Blog > Thoughts > Sean's Thoughts > How can some wannabes be so ignorant?
How can some wannabes be so ignorant?
Written by Sean on Wednesday, November 15, 2006
There’s been a recent flurry of activity on a Yahoo! Group I’m subscribed to. In particular, there was a man who says he has had BIID since he was 12 or so, and he’s now in his mid 40′s. This man started off rather aggressively and blasted a para that rectified a few misconceptions. I’m continually surprised when I hear self-professed wannabes have apparently so little understanding of the impairment they say they desire.
This man started by talking about how he had both BIID and GID, and how he’d never get an amputation because of the phantom pain. He wrote:
God there is no way on this earth that i would ever contenplate amputation pataplegia is as near as dam it to amputaion but with out the phantom pain I have beeb GID/BIID since the age of 12 and i am now 46
To which a real para explained:
If you belive that paraplegia is without pain then you are sadly misguided. Constant unremitting nerve root pain is a very common factor in many spinal cord injuries even those of a non traumatic nature.
The result is ofen “pains” in the paralysed area very akin to phantom pain.
Now, this information shouldn’t be earth-shattering news to someone who’s wanted to be a paraplegic all their lives. One would assume that if you want to be a paraplegic since the age of 12, you would do *some* research to better understand what that involves. If you want to be a race car driver, you learn about race car driving. If you want to be a fireman, you learn about that. So, a career choice is not much at all like a need such as BIID, yet, one would think that such a strong interest would elicit *some* research.
To top it, the original poster answered:
Thanks to all for your kind information however I now feel after reading certain things that it might well be best to drop the idea all together as the risks of turning quad or even death from infection are all too real and all to great to over look and these are risks i do not wish to undertake. Also i have been talking to a genuine para (traumatic) and she has backed up what tom said about al the complications Incontinance Impotance i male and the constant unremitting root pain
So, this guy who has had BIID for over 75% of his life has now decided to "drop the idea altogether" because of the risks? Not only did he not know about nerve pain, but he wasn’t aware of incontinence and impotence related to paraplegia? Where has this guy been? "It beggars belief", as a paraplegic mate of mine told me a few days ago.
How can you want to be a para and not know about nerve pain, incontinence, impotence, etc?
These people live in la-la land. It upsets me to think they can be so ignorant. It upsets me for them, and for people with disabilities, and for our very own transabled community as well.
It’s people like them that give the entire transabled community a bad name. Ignorant people who are in it for the glamour of it all. People who are turned on at the idea of being paralysed, without even knowing that they likely couldn’t get a hard on, much less feel it if they were indeed paralysed.
The real problem with some people.
Lily said to me a while back that she thought that many self-professed transabled individuals wouldn’t actually get a surgery if it was available. I think that’s true. But I also think that many more need to educate themselves about the implication of what it is they desire. Is it any surprise that I’m having such a hard time convincing paraplegics that I actually do know what is involved, considering they likely dealt only with idiots like that one in the past?
The disability community never really hears about the people who "get it", those who’ve done the research and know what is involved in being parplegic (or amputee, or blind, or or or). They get to hear about the nitwits that just don’t have a clue and wouldn’t know an SCI if it stared them in the face.
I just hope that if you are transabled, or think you are, you spend some time doing a bit of research. It’s easy now, with the internet, to get information about what it means to have this or that impairment. If I could do the research as a young teenager, going to the local university’s medical library and learning about spinal cord injuries, you can Google.
But perhaps no amount of research can cure the real problem: Cranial-Rectal inversion…
[tags]Transabled, BIID, GID, Amputee, Paraplegic, Paralysed, SCI, Problem, Fantasy, Ignorance, Incontinence, Impotence, Pain[/tags]This entry appears in Sean's Thoughts, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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7 Comments
Sean,
It is hard to get into the minds of others, such as that guy, but a couple of things about BIID are true with me and probably you:
* I have spent way too much time reading about spinal cord injuries, obsessively, like a moth to a flame, everything, including all of the nasty stuff.
* This isn’t an ‘idea’ I’ve gotten that can easily be discarded when the unpleasant truth comes out regarding what life with an SCI might be like.
Finally, unlike Claire, I’ve never been able to suppress my feelings even for a decade but unlike Sean I haven’t gone public.
3 On 15 November, 2006, Sophie said:
I think I’ve been able to suppress these feelings for the first 19 years of my life simply because I was oblivious. Growing up in such a rigid home meant I didn’t even give these sorts of things a second thought. Once I started exploring this side of myself I couldn’t get away from all the SCI sites, even BEFORE I knew my feelings had a name. I was ashamed to admit that I wanted a SCI, but that didn’t stop me from doing the research.
4 On 15 November, 2006, Sean said:
@Claire, yes, people do deal with it in different ways. And I think it’s one thing to be ashamed and repressing, yet another to be active in BIID groups and have no clue.
@John, I think that’s part of the thing for me, the concept that you could just change your mind about BIID.
This reminds me of the whole “pro-ana” and eating disordered community. I don’t know how many girls have asked how to “become anorexic” or think eating disorders (the wasting types) are some sort of diet. But, in their defense, most of them are in fact girls, and not full-grown adults. I wonder if BIID will one day be “trendy” like other disorders tend to be. Then again, could wanting to anorexic be a form of BIID? Great, now my brain hurts.
*So, this guy who has had BIID for over 75% of his life has now decided to “drop the idea altogether” because of the risks?*
Just reacting on this piece. I think it can be compared with what sometimes happens with GID. Having the feelings, troubles is one thing, but based on “costs and benefits”, some decide to refrain from doing something about it. I’ve been there, without any success though. Some, however, try to ignore the costs, pay no attention to them, but reality will strike back at a certain time (in case of GID it’s often the therapist starting about the list of possible consequences and complications).
I have been gathering information on SCI almost all my life. Despite that it took much time, research and the Internet to obtain good knowledge about it – there are still many details I don’t know despite the Internet. The more I learn the more I am afraid of the consequences BIID might involve. I try to be realistic. BIID is not so strong that I can’t live without for extended periods. But it is always resurging. I don’t actively want an SCI now because, though I would accept it if it happened. But I have no clue what the future will bring and if my desires will change and get stronger.
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1 On 15 November, 2006, Claire said:
Sean, I don’t know about this particular guy, but different people deal with their transability in different ways. When I first realized that I was a wannabe, that there were people like me, and that the disabled community despised us, I dealt with it by ruthlessly supressing the feelings inside me for nearly a decade. I didn’t want to go out and do research on my desired impairement to learn more; I was deeply ashamed of my feelings, hid my head in the sand, and just wanted it all to go away.