Holy shit.

[denny]

I get into some odd conversations on IM - if you want to know why, just look at my list of interests on my Yahoo profile - but this one has completely thrown me.

(21:14:32) [censored]: am well into one-legged guys
(21:14:45) Denny: don't think I've ever seen a one-legged guy at a club
(21:14:48) Denny: couple of girls
(21:14:50) Denny: weird
(21:14:52) [censored]: I wish
(21:14:58) [censored]: you will soon
(21:15:03) Denny: yeah?
(21:15:11) [censored]: I am having my leg amputated in the new year hopefully
(21:15:16) Denny: fucking hell
(21:15:19) Denny: seriously?
(21:15:24) [censored]: yea .. cant wait
(21:15:38) Denny: how have you managed to get that arranged?
(21:15:48) [censored]: yea .. I hate having two legs
(21:15:53) Denny: doing it abroad or something?
(21:16:09) [censored]: Am having my leg amputated in the Phillipines
(21:16:15) [censored]: my left one

Bloody hell.

Comments

[velvetfox.livejournal.com]

I'd heard of spare ribs, but not spare legs!

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

Now, see, this completely fails to baffle me. ~shrug~

E.
x

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

It didn't baffle me, it shocked me. It's not that I don't understand his stated reasons for wanting to do it (the phrasing used was very reminiscent of hearing a TS describe why they need their surgery), it's just a sufficiently extreme desire that it makes my brain recoil in horror nonetheless. Much like any kind of extreme self-mutilation does, despite the fact that some would classify my piercings and tattoos as 'the same sort of thing'.

[nisaba.livejournal.com]

People take on many forms - Apotemnophilia (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/12/elliott.htm)

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Interesting reading, thanks. I've talked to several amputee fetishists in the last few years, but never anyone who wanted an amputation themselves... that article seems to suggest it's a recent trend, so perhaps that's why.

[zotz]

It's been interesting to watch how people have moved into using language of identity concerning this sort of issue. To choose an unrelated example : ten or so years ago polyamory (as far as I could tell) was something you did. Now I've met people who don't adopt poly practices or become poly, but say they discovered themselves to be poly. I do wonder how much this sort of trend affects how people see themselves, because I think I've noticed that sort of language spreading across a wider range of topics.

[calum]

I don't think it's as much a language shift, as becoming more visible, trendy, popular.

I was talking about polyamory as something you were, or at least as an orientation, back in 1991. I still have some online conversation logs, etc. I'm pretty sure we were reading the first edition of Love Without Limits then too, but I could be wrong..

It wasn't in, hip, or popular. We weren't 'ethical sluts', but we were polyamorous, and our relationships were 'responsibly non-monogamous'.

If you read about poly on LJ today, the words responsible and ethical seem to fall out of the equation for far too many people, though. It does seem to have become something "I have to do", rather than something that requires responsible, ethical choices.

So, in that much, maybe you're right. Hmm.

[zotz]

Maybe, maybe not. It's just a thought.

I've just worked out (thanks to google and the miraculous InterWeb) that a short story concerning amputation that I read many years ago was Christopher Priest's "The head and the hand". I'd been wondering about that.