Transabled Testing Truth

I've written repeatedly about the absurdity of the ‘I identify as’ movement.

It’s the product of a soggy and indulgent society where we are all expected to suspend reality and truth in case we hurt someone else’s feelings.

That’s the only explanation as to why the university of Bristol, for example, issued guidelines for staff and students about the correct pronouns to use which included a link to when people identify as catgender or emojiself.

It is my view that if a human thinks they are a cat they are barking mad. I’d say the same of anyone who thinks they have emoji pronouns.

For the record, a search of emojiself shows a link to the LGBTQIA+ Wiki which says:

“Emojiself pronouns are a form of gender neutral neopronouns. They are similar to nounself pronouns but instead of using letters they use emojis or other pictograms.”

When you click on the link it takes you to a page that no longer exists. Even they must have realised how crazy the emojiself pronoun movement is.

As to catgender, that’s defined as:

"A xenogender where someone feels that the closest way to describe their gender identity is by making the equation to a cat in particular, cats in general, or by comparing their gender identity to certain cat-like features."

Now there might be some of you thinking what harm does this cause.

After all, these people aren’t making life-changing or non-reversible changes to their bodies. They aren’t really hurting anyone else so what’s the big problem.

In the case of cat people you might have a point but there are areas of  ‘self identity’ where real harm is done.

One of them is known as ‘transabled’.

These people feel like ‘imposters’ in their fully working bodies.

Alexander Baril, a Quebec academic defined transabled people:

"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.

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

This feeling is so strong that it leads some to do terrible acts of self-harm.

One man, who now calls himself ‘One Hand Jason’ deliberately cut off his right arm with a power tool, whilst letting everyone believe it was an accident.

He even trained himself on first aid so he wouldn’t bleed to death and practiced even on animal parts sourced from a butcher.

One Hand Jason said:

“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”

Another transabled person, Jewel Shuping from North Carolina identified as a blind person, even though she could see perfectly well.

Her self identification was so strong that she poured drain cleaner in her eyes to destroy her own vision.

She told one media outlet:

“I really feel this is the way I was supposed to be born, that I should have been blind from birth”

A psychiatrist diagnosed Shuping as having “Body Identity Integrity Disorder’ and said those who suffer from it can’t control their need to be disabled.

Researcher Clive Baldwin, interviewed 37 people from across the world who identify as transabled, to better understand how they think and feel. His research suggests that the condition might be more related to a neurological condition – a problem with the bodily mapping rather than a mental illness.

While transableism appears to be quite rare, it has been described as ‘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.

A clinical approach to this disorder saw a Scottish surgeon amputate the legs of two patients at their request in the 1990’s.

Unsurprisingly, transableism has met with some resistance.

Some say it is disrespectful and dishonest to those living with a disability while many others claim it is nothing like the other self-identity movements that seem to be such a talking point in the west.

In any rationale time these 'identity' claims would be seen as a sign of mental illness. Unfortunately, we live in an irrational world.