As an actual disabled person, what are your thoughts on people who claim to be transabled? I just read an article about it and I thought it was made up (still not sure it isn't) but it's apparently a real thing.
Well, the term for this is newish but the phenomenon isn't.It's easy to judge these people harshly but it's a very serious matter. It's legitimate body dysmorphic disorder and not the way people apply that to being transgender, it's a mental illness. That's why it's not so black and white.People who have this are so desperate to have the "right" body and people who actually have this condition are very specific, they don't want to be just generally disabled. There was a woman who wanted her leg amputated about 2 inches above the knee and of course no doctor would do that so she put her leg in ice and bared the pain until the frostbite began to kill her skin before calling 911, the doctors didn't want to amputate especially because of her very specific request on where to cut but it wasn't viable. They amputated her leg an inch lower than she wanted and she continually tried to harm herself to get them to take more off. It's not a lot of people who have this but every year there are people who unintentionally kill themselves trying to "fix" their bodies, or to force doctors to like this woman did.There is still a lot we don't understand about this and some schools of psychology don't believe it's real but they have found psychiatric medication to treat people like this. People in treatment (therapy and on the medication) not only lose interest in altering their body, they become as horrified as everyone else at what they were doing. That's legitimate neurological diversion so this is a legitimate mental illness which means they actually are disabled, just not in the way they want.The easy solution to this is to just put everyone who has this on medication but it's so taboo that a lot of people don't tell anyone, even their doctors, they just commit suicide or self-harm. There are also people who don't want treatment because they are proud of what they are. It's a little hard to not be hypocritical because this is a trend not only among sexual and gender minorities (wanting to be taken off of the DSM-5) but increasingly amongst the disabled. It's hard to make an argument why people who are blind should be "allowed" to remain blind if there is a medical alternative while simultaneously arguing that these people shouldn't be allowed to not have their neurochemistry altered.It seems like it should be easy."Your body should work like everyone else's" "you should want to be normal" "you are a burden on people" "you cost the taxpayers a lot of money if you are on disability or even need public spaces to be accessible" "you should fix yourself to make up for all the people who can't" "you're crazy"If you said this to a blind person you would rightly deserve a punch in the genitals.I still don't like it. I don't like that able-bodied people, even who are neurologically divergent, perpetuate the idea that people like me are faking our disabilities and they do (arguably) needlessly waste money that can go towards disabled people who actually have no options. Just because I don't like it doesn't mean I can dismiss these people. We need more research, we need to go at the issue in an unbiased manner for the best results for everyone but so far that can't happen.No one wants to deal with the disabled or our issues and so those who seem to be pretending to be disabled definitely don't have people being objective for them.To be clear: there are people that claim to have this condition because they want to be disabled so they don't have to work and they think that disabled people are treated well (big surprise for them) but that's easily revealed through therapy. Right now the best solution would be for people to acknowledge this condition and destigmatize therapy, not only would it reveal people who are faking it would make the medication more accessible.