Claire, thank you also for your no less excellent comments. I particularly like those two points you’ve articulated about why we can’t just blurt out why we really use the chair. Particularly the fact that it is important to be perceived not only as a wheelchair user because we’re cracked, but rather as paraplegics.

I think that whilst all of these phenomonon (Pretending, BIID, Wannabeism etc) can manefest in one person, it it is very dangerous to assume that in every case they are all linked.

I know one or two “pretenders” one is a full timer who lives her life as a paraplegic and may or may not be BiiD. For her it is important that if she cannot be who she feels she should be she can at least be percived as how she feels she should be. She seeks no special attention or benefit, although she may well receive some because of societies tendency to lionise independent disabled people at the same time as it discriminates and despises.

The others however are what you might call “hobby pretenders”. They have much more in common with others I know who are railway buffs running restored railways, historical re enactors or amateur drama buffs. I think in these people the desire is simply to “be somone else” for a time, to experience another life. the social dilemma for disability pretenders is much like that for some historical re enactors because the choice of subject challenges a social more. For example it’s seen as odd but harmless fun to pretend to be a cowboy or a redcoat or a civil war soldier. But what if the re enactor prefers to be an SS or Gestapo officer? Society baulks at that.

People like you are not “pretending” to need a wheelchair. The need is a real life psychological one.

I think “Wheelchair user” is a fair and accurate description in this case. Maybe “Enactor” is a better description of the hobby type.

P

The reality is this. We “wannabe” because of a mental illness in which our mind tells us that our body is other than what it is. We “pretend” as a form of psychological therapy in order to manage these feelings, because there is no cure. Our psychological need for a chair is not less real than someone’s physical need for a chair (or cane, or crutches, or contact lenses, or whatever you use to simulate your desired disability in order to manage your feelings).

And why can’t we just be open and honest and tell everyone “I use a chair because I have BIID”? Two reasons.

1. If BIID tells us that we are a paraplegic, then being perceived as being who we are is part of the therapy. Take that away, and the therapy becomes less effective. (And for those who will cry “Attention!” take note of the difference. It’s not about attention, it’s about being perceived as who our brain tells us we are. There is a HUGE difference there.)

2. The world isn’t ready for BIID. They haven’t been inculcated by the media to know, understand, and accept BIID. They are revolted and alarmed by it. The last thing anyone dealing with BIID needs is for family members, friends and acquaintances to start looking at you askance, avoiding you, whispering things behind your back, or thinking that you are insane in other ways besides the BIID (ie. “are you going to try to injure our children?”).

And so we must deceive, for our own mental health. And for those of the Judeo-Christian persuasion, I am quite convinced that where deception causes no harm to others, it is permissable as a way to manage an illness. The good caused by the therapy far outweighs the harm caused by the deception.