Let me preface this by saying that I've long since accepted that this attraction is what it is. I'm not self-hating, a freak, or a sadist (might be a masochist, though?). I'm not attracted to the suffering of disabled women. It's their functioning - their overcoming and being effective, complete, and fulfilled people despite having visibly less to work with than able-bodied women - that attracts me. It's the ways that they move, that they adapt, that they get on with things. That mixture of strength and vulnerability is potent. Something about it tells me that this person has some awesome in her that's worth seeing for myself. Instead of going 'dem child-bearing hips = Mmmm', my caveman brain's wired to say 'one leg woman mek stronk bebbies'. Physically, yeah, it's the impaired limb(s) that are a large part of the direct, visible focus of the attraction, and that definitely brings up feelings of guilt. For reasons of stigma surrounding disability, a biological aversion to injury, and exclusionary normalized beauty standards, visible disabilities are not a source of self-confidence for a lot of people who live with them. Having that be the focus of a partner's sexual attraction can feel not only like objectification, but objectification of something that they may consider the "single worst aspect of my life." I guess there's some irony in that. Anyways, I don't think that I objectify women, disabled or not. You can have the nicest stump going, but if it's attached to a dumbass, it ain't gonna do much for me. Still, sometimes I wonder. That, anyways, leads me to why I hate being a dev:
My attraction to non-amputees and non-paraplegics is very limited, so I basically don't have meaningful romantic relationships unless I find a partner who lives with one of those disabilities. I'm a reasonably good-looking guy and pretty handy with words too. Yet, having been on this planet more than thirty years, I've had two serious girlfriends. There have been multiple opportunities for relationships with able-bodied women who I've really liked and connected with that I've turned down or had to end because the physical attraction wasn't there. It would've been as unfair to them as it was uncomfortable for me to continue. I 'came out' to two of them because they started blaming themselves when things didn't work. Their senses of self-worth were attacked and I needed to let them know that there was no fault on their part and that they were worthy and deserving of love. One reacted with disgust and the other with understanding and philosophical musing. When it comes to my guy friends, going out to things like clubs, bars, and concerts can be weird. My lack of 'making moves' on women gets noticed. I've had more than one earnestly ask me if I was gay (FTR, I probably skew slightly bi at most). It definitely gives us one less piece of common ground to stand on and finding common ground forms the bedrock of most relationships.
I don't like dealing in universals, but I think that most people desire companionship in their lives, perhaps above almost everything else. On that subject, think about how difficult it is to find someone that you really, truly connect with, that you're compatible with, and that you'd like to spend your 'forever' with. You need to consider personality, interests, appearance, age, sense of humour, intelligence, convenience (not about to date someone on the other side of the world), and other factors. If/when you find someone who ticks all of those boxes, you have to see if she does it for more than just a few months of dating. If it works out, that's seriously special and an amazing feeling. I think we can all acknowledge, however, that reaching that point isn't straightforward.
Now, imagine that all of those usual factors apply but you have this paraphilia and it's connected to an exceedingly rare type of individual. With this in mind, let's decrease the pool of available partners to roughly 0.1% (one-thousandth) of what it was before, basically making that whole process described above a thousand times harder. On top of that, due to a mixture of how society tells her to feel about her own body and the actions of a few creepy men on the internet, take your ideal partner and flip a coin as to whether or not she'll want nothing to do with you because you're a dev. That, in a nutshell, is why I hate being one. When it comes to finding meaningful love, we're really up against it on numbers alone. The way that I see things, there are five possible outcomes that apply to the vast majority of us. I present to you A Devotee's Path to Happily Ever After!™:
- You build major portions of your life and identity around your attraction, becoming heavily involved with the amputee or general disability communities to maximize your chances of meeting a partner. This actually gives you a non-negligible chance of finding your ideal woman, but you have to sacrifice a lot of other things for that. Your interests, talents, time, and finances all take a back seat. You could very well find that special someone and live happily ever after, but you're still probably shooting around .400 or so.
- You don't make any concerted effort, but the cookie crumbles your way and you get incredibly lucky. You find that beautiful one-legged woman that makes your heart sing, she's a match in all or most relevant ways, and you get to live happily ever after (lucky bast*rd). The chances of this happening are just crazy levels of slim, though. If this is you, congrats, bro. You're a unicorn. Go prance around somewhere, you magnificent beast.
- Still very unlikely, but less so, is that you find someone who's not a great match but who fits your paraphilia and is as insecure and/or desperate as you (or is just a really nice person, maybe?), and you maintain a more or less dysfunctional relationship based on good s*x and mutual dependence. I've been here. It felt bad. It was bad, for both of us. Don't do this, man. Really.
- You live out your life with few or no meaningful s*xual relationships. Marriage and kids? DFKM bro. Maybe you come to terms with yourself and have enough other meaningful things in your life that you can achieve a sort of tenuous inner peace and be a decent overall guy. You can convince yourself that life is satisfying and you might not even be totally lying. I feel like this is where most of us end up, to be honest.
- Then there's the 'bad ending'. Love sh*ts on you (expected). Life sh*ts on you (bonus!). Things kind of stop meaning much. All that's left is the fleeting, momentary pleasure offered by p0rn or, failing that, being a creepy online stalker! Maybe you're one of those fifty year old eastern European dudes who makes weird comments that he doesn't think are weird on some twenty-one year old woman's instagram. Maybe, as a man of culture, you try the big-brain play of pretending to be disabled (and possibly a woman) yourself because of course you're not cringeworthy levels of obvious and why would anybody ever think you're not who you say you are online? If either of these are you, I'd like to say:
f*ck you.
Sincerely,
The rest of us