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Women coming out of the woodwork
Written by Sean on Saturday, January 27, 2007
A dozen years ago, there appeared to be almost no women that were transabled… In any case, there weren’t many at all that were interacting with me in the wannabe circles at the time. I thought that there weren’t many transabled women, other than the couple I had met here and there. But in recent months, I seem to be coming across more and more wannabe women.
In fact, the vast majority of people who contact me through my site are transabled women. I’d estimate the number of women who emailed me in the last 6 months at about 15, plus the half dozen that I’ve been in touch with in the couple years before that. It’s starting to mount. I find this fascinating (and I must admit, rather pleasant, no offense to you guys, but I prefer interacting with women).
It seems to amuse my friends as well, one of them referred to all these women as my "harem", although it’s very far from that. Interactions, email, yeah. More than that, no!
In any case, a very non-scientific impression is that it appears that transabled women generally want need to be paralysed, whereas transabled men generally want need to be amputees. I’d be interested to see actual numbers and hard data, but since there are very few studies out there and that the ones that are being done are unlikely to really paint a representative picture (perhaps mainly because of the focus on amputation, rather than taking a more general view of BIID).
Time will tell how things go.
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5 Comments
2 On 28 January, 2007, Sean said:
Someone commented to me in private: “Bull shit … no way to tell if more women are para wannabes than amps … besides, look at the most famous of today’s realized wannabes … Lily !!! We are dealing with such small numbers that each time we make generalizations it’s more likely wrong than right (and that is a generalization as well !!!)”
3 On 28 January, 2007, Sean said:
John, I believe that I’ve only been in touch with a relatively small fraction. I know for a fact that there is a relatively big and active community of amputee wannabes out there, the vast majority of whom have never been in touch with me. But even if all the amp wannabes and other wannabes that are online were in touch with me, I think there’s still tons of people out there sharing our feelings that either don’t know they aren’t alone, or don’t want to get in touch for whatever reason.
As to generalisations, please note I said it FELT like, not that is actually was :)
4 On 28 January, 2007, Marie said:
One must also bear in mind the gap in the number of women and men that are proficient enough with computers to make theirselves known.
I think that as the generation behind mine (I’m in my mid-twenties) begins to shed the inbred “no that’s wrong! you can’t feel that way!” feeling and begin to think for theirselves they will be proficient enough with technology to post blogs and make theirselves known (men and women).
So I am one of those women who joined your “harem” a few months ago. Good that you make it very clear that there not more than e-mail and interaction on the net. Maybe Marie is right. Men are often more proficient and started earlier exploring the Internet than woman. I think most transabled persons don’t find your site or others because they are not looking for it. They just have no clue that this community exists. I had been surfing the Internet for almost 10 years and eventually found your site last August “par harzard”. Yes, it would be interesting to know how many of us are out there.
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1 On 27 January, 2007, John said:
Sean,
Sometimes I wonder just how many transabled there are in the world. Fifteen-twenty years ago I thought that I was the only guy who needed to become a paraplegic. Thanks to the net and you it has become possible to encounter others.
Even with all the need-to-be-paras or amps that you have found through this site, we still seem to be pretty rare creatures.
Do you think that you have uncovered a large fraction of the total or are there, maybe, a lot more who just don’t want to admit or talk about their desire because it is so different?