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.'

Reading about the Eunuch Maker case it seems one or more of the men who were willingly castrated had taken testosterone blockers and one was a child of 16. There was also a woman who had her breasts removed. So a definite crossover with trans surgeries.

The court commentary I saw focused on the non-sterile setting and unsophisticated instruments and the lack of medical training being behind the convictions as a danger to life (versus say gender affirming surgery in NHS). One of the men operated on was high at the time and obviously there was a fetish and money driven element. There isn’t much on the lifelong impact on vulnerable or impressionable individuals. The ringleader was apparently charismatic and like a cult-leader.

He is clearly severely mentally ill. Self mutilation to that extreme cannot be anything other, surely.

I’d agree.

This is what I suspect. Surely, his past patients must be asking a lot of questions.

Can you imagine him having been your surgeon? The very thought makes my skin crawl.

For years and years I have been making the point that body integrity disorder and body dysmorphia are practically the same things or two sides of the same coin.

In one you get jailed for looping off a body part - in the other it’s celebrated. Which is such massive cognitive dissonance it’s a wonder more people don’t crack up trying to believe the nonsense.

Removal of breasts and crating tubes of flesh from other limbs to cos-play as a man. No different to removing a limb and cos-playing as someone with a disability. Both nasty and offensive to the group they are aping.

What’s House? I’d like to see/read this @AMansAManForAllThat

Very funny TV programme with Hugh Laurie. He’s an ‘eccentric’ doctor in the states who specialises in diagnosing unusual cases. His team investigate people and situations for the source of an illness.

There’s more to it, but…. Spoilers!

The extreme body modification subculture that led 'eunuch maker' to have his penis removed | UK News | Sky News https://share.google/DF93iWrBMfaB8Pcmr

This article goes into the psychology of BIDD, including what it describes as a subtype that has a sexual motivation.

It suggests antidepressants plus talking therapy may be a successful way of treating the condition.

I wonder if the current 'conversion therapy' bill would fall foul of this, though.

Discussion on there of the risks the 'Eunuch Maker' may pose to other prisoners - I wonder if he will be treated in prison for the condition. And I wonder what the MPs whanging on about 'conversion therapy' would have to say about his treatment, and whether it should be stopped in case it dissuaded him from a desire to castrate and be castrated?

Another similarity is how a known fetish (in this case ‘Apotemnophilia’) is hidden under a more respectable mental health condition (BIID) (see also: Autogynephila and Gender Dysphoria).

A reminder there is a “Eunuch Identity” chapter in WPATH’s Standards of Care linked to a fetish website. It would not surprise me one bit if it was revealed there was a direct link between Marius Gustavson and WPATH.

Pathetic and disgusting POS. Too much time on his bloody hands. No real life worries about actually surviving and caring for others. If humans had to just worry about surviving, there would be no space for this twisted inward perception of self BS, or extreme pervertedness...honestly this douchebag would not have survived natural selection

I remember seeing a documentary about people with body dysmorphia. It mentioned the Doctor who carried out elective amputations. There was one woman featured though. She wanted both of her legs amputated. She was very clear; not one, both. Occasionally she'd treat herself to days when she'd tit around in a wheelchair. I remember watching her driving and feeling outraged (on behalf of her legs!). She was fine with using them but clearly felt no gratitude to them. Resented them instead. I couldn't understand the cognitive dissonance she must have experienced. I have no idea what happened to her. She was still walking around when the programme finished. I don't remember if there was anything that gave any insight into where her delusion came from.

There was another woman who found a Doctor willing to blind her. Iirc they used drain cleaner. I think her delusion started with her parents being kind to a blind child.

Neither of these women seemed to have a sexual motive. Although, as with the blokes, they're extremely unlikely to come out and say that. They might though if they believed they were in like minded company.

I read that article as well. Very interesting. I also had to stop myself reading further into all this as feel myself going into some dark rabbit holes.

I performed a bit of Googlefu and succeeded beyond my wildest expectations

BBC - Science & Nature - Horizon - Complete Obsession https://share.google/FYt0djyQzAwlVu2qS

It's a transcript of the documentary I referred to just upthread.

The woman, Corinne, travelled to try to get Robert Smith (the one touting a cure not of The Cure) to chop both her legs off, above the knee quite high. One of her inspirations was as a child, after seeing a woman with a prosthetic leg, she pulled the legs off her Barbie doll. Presumably giving the doll above the knee amputations, quite high. The psychiatrist she saw was utterly flabbergasted. His comments are darkly hilarious

It's quite clear in the time that I've spent talking to you that you, you know you've got, in a sense got your feet on the ground at the moment. You're sane and sensible, you're not psychotic, but it's, I have to admit that it's, it's a, it's a big, it's a tall order, big request and at the present time I, I can't give you any assurance that that'll happen.

She'd, at that time, been having two years of therapy. She'd never mentioned this obsession to her therapist.

They interviewed one of the men, Hans, that Dr Smith had...treated. I remember when watching this one of the amputees really creeped me out. He may have been that one.

Reading the transcript, although it's filmed before SM and probably before the Internet became widespread, these guys were somehow finding one another

It isn't that it's just me. I'm not coming out of the rain just coming in and saying I want this. My God, how many years of therapy have I had working on this. Not only that, we have individuals who've had this surgery and it's worked for them and their lives have changed and all the individuals that I know that have either shot their leg off, thrown themselves under a cart, dropped an axle of a car on their leg, or they've thrown themselves under the train, these individuals have all told me that the only thing they regret is that they'd never did it earlier in their life.

This man, Gregg, had seen his friend die after being butchered on a table in Tijuana.

I'm sure there must be women with fetishes - it's not something people ever discuss, is it? Who knows, maybe some of my friends actually like licking feet or something.

But are there any women with this kind of extreme and horrific sexual deviancy? And is there nothing that some man, somewhere doesn't find arousing?

For probably obvious reasons, it's a very difficult area to research. Stigma means that many won't disclose. So there isn't masses amount of research available.

But some points - there are differences between having fetishes and acting on them. Fetishism/paraphilias present far more in males than in females. And some research suggests that males tend more towards sadism, while females tend more towards masochism. I wouldn't be surprised if gendered socialisation may have an impact on self reporting/disclosing, too.

Men tend to the extremes in most psychological areas, is my very rough understanding, and I'm probably not describing it well!

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10189825/

'there were significant associations between gender and highly stigmatized paraphilias, χ2(6) = 18.63, p = .005, and gender and non-consensual paraphilias, χ2(6) = 22.39, p = .001, in that significantly more men than women reported highly stigmatized or non-consensual paraphilic interests, behaviors, or both. In contrast, there was no significant association between gender and BDSM/fetish paraphilias'

Although this study classed 'transvestic fetishism' in the latter category, and I have never heard of a female AGP.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554425/

' Paraphilias, in general, are more common in men, with reasons unknown.[13] A recent study conducted looked specifically at the desire for and experience of paraphilic behaviors of a sample population demographically representative of the general population. The sample size contained a total of 1,040 persons classified according to gender, age, education, ethnicity, religion, and location of residency. Researchers found that almost half of the study population expressed interest in one or more paraphilic categories, with approximately one-third of this population actually acting on this interest at least once. Specifically, fetishism, frotteurism, voyeurism, and masochism held a prevalence of 15.9% (value considered to be statistically unusual), with interest in both males and females. Interest levels in fetishism and masochism revealed no statistically significant difference amongst males and females. The research found that the most common paraphilic interest amongst men is often voyeurism and fetishism'

Interestingly if you go by the BIID subreddit (and I realise it’s not an ideal sample) a large number of people who claim to have BIID also claim to be transgender.

www.reddit.com/r/biid/

Many Autistic as well I noticed…

There's a subreddit ...

Of course there is! 😧

Presumably this is how people with such disordered thinking find each other - online?

I can't help looking back to the days when social disapproval helped put in place boundaries - especially for the young. Men had to go into a sex shop to purchase porn or get it sent through the post (and sometimes confiscated) and for all the extreme stuff, they had to go into a back room.

The risk of being seen by neighbours - gossip etc must have kept countless young men away from the seedy adults pushing their fetishes. Now of course, they get state funding to access the young. 😞

Agreed. I think access online via websites, dark web, porn, and communities found on the likes of Reddit, the pit that is 4chan etc. have fuelled such disgusting fetishes conveniently and easily.

Bring back shame! Shame provides a social barrier and purpose in reducing dangerous and harmful fetishes like these.

I must admit I found myself having a quick glance at that Reddit section and it really disgusted me

But another side of me thinks it’s easier to police online maybe