Xenomelia, Anorexia, Trans – Similar Issue, Same Solution
Last week, the media reported a disturbing case of a UK doctor who had an obsession with chopping off his own limbs – what is referred to as xenomelia or apotemnophilia. But this adverse mental health condition is similar to anorexia and gender dysphoria. The treatment should not involve the amputation of healthy limbs. It should involve the healing of the mind. But someone needs to tell the Ministry of Health, politicians and media that basic truth. Xenomelia, Anorexia, Trans – Similar Issue, same solution.
Show Script:
I’m sure you’ve heard of anorexia.
But have you heard of xenomelia? Or apotemnophilia?
Have you heard of BIID – body integrity identity disorder (BIID) describes the extremely rare phenomenon of persons who desire the amputation of one or more healthy limbs or who desire a paralysis. Some of these persons mutilate themselves; others ask surgeons for an amputation or for the transection of their spinal cord.
According to Wikipedia, it’s also called amputee identity disorder or xenomelia, and formerly called apotemnophilia, is a rare mental disorder characterized by a desire to have a sensory or physical disability or feeling discomfort with being able-bodied, beginning in early adolescence and resulting in harmful consequences. People with this condition may refer to themselves as transabled.
Here’s a woman who blinded herself. According to Jewel, her fascination with blindness began early in childhood.
Here’s the case reported last month of a 20-year-old patient said he had been experiencing ‘incessant thoughts’ about the fourth and fifth fingers on his left hand. The two fingers that caused him stress were ultimately cut off in a bid to treat him.
And there are plenty more examples.
And I’m sure you know of someone who has had anorexia nervosa.
According to the MAYO Clinic
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by an abnormally low body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight and a distorted perception of weight… No matter how much weight is lost, the person continues to fear weight gain. Anorexia isn’t really about food. It’s an extremely unhealthy and sometimes life-threatening way to try to cope with emotional problems. When you have anorexia, you often equate thinness with self-worth.
How do we respond to anorexia? Do we offer weight loss pills, liposuction, prescription for enemas. Of course not. That would not be loving or healthy.
There are a number of options – psychotherapy, family-based therapy, nutrition support, treatment to restore health.
But what you’ll notice is that none of these treatments – for either xenomelia OR anorexia involve cutting the body. That would simply worsen the confusion and harm.
But here’s a case from last year where the rules completely change for a condition where the mind rejects the reality and where we should heal the mind, but the cultural narrative is to support the confusion and cut the body.
The NZ Herald featured this story
Transgender teen tries to cut off breast in self-mastectomy – Wellington doctors
The focus by the media is on the health system unable to bow to the wishes of the teen – rather than the healing of the mind.
Glenn Stanton who is a cultural commentator for Focus on the Family wrote a report for us way back in 2015 – yes, 2015 – raising concerns about gender ideology and the confusion it would cause for young people.
It was entitled Boys Girls Others – Making Sense of the Confusing New World of Gender Identity and in the discussion, it said,
“Paul R. McHugh, the long celebrated and retired psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital.. shut down the practice of many foundationless therapies including gender reassignment surgery… McHugh explained that gender dysphoria is not a problem of the body but the mind: This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken – it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.”
But it’s what is said next that should open our eyes to a story covered by the legacy media last week – and they didn’t or couldn’t see the massive contradiction in the way they covered the case, and how they cover the transgender issue.
“McHugh likens gender identity disorder to such body dysmorphic disorders [anorexia] where some girls believe they are overweight when they are actually life threateningly underweight. It is not a disorder of the body, but of the mind. Others have likened it to xenomelia – an oppressive sense that one or more of one’s limbs do not belong to their own body and often these strong feelings are present from early childhood. Another form of this is apotemnophilia – a term coincidently coined by John Money – to describe an overwhelming sexualised desire to become an amputee.”
I bet you didn’t know this.
Gender ideology came about as a result of the radical sexual theory of a sexologist from New Zealand named John Money. Yes – New Zealand. Born in Morrinsville. Prior to 1960, no scientists used the word gender as distinguished from sex. It was used grammatically, usually to distinguish sex from sexual intercourse. Johns Hopkins University – where John Money long held great influence – became a major center in the emerging field of sex reassignment surgery, having been the first to conduct such surgeries in 1960.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q1yxTIBfg4
But back to xenomelia and apotemnophilia.
“There are more people suffering from these disorders than one would imagine and are very real. Such people feel, in fact they ‘know’, that a particular arm or leg is not theirs and desperately want it removed. They speak of such limbs like transgender folks speak of their bodies. And they are able to tell you precisely at what point on the limb it ceases to be theirs, and thus they want the amputation made at that very particular point.
Carl Elliot, a medical doctor and philosopher of psychiatry, has studied this subject in depth and is struck by how these patients mimic the gender dysphoric in their use of the language of identity and being in describing the desire to have particular limbs amputated. Examples from his experience: “I always felt I should be an amputee.” “I have felt this is who I was.” “It feels ‘right,’ the way I should have always been and for some reason in line with what I think my body ought to have been like.” “Just as a transsexual is not happy with his own body, but longs to have the body of another sex, in the same way I am not happy with my present body, but long for a peg-leg.” As one doctor who remarkably does such amputations explained, the patients he sees feel, “that their body is incomplete with their normal complement of four limbs.”
It sounds like they’ve been reading the garbage that just came out of the Law Commission which was rife with dangerous and misleading gender ideology – ignoring the reality of being a woman.
Now the reason I tell you all this is because of a story in the media last week.
It was on the 6pm news on ThreeNews and also covered in the NZ Herald.
“A surgeon has been jailed for 32 months after he froze and amputated his legs for his own sexual gratification. Neil Hopper, 49, received £466,000 ($1.07m) from insurers after claiming that injuries to his legs in 2019 were the result of sepsis rather than self-inflicted.
The vascular surgeon, who carried out hundreds of amputation operations and worked at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust (RCHT) for a decade, used dry ice to freeze his legs. His former patients are now demanding an independent inquiry to establish whether any of them may have had unnecessary surgery.
Truro Crown Court heard that Hopper, who was married with children, had harboured a long-held sexual fetish to have his legs amputated. He pleaded guilty to fraud and also to possessing extreme pornography…”
I thought this was a Babylon Bee story actually. Neil Hopper. Neil. Hopper. No legs. Hmmm…
Sadly it’s a true story.
Now I’ll come back to the NZ Herald report in a minute because there’s an incredible admission at the end of the report – I’m not sure the NZ Herald realised what they were saying when they printed this…
But firstly, the ThreeNews report – which actually came from Channel 4 News in the UK – so we’ll watch that
The reporter seems to be shocked about the statement “penises being removed.”
Is she aware of what biological males who think they are females go through surgically in the name of ‘gender identity’?
And then some additional info from the New York Post
Yes – no regrets apparently.
That’s the mental illness speaking eh.
You’ll have noted that the Channel 4 interview only said the amputations were for sexual perversion reasons.
Back to the NZ Herald. Here’s the key bit
“[Defence lawyer] Andrew Langdon KC, mitigating, said his client had grown up in a rural village in Wales and felt he was “in the wrong body” from a young age. “He was troubled by his gender, he wanted to be female,” said Langdon. Langdon told how Hopper identified with body integrity identity disorder, which is defined as a desire to amputate one or more healthy limbs. Hopper described his thoughts about amputating his feet as “persistent, never-ending”.
As you watch this troubling case, what would you say – just as a non-medical observer – is needed by Mr Hopper.
Counselling? Mental wellness? Healing of the mind?
Or should we affirm the delusion, call in InsideOut, the AIDS Foundation, Family Planning, and fund him to ice and cut off other limbs – for his fulfilment and happiness, of course.
Rather than gender affirmation, let’s call it amputation affirmation.
Don’t say that out loud. The Ministry of Health just might think it’s a valid thing to do.
In fact, if it wasn’t for his fraudulent activity and stealing of money, you almost wonder whether this might not have been a media story.
But I’ve talked about this recently – with all of these cases, we should heal the mind, NOT cut the body.
https://youtu.be/KOnzyRtsZ58
Remember that gender-affirming surgical procedures for biological females primarily included mastectomy (chest masculinization surgery) while for biological men wanting to be women, this encompassed a range of feminising procedures such as tracheal shave, breast augmentation, and vaginoplasty – which, guys, would make your eyes water just thinking about.
Think about it – all of these procedures involve chopping off health body parts in the interests of ideology.
Just like Dr Hopper.
But chopping the body is not the answer.
Just to confirm this, here’s the latest research.
The study was by researchers from the Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Texas, and was published in Oxford’s Journal of Sexual Medicine. They sampled 107,583 patients.
They found that those undergoing surgery were at significantly higher risk for depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and substance use disorders than those without surgery.
They found that sex-change surgery doubles depression rates among gender dysphoric individuals rather than reducing them.
They conclude – “Findings suggest the necessity for gender-sensitive mental health support following gender-affirming surgery to address post-surgical psychological risks.”
Perhaps the mental health support should come first.
Rather than cutting the body, heal the mind.
Just as we would do for someone with anorexia nervosa or body integrity dysphoria (BIID).
Let’s close with the report I started with…
Just as it was unthinkable decades ago that people could have elective surgery in mainstream medical facilities to have their breasts and genitalia cut from their bodies – and their insurance or the government would pay for it – it is unfathomable that the same could happen in this instance. These are in the mind of the individual and no-one can refute that their feelings are not genuine. Neither can such individuals seem to live peaceably in their present state. And they are nearly obsessed with having these body parts removed. Some have resorted to cutting off their limbs themselves with knives, power saws, and even placing limbs on railway tracks to be severed.
Regardless of whether those with apotemnophilia believe they were ‘born this way’, it would be hard to argue such a drastic procedure of cutting off their perfectly healthy body parts is medically ethical. To try to solve a psychiatric problem by removing major body parts is not far from barbarism.
But there is a primary difference between gender and limb dysphoria: those with xenomelia or apotemnophilia are not politically and culturally organised and have not yet cloaked their desire for disfigurement as a human right.
It’s way past time New Zealand started healing the mind of vulnerable confused young people rather than aiding in their castration, chemicalisation and confusion.
Waaaay past time.
