Attraction to disability

History

Allusions to the attraction are found in, inter alia, Herodotus, works by Bruegel the Elder, de Brantôme, de Montaigne, Pushkin, Brecht, Bulgakov, Dalí, Hemingway, Mayakovsky, von Stroheim, and Buñuel, and roles by James Dean. It has become more widely known over the past century in waves coinciding with interwar decadence, the Sexual Revolution, and the advent of the world-wide web.

Groupings of "devotees" linked by correspondence had emerged by the 1920s. The attraction was broached in popular magazines in the 1930s and again in the '70s. By the '80s, a community involving disabled people had formed in the USA. A virtual world community is coalescing since the 1990s.

Nature

Devotees desire disabled people. For them, disability does not reduce a potential partner’s attractiveness but boosts it significantly. The disabilities may be minor like missing fingers, profound like blindness and (archetypically) amputations, or grave like quadriplegia. An extreme fringe of devotees desires people with cognitive disabilities. No detectable disability lacks its devotees. The desire to acquire a disability is an extension of the attraction. More than half of all devotees occsaionally pretend to be disabled. Avowed wannabes number not more than five per cent of all devotees. Anecdotal evidence links the attraction with foot or shoe fetishism and/or cross-dressing in some individuals.

Over half of all devotees feel the attraction since childhood, often cherishing memories of objects of their future attention. About a quarter discover the attraction in puberty, and a few do so in sexual maturity.

In intensity, the attraction is rarely exclusive, ranging between optional and preferred in most devotees.

Devotees tend to have set individual preferences: those desiring people with one disability will tend not to feel any attraction towards people with any other disability. Preferences may also define whether the disability is acquired or congenital and even trivia such as whether it affects the left or right side of the body. Most common is the preference for women who have lost a leg above the knee and walk with crutches. The ideal preferred partner is at ease with his/her disability (rather than resenting it) and does little to conceal it.

This is a summary of a poll on preferences conducted by a devotee forum: All Amputations 31 votes/3%, All Motor Impairments 27/3%, Finger Amputations, 19/2%, Wrist Disarticulations 5/0%, Single Below Elbow Amputation 26/2%, Double Below Elbow Amputations 28/3%, Single Above Elbow Amputation 52/5%, Double Above Elbow Amputations 42/4%, Single Shoulder Disarticulation 12/1%, Double Shoulder Disarticulations 25/2%, Toe Amputations 9/1%, Ankle/Foot Amputations 4/0%, Single Below Knee Amputation 40/4%, Double Below Knee Amputations 25/2%, Single Above Knee Amputation 141/16%, Double Above Knee Amputations 108/12%, Single Hip Disarticulation 60/6%, Double Hip Disarticulations 46/5%, Below Elbow and Below Knee Amputations 10/1%, Above Elbow and Above Knee Amputations 17/1%, Quadruple Amputations Below Elbows and Below Knees 14/1%, Quadruple Amputations Above Elbows and Above Knees 41/4%, Quadruple Disarticulations 30/3%, One Leg and One Arm Amputations 22/2%, Triple Amputations 36/4%. Total 870 votes/100%.

Population

A distinction exists between those attracted to the disabled but unaware of themselves as devotees, and aware members of the subculture.

In 1976, a company selling photographs to devotees had a clientele of about 300. As the world-wide web began rolling-out 20 years hence, devotees in dedicated fora numbered under 10,000. By 2006, the world devotee community comprises up to 100,000 members of dedicated internet fora. Duplication/multiplication of memberships, dead memberships, and the probable grey zone indicate that there are some 50,000 devotees worldwide in 2006.

By sex, over nine in ten devotees are male. By sexual orientation, the share of homosexual and bisexual devotees appears identical to that in the general population. By age, devotees cover the range from pre-puberty onwards.

By geography, in 2006 devotee fora membership indicated one or fewer devotees per million inhabitants in some countries, with a mean of 8 a million, and peaks of 50 a million. North America and Western Europe had most devotees, followed by the former USSR, eastern China, Japan, Australia, and the rest of the world. Along with differing levels of internet use, this reflects national, cultural, class, lifestyle, and period factors, as mooted in The Amelotatist (see References).

These are the results of two relevant polls conducted by a devotee forum:

Male 332 votes/24%, Female 59/4%, Other (Transgendered, et c.) 5/0%, Congenital Amputee 14/1%, Acquired Amputee 36/2%, Devotee 317/23%, "Lurker" 34/2%, Para/Quadriplegic 6/0%, Other Mobility Impaired (Polio, MD, et c.) 13/0%, Wannabe 73/5%, Just Curious 34/2%, Significant Other to Amputee/Devotee/Paralysed/Mobility Impaired 22/1%, Aged under 20 19/1%, Aged to 29 94/6%, Aged to 39 79/5%, Aged to 49 80/5%, Aged to 59 83/6%, Aged over 60 44/3%. Total 1344 votes/100%;

Europe 121 votes/44%, North America 108/40%, Australia/New Zealand and the Pacific 14/5%, Far East 11/4%, South and Central America 10/4%, Sub-Saharan Africa 5/2%, North Africa 3/1%, Other Asia 0/0%. Total 272 votes/100%.

A comparison with the disabled shows them as predominantly elderly: up to 80 per cent are over the retirement age. They form up to a tenth of the general population. Amputees (whom devotees most often desire) are about one per cent of the disabled, and over 80 per cent of them are men. Leg amputations lead at almost 80 per cent of this total, with above-knee ones accounting for 20 per cent of the subtotal.

Behaviour

No cases are known of devotees physically harming disabled people or causing disability to able-bodied ones. Wannabes engage in self-harm, often with fatal outcomes.

Many attracted to the disabled but unaware of themselves as devotees think they are unique. Others initially assume the attraction is universal and are disappointed to find it confined to very few people. Unaware devotees feel guilt at deriving pleasure from others' misfortunes and fear censure for desiring people branded by convention.

In relationships

Relationships between devotees and disabled people are ordinary, the attraction being sated by the mere fact of the partner's disability. Devotees may press their disabled partners to put their disabilities to the fore in intimate situations and exhibit them in social ones. Sexually, some devotees engage in active tactile observation as much as in intercourse.

Some devotees 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.

Over half of all devotees fail to establish relationships with disabled people. "Second-best" options for them are relationships with pretenders and wannabes. Practically all devotees have experience of relationships with able-bodied partners. Such relationships are ordinary despite the (often undisclosed) devoteeism of one partner.

Outside relationships

Many devotees 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 fora. Collecting disability-linked objects is a pastime for some devotees.

Over the past decade, a number of devotees have launched websites with images of their ideal partners, descriptions of fictional encounters with them, and devotee pornography (often produced in cooperation with disabled people). Online, devotees 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 devotee 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 devotee 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.

Borderline

Some devotees derive pleasure by pretending to have a disability. Others persuade partners to pretend. Pretending usually takes place in privacy or intimacy, but may be practiced in public. Male devotees in devotee chatrooms pretend to be disabled women en masse. This confirms a widespread proneness to devotee pretending mooted in The Amelotatist and the continuum between non-pretending devotees, pretenders, and wannabes. Being a premeditated confidence trick, pretending tends to be viewed as unedifying within the broad devotee community.

Some devotees 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 devotee community.

The wholesale circulating of images of disabled people is another behaviour under impotent community attack. 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 "copywronged" by devotees posting them on the internet for free use by others, depriving models of expected income. "Electronic surgery" ("ES"; retouching photographs of able-bodied people to make them look disabled) is also popular in some devotee circles. The resulting images are widely circulated on the devotee Web, jeopardising the reputations of the original subjects. Images of people known to have since died continue in circulation.

Devotees practising intrusive, stalking, and fetishist behaviour, and who peddle images, plead a paucity of potential partners.

Explanations

Though visited by scientific literature, the attraction has not been rigorously researched. Devotees have not caused much concern among the disabled and the public, and gathering statistically valid empirical evidence on them is difficult. There is proportionally more scientific interest in the smaller number of wannabes, reflecting public concern. Some explanations are at odds with each other, yet a number are repeated by all relevant sides.

Psychiatric

Classical psychiatry considered devotees off-mainstream sadomasochists:

1. Devotees are suppressed homosexuals. This first explanation (by Krafft-Ebing in his 1886 Psychopathia Sexualis) assumed that amputation stumps resembled phalli and was in line with the contemporaneous linking of much sexual oddity with homosexuality; 2. Devotees are sadists deriving satisfaction from disabled people's perceived lower status; 3. Devotees are masochists denigrating themselves by associating with disabled partners; wannabes are masochists wishing to acquire permanent physical stigma; 4. Devotees are voyeurs intrigued by the unusual behaviour and appearance of disabled people; 5. Wannabes are exhibitionists seeking satisfaction in the reaction of other people; devotees' ideal partners are exhibitionists.

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 5. Devotee pornography tends to display the appearance of disability across a range of activities, rather than focus on sexual situations.

Subsidiary observations include:

6. Devotees are teratophiles because they desire deformed people; 7. Devotees are classical fetishists because the focus of their desire is shifted from a person to parts of a body and/or objects.

Physical stigma (without the rest of the person) and disability aids (crutches, wheelchairs) feature to an extent in devotee websites;

8. Devotees are coprophiles since amputation stumps may be interpreted as resembling stools.

Sexological

Contemporary sexology does not consider devoteeism a problematic sexual deviation unless exercising it infringes the rights of one of the parties and/or those of third parties. Explanations include:

1. Imprinting: the impact of influential events on behaviour. Meeting 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, which is later projected onto others.

It repays mention that 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 devotee’s parents express admiration, the child may conclude that disability inspires regard, later ranking it among sexual preferences; 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) in 3 above is clear in wannabes. In them, projection has failed, leaving them to see themselves as more attractive if disabled. The fact that most devotees feel the attraction from childhood also backs the above explanations. There are also suggestions that there are more devotees in America, Europe, and the Far East due to specific parent/peer-driven achievement models there, dovetailing with 3 above.

4. Transvestism and transsexuality are put forward as partial explanations by analogy for pretenders and wannabes; by the early 2000s wannabes were beginning to label themselves "transabled." 5. Anne Hooper's explanation that all men see all women as "amputees" and vice-versa, with devoteeism a variation of this; 6. “Darwinism”: devotees see disabled people as proven in natural selection, having already cheated death.

By Devotees

The devotee community constantly debates the origins of the attraction ("the Why?"). The Amelotatist, reporting a poll of about 300 devotees (some 200 responded) was a community contribution and the first synthesis of explanations. A 2005 straw poll in two devotee 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, who are subject to degrees of social exclusion in some cultures, is among the motivations for devoteeism.

Dissatisfaction with psychological and sexological explanations, many seen as fanciful or contrary to perceived reality, dominates devotee debates on "the Why?". Devotees energetically dispute sadomasochistic explanations, claiming that to them the disabled are not less able and inferior, but hyper-able and superior ("godlike"). (This may be viewed as dissimulation.) Teratophilic and coprophilic explanations are vigorously rejected as offensive.

Current explanations and claims include:

1. Devoteeism is an addition to physical 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 like a ballerina captures audiences; 4. Devoteeism is a sexualised extension of compassion for misfortune, fascination with uniqueness, and hero-worship; 5. Each devotee may have become one for a variety of personal motivations rarely replicated in others; 6. Devoteeism 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, devoteeism 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 sex.

7. Religious, occult, and esoteric explanations are that devoteeism is programmed into some people by a higher power to provide partners for the disabled, that it is sent by a higher force to test devotees, or that it is evidence of past lives in which the wannabe occupied a disabled body and the devotee had a disabled partner.

By Wannabes

Wannabes have formulated no explanations for the discomfort they feel, other than paraphrasing the transsexual rationalisation to state that the soul of one with a disability is rebelling against an able body.

By Disabled People

A widespread view by disabled people outside devotee 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." Devotee-aware disabled people adhere to the devotee community's explanations. They do, however, draw a sharp distinction as to a fetishist category of devotees who engage in borderline behaviour and objectify disability at the expense of the person.

Summary

The attraction remains unresearched.

Voyeurism/exhibitionism and some sadomasochism and fetishism are present in devotees, but not at the forefront or to the exclusion of other motivations. The latter form a diffuse blend of sexualised compassion, hero worship, and maudlin empathy with the poignancy of disability. Origins are in childhood imprinting and response to pressure, and depend on specific cultural settings.

The devotee claim that the desire is an augmentation of common attractiveness criteria is borne out by widespread erotisation of physical distinctions like moles, spectacles, dental braces, or limbs in casts. Devoteeism is the tip of a "pyramid" of commonplace and less common attractions to unorthodox physique.

Standpoints

Devotees

Devotees assert that the attraction appears deviant only from the untenable position that disabled people are intrinsically unattractive or asexual. Since their desired relationships are voluntary and equal in principle, and since the disability has already been sustained, they claim that issues of deriving pleasure from others' misfortune have no place in debates on the attraction. They stress that these relationships are "because of," rather than "despite," the disability.

The devotee community rejects scientific enquiry into the attraction because it may throw an unhealthy shadow over it and because it feels science has failed it to date. 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 "devoteeism."

Disabled people have been welcomed into the devotee community since its emergence. The community feels borderline behaviour by some devotees would be curtailed or obviated by the social acceptance of the attraction it promotes.

Disabled People

Despite the explosion of the devotee Web, many disabled people remain unaware of devoteeism. Those newly-introduced to it are often shocked and repulsed.

The disability movement is significantly larger than the devotee community and the latter rarely comes to its attention. If it has any stance on devotees, it is ambiguous, with devotees often seen as entryist and fetishist; the stance on wannabes is negative.

If devotee fora membership is a sign of approval, by mid-2006 there was one disabled person for ten or more devotees: a proportion lower than a decade earlier. Nevertheless, in 30 years, up to 500 disabled people have offered images of themselves for sale to devotees. Often, their "impresarios" are disabled women. This may be interpreted as approval, but also as economic accommodation.

The devotee-aware disabled repeat the devotee claim that disabled people ought not to be branded unattractive and asexual, and acknowledge that devotees play a positive role in this regard. The disability movement, however, feels that devotees do not offer an escape from the tyranny of visual norms; they add often bizarre standards to mainstream ones.

"Visibility" is an issue within the movement. Cosmesis is widely available to the disabled. Some of them welcome this: it hides their physical differences, aiding integration. Yet, a minority claim that universal free/subsidised cosmesis promotes a visual norm which implies that disability is ugly or upsetting.

Overall, the disabled appear to prefer relationships occurring "despite," rather than "because of" disability.

References

The Amelotatist: A Statistical Profile, Ampix ^*, Lawndale, California, 1979
^* Baker, Louise, Out on a Limb, Whittlesey House, a Division of the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., New York, N. Y., 1946
Bruno, Richard L., "Devotees, Pretenders, and Wannabes: Two Cases of Factitious Disability Disorder," Sexuality and Disability, 15.4 (Winter 1997), pp. 243-260
^* Eliot, Carl, "Costing an Arm and a Leg: the Victims of a Growing Mental Disorder are Obsessed with Amputation"
Hooper, Anne, "The Amputee Fetish," Forum ^*, June 1978, Penthouse Publications Ltd, London
Elman, R. Amy, "Disability Pornography: The Fetishization of Women's Vulnerabilities," Violence Against Women, 3.3 (June 1997), pp. 257-270
^* Kafer, Alison, "Amputated Desire, Resistant Desire: Female Amputees in the Devotee Community," a paper to the Chicago Conference of the Society for Disability Studies, June 2000
Money, J., K. W. Simcoe, "Acrotomophilia, Sex, and Disability: New Concepts and Case Report," Sexuality and Disability, 7 (1984-1986), pp. 43-50
^* Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Essays, Booke iii, Chapter xi: Of the Lame or Crippel (translated from the original French)
Nattress, LeRoy, 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
^* Owens, Tuppy, et alia, Inside, The Outsiders Club, London, Spring 2006 et passim
^* a portal site to the devotee web
^* web articles on the attraction
^* the website which pioneered online discussion of the phenomenon in the early/mid 1990s
^* the wannabe site which pioneered the label "transabled"

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