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Acceptance by the Medical Profession
Written by Zoe on Wednesday, December 17, 2008
It occurred to me that there were other medical interventions which were accepted practice among the medical profession the end result of which might be to disable someone who requested that procedure.
For example, gastric bypass surgery reduces the size of the stomach to such an extent that post surgery, the patient is only able to take in very small amounts of food. The argued benefit in those cases is that the original disablement, obesity, is so severe that the end result is justified.
Another example might be tubal ligation or vasectomy. The result is intended to prevent the patient from having children. If infertility is a disability, then logically tubal ligation and vasectomy create a disability in the patient that otherwise was not there.
What about plastic surgery? If we assume for the purposes of this argument that the plastic surgery is purely cosmetic, and not to correct a defect, then what is to be gained from the surgery other than an attempt to improve the patient’s confidence and self esteem, in other words, to improve thier mental health.
And so why cant the same logic be applied to providing BIID sufferers with the body modifications they need?
Society tells us its okay to have elective surgery, risk outcomes you hadnt intended and potentially lose your life if the reason you want that surgery is to lose weight, prevent parenthood or if you think that changing your appearance will help you lead a more fulfilling life. But society doesnt accept acquiring a physical disability as something on that list. Why not? And is there potential for that point of view to change?
I anticipate that a counter argument might be that the benefits of such surgery might outweigh the risks, for example, providing patients with gastric band surgery might ultimately save health resources in the long run because it reduces the risk of obesity related medical conditions such as heart disease and diabetes, etc.
Couldn’t that same logic be applied to BIID in that providing surgical options would reduce the future impact of BIID suffers on the mental health system, and perhaps on the wider health system in the event that a person saw no other option than to self harm?
Is it perhaps that there simply isn’t enough information about BIID and so society can’t make a decision about whether or not it might find surgery an acceptable risk in the future. And so, do we perhaps just keep plugging away at both the medical professions lack of apparent interest in the subject and also society’s wider views of disability?
Tags: Acceptance, BIID, Personal choice
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3 Comments
Perhaps this all revolves around what the medical profession and society at large considers to be normal. This could be what marks us as being different from transsexuals. If someone with female anatomy feels that they are male, they can have their genitalia altered to conform with their male self image. They are transitioning TO a state of normality, a man with male genitalia. On the other hand paraplegia is not considered normal.
It was very easy for me to find a surgeon to change my abnormal intersexed genitalia into normal female genitalia. In this case my own idea of what was normal for my self image happened to coincide with the perception of the medical profession and society at large. People are going to say “Well of course she wanted normal genitalia”. But what if it had been the other way around? What if a man or a woman wants to have intersexed genitalia. This is what would be analogous to me desiring to be paraplegic. Both of these would be considered by society to be a transition from normal to abnormal. Thus the desire itself must be abnormal. For a transsexual the desired state is seen by society as normal, and consequently the desires of a transsexual can be seen as normal.
I’ll bet anything that there are in fact people who feel that they need to be intersexed. It would not surprise me at all if there is a website just like this, for men and women who desire to be intersexed. But, do you think they would find acceptance in the medical community such that they could have a surgery done that would be the reverse of mine, going from a normal to an abnormal state? I doubt it.
Actually I just had the idea of suggesting to the psychotherapists who run my support group that it should be open not just to people who are intersexed, but also to people who want to be intersexed. I think it would be fabulous to hear that perspective.
Alright, so what would we need to do in order to solve our BIID problem? I have spent quite a bit of effort educating people about intersex issues. A lot of it is simply to show that I, as a hermaphrodite, am a normal person rather than a freak. I’ve been called a freak, and I didn’t like it. This is part of my motivation for being very open about intersex stuff, including on this website. I want people to be aware that they know intersexed people and that they are not scary monsters. The same kind of thing needs to happen for PWD. They need to be seen more as part of the spectrum of normal human experience. Once someone with paraplegia can be seen by society as part of the normal variety of human conditions, I am more likely to be taken seriously by the medical community as someone who desires paraplegia because it is normal to me.
3 On 17 December, 2008, Sean said:
I think you hit the nail on the head there Chloe. That is one of the major differences between transsexuals and transabled that people keep on raising: male/female are natural states. Disability isn’t (let’s set aside the fact that congenital disabilities are natural)…
I’ve said often enough that with the negative bias the medical community at large has against disabilities, the only way we’ll ever “get there” is when there is no discrimination and/or prejudice against people with disabilities. This is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes.
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1 On 17 December, 2008, Sean said:
You ask “what about plastic surgery?”. It’s a very good question. Nikki Sullivan in her paper ‘Integrity, Mayhem, and the Question of Self-Demand Amputation’ says the following, which is a very good point: