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In some cases eventually these phenomena grow to the point where talking about them becomes almost unavoidable. We’re quite a tiny group though so that isn’t likely to happen any time soon.

Currently my only ideas are sending letters to mental health professionals, journals, even Congressmen (or their international equivalent). It’s not an ideal situation but being a nuisance might be the only real way to get any attention.

Either that or if the rate of self injury takes a sharp rise then I don’t think that they could help but take note of us.

Hi Sean,

I think BIID is currently seen as just some wierdness, however I can tell you there is more to this issue, while strictly BIID is rare, similar disorders are common, some people included in GID are not really transsexual, there are people who just wanna be eunuchs, or women who just want their breasts gone, even men who want breasts, but not anything else, but these people pass off as GID in order to get procedures, but they are closer to BIID.

I have to disagree with you inVivo. I don’t believe that the desire to be castrated, or women that want mastectomies, or men wanting breasts have BIID.

Well, Sean, what is the deep difference, the people I mean, are not GID or GIDNOS, its not a fetish, not a sexual thing, its also not BDD, what is the difference, for example, between wanting a finger, leg or a breast gone? The people which I know have a body image identity issue, not a sex/gender thing. And there is a population which can be studied. Because many such people have had the wanted procedure. And are happy.

I don’t really see any difference between a woman who has no gender identity issues wanting a mastectomy, and wanting a leg off. Someone I was talking to recently speculated that perhaps Van Gogh had BIID; he cut off an ear. While losing a breast or an ear are not disabling, and we tend to view BIID in terms of “desiring impairment”, perhaps it’s more about losing healthy, functioning body part than about desiring an impairment.

I think that the suggestion chopped off his ear because of BIID is a bit ludicrous, considering all the documentation about his chronic depression and the reasons why he did cut his ear off. But setting that aside, your argument of losing a healthy, functioning part of the body is appealing, but something in it doesn’t resonate right for me. I think there’s a difference in terms of *impact*. Relatively speaking, a mastectomy is benign, whereas blindness, deafness, paraplegia or amputation are major.

It’s likely to be one for the researchers to sort out! They are having a hard enough time to include non-amputation, I think stretching from there to generally removing any functioning body part will be something that will take a LONG time to achieve.

I see, if you limit BIID to “desiring impairment” I agree, but then GID can also not be compared to BIID, as it is also not about impairment.

No, not talking of *comparing*. There’s a difference between saying that a desire for mastectomy isn’t BIID, and saying that BIID has similarities with GID. In one case, you’re saying that something *is* something else. In the other, you’re saying they are similar. I don’t believe that wanting a mastectomy is BIID, but I don’t argue that it might be similar to BIID. I’m not saying that BIID and GID are “sibblings”, but there are similarities, maybe cousins. What you say about it makes it appear as if you could classify BIID as a subset of GID (using your example), which it clearly isn’t. It’s an “Identity Disorder” (same familly), but it’s different.

I was diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder because I desired Sex Reassignment Surgery. I wanted hormones to change my body as much as possible for the purpose of gender transition in society and legally change my gender. I fully understand GID because I live it. I would never venture to compare these two things, because I am not familiar enough with BIID and to even think that I have this “disorder” scares me because I can’t help but be afraid that I’ll be locked up in a crazy house for it if anyone finds out. However, I think the idea of impairment is not a strong reason to desire a certain body image to match one’s body. Society creates our standards, and someone said in another posting (more or less) that there are no celebrations for people who are disabled. The word disabled is a negative word that now means less than abled. Less than is the way we think of our friends whose bodies are different from our own. Society creates standards we can’t always match up to, so we’re all battling it.