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Response to comments on article in Newsweek
Written by Sean on Thursday, May 29, 2008
An article about Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) came out in Newsweek. It is a balanced article that presents BIID pretty well. I dont’ agree with everything, but these are matters of personal opinions, so am happy to leave it at that :) What I’d like to discuss in this entry, however, is the numerous, and mostly negative, comments in response to the article.
You people need serious help
Well, yes, actually, we do need serious help. Except there is no help!
The implied assertion in "you people need serious help" is that we need to go see psychiatrists or psychotherapists. The thing is, psychotherapy or psychiatry does not help at all. Talk therapies, cognitive-behaviour therapies, and other "tools" in the counselling arsenal simply do not touch BIID.
Further, prescribed medications also do not touch BIID at all.
While we do need help, and we *want* help, we’re not able to get the only thing that actually does make a difference: surgery.
We are very frustrated by this. We are further frustrated by people telling us "you’re sick, you need help", as if we just had to go to our nearest shrink and walk out of there "cured".
Productive member of society / getting on benefits
People are saying that we should not seek an impairment because we don’t deserve to get on benefits/welfare/etc. This is untrue.
We do not wish to have a physical impairment because we want to live off public welfare. We need a physical impairment because we are in the wrong body otherwise.
In fact, many of us are not as productive now as we could be with an impairment. The amount of emotional anguish we are dealing with makes us less attentive family members, makes us unable to work as well as we could otherwise (high absenteeism for many, due to emotional anguish).
It’s wrong to want to be physically disabled
I’m not going to debate the impact of that statement, the fact that it completely devalues people with disabilities as being "wrong", that’s for another time and place.
However, I must point out that it is not a question of want. It is a question of need. We did not CHOOSE to feel the way we do. We did not pick these feelings that make our lives hell. No more than people who are gay chose their sexual orientation (not implying that *their* lives are hell). This is a DISORDER (hence the name, Body Integrity Identity Disorder). No, not a question of choice at all.
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5 Comments
The idea of disabled people not being productive in society reminds me of an article in a local newspaper called the Vancouver Sun, about Beijing’s treatment of the Paralympic Games. (The article is here.) It makes me wonder, with the addition of the responses to the Newsweek article, if there have been any strides towards disability rights at all.
3 On 1 June, 2008, Sophie said:
IMO it looks to be “disability rights for all that the physically disabled deem to be disabled”
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1 On 30 May, 2008, Dante said:
Comments like those reinforce the points that several of us had made before - the ‘invisibility’ of mental illness is largely not regarded as being legitimate like a physical disability. We do need help; and obtaining the physical disability would actually be a cure to our disability that we actually have because we don’t have that disability. It also goes to show the attitude of people regarding people with physical disabilities are still unfortunately ignorant and backward - there’s the implication that those persons are not ‘productive members of society’ and indirectly implying they have less/no worth, and reinforces the attitude that if there’s nothing apparently physically ‘wrong’ with you, then it isn’t a legitimate problem.