Physically Healthy People Want Amputations To Feel ‘Empowered’
Move over LGBT. Meet the next movement. “Transabled”: physically healthy people who believe they have the right to live as if they have the disability they want. And that means they want doctors to surgically make them disabled and health insurance to cover the costs.
During a radio interview, a Canadian university teacher argued that doctors should amputate the limbs of able-bodied, psychically healthy individuals who consider themselves “transabled,” positing such extreme procedures will help those people feel “empowered.”
Clive Baldwin, a Canada Research Chair in Narrative Studies who teaches social work at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, Canada, says he has interviewed almost 40 people who identify as “transabled.”
He told “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on Sunday that an amputation may be, in some circumstances, the “best way” to manage the feelings of being “transabled.”
Baldwin described “transabalism” as “the desire or the need to move from being able-bodied to disabled. Because, the general consensus at the moment is one’s body map in one’s brain does not align with one’s physical body.”
He said being “transabled” is not a life-style choice but is “very much a deep felt need to become this way because their bodies are wrong.”
Baldwin explained that currently “transabalism” is thought to be a condition referred to as body integrity identity disorder for which, he said, there is no known cure.
“So people need to manage those feelings,” he continued. “So consequently, an amputation may be, in some circumstances, the best way to manage those feelings.”
He said that “transabled” people who have had an amputation “report physical feelings of relief. They feel more confident in themselves, They feel more at home in their bodies. They feel empowered.”
Balwdin said the majority of the 38 “transabled” people he interviewed for his work “would seek or would want an amputation.”
He said “it’s usually a very specific disability that people want. It might be a below left knee amputation. Or a right below elbow amputation. Some people want to be paralyzed. They don’t want their legs to work.”
One widely reported case is that of Chloe Jennings-White, an able-bodied Cambridge University educated research scientist now living in Utah and seeking a doctor to help make her paralyzed. She told the UK media in 2013 that she attempted to injure herself several times but to no avail.
Jennings-White uses a wheelchair and leg braces and lives the life of a disabled person even though she can walk. She called the feeling of first sitting down in a chair “magical.”
She told the media that when she was young she was jealous of disabled kids and envious of an aunt who got into a bike accident and was required to use leg braces.
She said she does use her legs at times, including to go hiking or skiing, sports she said she engages in with hopes the activities will make her paralyzed.
Is There A Benghazi Connection?
Is there a Benghazi connection to the killing of a veteran Islamic jihadist Saturday in a U.S. airstrike in Libya?
The Libyan government announced the airstrike Sunday, with the U.S. confirming that the target was Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian terrorist who was said to have been the mastermind of the In Amenas, Algeria, gas facility attack in January 2013 in which 40 people were killed during a three-day siege.
Belmokhtar helped lead several rebel-driven insurgencies across North Africa. The French military previously labeled him “The Uncatchable” after he evaded numerous assassination and arrest attempts.
Libyan sources told Reuters the attack on a farmhouse in Ajdabiya city near Benghazi also killed seven members of the Ansar al Sharia terrorist group who had been meeting there.
Ansar al-Sharia was blamed by the U.S. for leading the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack.
With the notable exception of CNN, media covering Belmokhtar’s purported death in the strike fail to mention his alleged direct ties to the Benghazi attack.
In May 2013, CNN quoted two sources with high-level access to Western intelligence agencies who disclosed that several Yemeni men belonging to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, took part in the Benghazi attack.
The sources revealed that counter-terrorism officials learned the identity of the three men and later traced them to northern Mali, where they are believed to have connected with the jihad organization led by Belmoktar.
Another intelligence source told CNN that Belmoktar had received a call in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack from someone in or close to the city.
The person on the other end of the call declared, “Mabruk, Mabruk!” meaning “Congratulations” in Arabic, according to the source.
The source told CNN that the call was made to Belmokhtar.
The CIA had no comment on the alleged call.
Besides the CNN report, an Algerian security official told The New York Times that three of the terrorists who survived the Algerian gas siege said they were aided by Egyptian extremists who were involved in the Benghazi attack.
In August 2013, Reuters reported on several links between the Benghazi and Algerian gas complex attackers.
One of the main demands of the Algeria hostage-takers was the release of the so-called “blind sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, held in the U.S. over the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
A Judicial Watch lawsuit resulted in the release of a Pentagon document dated September 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack, which detailed that the attack on the U.S. compound had been carefully planned by the “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdel-Rahman.”
In January 2014, a Senate investigation for the first time confirmed that an Egyptian organization called the Mohammad Jamal Network participated in the Benghazi attack. One of the Network’s goals is the freedom of Rahman.
Circumstantial evidence possibly even links the Benghazi attack to former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s campaign to free Abdel-Rahman. The blind sheikh’s release was one of the Morsi’s main foreign policy issues.
In July 2014, several major Arabic newspapers ran with a story, first reported by the Kuwaiti paper Al Rai, quoting a Libyan intelligence report on the Benghazi attack that mentions an alleged connection to Morsi and other prominent Egyptian figures.
Unsubstantiated Arabic-language reports from the Middle East also claimed the passport belonging to the alleged killer of Ambassador Chris Stevens had been recovered at the home of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader Khairat Al-Shater.
There is other information pointing to Morsi’s possible involvement in the Benghazi attack. YouTube videos of the attack show some of the jihadists speaking an Egyptian dialect of Arabic, as previously reported by FrongPageMag. One of the videos shows a jihadist carrying out the attack while stating in an Egyptian dialect, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, Dr. Morsi sent us.”