In the 1990s, Dr. Robert Smith, a surgeon at Falkirk Royal Infirmary, performed a pair of amputations on two men. Neither of the men involved had anything physically wrong with them, but both of them were suffering from apotemnophilia – a psychiatric condition involving the desire to have healthy limbs amputated.
Sufferers, counterintuitively, claim not to feel “whole” with four limbs and obsess over having their unwanted body parts chopped off. Smith argued the surgeries were life-saving, claiming the patients would commit suicide otherwise.
Apotemnophiles, like autogynephiles, insist that there is no erotic element, but it was later discovered that one of the men Smith operated on ran an amputee fetish website.
Upon investigation, the hospital deemed the procedures unethical. Smith was banned from mutilating healthy bodies (although he was found not to have breached any of the hospital’s rules at the time and not sanctioned), and the dubious experiment ended.
But let’s imagine for a moment an alternate reality.
Imagine a world in which a powerful apotemnophile lobby group somehow succeeds in convincing society that apotemnophile rights is the next civil rights movement. Their message is simple: anyone who identifies as an amputee is an amputee.
Activists insist that some people are born with innate amputee identities, and they are the most oppressed people in the world. They declare it apotemnophobic to say that humans are bipedal. Anyone who dares express such heresy deserves to have their life and career ruined, or even to be assaulted or raped.
Imagine there were a sudden 4,000% increase in teens identifying as amputees, but we were all forbidden from being concerned. (Most of the kids were gay or lesbian, or autistic. Almost all suffered from multiple psychiatric comorbidities.)
Instead we were supposed to celebrate it.
Parents of kids with supposedly innate amputee identities were expected to rejoice at the thought of their child undergoing the amputation of a healthy limb, and protesters took to the streets to demand that these children become a part of this barbaric medical experiment.
Imagine schools teaching children as young as kindergarten that some people have amputee identities, that they get to choose how many limbs they have. Posters promoting body mutilation adorned the walls of many classrooms.
Kids shows started featuring amputee characters, so children with innate amputee identities could see themselves represented. Then, as if in lock step, the number of kids identifying as amputees increased. Mention of the possibility of social contagion was aggressively suppressed and punished.
Imagine celebrities coming out as amputees and posing on the cover of magazines after they’ve had their perfectly healthy limbs chopped off, and everyone applauding their bravery and lavishing them with attention and adoration.
Able-bodied people with innate amputee identities began taking disabled parking spots and using disabled bathrooms for validation. Any actual disabled person who objected was labeled apotemno-exclusionary and intimidated into acquiescence.
Imagine children’s hospitals making promotional videos with soft music playing while doctors explain the amputation process to kids, promising immediate affirmation of a kid’s amputee identity.
Laws were passed making helping a child accept all their limbs a crime.
Imagine surgeons advertising their amputation services to teens on social media and posing proudly with their young patients as they show off their new stump, or making quirky videos lamenting only having four leg amputations booked that week.
Imagine if a wave of young people missing limbs started to speak out about the regret they felt about sacrificing their healthy body parts while they were going through a teen mental health crisis, but those people were silenced and called hateful bigots.
That world is obviously mad, but our reality is worse. Because along with healthy body parts, teens today are sacrificing their fertility and sexual function on the altar of gender, before they even understand what that means.
That the Scottish Government is at the head of the charge to promote this cult of child abuse as “progressive” and “caring” is a source of shame to the nation. We are living through one of Western civilisation’s darkest moments, and we must do everything we can to bring it to an end before thousands more children are irreversibly harmed.
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Mia Hughes is a researcher and author of The WPATH Files, an investigative report based on leaked internal communications from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. This post is an edited version of her original X thread.
