I reblogged a post on this yesterday and enjoyed seeing people’s comments on it so I thought I would share my own and invite you all to share yours as well.
The idea is that like some people are transgender and feel they are one gender while their body is another, there are some people who are able-bodied and feel that their true form is a version of what society describes as “disabled”
Most cases are of people feeling they should have one less limb and are very specific about where they wish their limb to be amputated to fit their ideal image. Many of these people bind the limb in question so they can live as if it is not there at all, and some others will drastically harm themselves so doctors have no choice but to remove the bone and tissue the trans-abled person has damaged or killed. People have died trying to do this.
Now, therapy and medications can and have been used to treat these people so that they identify with their bodies. Some people say it works for them and they contextualize what they go through as a mental illness but others do not; the same can be said for transgender individuals.
It can be offensive to some disabled people that able-bodied people can “romanticize” their situations and may sometimes appropriate pain and oppression, let alone sacrifice lives disabled people envy to become disabled themselves. A wider complaint is that government benefits are awarded to all peoples with disabilities, whether they were born into their circumstances, were victims, harmed themselves due to negligence, or intentionally harmed themselves due to their trans-identity. A line made between any of those categories would inevitably hurt people not intended so there is no easy answer.
I am a spiritual person, not in a way most people mean when they say this, but in a very complicated fruit loops kind of way and so my opinion on this is too esoteric to bother practice people with…but for the record I do believe trans-ability is real, people should have just as much right to remove a limb or disabled themselves as people who get breast or nose jobs, but I don’t believe the government should give them “special” treatment as they do me (someone born disabled.) Unfortunately, I have no answers on how that would be regulated.
It might also be interesting to think about the reverse situation. Are those who are disabled trans-abled if they believe their true form is able-bodied? If you lost a limb but believe your soul is still whole, would that make you trans-abled?
So it turns out if you put something off long enough Christy will just be super-efficient and do it anyway. Maybe I’ll add some input later; more likely I’ll just go back to sleeping for the entire day.
