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Home / Thoughts / Sean's Thoughts / Addressing the “pretenders for fun” issue

Addressing the “pretenders for fun” issue

Written by Sean on Friday, July 18, 2008

Rorshach recently objected to a post from Claire, where she was expressing concerns about “Pretendering for kicks”. This post was originally published on a private blog, but permission was given to reprint on this site. You may wish to read it if you haven’t already. This is an important issue that seems to inflame passions. I have some strong opinions on the matter and am going to discuss them here again. Be warned, I might ramble on a bit :)

There are many things to unpack from Rorshach’s post.

Binary system, duality, linear positioning

Rorshach is speaking against the "binary system", poling BIID against "Pretenders". I have to agree with him, there is no black & white. It is not a thing that has two defined poles. It is not a linear condition, with a line drawn firmly in the middle. I have never thought it was. Things change, and even one individual might find themselves at different places on the continuum depending of where they are at in life. As such, it might be causing confusion to talk "against" Pretenders. But for the sake of clarity, I will continue to use that word in this post, rather than say "those of us who use a wheelchair just for fun and who are behaving in ways that are damaging to others".

Do not take this for forcing people into a duality of "either, or".

Thoughts on pretending - we all do it, don’t we?

We all pretend, in some ways. I say often enough that I don’t pretend to use a wheelchair. I am a wheelchair user. Period. I spend nearly 100% of my public life as a wheelchair user. I do, however, pretend. I pretend to have a physical impairment. The reason I pretend is that I have long felt the need to have that physical impairment. I am pretending (lying) because society at large is not ready to accept me as an individual with BIID. I am telling a lie to live my own truth.

A few days ago, I was thinking about all of this and realised that in many ways, this is a debate that is happening in the transgendered community as well. As you might know if you’ve read through this blog carefully, I sometimes crossdress. I am not "gender confused". I crossdress because I enjoy the feeling. It seems a very sensual thing to me (albeit not a sexual one). I do this in the privacy of my own home. I do not go out. It’s just something I do for myself, simple as that. But I was told at one point by a transsexual that I was scum because of it. I was told that I was merely a tourist in a land where she was an immigrant, and that I could not possibly have any idea what it was like to be her, or to be a woman. She implied a very negative meaning to the word tourist. Of course I have no idea what it was like to be her, or a woman. I can only have an idea of what it’s like to be me. But more to the point, I am not seeking the experience of being a woman (although the idea of spending a month in a woman’s body intrigues me, but that’s another story, and I digress). The thing is, I am not a woman. Even when fully made up, I do not look like a woman. I do not have a woman’s voice. I am hairy like an ape, etc. Were I to go out in public, I would open myself to ridicule, but I would also cause problems. I could obviously not go into the women’s toilet. But it wouldn’t seem appropriate to use the men’s either.

This is perhaps similar to "pretending for fun" and those of us who do it as "therapy". The transsexual was clearly imparting a certain sense of elitism to the fact that she was better than me. But I don’t think Claire, and certainly not me, nor others, imply or believe that we are better than those who "pretend for fun".

It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it

Rorshach strongly states that it doesn’t matter "why someone is drawn to a wheelchair or any other device or condition". I believe the opposite. It matters a whole lot why, and how you do it. The reason we have to do things change the perception people have of what we do.

I used an analogy in response to the post. I said:

Taking an extreme example - If I shoot you in the head, people might think me a horrible man. Especially if I have no good reason to do so. But if I shoot you in the head because we’re stuck in the wilderness and you are being slowly crushed to death by a large boulder, and we’re alone and there’s no way we can move the rock or get to help in time, and being shot dead is a kinder way to go than slow, painful suffocation, then, the story is quite different.

Obviously, my example *is* extreme and improbable. But it illustrate things. I was made privy to comments from a person with a disability to someone with BIID. This person was rabidly against anyone who used a wheelchair without a physical need to do so. But upon speaking to the friend with BIID, they came to understand and accept our use of a wheelchair. In their own words:

the "pretenders" were motivated by totally different things. the one that comes to mind most was named cathy and she had a website where she talked about what she did. this was years before the term "blog" or places like myspace exsisted. one of her "things" was customizing her disability to cater to the particular fetish a male devo might have so she could pocket the profits of picture sales. also she admitted she like the perks. parking. people holding doors for her. seating in restaraunts, etc. the others encountered at and thru the new mobilty website, at that time, similarly left a sour taste.

This illustrates well that the motivation behind the actions *are* important.

Another person once said that pretenders reminded them of the saying "immitation is the sincerest form of mockery".

Yes, motivations are very important. It matters. If you do it just for kicks, it devalues the experience of other people who don’t have a choice (and in not having a choice I include those with physical impairments as well as BIID). It makes light of the fact that we and they are stuck with no other options. While it can be fun to use a wheelchair, the reason we use a chair is no fun at all, whether it’s due to a physical condition or a psycho-neurological one.

Do you *really* pretend just for fun?

The thing is, I believe that the majority of people who say they use a wheelchair "just because it’s fun" are in fact fooling themselves. Rorschach talks about someone for whom it is important to appear disabled even if they aren’t, even in front of someone who knows they don’t have a physical disability. This yells at me that it’s more than "pretending for fun". It’s a question of perception, of body image. It is screaming at me "Body Identity Integrity Disorder".

Rorschach further talks about people who have a psychological fixation when he refers to people who pretend. Isn’t that, by definition, not something one does for fun?

I’ve spoken to other people who say that "it just feels right to use a wheelchair", that when they sit in the chair "they feel one with it" and that they feel uncomfortable walking. Yet they claim in the next breath that they only use a wheelchair because it’s fun. This seems paradoxical to me. It seems much more likely that they are ignoring the fact that there is more to it than that. Perhaps they are afraid to admit to themselves that they have BIID. Let’s face it’s really scary to realise you have a condition that does not have an accepted solution/treatment.

I’ve also been told by someone very active in the community that they used to think they had BIID, but now, it’s gone away. They still use a chair regularly, but they claim that they don’t have BIID, that it’s just because it’s good and a change of "scene". When I asked them if they thought that BIID was really gone, or if perhaps they were just in a phase where BIID left them alone, they accepted that it was probable that they were not BIID-free.

There is also talk about using a wheelchair as a mechanism to relieve stress. If you are using a wheelchair that way, as a relief valve, you may wish to ask yourself what is it about using a wheelchair that offers a soothing/calming experience. Because, looking at it objectively, a wheelchair isn’t a de-stressor. It is not merely sitting in a wheelchair that provides you with stress relief. There’s more to it than that.

That leaves a few people whom I shall term "wheelchair fetichists", using Paracathy’s own expression for it.

Wheelchair fetishists

These are people that really get under my skin. Mind you, I don’t have a problem with how someone gets turned on. Heck, I’m kinky enough myself that I ain’t throwing that first stone (glass houses and all, you know?). But it’s the behaviours that get to me. It’s the attitude that they have as much right as anyone else to use a wheelchair (I won’t argue the toss here). But they also seem to think that gives them further rights to behave inethically, and innapropriately, because they get off on it. Now *that* is damaging behaviour which I strenuously oppose.

The ethics of pretending

I have long had a problem with people who behave unethically. Back in 1997, I was posting about the ethics of pretending. I still get upset with people who are doing stupid things that can, and do, hurt both people who have BIID/Pretenders and people with physical impairments. I think that the finger is pointed at those people before and above all.

With rights come responsibilities.

If we have the right to use wheelchairs, we have the responsibility to behave appropriately. We have the responsibility to pave the way for the next wheeler that comes after us, and to do as much as we can so they are left better off. That may involve advocating for accessibility, or simply being a decent human being that doesn’t abuse the kindness of strangers.

Common experiences

Rorschach says that:

Often the argument is made that the Pretender knows nothing of what it is to be disabled because of the temporary nature of their relationship to their chair.

If one seeks to understand the nature of the experience of what it is like to be (physically) disabled, I would venture to say that they are not pretending "just for fun", that there is something deeper than that going on. But I’ve already discussed that earlier in this piece.

Rorschach also speaks about common experiences. He says we’re all pushing rims. Which is true. We *do* share common experiences. I am amused at myself here, because I have been accused by people with physical disabilities of being unable to trully understand how they feel, what their experience trully is like. And I have defended myself against those accusations. I have said "by gosh, of course I can have a pretty good idea". And here, I am flirting with doing the same thing in response to Rorschach. But it’s not quite the same thing.

I posit that while there are surface similarities between the experiences of a "pretender for fun" and that of someone who wheels because of BIID, and then of someone who pushes a chair because of a physical impairment, there also are some profound differences. Not so much because they can jump out of the chair at any time - that is something BIID sufferers are accused of, but while we can physically get out, we are psychically stuck to our chair just as a para is stuck to hers. The difference between the "pretender for fun"’s experience and the BIID and/or para is the reason why they use the chair.

When I use a wheelchair, I seek out the *entire* experience of being in a chair. But if you are using a chair just for the sake of using a chair, you would not be seeking that. And if you are not seeking that "complete disability experience" (including the emotional as well as physical aspects), there is no way that you can come close. And if you *are* seeking the full disability experience, perhaps you’re firmly in the BIID spectrum, rather than sitting just outside of it…

I’m not arrogant enough to claim to have a stranglehold on the entire experience of using a wheelchair. We all experience it in different ways. But I do believe that the wheelchair fetishist has a fundamentally different experience, and the very reason why they use their chair makes it impossible for them to get "it".

Self-worth and pushing people down

Rorschach was accusing Claire, and me, and others who think as we do, that we are doing so to gain some misplaced sense of self-worth. As if putting people down really did make us feel better. Putting people down does not inflate my ego. I am not speaking up against wheelchair fetishists and unethical pretenders and those who think they wheel just for fun out of a (conscious or not) need to feel better about myself.

Quite the contrary. I do so out of a keen sense of fair-play and justice - I want for these people not to do harm to people with disabilities, directly or not, and I want the painstakingly build relationship between BIID and people with (physical) disabilities to continue growing.

I am not better than you. You are not better than me. I may disagree with you, and you may disagree with me. In the greater scheme of things, it does not matter. As long as you are honest with yourself. And as long as you behave ethically.

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Tags: BIID, Body Integrity Identity Disorder, Disabilities, Ethics, Fetishist, Paralysis, Pretender, Wheelchair