The Concerns Most People Have About People Faking Disability Arent Based In Fact. Obviously People Arent

The concerns most people have about people faking disability aren’t based in fact. Obviously people aren’t faking disability en mass for benefits or to get out of work or any of that stuff

But there is one form of faking that I think is a real problem for disabled people that I don’t think gets talked about enough. And that’s able bodied people pretending to be disabled (in my experience physically) to get emotionally closer to disabled people in order to exploit, abuse and/ or receive sexual gratification.

I’ve had it myself where people message me claiming to be disabled and struggling, asking for friendship or advice who have dodgy motives.

One time after making a post about incontinence, a person messaged me claiming to be newly paralysed and struggling with incontinence. They wanted to hear my experiences of using adult nappies due to a lack of changing places toilets. I was a bit suspicious of this person, clicked the account and it was all disability and humiliation based incontinence fetish posts. The person on the other end was exploiting my desire to support other disabled people so he could have a wank over how gross and embarrassing he found me.

Another time a person messaged me claiming to be quadriplegic and looking for someone with a body like his. I clicked the account and it was nothing more than a fetish blog full of stolen photos of wheelchair users. I’m sure the long game was to persuade me to send photos of me in my wheelchair to add to the collection.

I know that Facebook groups for amputees have this problem constantly of people sending messages like “I’m recovering from amputation and insecure about how my stump looks, can you show me yours?” and then using those photos for sexual gratification and sharing them with others to do the same. Similarly for wheelchair users and SCI groups.

Most of the people targeted are women, but as a man I’ve had several run ins with this as well.

There’s also people who pretend to be disabled to get close to an emotionally and physically vulnerable disabled person so they can isolate and abuse them later. I won’t go into details here but this is what happened with my abusive ex. I know for sure they made up a lot of their physical “disability”, other parts I have my suspicions about but will never have proof of either way. My ex is not the only person who uses this technique.

And unlike the very rare occurrence of benefits cheats this is a deeply embedded societal problem which systematically harms certain groups of disabled people.

As disabled people we need to be able to talk about this so that we can recognise it when it happens and share our concerns when we’re victims of it to prevent further victimisation of others.

Listen

a story with that cyberpunk theme of “are you really human if you modify your body to gain power“, except the body modification is just strength training.

Proposing some intersex gender modality & transition terms

So there are a whole bunch of different ways that intersex people can be/identify as trans. I've been thinking about what names would be useful for articulating these differences and in this post I'll list what I've got so far. 🧑‍🔬

I'm hoping to get feedback on these, so if you have feedback let me know! 💛 I expect to edit this post, to incorporate feedback and further ideas.

CW: mention of IGM and forced HRT

Types of transitions

Distransition: a medical transition forced upon an intersex person, such as through IGM or forced HRT. Dis- to indicate the negative aspect of the transition being coercive, as well as to connote disability since this process is so frequently traumatic and/or disability-causing. In disability studies language it's a form of debility (disability caused through systemic violence).

Mistransition: a distransition (forced transition) that is not in alignment with a person's gender identity. Mis- to indicate the incorrectness of the alignment as well as to maintain a negative connotation because this is a coercive transition.

Entransition: a consensual transition done by an intersex person. Contrast to distransition. En- acts as an opposite to dis- and also to me indicates a level of intent (e.g. envision, enact, enliven). It also serves to indicate that transition is different for intersex bodies than for perisex bodies.

Retransition: an entransition done by an intersex person who previously had been distransitioned. I.e. when an intersex person does a second transition to undo, alter, or improve a forced transition. Re- to indicate a second transition, but also that it's a revision of the first one.

Retrotransition: a retransition that is done to undo the effects of forced transition. So an intersex person who, after being forced into a binary gender, then transitions their body towards a best approximation of what their body's natural state would have been without forced transition. Retro- for backwards to indicate undoing that is worth differentiating from detransitioning.

Laterotransition: a retransition done by an intersex person to a gender that is neither the gender externally imposed by a distransition nor what their body's "natural state" would be. For example, an AFAB AIS person who was coercively transitioned female, who then later transitioned male. Latero- as contrast to retro- (latero- is to the side, antero- is forward) as well as to indicate the turn away from the path set forth externally by parents/doctors.

Anterotransition: a retransition done by an intersex person that continues the direction set forth by previous forced transition. So additional transitioning done by somebody whose gender is in alignment with what was externally imposed. While this will probably be somebody's AGAB, it doesn't have to be - some times intersex people are forcibly transitioned to a different gender than their AGAB.

All of these transitions would have an analogous gender modality. So an entransgender person is somebody who has/is undergoing/intends to entransition. And a retrotransgender person likewise has/is undergoing/intends to retrotransition.

I see distransition and mistransition as potentially useful for intersex people talking about trauma and structural intersexism. I think entransition might be useful for talking about how being intersex and transitioning is frequently different than for perisex people, especially if it is a retransition. And perhaps distransition and anterotransition may be of use to exparium folks.

Personally: I was distransitioned as an adolescent and have recently started a process of medically retrotransitioning.

Feedback welcome! A list of revisions will go at the bottom of this post. Will make flags for terms once I feel satisfied with them.

🦇 carmilla-did-nothing-wrong Follow

just because images of crucifixes cant physically harm us doesnt mean they arent still triggering, tag your crucifix pix j*sus chr*st

     silverstaked-deactivated2023100

oh? little bloodsuckers afraid of a tiny cross?

🦇 carmilla-did-nothing-wrong Follow

literally what the fuck is your problem?

⚰ fangs4fags Follow

of course its a fucking hunter

🧛‍♀️ cadaverouscathy Follow

Why are there still hunters on this site?? @staff

☠ skellingtom Follow

silverstaked has literally sent my friend exorcisms before. nothing strong enough to send them back to hell but theyve been weakened for days because of it. block and report.

🐺 howlin4u Follow

adding these tags from @vamplovingwolf theyre targeting werewolves too i guess

👻 tombfoolery Follow

we did it ghouls

When trans women are mocked and made into jokes in the media, I get very upset, and I am often told “Kay, you can’t go through life getting offended every time someone makes a joke.” And I sputter and object but they don’t hear me. So I want to be clear for once, about why the jokes make me angry.

I learned to hate myself for being transgender before I knew I was transgender. I laughed at the jokes in stand up comedy routines, and prime time sitcoms, and animated comedy shows, and in the movies, and in books, and in games, laughing at trans women for existing, about “men in dresses”, about people who “got their dicks chopped off”, and I learned to think that was worthy of ridicule.

And then a day came when I felt a pang of envy at what my female classmates were wearing and I repressed it, and felt guilty, and a day where I felt incomplete because I had no breasts and I repressed it and I felt disgusting And a day when I realized the only images of romance that made me feel anything showed two women together and I repressed it and I felt like a monster And a day when I realized I felt sick when I looked at myself in the mirror after every shower before work and couldn’t bear to look at my own face, and I hated myself. And then there came a day when I hated myself so much, and I thought I could never understand why, and so I just wanted it all to end. And it was just a miracle that I swerved my car back into my lane in time.

And all of it started with a joke that I heard on TV, and then kept hearing from all the voices from the ether, over and over and over, worming an idea into my mind before I was old enough to realize I was absorbing it, the idea that a man in a dress is funny, and that changing your body parts makes you a freak, and that women who have penises instead of vaginas are liars and hurt men. And they’re still making these jokes. And somewhere out there right now, just like all those years ago, there is a little girl in a t-shirt and cargo shorts with buzzed off hair watching the TV, hearing that joke and absorbing it without knowing it, who will someday have to pry herself apart to tear it out of her head, just like I did.

That is, if she doesn’t kill herself first.