A story about the Trans-abled.

This transgender person with "species dysphoria" transitioned into a cat,

only to discover he/she was also transabled, and is now confined to a wheelchair.

Body Integrity Identity Disorder

I know, I know.  All the bloggers at Patheos are gushing with admiration for Caitlyn Jenner and her courageous step toward sexual reassignment surgery after this week's debut as a voluptuous transgender woman, but there are other people who have extremely difficult issues with trans identities as well.  These folks do not always get the accolades a huge celebrity might get, and probably miss out on the all the compassion as well.

The Transabled.

They are persons who "feel like impostors in their fully working bodies."  Their story, their courage in 'coming out' is inspiring, to say the least.  Our society has made such strides to accept and make improvements for the disabled, while ignoring the needs, the feelings of the transabled.

OTTAWA — When he cut off his right arm with a “very sharp power tool,” a man who now calls himself One Hand Jason let everyone believe it was an accident.

But he had for months tried different means of cutting and crushing the limb that never quite felt like his own, training himself on first aid so he wouldn’t bleed to death, even practicing on animal parts sourced from a butcher.

“My goal was to get the job done with no hope of reconstruction or re-attachment, and I wanted some method that I could actually bring myself to do,” he told the body modification website ModBlog.

His goal was to become disabled.

People like Jason have been classified as ‘‘transabled’’ — feeling like imposters in their bodies, their arms and legs in full working order.

“We define transability as the desire or the need for a person identified as able-bodied by other people to transform his or her body to obtain a physical impairment,” says Alexandre Baril, a Quebec born academic who will present on “transability” at this week’s Congress of the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Ottawa.

“The person could want to become deaf, blind, amputee, paraplegic. It’s a really, really strong desire.”

Researchers in Canada are trying to better understand how transabled people think and feel. Clive Baldwin, a Canada Research Chair in Narrative Studies who teaches social work at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B., has interviewed 37 people worldwide who identify as transabled. - Read more here.

Now what could be more wholesome or natural than that? 

Can we say these people are true heroes?  To be admired for the courage to mutilate oneself to become disabled.  To voluntarily share the disabilities of the truly disabled could possibly be a strange sort of heroic virtue, right?  I don't think so.

Highlighted in the article is a woman who wears  leg braces and is wheelchair bound - though her legs function perfectly.  Look at how happy she is, her smile beaming in the photograph below.

-photo credit-

“It’s a problem for individuals because it’s distressing. But lots of things are.” He suggests this is just another form of body diversity — like transgenderism — and amputation may help someone achieve similar goals as someone who, say, undergoes cosmetic surgery to look more like who they believe their ideal selves to be. - Reasearcher statement. ibid

Disclaimer.

I shouldn't make fun of this, I know.  I actually knew a girl who most likely had this problem.  She lived in my neighborhood and often would wear a cast as if she broke her arm.  She did break it once I think - which is how she got the cast.  Later she'd wear it out and about, without saying anything about it.  Once she plucked out all of her eyelashes and eyebrows.  She had mental illness - which is why these conditions are not funny.  That said - I think we need to call metal illness what it is - and these trans conditions seem to me to be mental illness.

The girl from my neighborhood ended up committing suicide.

H/T Ray