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Frank Pasquale

Relativism, Technology, and Accommodation

I was recently reading Prof. Annemarie Bridy’s article on apotemnophilia–a “desperate[] desire[] [of able-bodied individuals] to live as amputees” because they are “unable, despite considerable efforts, to reconcile themselves psychologically to living with the bodies with which they were born.” (Bridy, Confounding Extremities, 32 J. Law, Med., and Ethics 148 (2004). The condition has been consistently “identified . . . as an extreme variant of Body Dismorphic Disorder (BDD),” but advocates for apotemnophiles claim that they “see themselves with an amputated limb as becoming able-bodied and more fully functioning, more whole, more complete.” Therefore a stark question is raised by the apotemnophile: is the very desire to have a limb amputated itself a form of mental illness, or is amputation the therapy the condition demands? Bridy raises an interesting analogy:

[C]osmetic surgery patients essentially embrace the same paradox that underlies the apotemnophile’s desire for elective amputation: they seek to alter themselves (i.e. physically) precisely in order to become more authentic to themselves (i.e. as they imagine themselves to be). The cosmetic surgery patient’s personal Ideal, like the apotemnophile’s, is an imaginary self-construct that can become reality only through surgical intervention. Cosmetic surgery patients aspire to beauty as an end in itself; apotemnophiles aspire analogously to disability.

Of course, things diverge rather rapidly from there. The cosmetic surgery patient frequently aspires to some common (and perhaps oppressive) ideal of beauty; the apotemnophile can most charitably “be understood as implicitly challenging the pervasive stigma of disability not only by embracing but by seeking to literally embody an alternative conception of bodily integrity.”

While thinking about societal tolerance of apotemnophiles, I browsed this story in the NYT on the presumed-dog-invite trend. There is some pretty funny stuff here:

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