Attraction to disability
Attraction to disability is a sexualised interest in the appearance, sensation and experience of disability. Many of those attracted pretend to be disabled and some wish to acquire a disability. Sexologically, the attraction is mostly seen as a stigmatic-eligibilic paraphilia, though also as an aspect of identity disorder in some cases. Those experiencing the attraction are not psychotic, delusional, dysfunctional or dangerous, though a few may be in danger through self-harm.
History
Allusions to the attraction are found in, inter alia, Herodotus, classical Vietnamese legend, works by Bruegel the Elder, de Brantôme, de Montaigne, Pushkin, Brecht, Bulgakov, Dalí, Hemingway, Mayakovsky, von Stroheim, Helmut Newton and Buñuel, and roles by James Dean. Shades of the phenomenon are present in the Chinese foot binding tradition.
The attraction has become ever more widely known over the past century in waves coinciding with Interwar decadence, the Sexual Revolution and the advent of the world-wide web. A number of artists do not hide the fact that they may be attracted to disability or are approvingly aware of the attraction: drama producer Andriy Zholdak produces plays with disabled people, sculptor Marc Quinn makes statues of them, photographers Gerhard Aba, Petrina Hicks, Eric Kroll, Romain Slocombe and Yury Solomenko photograph them, directors produce art films like Um crime delicado dealing with the attraction and Chinese balletomanes produce dance performances with disabled dancers. The attration to disability also features regularly in Japanese anime and manga and has established a large, mostly apocryphal, online presence.
Small informal networks of men attracted to disability had emerged by the 1920s. They were linked largely by correspondence, members often assuming pseudonyms for the purpose. The attraction was broached in popular magazines in the 1930s and again in the 1970s, having been covered ad-hoc by minority erotica in the interim. By the 1980s, a community involving those attracted and disabled people was emerging in the USA, gatherings (Fascination conferences, after the name of the community's journal) beginning in June 1985 in Chicago. A virtual world community has been coalescing since the 1990s as a fragmented set of internet fora, chatrooms and p2p networks for general exchange, rather than a monolithic lobby. Sections of the community are articulating meaningful discourse.
The attraction has been subject to episodic scientific interest since the late 19th Century, with a relative resurgence of interest since the mid-1970s. Until the 1990s, it tended to be described mostly as acrotomophilia, with no apparent awareness of the broader attraction to other disabilities or of the wish to pretend and become disabled. Bruno (1997) systematised the attraction as factitious disability disorder. A decade on, others argue that erotic target location error is at play, classifying the attraction under identity disorders.
Nature
Those attracted to disability ("devotees") are aroused by disabled people. The stigmatic-eligibilic paradox is that, for a devotee, disability does not reduce a potential partner’s attractiveness but boosts it. "Disability" in this context may be minor like missing fingers, profound like blindness and (stereotypically) amputation, or grave like quadriplegia. An extreme fringe of devotees desires people with cognitive disabilities. No detectable disability is devoid of devotees.
The desires to pretend to be disabled and acquire a disability are extensions of the attraction. About half of all devotees occasionally pretend (43 per cent of Nattress [1996], sample of 50). Avowed "wannabes" seem to number not more than five per cent of the devotee-wannabe population, though Nattress (1996) found 22 per cent of his sample of 50 had wanted to become disabled. Accordingly, Bruno (1997) puts devotees, pretenders and wannabes under the common heading of DPWs.
Well over half of all DPSs have felt the attraction since childhood, as typical of paraphilias. The Amelotatist (see References) found that 75 per cent of its sample of 195 were aware of the attraction by age 15. Those attracted often cherish early memories of a sexuoerotic tragedy (a "first sighting") involving an object of their future attention, often an older member of the opposite sex, as stereotypical in paraphilic etiology. About a quarter report discovering the attraction in puberty, and a few do so in sexual maturity.
In intensity, the attraction ranges between optional and preferred in most DPSs. It appears that as its intensity grows, DPSs may desire ever more profound degrees of their preferred disability (see Preferences), and that pretender and wannabe elements emerge and increase. Thus, detailed enquiries as to what sensations there are or are not in the parts of the body affected by disability are regularly posed in DPW fora frequented by disabled people, suggesting an exhaustively detailed DPWs curiosity as to the experience of disability. Avowed wannabes seem to feel their aspect of the attraction significantly more keenly than ordinary devotees, and for some of them it has exclusive intensity.
The aforesaid has given grounds for the attraction to disability to be represented as the continuum Bruno (1997) termed factitious disability disorder. At its less-intense, devotee, end there is sexualised fascination with the existential aspects of disability and its appearance. In its middle, pretending, area is strong desire to imagine the sensations they experience through pretending. At its intense, wannabe, end is an imperative to acqure a disability which may prompt serious self-harm. The attraction does not pose danger to DPWs' partners or third parties.
Preferences
DPWs' erotic ideals are conventionally attractive people who happen to be disabled. They are at ease with their disability. Rather than resenting it, they do little to conceal it. Their attractiveness grows in direct proportion with the extent to which they are prepared to parade the disability in contravention of socially established norms. This general statement is subject to a significant proviso.
DPWs have set individual preferences: those desiring people with one disability may feel little or no attraction towards people with other disabilities. Alongside defining the nature of the preferred disability, preferences may define whether it is acquired or congenital, traumatic or caused by illness, 'ideal' elapsed periods since it was acquired, whether it involves more marked or subtler physical scarring, and even trivia such as whether it affects the left or right side of the body. How the disability is 'worn' is also a preference area, with individual DPWs having detailed specifications of clothing, props, behaviour and even environments which appeal.
Evidence of the enormous variety of devotee preferences is provided by the very large number of exceedingly narrowly-specialised devotee fora. Examples include groups dedicated to amputees with bandaged stumps, brides with disabilities, hook prosthesis users, hopping leg amputees, leg amputees who use pylon prostheses, non-users of prostheses, people with one short leg, people with limbs in plaster casts, et c.
Depending on the individual, preferences may be firmly or less firmly set. They may evolve to varying degrees with time but seem never to 'switch' from one type of disability to another. Individual DPWs' exact personal preferences are rarely, if ever, replicated in others.
A key feature of the attraction, preferences seem to serve two purposes. First, they fix the appearance and circumstances of the sexuoerotic tragedy and perpetuate and reinforce its influence. Second, they may act as an excuse which keeps inhibited devotees from pursuing relationships (see Behaviour), since their precise preferences are most unlikely to be replicated.
There are many indications that male and female DPWs may have differing overall preferences. Thus, the preference for women who have lost a leg above the knee and walk with crutches appears most common among males, while preferences for men who have lost one arm or are paralysed appear more common among females.
DPW preferences are overlaid over common attractiveness criteria, rather than supplanting them. Thus, male DPWs routinely rank disabled women by looks, while female devotees routinely rank disabled men by charisma; "looks" and "charisma" in this context have completely 'mainstream' meanings.
Population
A distinction has to be drawn between the unknown number of people who feel varying types and degrees of sex-tinged fascination with disability but have not acknowledged this fascination, and aware members of the DPW subculture (also see Behaviour below).
In 1976, Ampix, a company selling DPW pornography, had a clientele of about 300. A decade later, Fascination, a DPW community quarterly publication, had a circulation of under 1000. As the world-wide web began rolling-out 20 years hence, DPWs in dedicated fora numbered under 10,000. By 2006, the world devotee community comprised up to 100,000 members of several hundred dedicated internet fora. Duplication/multiplication of memberships, dead memberships, and the probable 'grey zone' of under-motivated, merely-curious or accidental forum members would indicate that there were anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000 DPWs worldwide in 2006. (In contrast to this, and though their number is disputed, disabled people form up to a tenth of the world's population, those above puberty and below retirement age accounting for over a third of this number.)
By sex, it is consistently reported (most recently in 2006 on dysmelien.de, see References) that over 90 per cent of DPWs are male. It may be that women attracted to disability tend to view their feelings as romantic hero worship and not an 'up-front' sex-centred drive or are disheartened by the male domination of the DPW scene.
By sexual orientation, the share of homosexual and bisexual DPWs appears identical to that in the general population. There are indications, however, that a proportion of heterosexual DPWs may experience homoerotic arousal at members of their own sex with their preferred disability. This ambivalence may be significantly more common among female DPWs. There are also indications that where the "first sighting" involved a person of the same sex, the future DPW may grow up homosexual.
By age, the acknowledgement of the attraction may occur from pre-puberty onwards, with today's aware DPWs discovering the subculture from their mid-teens onwards.
By educational and career attainment, The Amelotatist reported an unusually high proportion of highly educated and successful people among its sample of 195. Though much ridiculed by some in the DPW community, this finding was confirmed by Nattress (1996), all of whose 50 subjects had completed higher education and pursued successful careers. This may indicate greater than average DPW susceptibility to parental and peer pressures, significant in light of explanations below.
By geography, in 2006 DPW fora membership indicated one or fewer DPWs per million inhabitants in some countries, with a mean of 5 to 8 a million, and peaks of 30 to 50 a million. (In comparison, there are some 30,000 and 40,000 disabled people above puberty and below retirement age per million inhabitants worldwide.) North America and Western Europe had most DPWs, followed by the former USSR, eastern China, Japan, Australia, Southern Africa and the rest of the world. Southern Asia and Africa appear to have none or extremely few DPWs. Differing levels of internet access are clearly at play, though the spread undoubtedly also reflects national, cultural, class, lifestyle and period factors, as well as specific parent-child and peer relationship paradigms.
Behaviour
No cases are known of DPWs physically harming disabled people or inflicting disability on able-bodied ones. There is no evidence of any advocacy of such harm in devotee circles. DPWs have been known to steal disability aids such as crutches or artificial limbs. Wannabes may ultimately engage in self-harm, often with fatal outcomes.
People who are fascinated with disability in a sexual way, but are unaware of themselves as devotees, appear to fall into two groups. Most appear to think they are alone in the world. A few assume the attraction is universal and are later surprised and disappointed to find it confined to very few others.
Inhibitors to DPW behaviour
Many DPWs feel intense guilt and shame at apparently deriving pleasure from others' misfortunes. For this reason, they fear parental, family, peer, and public reprimand. They also sense the stigmatic-eligibilic paradox and fear ridicule for desiring people whom convention both brands and patronises. In addition, they fear censure from the very people whom they desire. Moreover, wannabes in particular report mistrusting their feelings and being unwilling to surrender to them. This guilt and feelings of fear from seemingly all sides, added to the customary guardedness of sexual minorities, appear to form powerful inhibitors to DPWs' publicising their feelings and pursuing their preferred partners. Indeed, claims to have overcome guilt and fear appear to bestow significant DPW community cudos on those who make them.
Under different formulations, the question of whether — given an opportunity — a devotee or pretender would actually enter into a relationship with a disabled person, is posed occasionally in devotee fora. Answers indicate that guilt, shame and secretiveness are so powerful in some devotees and pretenders that they exercise strict self-denial. They also indicate that many devotees and pretenders feel ill-equipped for relationships with disabled people, not only as regards the attendant family, social, career, et c. dimensions, but also as regards the prosaic realities of living with disabled partners. Those declaring willingness to pursue relationships often decry the lack of set etiquette for encounters between themselves and disabled people who may also be assumed to be dealing with significant inhibitions.
Instead of relationships, some DPWs seek unencumbered and non-committing transactions with understanding, needy and/or economically motivated disabled people. This is evidenced by at least two devotee fora (2006) for disseminating and sharing information on disabled prostitutes, and between nine and a dozen 'disabled courtesan' websites (2006). Rather than being merely sexual, however, it seems that such transactions involve the disabled partners displaying as wide a range as possible of intrinsically 'disabled' behaviours, including dressing in specific clothing, play-acting specific routines, and optionally making public appearances with their DPW escorts.
There are claims that female DPWs may be less inhibited and more direct about their attraction, and that they tend to form relationships with preferred partners more easily.
In relationships
The Amelotatist found that 55 per cent of a sample of 195 DPWs had dated disabled people, 40 per cent had had sex with disabled partners, and 5 per cent had current disabled spouses. Nattress (1993) found that 41 per cent of a sample of 50 DPWs had had, or were in, relationships with disabled partners.
Relationships between DPWs and disabled people tend to be reported as being ordinary, the attraction being sated by the mere fact of the partner's disability. It appears that the attraction to disability is undisclosed in a proportion of DPW-disabled relationships. DPWs may press disabled partners to put their disabilities to the fore in intimate situations and exhibit them in social ones. Sexually, some DPWs have been reported to engage in active tactile observation as much as in intercourse.
Some DPWs appear to have intermittent transient and fragile links because sexual satiety does not satisfy broader emotional needs. The pattern is similar to that in other sexual minorities such as some gay men. The issue at play is the disparity of motivations: in a relationship, devotees first seek physical satiety, while their potential partners seek satisfaction for the broad range of human relationship needs. The disparity ceases to be a consideration only in purely sexual contacts. This is borne out by findings by both Nattress (1996) and Dixon (1983), who report that, despite reasonable success in obtaining sexual contact with disabled people, just 21 per cent of DPWs had had long-term relationships with disabled partners.
About half of all DPWs fail to establish relationships with disabled people. 'Second-best' options for them are relationships with pretenders and wannabes. Practically all DPWs have experience of relationships with able-bodied partners. Such relationships are also reported to be ordinary despite the (mostly undisclosed) attraction to disability on the part of one partner.
Outside relationships
Many DPWs redirect their desires into creative pursuits. A number of them occupy positions offering professional contact with the disabled. Others are members of disabled people's social and/or political fora. Collecting disability-linked objects is a pastime for some DPWs.
Over the past decade, a number of DPWs have launched websites with images of their ideal partners, descriptions of fictional encounters with them, and DPW pornography (often produced in cooperation with disabled people). Online, DPWs exchange images of disabled people, descriptions of sightings and meetings of/with them, potted biographies of disabled people, techniques for attracting their attention, and opinions on acceptable/unacceptable DPW behaviour. There are attempts to condemn the objectification of disabled people. Wannabe fora are dominated by enquiries as to which doctors may be willing to inflict elective disability.
The DPW community has a growing English-based internal terminology which emerged in the 1930s. The label "devotee," adopted in the early 1980s due to its alliteration with "amputee" has entered research usage. "Wannabe" is another internal label, with a variety of other terms coined (thus, "sighting" for an encounter with a disabled person), borrowed or modified from the disabled world (thus, "sticks" instead of "crutches") or other sexual minorities (thus "devdar," a modification of "gaydar," denoting the supposed devotee ability to foretell "sightings" of people they desire, or "transabled," another term for wannabe and an alliterative modification of "transsexual").
Borderline
As stated above, many DPWs derive pleasure by pretending to have a disability. Others may persuade some non-disabled partners to pretend. Pretending usually takes place in privacy or intimacy, but may be practiced in public. There was overwhelming evidence that males in the devotee chatrooms which sprang up during the 1990s pretended to be disabled women en masse. This confirms a widespread proneness to pretending first mooted in The Amelotatist, as well as the continuum between devotees, pretenders, and wannabes. Being a premeditated confidence trick, pretending tends to be viewed as unedifying by the high DPW community.
Some DPWs collect personal data on disabled people, follow and photograph them candidly, call them and write to them, contrive to encounter them, and seek them out in healthcare establishments and at disability gatherings. This "potted palm syndrome" (practitioners are said to peep from behind parlour plants) is condemned within the DPW community. Where it spills over into stalking, mostly of the incompetent suitor and intimacy seeker types, such behaviour may give the authorities in some countries grounds for prosecuting the devotees responsible. Over 85 per cent of Nattress's sample of 50 DPWs stated that they would follow an unknown disabled person matching their preference. Over 57 per cent stated that they would attempt to start a conversation with a randomly encountered disabled person who matched their preference.
The wholesale circulating of images of disabled people is a behaviour under impotent attack from some sections of the DPW community. Most images are obtained candidly, distribution (if commercial) does not benefit those depicted, and risks compromising them since the context is sexual. Alongside this, commercial images of disabled models are invariably "copywronged" by DPWs posting them on the internet for free use by others, thus depriving models of expected income. "Electronic surgery" ("ES"; retouching photographs of able-bodied people to make them look disabled) is also popular in some DPW circles. The resulting images are widely circulated on the DPW Web, jeopardising the reputations of the original subjects. Images of people known to be dead continue in circulation.
People attracted to disability appear to have been obsessed with images for as long as the attraction has been known. Stories are told within the community of collectors who had succeeded in garnering up to some tens of thousands of images in the pre-internet era. The DPW fascination with images lends considerable credulity to claims that the attraction to disability is voyeuristic and hence forms part of the sadomasochistic continuum.
DPWs practising intrusive, stalking, and fetishist behaviour, and who peddle images, often plead a paucity of potential partners, of opportunities to approach such partners in a normal fashion, and the lack of any established polite etiquette for such encounters.
Explanations
The established view of the attraction is that it is part of the paraphilic spectrum. Research since 2000 focusing on amputee wannabes has produced evidence that at least in some cases the condition is an aspect of identity disorder. Research is hampered by the aforementioned secretiveness of DPWs. It is likely to remain so in view of the widespread DPW conviction that sexological, journalistic or other enquiries into them can only bring disbenefits.
A number of the explanations offered are repeated (under different formulations) by all relevant sides.
Psychiatric
Early psychiatry considered devotees off-mainstream sadomasochists:
1. Suppressed homosexuality. This first explanation (by Krafft-Ebing in his 1886 Psychopathia Sexualis assumed that amputation stumps resembled phalli and were thus seen as a safe alternative by latent homosexuals. This was in line with the contemporaneous linking of much sexual oddity with homosexuality, and with the author's intent of linking the "antipathic instinct" (homosexuality) with all "perversions";
2. Sadism deriving satisfaction from disabled people's perceived lower status;
3. Masochism deriving satisfaction by self-denigration through association with stigmatised partners; wannabes are masochists wishing to acquire permanent physical stigma;
4. Voyeurism gratified by the unusual behaviour and appearance of disabled people. Willing disabled partners are exhibitionists capitalising on their unusual physique. Wannabes are also would-be exhibitionists seeking satisfaction in the reaction of other people;
Psychology views sadism and masochism as interchangeable, with voyeurism and exhibitionism as their respective aspects. Devotees’ observation-based behaviour and preference for display-minded partners seem to support explanations 2 to 4. Devotee pornography tends to display the appearance of disability across a range of activities, rather than focus on sexual situations.
Subsidiary observations include:
5. Teratophilia because of the desire for deformed people;
7. Classical fetishism, since the focus of desire is shifted from a person to parts of a body and/or objects. Physical stigma without the rest of the person, as well as disability aids do feature to a significant extent in DPW pornography;
8. Suppressed coprophilia, since amputation stumps may be interpreted as resembling stools. This early hypothesis is in line with the linking of sexual behaviour to toilet training.
Sexological
Contemporary sexology does not consider the attraction problematic unless exercising it infringes the rights of one of the parties and/or those of third parties. Explanations include:
1. Imprinting or the influence of influential events on behaviour. Encountering visibly disabled people in childhood awakes strong emotions which may give rise to quasi-logical reasoning and a desire for people with the type of trauma encountered. Care received during hospital stays may awaken a wish to become disabled (as a way of ensuring continuous care), later projected onto others. Freud is credited with discovering conditioning ("imprinting" in sexology) in the context of fetishism;
2. Implied parental approval: if, on encountering someone disabled, a future DPW’s parents express admiration, the child may conclude that disability inspires regard, later ranking it among sexual preferences. This is among explanations mentioned by Dr John Money in Lovemaps;
3. Flight from pressure: strict parenting and/or onerous peer environments may cause the future devotee to seek respite in sickness and disability. With time, the wish to become disabled is ‘projected’ onto others. The analogy with Munchausen Syndrome (simulating or inducing illness as a route to compassion and benefits) here is reasonably clear in wannabes. In them, projection has failed, leaving them to see themselves as more attractive if disabled. The fact that most DPWs feel the attraction since childhood also backs the above explanations. There are also suggestions that there are more DPWs in America, Europe, and the Far East due to specific parent/peer-driven achievement models there. This is another explanation mentioned in Lovemaps;
4. Inferiority complex causing projection: DPWs may have been made to feel inferior in childhood and may project their ambitions onto disabled people, who perforce have to overcome many barriers;
5. Transvestism and transsexuality are put forward as partial explanations-by-analogy for pretenders and wannabes; by the early 2000s, some wannabes were beginning to style themselves "transabled." The critique is that, since there is no naturally occurring 'state of disability,' such claims are superficial;
6. 'Darwinism': DPWs see disabled people as proven in natural selection, having cheated death and overcome adversity;
7. The unknown: children experience fascination with and fear of, the unknown, when encountering a disabled person. As adolescents, they may experience similar emotions when first approaching the opposite sex. This fascination with alienness may become associated with arousal over time through classical conditioning. Eventually, arousal will be triggered by the emotion;
8. 'The missing phallus': when exposed to the nude female body, some men are fascinated by the fact that 'the penis is missing' and there is an alternative and sexual organ (in fact, one reminiscent of a wound) in its place. This feeling of surprise may become a part of sexual attraction. The sight of a missing limb may evoke a similar feeling. Similar to 6 above, this explanation was proposed by Dr Anne Hooper in 1978;
9. Attention seeking and envy: since disabled people tend to draw more than average attention, children observing them may conclude that one has to be disabled to enjoy attention. In puberty, disability would be included in their attractiveness criteria.
10. Erotic target location error: the desire of some male transvestites and transsexuals to assume the appearance of their sexual ideal was transposed by analogy to amputee wannabes by First (2005) who backs his claim with research by himself and others since 2000. Since the condition of some wannabes appears not to be primarily sexual (except by association), the explanation defines the attraction to disability as an identity disorder. It is put forward within the narrow context of amputee wannabes and the author does not address the DPW continuum discussed above. Interestingly, the wannabe community has always defined itself in terms very similar to those First and Lawrence (2006) use, with the indigenous label "transabled" gaining ground by 2005 at the expense of "wannabe."
By DPWs
The DPW community constantly debates the origins of the attraction ("the Why?"). The Amelotatist, reporting a poll of about 300 devotees (195 responded) was a community contribution and the first synthesis of explanations. A 2005 straw poll in two DPW fora revealed that in childhood many respondents (often first or only children) felt alienated from peers, forming solitary interests in, inter alia, transportation or collecting. This may indicate that empathy with the disabled, subject to exclusion in most cultures, is among the motivations for the attraction. It may also indicate that admiration is at play in the attraction, inasmuch as the disabled perforce overcome inhibitions similar to those many DPWs face, as hinted above.
Current explanations and claims include:
1. The attraction is a mere addition to the physical attractiveness criteria which everyone has for potential partners;
2. Everyone wishes to have a distinguished partner, and disabled people stand out as unique amid a physically standard population;
3. Disabled people perform a number of actions in original ways which capture onlookers, rather like ballerinas capture audiences;
4. The attraction is a sexualised extension of protective compassion for misfortune, fascination with uniqueness, and hero-worship;
5. Each DPW may have become one for a variety of personal motivations rarely replicated in others;
6. The attraction is not primarily sexual, since it involves an overall curiosity about the broad existential aspects of disability rather than its narrow sexual aspects. There is indeed overwhelming evidence that, rather than being sex-centred, the attraction is 'sex-diffused.' Dedicated pornography caters to people erotically intoxicated with the appearance, spectacle, and perception of the entire disabled experience, rather than merely with nudity or sex;
7. The attraction is an expression and extension of infantile non-conformity, being a counterpoint to the mainstream attitude to disability and sex. The attraction (or approving awareness of it) features in non-conformist avant-garde artists' work. Another argument in favour of this explanation is that DPWs, who may be more than averagely successful (see The Amelotatist in Population above) and hence analytical, are able to sense the flaws in the conventional attitude to disability at a formative age and react against them by cultivating an opposing attraction;
8. Religious, occult, and esoteric explanations are that the attraction is programmed into some people by a higher power in order to provide a pool of potential partners for the disabled; that it is sent by a higher force to test or build DPWs' characters through exposing them to practically insurmountable deficit; that it is evidence of past lives in which the wannabe occupied a disabled body and the devotee had a disabled partner; that it focuses on the supposedly intriguing juncture where the physical body is severed but the astral body continues (disabled people are claimed to have healthy auras).
By disabled people
A widespread view by disabled people outside DPW circles is that the attraction results from low self-esteem. Lack of success in attracting able-bodied sexual partners on the part of such individuals may drive them to view disabled people as 'soft targets.'
DPW-aware disabled people generally adhere to the DPW community's explanations. In particular, they draw attention to the untenability and political incorrectness of the argument that denigrates them to the status of second-best partners for social inepts. They do, however, draw a very sharp distinction between 'sound' DPWs and "fetishists" who engage in borderline behaviour and objectify disability.
Summary
Assertions that the attraction is a paraphilia are borne out by numerous aspects of it, including the early sexuoerotic tragedy and the DPW proneness to other paraphilias. The attraction's complexity and breadth, however, do appear to reach across into states which are not classifiable as paraphilic, as well as to spill over into the area of identity disorders (at least for some wannabes).
Voyeurism/exhibitionism/sadomasochism and fetishism are certainly present in DPWs, but far from the forefront and not to the exclusion of a very broad range of other, and predominant, motivations. The latter are a diffuse blend of sexualised compassion, protectiveness, and maudlin empathy with the poignancy of stigma and disability. There is anecdotal evidence that some DPWs exhibit mild introversion and alienation. If true, this would tend to make them more likely to empathise with the experience of disabled exclusion and stigma, or to admire the perceived heroism of disabled people in overcoming exclusion and stigma, hence prompting them to seek disabled partners.
The DPW claim that the desire is an augmentation of widely shared attractiveness criteria is amply borne out by widespread public erotisation of commonplace physical distinctions ranging from dimples and gappy teeth, through moles and freckles, to spectacles, dental braces, and limbs in casts. The fact that 'freak shows' featuring disabled performers were popular fairground attractions until after the Second World War hints that a significant number of ordinary people harbour curiosity about unorthodox appearance and modi operandi, at least some of which can be assumed to be tinged with sex. The undying popularity of elective physical modification such as body part piercing, tattooing, and sundry cosmetic interventions (surgical or not), exhibits at least some drives in common with wannabeism. The attraction to disability appears to be the extreme tip of a 'pyramid' of commonplace, less common, and minority attractions to unorthodox physique, and the desire to have such physique oneself. For the most part, these attractions are not paraphilic.
Another DPW claim — that the attraction visits different people for different reasons — also appears reasonable in view of the sheer number and diversity of proffered explanations (most with their 'lobbies'), coupled with the extremely small number of DPWs and the DPW community's palpable heterogeneity.
Standpoints
Scientific, quasi-scientific, and self-generated explanations seek to highlight the causes of the attraction. This section outlines the stances of those most affected by it and the modi vivendi they are developing.
Since DPWs desire disabled people, the latter's views of devoteeism form the undoubted crux of the DPW community's attention. DPWs have tended to emphasise their usefulness as political and social allies to the disability movement. For its part, since a glad discovery of the attraction in the 1970s, that movement has largely disabused itself regarding DPWs.
DPWs
DPWs assert that the attraction appears deviant only from the untenable position that disabled people are intrinsically unattractive or asexual. Since devotees' desired relationships are voluntary and equal in principle, and since the disability has already been sustained, they point out that issues of deriving pleasure from others' misfortune have no place in debates on the attraction. While disclaiming paraphilic explanations, they stress that their preferred relationships are 'because of,' rather than 'despite,' disability, thus unwittingly restating the stigmatic-eligibilic paradox.
The DPW community rejects scientific enquiry into the attraction because it may throw an unhealthy shadow over it and because it feels science can bring no real insight. It is minded to move towards coalescing as a lifestyle grouping like the gay community; today, scientific enquiry into the latter is viewed as unnecessary and discriminatory. Similarly to the gay community, which rejected the term "homosexuality" in favour of "gayness," devotees reject terms like "amelotasis" in favour of internal ones like "devotee/ism." Words like "fetish" or "paraphilia" appear to raise loud devotee hackles, probably due to very widespread ignorance and/or alarm of/at their meanings and implications. DPWs energetically dispute sadomasochistic explanations, claiming that to them the disabled are not less able and inferior, but hyper-able and superior ("godlike"; this dovetails with the element of admiration mentioned above). Teratophilic and coprophilic explanations are vigorously rejected as fanciful and offensive.
Disabled people have been welcomed into the DPW community since its emergence. The community feels that public acceptance of the rights and equality of disabled people would benefit its members, not least by removing blocks and inhibitors to their self-expression. In social attitudes, some DPWs appear to sense a paradoxical parallel between their position and that of disabled people. They also feel that borderline behaviour by some of their number would be curtailed or obviated by social acceptance of the attraction. Hence, their community expresses unreserved support for the disability movement.
Disabled people
Despite the explosion of the DPW Web, many disabled people remain unaware of the attraction. Those newly-introduced to it often report initial alarm and deep shock. Subsequent reactions (often after further research) appear to involve deep introspection and an eventual revision of attitudes. While some aspects of the attraction remain unacceptable and disquieting to disabled people, others appear welcome and liberating. If DPW forum membership is a sign of approval, by mid-2006 there was one disabled member for ten or more DPWs: a proportion somewhat lower than a decade earlier. Nevertheless, in 30 years, up to 500 disabled people have offered images of themselves for sale to devotees, several dozen of them even becoming 'devotee courtesans.' Often, their 'impresarios' are themselves disabled women. This may be interpreted as approval, but also as economic opportunism.
The disability movement is many times larger than the DPW community and the latter rarely comes to its attention. The movement perforce backs the DPW stance that the disabled ought not to be branded unattractive and asexual, but by the same token resists suggestions that they ought to welcome the attentions of a sexual minority. If it has any real stance on DPWs, the movement is generally negative, seeing them as unaceptably needy and fetishistic. Despite early hopes that DPWs were welcome allies in the battle against lookism, the movement has found that they do not offer any escape from the tyranny of visual norms; they merely pile bizarre standards atop mainstream ones. In addition, the 'hero adulation' and protectiveness elements of the attraction are ideologically most unwelcome to the movement. More insiduously, DPWs are seen as entryist. Thus, 'visibility' is a disability movement issue on which DPWs are attempting to influence views. Cosmesis is widely available to the disabled. Some welcome this as hiding physical differences and aiding integration; others claim it perpetuates a visual norm implying that disability is ugly; DPWs promote the latter side.
Treatment
The attraction to disability has not occasioned public concern, even in the more extreme forms which have come to light since the 1990s. It has also failed to occasion genuine concern among disabled people. Most DPWs appear not to find the attraction burdensome and to resist treatment as threatening the entire fabric of their sexuality, as well as stigmatising them. The sole reported exceptions involve wannabes presenting to medical professionals to request treatment. Researchers are non-judgmental; the two exceptions are Riddle (1988, 1988 [2]) who believes the attraction opens new opportunities to disabled people, and Bruno (1997), who feels the attraction holds scant promise for DPWs and disabled people.
Reported treatments centre on psychotherapy for distressed individuals presenting for treatment. Thus, Riddle (1988, 1988 [2]) suggests that the aim in a psychotherapeutic encounter should be to make devotees "learn to love themselves," while Bruno (1997) elaborates by advocating the pre-planned thought stopping, substitution of appropriate behaviors and introspection methods.
In the case of wannabes suffering distress through erotic target location error, Lawrence (2006) moots the possibility of testosterone-lowering medication in parallel with that of elective limb removal through surgical intervention.
References
- The Amelotatist: A Statistical Profile, Ampix [exeunt], Lawndale, California, 1979
- [1] Bruno, Richard L., "Devotees, Pretenders, and Wannabes: Two Cases of Factitious Disability Disorder," The Journal of Sexuality and Disability, 15.4 (Winter 1997), pp. 243-260
- Dixon, D., "An Erotic Attraction to Amputees," Sexuality and Disability, 6, pp. 3-19, 1983
- Elman, R. Amy, "Disability Pornography: The Fetishization of Women's Vulnerabilities," Violence Against Women, 3.3 (June 1997), pp. 257-270
- Everaerd, W., "A Case of Apotemnophilia: A Handicap as Sexual Preference," The American Journal of Psychotherapy, 37, pp. 285-293, 1983
- First, M. B., "Desire for Amputation of a Limb: Paraphilia, Psychosis, or a New Type of Identity Disorder?," Psychological Medicine, 35, pp. 919-928, 2005
- Fleischl, M. F., "A Man's Fantasy of a Crippled Girl," The American Journal of Psychotherapy, 14, pp. 471-748, 1960
- Hooper, A., "The Amputee Fetish," Forum [exeunt], June 1978, Penthouse Publications Ltd, London
- Lamacz, M., J. Money, Vandalized Lovemaps: Paraphilic Outcome of seven Cases in Pediatric Sexology, Prometheus, Buffalo, N.Y., 1989
- [2] Lawrence, A. A., "Clinical and Theoretical Parallels Between Desire for Limb Amputation and Gender Identity Disorder," Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35, 3 (June 2006)
- London, L. S., Dynamic Psychiatry: Transvestism-Desire for Crippled Women, Vol. 2, New York, Corinthian, 1952
- Money, J., K. W. Simcoe, "Acrotomophilia, Sex, and Disability: New Concepts and Case Report," Sexuality and Disability, 7 (1984-1986), pp. 43-50
- Money, J., Jobaris, R., Furth, G., "Apotemnophilia: Two Cases of Self-demand Amputation as a Paraphilia," The Journal of Sexuality Research, 13, pp. 115-125, 1977
- Money, J., Lovemaps: Clinical Concepts of Sexual/Erotic Health and Pathology, Paraphilia, and Gender Transposition in Childhood, Adolescence, and Maturity, Irvington, New York, N.Y., 1986
- Money, J., "Paraphilia in Females: Fixation on Amputation and Lameness," The Journal of Psychiatry and Human Sexuality, 3, pp. 165-172, 1990
- Money, J., The Adam Principle, Prometheus, Buffalo, N.Y., 1993
- [3] Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, "Of the Lame or Crippel," Chapter xi, Booke iii, Essays, (translated from the original French)
- Nattress, L., Jr., "The Female Amputee as an Object of Interest and Sexual Attraction," in Pfeiffer, David, Stephen C. Hey, Gary Kiger — Eds., The Disability Perspective: Variations on a Theme, Salem, Oregon, USA, The Society for Disability Studies and Willamette University, 1993
- Nattress, L., Jr., Amelotasis: A Descriptive Study (second edition), unpublished doctoral dissertation, 1996
- Riddle, G. C., Amputees and Devotees: made for each other?, Irvington, New York, N.Y., 1988
- Riddle, G. C., "The Origins of Devotees' Attraction," Invited Presentation to the Fascination Conference, Chicago, June 1988
- Storrs, B., "Devotees of Disability," New Mobility 6, pp. 50-53, 1997
- Storrs, B., "Amputees, Inc.: Amputees pitching Products and Themselves to Devotees of Disability," New Mobility 7, pp. 26-31, 1997
- Taylor, B, "Amputee Fetishism: An Exclusive Journal Interview with Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins," The Maryland State Medical Journal, pp. 35-38, March, 1976
- Wakefield, P. L., Frank, A., Meyers, R. W., "The Hobbyist: A Euphemism for Self-Mutilation and Fetishism," Bull Menninger Clinic, 41, pp. 539-552, 1977
- [4] a portal site to the devotee web
- [5] a site whose disabled owner is researching a thesis on devoteeism
- [6] Owens, Tuppy, et alia, Inside, The Outsiders Club, London, Spring 2006 et passim
- [7] the website which pioneered online discussion of the phenomenon in the early/mid 1990s
See also
- abasiophilia — the desire for people who limp and/or use leg braces, walking sticks, crutches, walkers or wheelchairs
- acrotomophilia — the desire for amputees (also known as "amputee fetishism")
- amaurophilia — the desire for blind partners
- amputee fetishism — the desire for partners with missing limbs (also known as "acrotomophilia")
- apotemnophilia — the desire to acquire a disability ("wannabeism," "transability")
- dental brace fetishism — the desire for partners who use dental orthoses
- disability devotee ("dev") — one who desires disabled partners
- disability pretender — one who behaves as if disabled and/or alters their appearance so as to suggest they are disabled
- eyeglass fetishism — the desire for partners who wear spectacles
- foot binding — a recently-discontinued ancient Chinese custom
- handicap fetishism — another term for the broad range of attractions to disability
- legbrace fetishism — the desire for partners who use leg braces; an aspect of abasiophilia
- medical fetishism — a sexualised interest in observing medical practice and receiving medical treatment
- Munchhausen's syndrome — a psychological disorder whose sufferers feign illness and/or cause themselves self-harm
- pornography addiction — the excessive or exclusive reliance on pornography to attain sexual arousal (also known as "pictophilia")
- robot fetishism — the desire for people dressed to appear like robots and acting as robots
- sexology topics — a complete listing
- statuephilia — the desire for mannequins or for statue-like immobility, feigned or caused by illness or paralysis (also known as "agalmatophilia")
- teratophilia — the desire for deformed or monstrous people
- transformation fetish — the desire for people who undergo physical transformation (mostly an aspect of pornography fetishism) or body modification
- voyeurism — the excessive or exclusive reliance on observing other people to attain sexual arousal