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Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / Sophie's Thoughts / Amputee only: An old debate

Amputee only: An old debate

Written by Sophie on Thursday, April 27, 2006

I spent time looking for resources on the internet relating to Body Identity Integrity Disorder.  This was partly because Sean wanted to develop a resource centre for BIID.  After spending time searching through journal databases, google, and some of the links that were used on BIID.org I did not really find anything different to what I already knew. 

A large amount of the websites I went to had simply reproduced the article written on the Times website At War With Their Bodies, They Seek to Sever Limbs  Another thing I got rather irritated with was that all the information I could find in the internet relating to BIID all exclusively wrote about amputee wannabes.  I did not think this was very fair or unbiased but then the majority of places would refer to people to the old BIID.org site for more information.  We all know that BIID.org primarily discussed amputees and only had say one or two sentences saying that there were people like myself who felt they were meant to be in a wheelchair or some other disability.

I’ve been saying this for a while now, how can we expect the medical field to perceive us as something to actually take the time to research, if we can’t agree on the definition ourselves.  I know for a fact there are some amputee BIID people who refuse to admit that we are in the same group as them.  And then because the amputee BIID people are the ones who obviously produce most of the material relating to BIID this is what the people in the medical profession read about.  Can it be that amputee wannabes are more important?  Or do we need to encourage other BIID sufferers that they are not alone in their feelings and produce some decent material ourselves.  Sites such as Sean’s and my own can only scratch the surface.  Having Dr Robert Smith being busted for those elective amputation surgeries did give BIID exposure, but the focus has always been on amputees.  Maybe we need a different BIID sufferer make an attempt to get what he/she needs and have that blasted all over the media.  But then that wouldn’t be very healthy mentally for the BIID sufferer.  It’s a lose/lose situation.

The large majority of articles I found on the internet spin a rather bad image about all of us.  That although we are otherwise a healthy individual, this one aspect of us is license to put is in the “mentally unstable, dark, in desperate need of changing” group.  How is it that something like this can be bulked in the bad category when people are trying to alter their bodies to produce the “perfect” person they feel they are meant to be on a daily basis?  People have plastic surgery, buy skin care products, pluck/shave/wax hairs, the list goes on.  How is what we feel we’re meant to be any different with people with Gender Identity Disorder?  To make things worse, BIID sufferers are more than aware of society’s perception of us.  They live most of their lives “in the closet” and other problems like depression can arise.  They are never given a chance to safely bring their feelings into the open to think about it for fear of being ostracized or being put in a “funny farm”.  What little research that has been done all agrees that the sufferer’s symptoms ease substantially when they get what they feel they need.  A person would only really regret the decision if they did not actually have BIID, but similar problems. But then would a person really go as far as injuring themselves if this was not what they really really felt they needed?

I welcome any comments regarding this article, and I would more than welcome any referrals to online resources that did not purely focus on amputees.