical school where met his wife and future mother of his children and confided in her about his gender issues but never to his colleagues for fear he would be cast out out and left isolated. Neither did he confide to anyone about his body integrity disorder and the deep-rooted loathing he had for his legs and feet.'

Sickening quotes in that 2023 article “it happened to all of us”. And he gave pictures of his kids to the papers. Given his conviction, news outlets should remove the pictures of those poor children from the online articles.

How old are his kids?

Primary school age, I would say.

A Guardian article

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/sep/04/nhs-surgeon-legs-removed-jailed-fraud

Although not the focus some of his former patients aren't buying the reassurances, and who can blame them, they're seeking legal advice.

I also half read one of those books, so badly written I gave up. I quite like a bit of well written smut though tbf. The convergence of power and sex can be entertaining. I also like thrillers and dystopian sci- fi. I’m not keen to find myself on the run from a serial killer or fighting off parasitic aliens. Massive difference between entertainment and something you are acting out in reality.

In the scholarship of the body in society of the 1990s, body dysmorphia and dysphoria were prominent topics. This was because they were seen as examples of discomfort with / alienation from the body which resonated widely in modern Western societies.

Different bodily dysmorphias / dysphorias were often discussed together as part of the same phenomenon: transsexualism, alienation of body parts (commonly limbs, especially legs), anorexia nervosa, body modifications, and body trauma disorders such as phantom limb pain.

Said scholarship was often interested in the image-experience of our bodies held in our brains, the 'homunculus' or body map in the somatosensory cortex. These dysmorphias were discussed in relation to neurology meeting society / culture - distortions or disturbances in the body map being expressed as disorders like the powerful conviction that a person's legs don't belong to them and people's attempts to remove their own legs (train lines etc.) and the ethics of surgeons removing the limbs to ease the psychic discomfort.

There will be a view in the subculture that 'leglessness' is an identity and that deliberate leglessness is as valid as natural leglessness.

Because humans are sexual, these ideations of the body get tangled up with sexuality. Similarly body modifications (tats, piercings, implants etc.) were often explained as eroticised.

The association of these other body dysmorphias / dysphorias with gender dysphoria or 'trans ...' became politically taboo of course.

I don’t think they consider that. It’s another similarity with men who transition. They don’t give a thought to how their kids would feel about walking around with their dad in women’s clothes or calling their dad ‘mum’.

There one who told his daughter, on the eve of her GCSEs or possibly A levels, that he was going to transition. He couldn't wait a week.

Yep I think that was Jane Fae. Daughters going through puberty and wives/girlfriends going through pregnancy and birth are also common times for transition to be announced.

I’m finding it hard to word this but I’m finding it hard to reconcile an incongruence here. Here there is a natural reaction of horrified revulsion by the overwhelmingly majority of people - yet Susie Green’s actions towards her own child makes her and child stunning and brave…

Removing your own body parts - major publicity and reactions of revulsion.
Taking your child abroad to avoid the UK’s illegality of the removal of your child’s genitals - no publicity outside of a limited circle, and positively applauded by many.

I suppose like PPs have said, no financial fraud involved - meh. I don’t understand it.

It’s absolutely horrible imo - I don’t know how I’d cope if that was my Dad

There’s a massive difference between reading about a woman being submissive and arranging to get your feet chopped off because it makes your dick hard (as reported in the news reports of the trial where there was evidence of him sending others pictures of his erect penis when he thought about it) especially when the person whose dick gets hard at the thought of his limbs being amputated carries out amputations on patients.

I like that his name is Hopper. Quite ironic really!

I suspect that the NHS are currently setting a very high bar in commenting whether his clinical judgement was affected - e.g. performing an amputation when there was no clinical need. The reality is that after reading reports about how much he was aroused by his own operation, people will be worried about what happened in theatre.

People are already worried that health care staff will comment negatively about their appearance while they are under an anaesthetic (this has been researched quite extensively). How much worse would it be to fear that a surgeon derived sexual pleasure from operating on you?

As I wrote earlier, the sentence is risible for what he has done. I bet I would be imprisoned for longer just simply for that level of insurance fraud.

I hope his patients are reassured. What a horrific thing to discover.

Mia Hughes from Genspect
genspect.org/brave-and-inspiring-or-deviant-and-disturbing/

Absolutely brilliant read, thanks for sharing @Dopeydoraz

'Before trans activism made the comparison taboo, researchers noted the overlap between the two groups, with one 2005 paper finding almost 20% of apotemnophiles, like Hopper, wished to be members of the opposite sex.
Sufferers and experts alike also frequently noted the commonalities of the two paraphilias. As Dr. Anne Lawrence, an autogynephilic man and sex researcher, put it: “[They] are two sides of the same coin. They’re both about feeling like you’re in the wrong body and wanting to change that body.” Lawrence also noted a significant overlap between the two cohorts, with
Or, as one apotemnophile bluntly told a researcher in the 1980s: “Just as a transsexual is not happy with his own body but longs to have the body of another sex, in the same way I am not happy with my present body, but long for a peg‑leg.”
In both, there is the same ethical quandary: what constitutes harm? In traditional Hippocratic medicine, cutting into healthy bodies amounts to obvious harm. Yet, for those in favour of “sex-reassignment” surgeries and limb amputations, the inverse is true: not cutting into healthy bodies is defined as “harm.” The ethical justification is framed as: operate, or the patient will harm themselves.
And evidently some do. Hopper’s is far from the first story of this nature. Apotemnophiles have, like Hopper, frozen limbs in dry ice, blown them off with shotguns, or attempted self-amputation.
Autogynephiles have a similar history of extreme self-harm. In the days before trans activism persuaded surgeons to abandon their instinctive revulsion at disfiguring healthy genitals, extreme self-injury was common. One 1965 study of 100 male “transsexuals” found that “[s]ix patients performed autocastration, three transsexuals amputated their penises, and nine others attempted self-mutilation.”'

No idea how the NHS determined that all the amputations he performed on patients over the years were entirely necessary and I certainly hope their investigation findings are correct. But imagine the alternative.

I’m sceptical that the NHS would publicly express concerns that all the body parts he surgically removed from patients were completely separate and unrelated to his obsessive sexual fetish for the removal of limbs.

His wife and kids have lost their home too, according to the Guardian.

Interesting piece from BBC reporter Nicola Bryan today: How I fell for jailed amputee surgeon Neil Hopper's sepsis lie (headline has since been changed) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0vr20gxvno

"When news of the charges against Hopper broke in July, I was shocked.
Then I was confused - what exactly was he accused of doing? And why would someone inflict those injuries on themself?
Then I was concerned. Was I wrong to have taken what he told me at face value?
Fact-checking is an essential part of journalism, but on the face of it this did not appear to be a difficult story to confirm.
...
Remembering my conversation with Hopper while watching his sentencing on Thursday, it was clear that as a journalist you never quite know where a story will take you."

I hope Ms Bryan continues the good work for the BBC and begins to reflect on other reports, eg:College staff 'need gender diversity training'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-40609106

So I can understand why this man got prosecuted and convicted because of the fraud, but I am baffled at why the other Eunuch Makers were convicted and why the reporting on it was very much against them, when at the same time there is an industry that carries out castrations, called gender affirming care and it is celebrated.

Yep.

The NHS wants to castrate healthy genitals on men only on its own terms.

Reminds me of that Peter Greenaway film ZOO where it's a women who gradually gets all of her limbs amputated. I remember watching it as a student and it was a complete horrific fantasy - hard to imagine people actually carrying it out.

From the BBC article:

The court heard how he had suffered body dysphoria since childhood and his penis was feet were an "unwelcome extra" and a "persisting never-ending discomfort".
…
After his amputations he sent him another message: "It feels so cool. No penis feet!"

I feel like screaming. Whats the bloody difference??

I think that is the danger that we are in — we are just unable to distinguish between AGP and true gender dysphoria (and if such a thing really exists!)
Dangerous territory indeed! Welcome to 2025.