Transabled?

[Sarah CB]

So apparently there are people out there who feel like imposters in their perfectly able bodies. They feel like they should have an amputation or be blind or be a paraplegic. They feel as though continuing to live in an able body is not being true to their identity.

 

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/becoming-disabled-by-choice-not-chance-transabled-people-feel-like-impostors-in-their-fully-working-bodies#__federated=1

 

No words... Except that I didn't find the story particularly shocking.

[JumpyTheFrog]

Um, if this is real, it's going too far. I can't muster up sympathy for someone who wishes their legs, eyes, or ears didn't work. And I am really not okay if they self-mutilate or have a doctor do it and then want to qualify for disability because now they can't work.

[JumpyTheFrog]

And shouldn't it be called "transdisabled"?

[Ailaena]

This has been a thing for a long, long time, although I don't know if it had an actual label until recently. 

 

Yes, people mutilate themselves and yes, there are people who specialize in helping people achieve the look that they want and yes, it goes there.  These people feel compelled to change/remove their anatomy, like, to a degree I would not have imagined.

[.Michelle.]

I heard about this years ago, but it wasn't presented as people who wanted to be disabled as much as they had a body part that felt foreign to them.  It was loathsome for them to drag around this limb or limbs that they felt was not really a part of them and they wanted it gone.

[foxbridgeacademy]

I also don't find it shocking, mental illness and neurological disorders manifest in a myriad of ways including body dysmorphia.

[Catwoman]

Yikes.

 

I had not heard of this.

 

I wish I still hadn't.

[Guest]

I didn't read the article and I'm totally playing Devil's Advocate here BUT if a person can feel that their perfectly functional gender is wrong and can have it changed, why can't I say that my perfectly functional arm is wrong and have it removed? Why are my feelings about my arm less valid?

[Changed]

I didn't read the article and I'm totally playing Devil's Advocate here BUT if a person can feel that their perfectly functional gender is wrong and can have it changed, why can't I say that my perfectly functional arm is wrong and have it removed? Why are my feelings about my arm less valid?

Exactly what I was thinking.

[Catwoman]

I didn't read the article and I'm totally playing Devil's Advocate here BUT if a person can feel that their perfectly functional gender is wrong and can have it changed, why can't I say that my perfectly functional arm is wrong and have it removed? Why are my feelings about my arm less valid?

I'm sure that is the exact argument many of those people are using, particularly now with all of the support for Caitlyn Jenner.

[plansrme]

I didn't read the article and I'm totally playing Devil's Advocate here BUT if a person can feel that their perfectly functional gender is wrong and can have it changed, why can't I say that my perfectly functional arm is wrong and have it removed? Why are my feelings about my arm less valid?

I read the article and a couple more on one of the women featured and agree that this is a perfectly legitimate question. I also wonder how the transgender community has reacted to this encroachment onto their turf, so to speak. At least one of the articles I read had a transabled person making the obvious comparison.

[Heidi]

I didn't read the article and I'm totally playing Devil's Advocate here BUT if a person can feel that their perfectly functional gender is wrong and can have it changed, why can't I say that my perfectly functional arm is wrong and have it removed? Why are my feelings about my arm less valid?

Or how long will it be before we have transabled people on the cover of popular magazines showing off their mutilations and being praised as being brave and beautiful? Probably not very long. I find it equally disturbing as Caitlin Brenner and the praise he is receiving. I look at those pictures and do not see brave and beautiful. I see someone who is deeply unhappy and in need of mental heath services. Yet his misery and mutilation is celebrated and encouraged. I see sad and sick in him and our society that applaudes it.

[JumpyTheFrog]

I didn't read the article and I'm totally playing Devil's Advocate here BUT if a person can feel that their perfectly functional gender is wrong and can have it changed, why can't I say that my perfectly functional arm is wrong and have it removed? Why are my feelings about my arm less valid?

I wondered the same thing, but then I began thinking about how at least some transgendered people are intersexed/chimeras/whatever else I may be missing. So at least there is a biological explanation for those people.

[albeto.]

Um, if this is real, it's going too far. I can't muster up sympathy for someone who wishes their legs, eyes, or ears didn't work. And I am really not okay if they self-mutilate or have a doctor do it and then want to qualify for disability because now they can't work.

 

It's not a choice to go "just that far," or "too far." We have no choice how our brains are wired at birth, and we have no choice what our environment will be when we are young. We can no more predict the outcome of our environment on our 3 year old self than we can predict the thought we will think tomorrow at 3:00. Come tomorrow at 3:00, we can see what variables helped to inspire that thought, but that doesn't help us now. 

 

The brain is a fascinating and mysterious machine, no?

 

Random piece of trivia I learned recently during a public talk with a sleep expert:

 

You know those times when you fall asleep only to startle yourself awake with a jerk? Your leg jumps or your arm flinches, and sometimes you're aware of a shadow of a dream in which you fall or stumble, but sometimes you're just startled awake? Turns out our brains are to blame. Because the're so awesome. Check this out.

 

From infancy, your brain takes in information through sensory perception organs. Your eyes watch, and eventually make sense of the images. Your ears hear and eventually make sense of the sounds. Babble turns into words, and even "muscle babble," that random, flailing arms and legs that inspire a new mom or dad to stick their face deep into the tummy of said squishy baby and blow raspberries until everyone is belly laughing, eventually makes sense allowing for baby to reach out for a toy, keys, or Dad's nose. Your brain, from the very beginning, works to process all this information, store it in memory, recognize emotional responses, and make predictions. And predictions it makes. By 12 months, baby has predicted a pretty reliable way to get around on all fours, and sometimes on two legs with the help of a coffee table or Mom's hand. The brain silently, constantly, makes these calculations about body - space awareness, learning to act seemingly effortlessly. By the time you're 20 and you are walking with a friend down town, you don't even think of the curb at the end of the sidewalk, you simply, without awareness, step down while continuing your discussion. Your brain, however, has made rapid calculations involving your speed, the pressure of this step v. the pressure of the first step onto the street. They're not the same, and yet your brain has done this calculation without your awareness.

 

When you sleep, your brain turns off motor function, with necessary exceptions like breathing. In essence, when you are asleep, you are paralyzed (people who wake up and are conscious before the brain takes the opportunity to turn this off experience "sleep paralysis." They are fully awake, aware of what's going on, but unable to control their body. For some this lasts a few seconds. Most of us never experience it. How can we blame a person for being afraid to sleep if this is what they experience? But nevertheless, the brain does this. It does all kinds of legitimately cool things in your sleep as well. If you hook up your brain to electric nodes to record your brain waves, you'll find that in the deepest sleep, all the parts of your brain start to synchronize. Researchers speculate this is the time the brain consolidates information. It's why sleep is important, and schools that start later, giving high schoolers that extra hour of sleep, show better results on SATs. Anyway...

 

When you drift off to sleep, your brain slowly looses sensation of your physical surroundings. It's relaxing, and hormones are pulling it deeper into sleep. That moment you jerk yourself awake relates the moment your frontal cortex just realized it can't feel the mattress underneath you and is frantically trying to calculate the best way to catch yourself from falling.  In other words, your thinking brain wasn't relaxed enough to turn off by the time your sensory perception had shut down for the night.

 

So what does this have to do with transablism? Not much, only that our brains do a hell of a lot of thinking without our awareness, or even our permission. How can we blame someone whose brain has developed such an anxiety to a thing most of us can't relate to? That doesn't mean the anxiety isn't real, and it doesn't mean it was created on purpose. It just means most of us are damn lucky to have brains that conform to our intentions and desires. 

[go_go_gadget]

I read the article and a couple more on one of the women featured and agree that this is a perfectly legitimate question. I also wonder how the transgender community has reacted to this encroachment onto their turf, so to speak. At least one of the articles I read had a transabled person making the obvious comparison.

 

There's a strong precedent for ''We're okay, but these other people are just taking it too far''. The transgender community has felt marginalized by the gay/lesbian community for a long time, as has the asexual community. You also see this in marriage equality discussions when the question of polyamory comes up. I'm not surprised that the transgender community isn't necessarily thrilled to be associated with the transabled.

 

My first thought was ''Okay, as long as transabled people are somehow prevented from making use of society's provisions for the disabled, since they're actively choosing this,'' but then, the same could be said of women who have babies they can't afford and then make use of welfare. I think in the end, the number of transabled people will be so small as to not have much of a fiscal or other logistical impact, and it would probably be more complicated (and quite possibly more expensive) to discriminate against them.

 

I imagine that ''ability-reassignment'' surgery would carry the same psychological exams and prerequisites that gender-reassignment currently does, if it were legitimized. 

[albeto.]

Or how long will it be before we have transabled people on the cover of popular magazines showing off their mutilations and being praised as being brave and beautiful? Probably not very long. I find it equally disturbing as Caitlin Brenner and the praise he is receiving. I look at those pictures and do not see brave and beautiful. I see someone who is deeply unhappy and in need of mental heath services. Yet his misery and mutilation is celebrated and encouraged. I see sad and sick in him and our society that applaudes it.

 

If transabled people as a group are unjustly discriminated against and face oppression for things that are legitimately out of their control, I would applaud the first one who comes out in public to educate us about their plight. As it stands, physically disabled people are protected by law in all 50 states, whereas transgender people are not. Not only that, but states keep creating laws that make it specifically legal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or identity in the same way it's specifically legal to discriminate on the basis of being drunk and disorderly. But what harm does being LGBTQ present? Arguably, none. The arguments about harm from LGBTQ are shaky, logically faulty, and rely on faith based claims available only to those with "real faith", in opposition to objective data readily available to anyone and everyone. 

[Carol in Cal.]

 ... in opposition to objective data readily available to anyone and everyone. 

 

Objection.  Assumes facts not in evidence.  Typically so.

 

And that is all I have to say about that.

[JadeOrchidSong]

I didn't read the article and I'm totally playing Devil's Advocate here BUT if a person can feel that their perfectly functional gender is wrong and can have it changed, why can't I say that my perfectly functional arm is wrong and have it removed? Why are my feelings about my arm less valid?

Exactly!!!

[JadeOrchidSong]

Or how long will it be before we have transabled people on the cover of popular magazines showing off their mutilations and being praised as being brave and beautiful? Probably not very long. I find it equally disturbing as Caitlin Brenner and the praise he is receiving. I look at those pictures and do not see brave and beautiful. I see someone who is deeply unhappy and in need of mental heath services. Yet his misery and mutilation is celebrated and encouraged. I see sad and sick in him and our society that applaudes it.

Exactly!

[Wheres Toto]

Objection.  Assumes facts not in evidence.  Typically so.

 

And that is all I have to say about that.

 

 

There is objective evidence that indicates there is harmed caused to other people by being LGBTQ?

 

Please share links.

[scoutingmom]

When you sleep, your brain turns off motor function, with necessary exceptions like breathing. In essence, when you are asleep, you are paralyzed (people who wake up and are conscious before the brain takes the opportunity to turn this off experience "sleep paralysis." They are fully awake, aware of what's going on, but unable to control their body. For some this lasts a few seconds. Most of us never experience it. How can we blame a person for being afraid to sleep if this is what they experience? 

 

 

 

I've had that happen quite a few times.   It really wasn't scary, just annoying..... trying to 'get up', but I can't even move...  but you just think about moving for a few seconds - maybe up to 30 seconds? - and then you slowly can.

[DesertBlossom]

So what does this have to do with transablism? Not much, only that our brains do a hell of a lot of thinking without our awareness, or even our permission. How can we blame someone whose brain has developed such an anxiety to a thing most of us can't relate to? That doesn't mean the anxiety isn't real, and it doesn't mean it was created on purpose. It just means most of us are damn lucky to have brains that conform to our intentions and desires. 

 

So where's the line between "this is just how his/her brains works" and "maybe it would be healthier to address the malfunctioning going on in the brain instead of trying to embrace it."

[T'smom]

So where's the line between "this is just how his/her brains works" and "maybe it would be healthier to address the malfunctioning going on in the brain instead of trying to embrace it."

I'm sure that people try to "get better" before wanting to amputate a body part. But seriously, there has to be so few people that this affects, it's hard for me to get worked up about it.

[Corraleno]

I heard about this years ago, but it wasn't presented as people who wanted to be disabled as much as they had a body part that felt foreign to them.  It was loathsome for them to drag around this limb or limbs that they felt was not really a part of them and they wanted it gone.

 

This. I think the linked article is really misleading, in that it implies that these people are choosing to create a disability where none exists simply because they "want to be disabled." In fact, the disorder (as far as scientists can figure out) is due to a neurological glitch where the brain doesn't recognize part of the body as "mine." Basically, they already do have a disability — not that their body is already missing a part, but that their brain is "missing" that body part.

 

So a person who is wired this way may, for example, feel like his left hand is not his own and that it's a foreign object grafted onto him. It's really not a choice to feel this way; there's something significantly wrong with this person's brain wiring, but at the moment scientists really have no way of treating it other than, in extreme cases, removing the "alien" body part. I can't imagine how horrible it would be to feel like part of my own body was a foreign object.  :sad:

[DesertBlossom]

I'm sure that people try to "get better" before wanting to amputate a body part. But seriously, there has to be so few people that this affects, it's hard for me to get worked up about it.

 

I wasn't limiting my question to "transabled" people.  

[regentrude]

This. I think the linked article is really misleading, in that it implies that these people are choosing to create a disability where none exists simply because they "want to be disabled." In fact, the disorder (as far as scientists can figure out) is due to a neurological glitch where the brain doesn't recognize part of the body as "mine." Basically, they already do have a disability — not that their body is already missing a part, but that their brain is "missing" that body part.

 

So a person who is wired this way may, for example, feel like his left hand is not his own and that it's a foreign object grafted onto him. It's really not a choice to feel this way; there's something significantly wrong with this person's brain wiring, but at the moment scientists really have no way of treating it other than, in extreme cases, removing the "alien" body part. I can't imagine how horrible it would be to feel like part of my own body was a foreign object.  :sad:

 

I heard about that and imagine it a truly horrifying feeling... but what about the woman in the article who uses braces and a wheelchair despite having two perfectly functioning legs? Is that like a form of extreme Munchhausen's?

 

[albeto.]

So where's the line between "this is just how his/her brains works" and "maybe it would be healthier to address the malfunctioning going on in the brain instead of trying to embrace it."

 

Reduction of life-impairing anxiety is the goal. How that is accomplished will require information first before meaningful solutions can be expected. What variables contribute to such a condition? What variables distinguish a desire from an anxiety? Treatment depends on the details of the condition, and we simply don't know enough details. Yet. Given time, we will. What's necessary to uncover these details is funding for research. For this reason, people speaking out benefits others. Bringing this condition to the attention of the public increases the funding pool from which researchers can draw necessary capital in order to conduct research. If we truly want to reduce the suffering of our loved ones and member of our community, it behooves us to understand what makes them suffer. Drawing from personal experience isn't enough. We have always benefited from formal and concentrated research to discover details about any harmful condition; those details allow us to imagine potential solutions, put them to the test, and see which ones work. 

[Ravin]

So where's the line between "this is just how his/her brains works" and "maybe it would be healthier to address the malfunctioning going on in the brain instead of trying to embrace it."

I would suggest that the line lies with the path that doesn't further harm the person. Transition is a lifesaving approach for many transgender people. On the other hand, no approach attempting to change the transgender person's brain or identity has been shown to work, and rather conversion therapy and such are known to worsen depression, etc. In transgender people.

 

The question with the body dysmorphic person is, will it actually help their mental/emotional well being? I know with some issues, it can lead to higher and higher risk efforts to change the body that can lead to death.

 

Transgender/transsexual people often need counseling ongoing through and after transition. Hormones and surgeries don't always result in ideal outcomes and realistic expectations have to be had going in. Anorexia is very difficult to treat because altered body image is part of it.

 

Transgender people are helped by making the changes in transition. Anorexic people are not helped by being allowed to starve to death. If nothing else, that is the difference in what is the right approach from the standpoint of medical ethics.

 

We don't understand enough about the brain yet.

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

Or how long will it be before we have transabled people on the cover of popular magazines showing off their mutilations and being praised as being brave and beautiful? Probably not very long. I find it equally disturbing as Caitlin Brenner and the praise he is receiving. I look at those pictures and do not see brave and beautiful. I see someone who is deeply unhappy and in need of mental heath services. Yet his misery and mutilation is celebrated and encouraged. I see sad and sick in him and our society that applaudes it.

 

Funny. I feel the same way about the Duggars.

[Bluegoat]

You can make the "I feel this way, so it is just normal for me and who I am" argument for many kinds of mental illness.  In most cases though, we've said  that this is the result of some kind of malfunction or something that is not working the way it should. Even if the person does not recognize it. So - no, you are not really being hunted by the KGB and do not need to barricade yourself in your home.  You just feel that way".  And so on. 

 

If it affects the person negatively, we generally try and treat the cause, not the symptom, and even if we have to treat the symptom, we recognize that as a kind of best we can do scenario.

 

There are a few things that have been widely accepted in pop culture that I think have tended to go against that approach.  One is an acceptance of feeling as totally defining our identity.  Another is that we should modify the physical part of a person to fit that perception of identity and that will create harmony and in fact that is the preferred way to accomplish that.   I feel like I am a woman, so I will modify my body to match that sense, and then I will be a women.  I feel like that arm is not mine feel like this arm is not mine, my identity is therefore differently-abled, so I should remove my arm to create that scenario. 

 

We don't, so far, see that with my specific scenarios - like the KGB, or thinking you are a totally different individual, but it seems like the principle should hold.

 

To me it speaks to a rather odd sort of mind-body duality, as if the brain were "us" more than our body is, so that the healthy solution is always to modify the body to fit what the brain feels, even if it seems quite clear that the cause of the problem originates with the brain rather than the body. 

[Corraleno]

I heard about that and imagine it a truly horrifying feeling... but what about the woman in the article who uses braces and a wheelchair despite having two perfectly functioning legs? Is that like a form of extreme Munchhausen's?

 

 

I thought that photo was a really odd inclusion, because that woman isn't mentioned at all in the article, and there's no explanation of what her issue is. Maybe she just wants the attention, a la Munchhausen's, or it's possible that she does have a neurological issue with the way her brain "maps" her body and she uses the braces & wheelchair to immobilize the "alien" limbs rather than amputate them.

 

I think the whole article was rather badly done, and seems to be lumping together medical issues that may have completely different etiologies as if they're all basically the same thing — and that they're simply "choices" or preferences rather than disorders. 

[Guest]

I feel so badly for them. This is nothing new, just a new label for it.

[luuknam]

I read about this in the distant past, I think in an Oliver Sacks book? He's written some very interesting books for laypeople about neurological disorders.

[Corraleno]

 I feel like that arm is not mine feel like this arm is not mine, my identity is therefore differently-abled, so I should remove my arm to create that scenario. 

 

I don't think this is true of the disorder, and that's why I think that article was misleading. The problem isn't that the person "identifies as disabled" and changes their body to fit their "disabled identity,"  it's that their brain does not identify the affected body part as "theirs." They're not trying to become disabled, they're actually trying to treat the disability that they have. If scientists ever figure out how to rewire the brain to recognize the "alien" body part, I'm sure most people would choose that solution over amputation.

 

 

To me it speaks to a rather odd sort of mind-body duality, as if the brain were "us" more than our body is, so that the healthy solution is always to modify the body to fit what the brain feels, even if it seems quite clear that the cause of the problem originates with the brain rather than the body. 

 

We don't have many options for treating issues that result from actual neurological wiring glitches, though, versus problems that arise from biochemical issues. For example, with ADD we can prescribe a chemical that will help compensate for dopamine processing deficits, but we can't change the fact that there are often structural differences in ADD brains versus nonADD brains. With gender dysmorphia, we have no way of rewiring the brain to match the body, but we do have chemical and surgical ways of making the body more closely match the brain, so that's what we do.

 

And it's not at all odd to me that we see the brain as being more "us" than our bodies. A person whose body is totally paralyzed but whose brain still functions is still "that person," whereas someone who is declared brain dead is no longer "the person they were," even if their heart continues to beat and their lungs continue to breathe.

[Sarah CB]

This. I think the linked article is really misleading, in that it implies that these people are choosing to create a disability where none exists simply because they "want to be disabled." In fact, the disorder (as far as scientists can figure out) is due to a neurological glitch where the brain doesn't recognize part of the body as "mine." Basically, they already do have a disability — not that their body is already missing a part, but that their brain is "missing" that body part.

 

So a person who is wired this way may, for example, feel like his left hand is not his own and that it's a foreign object grafted onto him. It's really not a choice to feel this way; there's something significantly wrong with this person's brain wiring, but at the moment scientists really have no way of treating it other than, in extreme cases, removing the "alien" body part. I can't imagine how horrible it would be to feel like part of my own body was a foreign object.  :sad:

 

But what about the people who want to be blind or paraplegic?  That doesn't seem to be the same thing as those who want something amputated.  Same with the woman wearing the leg braces.

 

 

 

 

[Sarah CB]

There's a strong precedent for ''We're okay, but these other people are just taking it too far''. The transgender community has felt marginalized by the gay/lesbian community for a long time, as has the asexual community. You also see this in marriage equality discussions when the question of polyamory comes up. I'm not surprised that the transgender community isn't necessarily thrilled to be associated with the transabled.

 

My first thought was ''Okay, as long as transabled people are somehow prevented from making use of society's provisions for the disabled, since they're actively choosing this,'' but then, the same could be said of women who have babies they can't afford and then make use of welfare. I think in the end, the number of transabled people will be so small as to not have much of a fiscal or other logistical impact, and it would probably be more complicated (and quite possibly more expensive) to discriminate against them.

 

I imagine that ''ability-reassignment'' surgery would carry the same psychological exams and prerequisites that gender-reassignment currently does, if it were legitimized. 

 

I agree.  I used to get worked up about a lot of things, but now I mostly get worked up over hypocrisy.  If something is legal, it should be legal for all.  If surgery to alter your body to something that meshes with your identity is legal and accepted in society, then it shouldn't matter why you don't feel it meshes your identity.  There shouldn't be a distinction between surgery for gender or for vanity or for removal of a limb that doesn't feel right.

 

Same with marriage.  It drives me up the wall that gay marriage is legal but polygamous marriage is not.  If you can marry someone of the same or different gender and we can recognize those relationships as loving and meaningful then why on earth can't someone marry two people.  Or more.  

 

Same with abortion.  If it's legal to abort a child, I don't understand why people get worked up about those who abort because of the sex of the baby.  Sorry, I don't think you can pick and choose "valid" reasons for abortion.  If it's valid, it should be valid for any reason.  Here in Canada they don't generally do an ultrasound until 20 weeks and many places won't tell you the sex of the baby.  It's to avoid that kind of abortion.  I think it's ridiculous.

 

This has nothing to do with personal beliefs of what is "wrong" or "right" but everything to do with what is legal and accepted in our society.

[JadeOrchidSong]

Totally agree with you, Sarah CB!

[ILiveInFlipFlops]

The story about the man who woke up and thought someone had put a severed leg in bed with him because he didn't recognize it as part of his body? It's in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

 

Wow, I just read the reviews on this, and it looks absolutely fascinating. Thanks for the title!

[SKL]

ohh kayy.

 

Slippery slope anyone?

 

Editing my comment but I still stand by the concept that we do not change the physical world to match the world view of each person with a mental issue.

[albeto.]

ohh kayy.

 

Slippery slope anyone?

 

Let it be hereby documented that I've always believed I am actually a princess wrongly brought up in a working-class family.  I guess you could call it transworkinstiff.  Day after day I wake up and I feel like it's totally wrong that I have to work for a living.  I don't even want to wake up most days.  Clearly I'm not living the life I was meant to live.  Now the question is, what is the equitable way to deal with this?

 

This is extraordinarily offensive. It takes into consideration nothing informative, ignores any information we have available, and assumes your own limited experiences speak for all humanity. The arrogance it takes to laugh at people's genuinely crippling anxiety is heartbreaking to watch. 

[SKL]

This is extraordinarily offensive. It takes into consideration nothing informative, ignores any information we have available, and assumes your own limited experiences speak for all humanity. The arrogance it takes to laugh at people's genuinely crippling anxiety is heartbreaking to watch. 

 

I am not laughing at the disorder, I am pointing out that we do not change the physical world to suit the world view of each person who has a mental issue.

 

I think that anyone who supports amputating a healthy body part for any reason is extremely misguided at best.

 

OK I don't really care about sex organs that don't have any function as far as contributing to society.  But arms and legs?  No.

[Sarah CB]

I am not laughing at the disorder, I am pointing out that we do not change the physical world to suit the world view of each person who has a mental issue.

 

I think that anyone who supports amputating a healthy body part for any reason is extremely misguided at best.

 

OK I don't really care about sex organs that don't have any function as far as contributing to society. But arms and legs? No.

So where is the line drawn? What if I wasn't transgendered, but I didn't feel like my breasts belonged to me and I wanted them removed. Is that OK? Or is it only ok if it's related to gender identity?

 

How about fingers or toes? You're right - it is a slippery slope and that's why this stuff drives me nuts.

[albeto.]

I am not laughing at the disorder, I am pointing out that we do not change the physical world to suit the world view of each person who has a mental issue.

 

I think that anyone who supports amputating a healthy body part for any reason is extremely misguided at best.

 

OK I don't really care about sex organs that don't have any function as far as contributing to society.  But arms and legs?  No.

 

By comparing this disorder to a choice, you trivialize the anxiety. By comparing it in such an arguably disrespectful, snotty way, you mock it and those who suffer from it. I take your comment to show you dismiss and ridicule mental disorder to which you are not familiar, and anyone who suffers from it, or supports informing the public about it. By virtue of your condescending dismissal in an otherwise serious conversation, your comments imply that mental disorders that you don't personally find relevant to your life are absurd. The hubris this shows, that your personal experiences are somehow universal to all humanity, reveals not only a problematic ignorance of the world unfamiliar to you, but a profound disconnect from the feelings of people with whom you are conversing. 

 

Your comment that anyone who supports amputating a healthy body part for any reason is extremely misguided suggests you have absolutely no knowledge of this particular disorder, the various treatment options, nor have you taken the time to read the thread. 

 

This last statement is bizarre. By what possible argument can you appeal to importance of the maintenance of another person's external body part but utterly disregard their internal one? Do you assume arms and legs should provide for you, even if indirectly, but vaginas and penises are free to fill whatever function their host determines without worry of public reprimand? 

[albeto.]

So where is the line drawn? What if I wasn't transgendered, but I didn't feel like my breasts belonged to me and I wanted them removed. Is that OK? Or is it only ok if it's related to gender identity?

 

How about fingers or toes? You're right - it is a slippery slope and that's why this stuff drives me nuts.

 

Of course you could remove your breasts for whatever reason you wanted. Why couldn't you? 

 

I think the slippery slope argument is only a problem if one considers these issues to be choices made in the same way we might choose breakfast. The mind doesn't always work according to our desires and intents. Neurology is the field of science that is going to explain this, and we're learning more all the time. However, so long as one assumes this kind of behavior indicates a bizarre but willful choice, they will be confused. The slippery slope argument will seem apropos, but fewer and fewer people will accept that fear because information has a way of solving mysteries. 

[Bluegoat]

I don't think this is true of the disorder, and that's why I think that article was misleading. The problem isn't that the person "identifies as disabled" and changes their body to fit their "disabled identity,"  it's that their brain does not identify the affected body part as "theirs." They're not trying to become disabled, they're actually trying to treat the disability that they have. If scientists ever figure out how to rewire the brain to recognize the "alien" body part, I'm sure most people would choose that solution over amputation.

 

 

We don't have many options for treating issues that result from actual neurological wiring glitches, though, versus problems that arise from biochemical issues. For example, with ADD we can prescribe a chemical that will help compensate for dopamine processing deficits, but we can't change the fact that there are often structural differences in ADD brains versus nonADD brains. With gender dysmorphia, we have no way of rewiring the brain to match the body, but we do have chemical and surgical ways of making the body more closely match the brain, so that's what we do.

 

And it's not at all odd to me that we see the brain as being more "us" than our bodies. A person whose body is totally paralyzed but whose brain still functions is still "that person," whereas someone who is declared brain dead is no longer "the person they were," even if their heart continues to beat and their lungs continue to breathe.

 

I agree that the issue isn't coming out of a person identifying some way as disabled, at all.  And I think what you are saying is the most sensible, and natural, way to approach it.  My impression, or interpretation of the article, was that some of the people afflicted with this have taken the position that in fact their identity, their "real self" if you will, is a person without an arm, or whatever. It's very similar to the approach that some people take with transexuals -  so I'm not entirely surprised to see the same logic used in another context, that kind of cross-over in thinking seems pretty common.  If one person can say "I feel like my body is wrong because it is the body of a man, my true-self is a woman, and so I need to try and change my body to reflect that," and that logic is accepted, it seems like it could also apply to other feelings of bodily disconnect too.

 

I also agree that the inability to do much to fix problems in the way the brain is structured leaves only the possibility of treating the body more directly.  I don't however think that really reflects a lot of the rhetoric around that kind of physical modification.  If we acknowledged openly that what is happening is really a kind of superficial way to alleviate stress, it would be clear that the ideal would still be to eliminate the root of the problem, and that what was happening is essentially a kind of cosmetic modification.  If you have your hand removed for something like that, you are still not a person who by nature has no hand, any more than someone who has lost it to disease is.  You are a person missing a hand due to the treatment of a serious a medical condition. 

 

I don't think it is odd, exactally, that we tend to identify more with our mind or perception, than our body.  I don't think that means we are in fact our mind but not our body - I suppose that is something a platonist might say or someone who really was a dualist, but it makes no sense for me as a Christian, and it also makes no sense from the perspective of western secular humanism or materialism.  In both body and mind (or brain) are a unity.  A man who is paralyzed is still the same person, yes, but he is also now a paralyzed man.  That is a part of who he is and it is going to be both a psychological and biological fact.

 

I also think though to some extent we have something of a bias in thinking about this - the west does have a strong tendency to mind-body dualism.  it isn't obvious to everyone that a person who is brain-dead is no longer that person.  THis is for example why in Japan you see very little organ donation and transplant - their view of the body means that our concept of being brain-dead doesn't have the same meaning for them and so harvesting organs becomes a violation against the person.

 

I think the public discussion of this issue has become really confused and full of vague and often contradictory ideas, and most of the time it doesn't seem to be rooted in the biology at all.

[Bluegoat]

Wow, I just read the reviews on this, and it looks absolutely fascinating. Thanks for the title!

 

All of Sacks books are fascinating, but my favorite is actually his memoir of his childhood "Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood".  It's interesting from the perspective of self-education of children too.

 

[mom31257]

Doesn't creating a disability in yourself create the potential for you not to be able to support yourself? I think counseling, medications, and behavior therapy would be better than mutilation. 

 

 

[Bluegoat]

So where is the line drawn? What if I wasn't transgendered, but I didn't feel like my breasts belonged to me and I wanted them removed. Is that OK? Or is it only ok if it's related to gender identity?

 

How about fingers or toes? You're right - it is a slippery slope and that's why this stuff drives me nuts.

 

I think one of the question is, are we actually helping a person if they are wanting to harm themselves because of a mental illness.  My dad is bi-polar and has tried to kill himself several times.  Was that an expression of his autonomy, or were we right to say "you're sick, you need to go into the hospital?"  What about people who are cutting themselves?

 

It is sometimes hard to draw the line - what is a difference between a teen girl cutting herself to relieve stress, or engaging in a lot of trendy body modification?  Sometimes, maybe very little from her perspective.  It can be difficult to sort out. 

 

I think the reason this is an interesting comparison though is because it does make us say - why do we feel more comfortable in the case of the transgendered person making a choice like that than in this instance?  It means we have to try and think more clearly about identity and our physical self.

[Sarah CB]

Of course you could remove your breasts for whatever reason you wanted. Why couldn't you? 

 

I think the slippery slope argument is only a problem if one considers these issues to be choices made in the same way we might choose breakfast. The mind doesn't always work according to our desires and intents. Neurology is the field of science that is going to explain this, and we're learning more all the time. However, so long as one assumes this kind of behavior indicates a bizarre but willful choice, they will be confused. The slippery slope argument will seem apropos, but fewer and fewer people will accept that fear because information has a way of solving mysteries. 

 

No - I disagree.  I guess I'd liken it more to walking off a cliff, rather than a slippery slope.  I think if we take that first step (which we already have) then we can't really argue with those who assert their right to need the same thing - regardless of the "why" behind it.

[Sarah CB]

I think one of the question is, are we actually helping a person if they are wanting to harm themselves because of a mental illness.  My dad is bi-polar and has tried to kill himself several times.  Was that an expression of his autonomy, or were we right to say "you're sick, you need to go into the hospital?"  What about people who are cutting themselves?

 

It is sometimes hard to draw the line - what is a difference between a teen girl cutting herself to relieve stress, or engaging in a lot of trendy body modification?  Sometimes, maybe very little from her perspective.  It can be difficult to sort out. 

 

I think the reason this is an interesting comparison though is because it does make us say - why do we feel more comfortable in the case of the transgendered person making a choice like that than in this instance?  It means we have to try and think more clearly about identity and our physical self.

 

Absolutely - and that brings us to legalized euthanasia as well.  In places where it is legal, why shouldn't anyone be able to take advantage of it?  Why is one person's illness more important or serious than someone else's?  Shouldn't the person who wants to be euthanized be able to do so if they feel like staying alive is more terrible than dying?