“Transabled” People Are A Thing. I Am Not Making This Up.

I have absolutely no idea how to process this.

According to that sourcelink, there are people among us who, even though they are perfectly healthy and able-bodied, WANT to become disabled, and will sometimes injure themselves purposefully to achieve that goal.

A guy named Jason, for example, CUT OFF HIS RIGHT ARM with a power tool, because he had such a strong, insatiable desire to be disabled.  Other "transabled" people want to become deaf, blind, or otherwise limit or eliminate movement in their extremities and will go to great lengths to achieve their desired disability.  Most transabled people, according to the sourclink, are men who crave amputation or paralysis, but at least one on record wants to have his penis cut off.

THESE PEOPLE EXIST, y'all. 

One guy apparently dropped a massively heavy concrete block on his legs, hoping he'd need to have them amputated. Much to his disappointment, doctors were able to save his legs (those jerks!) and he "only" has a limp now.  To him, having only a limp is lame (no pun intended.)

Ok, so maybe there was a little pun intended there.

Apparently, some transabled folks compare their experience to transgender people who don't feel like they're in the right body.  Transabled people genuinely believe their arms or legs or eyes or ears SHOULDN'T be functional, and so they are at odds with the fact that those body parts work just fine.  One social worker who studies this disorder, Clive Baldwin, says that amputations can legitimately HELP some of those suffering, just as a sex change operation can help transgender people.

And now, as transgender folks are getting more attention from the pop culture media world (Laverne Cox, Caitlyn Jenner), people who identify as transabled are looking for acceptance and understanding as well.  And you know who's irritated by that?  Transgender people.  And disability activists, according to the sourcelink. 

Alexandre Baril, a disabled transgender "academic" who focuses his research on transabled people in addition to feminist, gender and sexuality studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, says:

“They tend to see transabled people as dishonest people, people who try to steal resources from the community, people who would be disrespectful by denying or fetishizing or romanticizing disability reality. Each try to distance themselves.”

Transability has another name – Body Integrity Identity Disorder.  It's a thing, you guys.  And I guarantee you that it's going to become and bigger and bigger thing.  I guarantee you that within just a few years, ESPN is going to give some famous person the Arthur Ashe courage award for like, gouging out their own eyes in order to live a freer, transabled life.

It could happen.

The world just keeps getting crazier and crazier, doesn't it?