transabled.org

I always wondered about this. It’s nice ot have some proof, though 50 people is really more of an indicator. Though given how rare this is it might, in terms of percentage, be larger than it appears.

Cool stuff all in all though. Good post!

I always am careful not to “mix and match”. I talk about devotees, or I talk about BIID, but I don’t put the two together in the same “lump”. Reason being is that devotees have somewhat of a more negative perception than BIID sufferers. In a way, it makes it harder to make BIID accepted if it’s tied to a “sexual deviance”.

Obviously, there are some links, it’s part of the spectrum. Probably in a similar way that transsexuality and homosexuality have links. Many transsexuals have gay/lesbian tendencies. Many gay/lesbians are transsexuals. But not most, by far, and it’s not because some people happen to have some of these traits together that the conditions are necessarily related.

I like casts, but although casts are medical in nature, my interest in casting is not related to my need to be paralysed.

I think that you have to look at the percentage of people with BIID who are also devotees compared to the percentage of the general population who are devotees. I don’t have any stats for that but I will hazard an educated guess that the percentage of transabled people who are devotees is staggeringly higher than that of the general population. That should tell us that it’s not merely some random coincidence that some people with BIID just happen to also be devotees.

I don’t argue the fact that the percentages are different, no contest there. That’s why I used the example of gay/transsexual, because there as well the percentages are staggeringly different. :)

Well if there’s no contest, then how can you possibly believe that they aren’t related? The correlation is so high, that seems proof positive to me.

Oh, and I know many people who accept devoteeism just fine, it’s BIID they have a problem with. So I’m not sure that the relationship is so damaging to the BIID cause. And anyway, I don’t think it’s a good idea to hide the truth about a cause in order to promote the cause. Of course I say that right on the heels of my “Telling a lie to live your own truth” post, don’t I?

Could I start off with a question?

Sean, you mentioned an interest in casts. Would somebody wishing to wear a cast or leg brace be classified as having BIID, or does BIID only cover wanting to have something removed or rendered unuseable permanently?

In my own case, I had to come to terms with devotee desires first. I thought my desire were simply an attempt to imitate what I thought was attractive, but I believe that BIID was the underlying issue all along. I felt as bad about being a devotee as I did about BIID desires.

I seem to have phased out of the devotee thing, althought it is still an element of my personality. I would be willing to believe that yes, there is a link, but the two may blurr, each having a tendency to mask itself as the other, especially as people try to deal with the issues. Given the nature of what is available on the internet, I could easily see people drawing the conclusion after finding out there are other people like themselves and the amount of devotee material on the web.

Perhaps it is the same as depression masking itself as BIID or BIID masking itself as depression.

My wife even commented on the different stages I have gone through in dealing with this. She feels I have phased through devoteeism and dealing now (succesfully) the main issue.

Would somebody wishing to wear a cast or leg brace be classified as having BIID, or does BIID only cover wanting to have something removed or rendered unuseable permanently?

I think casting is something else entirely. As they are both “medically” related and there are many casters who have BIID, or many BIID sufferers also into casting, it’s easy to confuse the issue.

From my understanding of BIID (and I may of course be wrong), BIID is about permanent impairment. Casting is (generally) more of a sensual/sexual thing.

@Claire. My issue here is not with the percentages, but with the interpretation of them. Just as I’m unwilling to say that because there are more gay people who are transsexuals means that there is a direct relationship between homosexuality and GID, I am unwilling to assume that there is a direct correlation between BIID and devotees, despite the higher than average percentage of occurence. :)

Apologies in advance if my XHTML coding doesn’t work out.

The correlation is so high, that seems proof positive to me.

Claire, I’m not sure if you are familiar with Logical Fallacies (Wikipedia actually has a pretty good page on them) but what you’re using there is called the Post Hoc Fallacy.

In short, correlation doesn’t equal causation. Here’s a good way to illustrate it: I close my eyes and fire a gun into the sky and a few seconds later a 747 comes crashing to the ground.

Now yes those two events are linked and it is possible that my bullet caused the plane to crash, but simply because those two events are linked does not mean that one caused the other or vice versa.

I hope this helps :)

Oh come on! lol I’m not talking about one bullet, one plane, and an incredible circumstance. I’m talking about a whole bunch of people and a clear trend. And I’m not talking about “cause” either. I’m not saying BIID causes devoteeism or vice versa. I’m saying they are related. Perhaps they are both caused by the same cause or that adjacent areas of the brain are affected. Saying that devoteeism is statistically higher in the BIID community than in the general population is not a “post hoc fallacy”! It’s simply the truth.

Well, what I can see about it is that devotees usually face their desire as a simple thing, but when we talk about wannabes they use to say that it’s a illness…so, that is still strange to them. I can say it as a devotee AND transabled. BIID, infortunatelly, is still a taboo in our community.

Well I do tend to place a bit too much faith in logic but I see a lot of other ways that this could go. What it really comes down to is that my personal belief is that early childhood experiences etc. contribute more to BIID than the shapes and sizes of different areas of the brain. That is not to say that they might not be affected by that though neuro-plasticity is quite an interesting phenomenon.

i dont know
in my opinion my being transabled has come from being a devotee at a young age and progressed from there
but just because it is like that with me doesnt mean everyone is the same.
but it also seems that everyone has categorised us all togetherbut that doesnt make it right?
um i will probably just sit on the line with this one

Hmmm.

Where do you class a guy who has no interest in being disabled/impaired/etc and no interest in those who genuinely are thus…but a strong attraction to women willing to pretend as much as lifestyle will permit?

I don’t class people ;) I have no idea. Where do *you* put yourself on this continuum?