Yes, you are correct. While I enjoy personal acceptance, that’s not really the point. My “work” is all about getting BIID known and accepted. By the disability community, and the medical community, etc.

Someone just told me that they just want to change their world. Me, I think that in order to change “my” world, to get surgery, the only way I have is to change “the” world, to get society, and the medical establishment to accept BIID as a real condition, and to accept surgery as the only viable option. There may be other options later on, but at the moment, surgery’s the only thing that works.

First, I regret that my post creates a bit of an “us vs them” perception. But we have that situation, somewhat.

We have a disability - BIID. As such, we are part of the disability community, just as those with other mental illnesses are part of the disability community. Only those who have physical impairments would prefer to keep us at bay. We have far more in common with them than we have with a non-disabled society. I believe in powers in number and if we could band together instead of fighting, we are likely to get much further along.

Second, and this is really a very brief explanation of something I have been wanting to write about for a while, I believe that one of the major blocks for surgery as an option for us is the negative bias the medical community at large has against people with disabilities. Disability rights activists have been fighting hard to get accepted, and their plight is also ours. I think they have to succeed in convincing the medical establishment that impairments are nothing negative, per se. Then, and only then, can doctors readily accept that someone might wish to acquire an impairment. Again, we can do our bit, but only if we stand/sit united will we win.

I *do* want the acceptance of the disability community, because it’s a community that I care very, VERY much about. I’m even prepared to make some sacrifices in order to make that come about.

But they have pissed me off time and again with their refusal to see a mental disorder as a valid disability. It angers me that they think that they have a say-so in how *we* deal with *our* own health issues. “Mental health” does indeed fall under the “health” umbrella…what’s so hard to understand about that?

I’ve made a generalization there, because I have talked to MANY people with disabilities who are very accepting and supportive. I just wish they would be more publicly supportive. It seems like this support is always confined to private communications. They are afraid of angering the disability community at large, I suppose.