Gacantaada ma jeclid? Iska gooy

[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Illogical desires that can't be ignored

 

Toronto Star

Oct 04, 2007

 

When Greg showed up at a hospital in the middle of the night complaining of a frozen foot, the nurse made him sit for half an hour in the waiting room in hopes that the "pins and needles" sensation would go away on its own.

 

When the nurse realized that Greg had purposely frozen his lower leg by submerging it in dry ice for six hours, he was whisked off for examination. Hours later, Greg was recuperating after doctors were forced to amputate the lower portion of his left leg.

 

He had accomplished his goal.

 

Greg (a pseudonym) is one of a small but increasingly vocal group of people with an unclassified condition known as Body Identity Integrity Disorder.

 

In many ways, Greg, whose leg was amputated three years ago, is an average North American: He's in his 30s, married with one young child and successful at his career. But ever since he was a child, Greg says, he's had the constant desire to be rid of his lower left leg.

 

It's impossible to estimate the number of people with Body Identity Integrity Disorder worldwide, but the advent of the Internet has let them form a community online.

 

The appeal of anonymity and a chance to connect with the few people who can claim to understand them has led so-called "amputee wannabes" to come out of the woodwork and publicize their plight in a way that was previously impossible.

 

Little is known about the disorder and few people have studied it. It was first classified in 1977 as a sexual attraction to the idea of becoming an amputee.

 

Now it's no longer considered a simple sexual deviation.

 

The few psychologists who have studied this phenomenon have largely concluded that the desire to have a limb amputated is a matter of self-identity. Doctors say these people are simply "troubled," plagued by illogical desires that they cannot ignore.

 

Wannabes, ironically, describe not feeling "whole" with all of their limbs intact.

 

Most claim that a certain part of their body feels foreign. And they are very specific about the limb they wish to have removed, right down to the number of inches they want their stump to be.

 

Most wannabes can remember having these feelings as far back as childhood. A 33-year-old wannabe from Vienna who calls himself Matt says he has felt attracted to the idea of being disabled since he was a young child.

 

Matt recalls his kindergarten teacher announcing the arrival of a new classmate – a boy whose legs were amputated above the knee. Matt's immediate reaction was that "it felt like a jackpot."

 

Now Matt says he wants to have all four of his limbs removed to live as a quadruple amputee. The only thing preventing him from achieving this goal, he says, is money.

 

Self-injury, like Greg's solution with dry ice, is not the only way to have a limb amputated, Matt says. Although it's a closely guarded secret in wannabe communities, Matt knows of at least two countries where one can pay a doctor to create a false medical reason to explain an elective amputation, at a cost of about $10,000.

 

Wannabes didn't always have to resort to self-injury or black market procedures.

 

Dr. Robert Smith, a surgeon at the Falkirk District Royal Infirmary in Scotland, amputated the legs of two patients at their request in the late '90s, the BBC reported.

 

In 2000 he was set to amputate the leg of a third patient, an American psychologist, when the hospital barred Smith from performing the surgery. No other doctor is known to have agreed to amputate the healthy limbs of patients since then.

 

A controversial essay written by two Australian bioethics experts argues that amputation may be the best and only way to treat this condition. Neil Levy, one of the authors, explains there is evidence that wannabes are truly suffering, and the medical community should provide the treatment they need. He says the only treatment that's been shown to provide relief so far is amputation.

 

[sNIP]

 

Claire, a mother of four from Eastern Canada, was one of the first test subjects in Ramachandran and McGeoch's study in the early summer. Claire writes in an email that she was conflicted about participating in the research project.

 

"I am afraid to do this, for one reason – because I'm afraid if I'm `cured' ... it will take away from part of my identity."

 

Claire says that in the several months that she has been blogging on a website for "transabled" people, she has "come out" to her husband and gone to therapy. She bought a wheelchair and has spent weekends in another city pretending to be a paraplegic.

 

The experience was eye-opening, she writes.

 

"It has shown me that when I live life as a para, I feel right. Instead of spending my day in anxiety or frustration, plagued by obsessive thoughts that never go away, unable to truly concentrate on or enjoy anything, I just feel normal. The demons in my head are stilled."

 

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more

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[Miskiin-Macruuf-Aqiyaar]

Internet caters to amputee fetish

 

Disabled athlete Ian Gregson says he never wondered why the same group of able-bodied fans always showed up at his Paralympic sporting events.

 

He didn't dwell on "strange" websites he saw in the early days of the Internet where people were trading photos of female amputees. And even when he saw an advertisement in Hustler magazine for a mail-order catalogue called Ampix selling pornographic images of female amputees, he says he noted only how bizarre it was, and then moved on.

 

But when new members began requesting pictures of amputees on his mailing list, the St. John's Amputee listserv, Gregson was perplexed. His site was aimed at helping amputees cope with the loss of their limbs. But many of those asking for images explained their interest to him: these people, mostly men, were sexually attracted to amputees. It was his first encounter with a group of people he would clash with for years to come: devotees.

 

They formed a community that has exploded online. Any search for the term "amputee" will turn up at least a few results for devotee-oriented websites, not to mention targeted ads for pictures of amputees. There are thousands of Web pages, forums, listservs and blogs catering to every imaginable niche of devotee interests.

 

For many people, this type of pursuit is seen as a strange and disturbing fetish, but for devotees, disability is just another physically attractive feature, no different from a curvaceous figure or beautiful eyes. Amputation is the most common disability that attracts but there are people who are aroused by blindness, paralysis

and even a group attracted to cognitive disabilities.

Others fantasize about the equipment necessitated by a disability: wheelchairs, casts, neck braces, crutches and so on

.

 

What all devotees seem to have in common is their commitment. For some, every detail is important – whether the disability was present from birth or acquired later in life and even which side of the body the disability affects.

 

Devotees exist in greater numbers than many people could fathom. Ampix catered to a clientele of only 300 people in 1976. A decade later, a devotee newsletter called Fascination had amassed a circulation of 1,000. By the time the Internet went mainstream in the mid-`90s, 10,000 people were participating in various devotee Web sites, forums and chats. Estimates today have as many as 50,000 active devotees online.

 

[The

same

source.]

[-Nomadique-]

^Bal isuug..

 

*goes to re-read it again to be sure*

 

..Subxanallah!!

[Som@li]

Waali

[Pucca]

these ppl need to just move to africa...i'm sure someone will willingly cut off their 'offending' limps. :rolleyes:

[Jacaylbaro]

crazy world ........