sweetestel:

myidlehand:

duessa:

bacon-beer-and-boobs:

unknowablewoman:

nom-chompsky:

NGC’s Taboo is doing an episode on transablism.

In the promo for their new season, there’s a lady who is having surgery to become paraplegic, saying it will make her “feel like a complete person.”

From the NGC site:

Photo 1: Chloe Jennings-White leads a double life. A Ph.D chemist in Salt Lake City, Utah, Chloe lives as a paraplegic in a wheelchair. For the most part, people believe that Chloe is unable to walk, but she has a shocking secret. Chloe isn’t paraplegic at all.

Photo 2: Chloe Jennings-White stands beside her wheelchair. She is not a paraplegic, but chooses to live as one.

I just don’t even have anything to say about this anymore, man. 

I don’t …. what?

This is just pissing me off. I’m sure she as good reasons to do this but someone I love very dearly is sick and he knows he’ll end up in a wheelchair one day (sadly, sooner rather than later). He’s going through a lot of pain and every day is a struggle already. He can barely walk now, even if somebody helps him. And even if we all know there’s nothing to do, it just breaks my heart to know that he’s sick. Because, even if he never complain about his disease, I know he would give anything to be able to walk again like anybody else and to not know that he won’t even be able to use the wheelchair without assistance because his hands are giving out as well. It’s a terrible fate awaiting for him and he can see it coming slowly.

So seeing this women going through surgery to do this is pissing me off more than anything. It even pissing me off that doctors are ready to do this. They are suppose to make people better, not broke them. I feel like it’s an insult and a lack of respect to all the people who don’t have a choice. To disable her body willingly when so many people would give everything to be able to walk, when so many people had terrible accidents or suffer from horrible diseases that robbed them from the simple right to walk, to go everywhere you want, whenever you want.

I know that ultimately it’s her choice, her body and her life. She has every right to do whatever she wants with her spine and it’s actually none of my business but it still pissing me of and I feel like it’s unfair to the people who don’t have a choice.

I’m not sure what scares me the most, here. The psychological mechanisms behind this person’s choice or the ethical logic behind the doctors agreement of practicing such an operation. I mean, how would that even be legal for surgeons to damage a person’s spinal cord? How do they deal with their professional consciousness? I’m at loss.

The doctors shouldn’t even be considering doing this— this woman needs a psychiatrist, not a surgeon.

posted 4 months ago on 18/1/2012 with 130 notes
via sweetestel © National Geographic