Body Integrity Identification Disorder, Transabled, or Transability

Topic: Psychological Disorders
Ian C. Langtree - Content Writer/Editor for Disabled World
Published: 2023/06/17 - Updated: 2023/09/22
Publication Type: Systematic Review
Contents: Summary - Definition - Introduction - Main Item - Related Topics

Synopsis: Transability is 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. People who become fixated on these feelings, often from a young age, are called transabled. Some of them want amputations, others want to be paralyzed or lose their sense of sight or hearing. Some people 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.

Defining Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID) and Transability

Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID) and Transability

Body Integrity Dysphoria (BID):

Body integrity dysphoria (BID), also referred to as body integrity identity disorder (BIID), amputee identity disorder or xenomelia, and formerly called apotemnophilia, is a mental disorder characterized by a desire to have a sensory or physical disability or feeling discomfort with being able-bodied, beginning in early adolescence and resulting in harmful consequences. BID appears to be related to somatoparaphrenia. People with this condition may refer to themselves as transabled. In the ICD-11, BID is included under the category "Disorders of bodily distress or bodily experience". It is "characterised by an intense and persistent desire to become physically disabled in a significant way (e.g. major limb amputee, paraplegic, blind), with onset by early adolescence accompanied by persistent discomfort, or intense feelings of inappropriateness concerning current non-disabled body configuration.

Transability:

Transability, or trans-able, is defined as the need of a non-disabled person to transform his/her abilities or senses with the goal of acquiring a physical disability (amputation, paralysis, blindness, deafness, etc.) and therefore becoming disabled. Researchers and transabled people use a variety of terms to refer to transability.

Introduction

Even though the transabled movement is gaining mainstream coverage, transablism has been studied since the early 20th century, when it was known as abasiophilia, then amputee identity disorder, body integrity identity disorder, and now transablism.

Main Item

Transability, known to medicine and psychology as Body Integrity Identification Disorder (BIID) (First 2004; Stirn, Thiel, and Oddo 2009), is one of the most secretive emerging areas in research psychiatry today. People who become fixated on these feelings, often from a young age, are called transabled. Some of them want amputations, others want to be paralyzed or lose their sense of sight or hearing. Transabled people say they feel like impostors in their fully working bodies. Body Integrity Identification Disorder was added to the "emerging measures and models" appendix section of the DSM-5 in 2013.

"From transgendered to 'transabled': People are 'choosing' to identify as handicapped", states the headline on the New York Post webite. "Transableism is a newer term for BIID, or "Body Integrity Identity Disorder," in which a person actually "identifies" as handicapped", the article states.

"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," Alexandre Baril, a Quebec born academic who is himself disabled and transgender, told National Post. "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," Baril says, adding people in both transgender and disabled circles tend to make judgmental or prejudicial statements about transabled people.

Scholar Jenny L. Davis divided transabled people into three groups, depending on their impairment needs:

Today, activists are changing the identifier from a psychiatric condition (BIID) to an advocacy term (transableism). In the same way they have changed "gender dysphoria" to "transgenderism." The point of "changing the identifier" from a psychiatric condition (BIID) to an advocacy term (transableism) is to "harness the stunning cultural power of gender ideology" to the cause of allowing doctors to "treat" BIID patients by "amputating healthy limbs, snipping spinal cords or destroying eyesight," according to Evolution News and Science Today (EN).

The Oath of Hippocrates Adjures Physicians to Do No Harm

The inflicted wound causing disability is lifelong and imposes burdens on others and neither patients nor physicians can duck responsibility for that. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) notes on its website:

"Those with BIID desire the amputation of one or more healthy limbs or desire a paralysis."

Transability may be a kind of body dysmorphia, a mental health condition in which sufferers experience anxiety over a perceived physical imperfection or defect. This is one explanation for transability. However, not all transabled people identify as having a mental health condition, and some claim that wanting to be disabled is just a part of who they are, similar to how some people identify as a certain gender or sexuality. Some also want to be disabled to support other disabled people.

Transablism Highlights

1 - Transabled people live happier lives after getting the disability that their brain craves.
2 - Doctors are yet to classify transability as a mental, behavioral, or neurodevelopmental disorder
3 - Transability is a disorder likely caused by a mapping issue in the brain that compels people to desire having a disability.
4 - Some transabled people have gone to great lengths to get amputated, including using cutting tools to get rid of their limbs.
5 - The disabled and transgender communities distance themselves from transability, dismissing transabled people as dishonest and insensitive.
6 - Clive Baldwin, a Canadian Research Chair in Narrative Studies who teaches at St. Thomas University, revealed that he found most of the people who are transabled are men. However, it is not always limited to one gender.

Both transgender and transabled persons suffer from a delusional disorder. Can you be considered a serious human being if you alter, or mutilate, your body like this, instead of getting the appropriate mental help needed? It's offensive to people who actually suffer from the condition that you say you need, in order to be your true self. Life-altering physical mutilation to affirm a mental delusion? Denial of reality is delusional and anti-scientific.

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Cite This Page (APA): Langtree, I. C. (2023, June 17 - Last revised: 2023, September 22). Body Integrity Identification Disorder, Transabled, or Transability. Disabled World. Retrieved October 7, 2024 from www.disabled-world.com/disability/types/psychological/biid.php

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