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Is transability a lifestyle choice?
Written by Sean on Thursday, August 23, 2007
It is dangerous, I think, for us to call it a lifestyle choice. That expression implies a benignity of the condition which is just not true. It also implies a choice, which we do not have. We have no more choice about having BIID than someone who is gay has about their sexual orientation. And I think you’ll have a hard time finding anyone who is gay to agree that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice.
The lifestyle choice comes in when/if you decide to spend your life as a paraplegic, a full time wheeler (if that is your flavour of BIID). But that’s the only choice.
BIID is a very real and very serious condition. If we tell people that it is a "lifestyle choice", they will grow with a misunderstanding of the condition, and think that it has less impact than it does, and they will assume that as it is a *choice*, we can just will ourselves out of it.
"Lifestyle choice" also means that the medical community shall never take us seriously and even consider creating treatment protocols, because, after all, why would we need treatment, if it’s just a lifestyle choice? (note, by treatment I mean anything up to and including surgery).
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3 Comments
Yeah, I really have made the “choice” to want to be a paraplegic so I can live in fear that people will find me out and brand me as crazy. Sean, you are right, calling BIID a lifestyle choice is reminiscent of what certain groups say about gays.
It is hard for me to see how we even have much of a choice in how we live with this as I know I will always be obsessed with it.
It was harder for me to admit that I was lesbian than to accept my BIID. Both have their dark profiles, but which one would probably be accepted more readily? If you think about humanity I doubt either would, and we would find ourselves stuck in some crazy house… the BIIDs and the gays; I guess I would be right at home.
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1 On 23 August, 2007, Ronald said:
Choice? None of us have chosen this, that is for sure. We would not be logging onto this website trying to figure out why we are like this and where it comes from.
We can choose, however, how we wish to deal with it although that ultimate choice is not currently available from the medical community.
This is the same as hair color, skin or eye color, male or female. We got what we were given, and we run with it the best we can.