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Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / Claire's Thoughts / BIID vs. Pretending for kicks

BIID vs. Pretending for kicks

Written by Claire on Saturday, July 12, 2008

It’s very important to distinguish between pretenders who have a genuine psychological/neurological condition (BIID or Body Integrity Identity Disorder) and people who are pretending for kicks or because they have a wheelchair fetish.

I am a member of the first group; I have BIID. To me, using a wheelchair is therapy. In fact, my psychologist has told me to continue doing this (from time to time). So, for me, wheelchair use is actually a therapy prescribed by a mental health professional.

But there are others who deny having BIID and rather term themselves "wheelchair fetishists" or have very nebulous reasons as to why they are actually wheeling other than that they get a kick out of it or it "feels good" or it’s just "alternative locomotion" or whatever. I have a problem with these people.

I think half of them do indeed have BIID but are unable to admit to themselves that they have a mental illness. They need to accept that they have a mental illness just like anyone else who needs to accept their disability. If you don’t like the term "mental illness" then choose another one, such as "psychological disorder", or maybe even "neurological condition", but whatever you call it, you have to accept the fact that the "D" in BIID does indeed stand for Disorder and it is disordered to wish part of your healthy body to be gone or nonfunctional.

And the ones who are pretending but don’t have BIID, well, that’s just incomprehensible to me. It’s also disordered in some way to think it’s fun to pretend to be a paraplegic even if you don’t want to actually be one. Why would one pretend in public to be disabled, with all the complicated logistics that entails, if they didn’t have some disorder of some kind? The "it feels good" and "alternative locomotion" arguments don’t wash with me. Why should it "feel good" to refrain from using half of your working body, unless you have BIID, or if not BIID, then something similar, something related? Why would one take on the frustrations of using a wheelchair in an inaccessible world for the sake of "alternative locomotion", if you didn’t have psychological needs that transcend this frustration? It just doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t work for the disabled community either.

If it’s really that, if they’re really doing it just for fun, and for no other reason, then after much reflection, I find myself on the side of those in the the disabled community who think that wheelchair pretenders are dangerous and insulting. I realize that this could be taken as hypocritical. But I am now aware that pretending can be dangerous, because we’re perceived by the general public as disabled, and thus are representing the disabled community. And as a representative of the disabled community, I’ve made some mistakes that I truly regret. Using a wheelchair is just not something that should be taken lightly.

One of my dearest wishes is that the disabled community would come to understand who and what we are, and allow us to peacefully coexist with them. When we were "wannabes", that wasn’t possible. Nothing made sense. They saw "imitation as the sincerest form of mockery" (The guy who said that actually said something very kind later on). I don’t blame them, actually, as they were operating under some pretty big misconceptions, and wannabes themselves were unable to explain themselves satisfactorily most of the time. But now, thanks to Dr. Michael First and others, our condition has a name. It’s being legitimized by researchers like noted neurologist V.S. Ramachandran. Body Integrity Identity Disorder is real. "Wannabes" have it. Except that I reject that word now. I’m not a "wannabe". I am transabled and I have BIID. I have actually been able to get through to a few disabled people by explaining that BIID is an actual disorder. Sometimes, once they see that, suddenly we’re not so bad anymore. We actually have a lot in common, if you look at it that way.

Not only that, but with a real capital-D Disorder we are taken far more seriously by the medical/psychiatric community. We are far more likely to get help from them if we embrace the fact that we have a disorder than if we term it a lifestyle choice.

For me, it’s not a choice at all. I MUST wheel. Not because it’s fun. But because I can only have fun, or pleasure, or peace, if I’m relieved from the psychological distress of walking.