One Hand Jason and That Jenner Person

By: American Decency Staff

Imagine this: for years, you haven't felt comfortable in your own body. You feel like there's something wrong, that just doesn't fit. You're convinced you were born wrong.

You're convinced you were meant to be different.

You're convinced you were meant to be… disabled.

You must be trans – transability that is.

A piece at the National Post case studies a man who calls himself "One Hand Jason." This guy lopped of his own right arm due to his transability impulses, and according to the piece, OHJ is not alone.

One professor cited by the Post has interviewed 37 such individuals.

"Most crave an amputation or paralysis, though he has interviewed one person who wants his penis removed. Another wants to be blind.

"Many people, like One Hand Jason, arrange 'accidents' to help achieve the goal. One dropped an incredibly heavy concrete block on his legs — an attempt to injure himself so bad an amputation would be necessary. But doctors saved the leg. He limps, but it’s not the disability he wanted."

 The piece goes on about Prof. Baldwin's subjects,

 "Some of his study participants do draw parallels to the experience many transgender people express of not feeling like they’re in the right body. Baldwin says this disorder is starting to be thought of as a neurological problem with the body’s mapping, rather than a mental illness.

"It’s a problem for individuals because it’s distressing. But lots of things are.” He suggests this is just another form of body diversity — like transgenderism — and amputation may help someone achieve similar goals as someone who, say, undergoes cosmetic surgery to look more like who they believe their ideal selves to be.

Make sure you got that last sentence.

Professor Baldwin is actually suggesting that the right thing to do for these people is not to get them a psychologist and a TLC show, but to actually help them chop themselves up.

Finally, "As the public begins to embrace people who identify as transgender, the trans people within the disability movement are also seeking their due…"

*Let Right Wing Watch note that I am not the one who paralleled transgenderism and transability, I'm just quoting the piece.*

How fortuitous this story should be published the day after Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner's newly surgically feminized face hit the cover of Vanity Magazine, sparking a national conversation on transgenderism and demanding that he be recognized as 'she.'

Erick Erickson at RedState.com makes the point nicely,

"This is nuts and oh by the way Bruce Jenner still has his. An authentic self does not seek surgery and hormone therapy.

"He is not a she. It is not bigoted to point that out. It is the reality. We need to show Bruce Jenner compassion for his mental issues, not celebrate those issues. But we live in a society where up is down, bad is good, and normal is so passé.

"Vanity Fair does not care about Bruce Jenner. They care about selling magazines. ABC News does not care about Bruce Jenner. They care about ratings. And most of those applauding Bruce Jenner right now care about an agenda more than a person."

"But here is a man who has serious issues. He needs help and he needs prayer. He no more needs affirmation for what he is doing to himself than an alcoholic needs another drink. But that is what our society is going to do because our society has gotten drunk off its own narcissism — a narcissism now trying to keep up with Kardashians in new and exciting ways." 

In a world where a man is so insecure about himself that he's having plastic surgery and literally changing his entire identity – perhaps the greatest midlife crisis of all time – it's those who point out the fact that at the end of the day, Bruce is still Bruce, who will be called hateful or unloving.

It's those who would tell him, he doesn't need surgery, he needs to actually deal with this issue at it's root who will be called bigoted.

As Walt Heyer, a former transgender man who went even farther than Jenner to "fix" himself now recognizes, "Eventually, I gathered the courage to admit that the surgery had fixed nothing—it only masked and exacerbated deeper psychological problems."

Heyer says elsewhere, "I don't think [transgender] is an accurate description of where the people are. They're individuals suffering from a delusional disorder that is going to become very self-destructive if, in fact, they don't get good psychological counseling or psychiatric help during that process."

Bruce Jenner doesn't need us to cheer his self-mutilation. He needs help overcoming this confusion, and he needs to know the One who made him a man in the first place.

Put simply, Bruce doesn't need our affirmation anymore than One Handed Jason needs someone to plug in his power saw.

Click Here to see Walt Heyer's write up of the Jenner/Sawyer interview

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photo credit: InTouch Magazine, Bruce Jenner Photoshopped Transgender Cover, 1/2015, pic of magazine by Mike Mozart of TheToyChannel and JeepersMedia on YouTube #Bruce #Jenner #Intouch #Magazine #Photoshop via photopin (license)

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