#congenital limb

[yardsards]

concept: grizzled badass action hero with a missing body body part

for a long time it's never explained how they lost that body part. maybe everyone's too intimidated to ask them. or maybe people do ask and they tell different, increasingly outlandish story every time. sword fight. rescuing a baby from a burning building. tortured for information. caught in a bear trap and had to gnaw it off.

eventually it's revealed that nah, there was no accident, it's congenital

[octoberarts]

I realised when I do amputee/limb difference characters I tend to make them acquired differences...so obviously I wanted to start diversifying that.

[Image ID: A woman with no arms stands relaxed with a soft smile. She has pink hair in two tiered ponytails, with blue hair decorations in them, green alien earrings, and purple glasses. There is a red heart on her face, and two heart shaped necklaces. She wears a pink and blue puff sleeved shirt with a rainbow patch. She has blue patchwork shorts, and blue knitted leg warmers over pink heart patterned toeless tights, and no shoes. There is a toe ring on her left foot, and she wears a pink heart shaped bag with many pins on it.]

[wheelie-sick]

growing up disabled fucks you up so badly. for me it was isolation

I couldn't play with other kids at recess and I couldn't participate in PE. other kids didn't want to be friends with me because I wasn't fun to play with and I looked weird and I walked weird. I spent most of my time at school in the nurse's office, I barely even remember some of my teachers because I saw them so infrequently. I missed a lot of school because I was always sick. when other kids did hang out with me I'd ruin all their fun because I couldn't participate in their activities.

I was deaf and couldn't really hear other kids well. other kids didn't want to bother communicating with me, I just wasn't worth the effort. I was always seen as rude and uncaring. no matter how many times I explained that I wasn't ignoring people I just physically could not hear them no one understood.

all this led to a lot of isolation. it permanently stunted my development because I never learned important social skills and I didn't learn how to make friends. in elementary school I had two true friends. I had to be taught how to make friends at 15 in therapy. and I'm sure my social skills weren't the only things affected by my isolation growing up but I have no reference point for what a childhood is supposed to look like.

[vireserein]

TL;DR: Obvious amputee struggles, hidden hEDS hijinks, failed attempt at mooning church ladies with my sexy yoga talents.

Invisible disabilities are still disabilities, and even if people can't outwardly see what you struggle with, you have the right to look "unsightly" or "inappropriate" in public to take care of yourself. This is taking medications, this is sitting down, this is doing whatever you need to do to keep your body happy and healthy. I'm used to being very obviously different with a congenital forearm amputation that doesn't really get in the way of my life besides the occasional inconveniently short microwave handles (can't get my residual joints behind them) or the way strangers and family often treat me in public for it (very poorly; this is my main struggle and I'd go so far as to say social separation is my main lifestyle difference. I am always unsightly in public.) . . . But the less notable side of my body, which is a progressively worsening diagnosis of hEDS that I've been dealing with for half of my life, is something I am still getting used to accepting and managing. With or without a lot of physical therapy, supplements, rest, and preventative care, I have issues that won't go away. Lately, this means that I can't sit up straight or stand for long periods of time, and very often need to do strange little jigs to get my ribs back into their parking spots in my poorly-oiled upper back— essentially, I can't look proper in quiet spaces. As a woman attending a tri-city snooty-suburb church primarily composed of prim-and-proper older ladies and their equally judgy sheltered tweenagers who would have a conniption at the idea our planet Earth being over 6,000 years old or, God literally forbid, people being themselves, I have at least one personal worst place to have three ribs twist themselves out of me so suddenly while mid- un-pretzelifying my body (to avoid back pain on a shitty pew) (also read: standing up like I'm an overburdened robot). That said, I love my community for the things they do correctly, and I love and prefer the church I attend while at my university for being much kinder, more open-minded, science-loving people.

So anyway, you do what you have to do, even if this means gasping like a fish with a harmonica stuck in its throat, squeezing past 10 of those people very forcefully, and lumpily skittering out of the room (picture a constipated armadillo. I'm fond of my parenthetical similes if you can't tell) to the aghast spite of plenty to put your rebellious skeleton back together in the bathroom, hands covered in napkins and ass directly to the door like this:

(I was taught this funny hot banana-pyramid pose by some very good friends of mine. It saves lives.)

Some people will still love you when they see your nice ass at church, and others will be offended over silly things, and even more will have the right intentions but a terrible mindset. . . But you matter most in this context, unless you're bowling over 95-year old grandfathers for bonus points.

And no, I didn't get caught. And, as a final addition, I think this whole connective tissue disorder thing has helped me to start accepting the visible part of me more. As I've mentioned before, I was raised to stamp out the idea that I was different, and to ignore my own support needs to convince others. Those needs were much easier to believe for something new and fresh that I could demand regular appointments for, and the wacky things I have to get up to to avoid pain have helped me to give less of a shit about others, even if it's hard to.

[wingless-thrush]

Impossibly Imperfect

(The following is an edited version of a personal blog originally posted on 10 May 2012.)

I lived in Asheville, North Carolina for a couple years while growing up, which is located in the mountainous western part of the state. Our neighborhood was perched on the side of Beaucatcher Mountain, and was comprised of a lot of hilly, windy streets. One particular neighborhood street was especially steep, with a sharp S-curve at the bottom of a long, straight hill. Just beyond the S-curve, the terrain dropped off dramatically into a rugged, wooded ravine. If the street had been a busier road, it would be one of those notorious stretches of highway that has a nickname like Death Hill or Blood Alley.

As it was, the street didn’t have very many houses on it and was lightly traveled by cars, so it became a favorite spot for us to play. I’d pull my red Radio Flyer wagon to the top of the hill, climb on board, and then ride at top speed down the hill, with the wind blowing in my face. The feeling of flying downhill was as ecstatic as the first big drop on a roller coaster, but was tempered with the very real danger of missing the curve, flying off the pavement, and ending up broken and bloodied at the bottom of the ravine.

The memory of flying down that hill in a Radio Flyer wagon at high speed, with a near-certain bloody and painful death at the bottom of the hill rapidly getting closer, has become somewhat of an unfortunate metaphor for my love life over the years. The whole realm of relationships and sexuality has been a very difficult one for me, and it’s not without a degree of hesitation that I write about it here.  While I do a pretty good job at maintaining close friendships with quite a few attractive women, things always seem to fall apart whenever there’s a hint of romantic feelings involved.

Part of it may have to do with the uptight Calvinist background I grew up in, where sexuality was hardly ever discussed except in the context of there apparently being far too much of it on television and in popular culture. And then there’s the fact that I was sexually abused as a child, by an older neighborhood kid who promised to allow me into his “club” if I performed certain acts down in the woods behind the house. Somehow my membership card to his secret club must have repeatedly gotten lost in the mail, because I kept having to go through the initiation process over and over again.

I'm also mildly autistic with some related mental health issues like anxiety and depression, and that no doubt plays a big role as well, even though I never knew I was on the spectrum until I was well into adulthood. Nowadays I can do a pretty good job of pretending I’m at least somewhat normal, but as a kid I was clueless. Nobody really had a name for my condition at that time; I just assumed I was a weird misfit due to some horrible character defect on my part. While my classmates were playing with their Transformers or G.I. Joe action figures, I was usually off in the corner sketching pictures of bridges and spaceships. A few years later when they were having their first sexual experiences, I was still sketching (slightly more refined) pictures of bridges and spaceships. It’s not that I didn’t have sexual feelings or wasn’t incredibly attracted to certain girls at school; it’s just that I was too chickenshit to actually act on those feelings. My classmates assumed I was gay or asexual, and bullied the living shit out of me accordingly. During bus rides home in 5th grade, a few of the popular kids would corner me in the back of the school bus and ask me invasive questions about my sexuality. If they didn’t like my answer, one of them would give me a swift punch in the stomach.

As you might imagine, relationships and sexuality �� things that, in an ideal world, should be sources of joy and happiness for those involved – had come to be strongly associated with feelings of guilt, shame, rejection, and violence in my mind. When you crash the Radio Flyer wagon into the ravine too many times, you start to dread the idea of hauling it back up the hill for another ride.

Fast-forward to this past week, when a random bit of news during my workday brought back vivid memories of a time when I flew down that metaphorical hill way too fast, and ended up crashing into the ravine in a most spectacular manner.

As it turns out, a former crush of mine is getting married on Saturday, and not to me. You’d think I’d be over it after almost a decade, but this one really stung. For a few months in late 2002 and early 2003, “Jennifer” and I had developed what I considered a pretty deep long-distance relationship, which culminated in her flying to Philadelphia and meeting up with me during her spring break.

I’ve always had a pretty specific picture in my head of what my ideal partner is like, and it was uncanny just how close she came to that mental image, in a number of important ways: her intelligence, her emotional maturity, her overall great looks, and so forth. Nobody else before or since then has come quite so close to my idealized version of Miss Right. I was much more religious back then than I am now, and I was convinced she was the gift from God that I had been praying for almost my entire life.

I’ve always been drawn to the unique and unusual. In a neighborhood full of bland McMansions, I’m the guy who would buy something like the Mushroom House. Whenever I’d get a handful of candy corn around Halloween, I’d always pick out the mutant pieces and eat them first, because they were special and stood out from the others. I was somehow convinced this made them taste better.

Likewise, for as long as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by and found beauty in people with certain unique physical characteristics – even something as relatively minor as having a pair of webbed toes – but particularly with people who are missing one or more limbs, either by birth or through circumstances later in life. Jennifer wasn’t the first amputee I’d felt romantic feelings toward, and she likely won’t be the last. The first crush I ever had was toward Carol Johnston, a gymnast who was born without part of her right arm. Her story was the subject of a Disney film I saw on TV while growing up, and I was enthralled with the shape and movement of her partial arm, which ended with a small, round stump just below her elbow. (Carol is almost old enough to be my mother, but she appeared much closer to my age in the film, which had been produced a number of years before I saw it.) Jennifer was completely armless, not unlike Simona Atzori, an Italian artist and dancer who was also born without arms. No stumps or even scars, just perfectly smooth shoulders where a pair of arms would normally begin. Her use of her feet for daily tasks was as fluid and natural as most people’s use of their hands. I’d gladly pick somebody like her over any number of plastic-looking supermodels.

There’s a lot more to it than just the physical attraction, though. What I find equally appealing is the fact that people like Jennifer have a unique story to tell, that they know what it’s like to be different and to overcome obstacles. My favorite people in the world are those who strive to overcome life’s challenges with grace and humor, and who embrace their own uniqueness. This might be the one element that all my closest friends have in common, regardless of how many limbs they have.

An army of therapists could spend countless hours speculating on all the reasons why I have these feelings, and still not come up with a satisfactory answer. I wouldn’t really call it a fetish, although sexual attraction is certainly one part of it. I’ve always felt different throughout my life, and I think maybe I find a kindred spirit in somebody who is as different on the outside as I am on the inside, and who has spent a lifetime overcoming obstacles and dealing with other people’s stares and clueless comments, as well as more mundane things like a lack of wheelchair ramps or doorknobs that are difficult to grasp. To be clear, the attraction has nothing at all to do with any hardship or suffering that comes with being an amputee. I’ve had a few close friends over the years who are amputees, and I wouldn’t wish those phantom pains, ongoing medical issues, or the cost of a prosthetic limb on anybody.

As you might imagine, being attracted to amputees brings forth a lot of conflicted feelings that include heavy doses of shame and guilt. Pop culture values physical perfection to an obscene level, and people don’t like to be reminded that they might someday lose a leg in a car accident, or give birth to a child that has less than ten perfect fingers and ten perfect toes. Veterans who lose limbs in combat are either swept under the rug and ignored by the people who sent them into combat in the first place, or are maybe put onto a pedestal and briefly worshipped as folk heros – but never portrayed as the guy next door who lost his legs and a couple of close friends to a roadside bomb, and who still has nightmares about it. But I didn’t choose to have this attraction any more than Jennifer chose to be born without arms, and I reject the notion that I should beat myself up over an aspect of my psyche that I never willingly signed up for.

Soon after high school, my family got a computer, and I was introduced to this new thing called the Internet for the first time. After dialing in to AOL and doing a couple of creative searches (I’m really dating myself here), I soon discovered that I’m not the only person who has this attraction; people like me are typically referred to as devotees within the community. (The phenomenon also has a very dry technical term: Acrotomophilia.) Personally, I find the terminology inadequate – the term admirer has also been tossed around, which I find more apt – but for better or worse, devotee seems to be the accepted label.

How do amputees typically feel about this attraction? Opinions vary widely. Some find it very flattering and liberating; a common sentiment is that it’s nice to be seen as an attractive woman with no caveats, as opposed to being seen as attractive despite a disability. Others find it extremely repulsive and threatening, feeling that devotees are getting their jollies from what for many amputees is the most painful and traumatic episode of their lives. Most amputees’ feelings probably fall somewhere between those two extremes, perhaps accepting of the attraction despite some reservations. As a gross generalization, my experience is that amputees who were born that way tend to be more accepting of the attraction than those who lost a limb later in life due to trauma or disease. It’s a very controversial issue within online support groups and other amputee-related communities, with very passionate feelings on all sides of the issue. The purpose of this post isn’t to change anybody’s mind about it, but to simply articulate my own feelings.

Back in the 90’s there used to be a small online community of devotees and devotee-friendly amputees, mostly on IRC and an email listserv. There were even occasional real-life gatherings, and a number of marriages have come from those meetings. With a fairly intimate community it was easier to keep the predatory elements away, of which there are unfortunately quite a few. In the amputee-devotee subculture, the bad apples usually consist of guys who get off on some sort of power trip by being with somebody they perceive as helpless, or people who live out their fantasies by pretending to be amputees online.

Unfortunately, with the explosion in social media such as MySpace and then Facebook over the past few years, what used to be a fairly tight-knit and self-policing internet subculture has become a free-for-all, with some devotees pursuing amputees with all the grace and chivalry of the Nazgûl pursuing the One Ring, and ruining it for those who have better social skills and more honest intentions. There are still some vestiges of the old community left, but it’s a pretty small and isolated group with relatively little in the way of new blood.

I know of a number of amputee/devotee couples who couldn’t be happier. I also know of devotees who have gone their entire lives without finding their ideal partner to settle down with, and I know of others who ultimately married non-amputees only to find themselves depressed and frustrated, and their marriages failing. As for myself, it certainly makes things difficult because my ideal dating pool is a tiny fraction of the general population. I can go months or years at a time before seeing an attractive female amputee out in public, and the whole online scene is a crapshoot. On the rare occasion I see an attractive amputee out in public and I fail to make any kind of meaningful contact with her (which is almost always the case – I universally err on the side of keeping a respectful distance and doing nothing, rather than annoying her with any awkward advances), it can haunt me for months or years after the fact.

Mind you, I’m still very attracted to able-bodied women as well. The longest relationship I’ve had so far was with somebody who wasn’t an amputee, and I don’t regret a minute of it. But in looking for a long-term relationship or marriage, I face a bit of a dilemma. When I was in that relationship, there was always a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I wasn’t being true to my feelings and that I was “settling” for something that was less than my ideal, and I was overcome with feelings of guilt. I didn’t feel like I was being fair to either her or myself. Nobody likes to be told they’re a second choice.

Jennifer seemed flattered by my unusual form of attention, and I was thrilled with the idea that after so much longing and searching, I had finally found somebody to share my life with. But the day after she arrived in town and we first met face-to-face, she called me up at work just a couple hours before we were supposed to meet again, and slammed the brakes on any notion of a relationship. She never did give a clear reason, but seemed to imply that she wasn’t ready for a relationship and that the chemistry didn’t feel right.

On one level it was understandable, as there was a pretty significant age difference between us, we had different backgrounds and ambitions, and lived a couple thousand miles apart. At that moment on the phone, though, I felt like a bomb had just been detonated within my already-fragile psyche. I blame myself for getting my hopes up too high in the first place, but that euphoric feeling of being head-over-heels in love was incredible while it lasted. For a brief few weeks, I felt like I was racing downhill in that Radio Flyer wagon, and the S-curve and ravine were no longer a threat. I haven’t experienced anything like it since then, and part of me wonders if I ever will.

She said she wanted to remain friends, and held out the idea that maybe sometime in the future, things might work out between us. But it never happened. The phone calls and online chats became less frequent, and then stopped altogether. My greetings went unanswered, and after a lot of heartbreak and depression on my part, I eventually moved on. She became somewhat of a minor media celebrity with her motivational speaking gigs and other accomplishments, and I continued quietly making slow but steady progress toward my academic and professional goals.

I had pretty much put that episode out of my mind until now, but learning that she’s getting married this week brought it all back. In all honesty, I wish her the best, and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I can now look back and see about a million reasons why things never would have worked out between us. As painful as it was for me, she probably did the right thing by breaking it off sooner rather than later.

So now I’m spilling my guts here, mainly just to get it off my chest and hopefully gain some catharsis, but also to shed some insight into an aspect of my life that, until now, I’ve kept pretty private. No doubt some parts of this blog entry dove pretty far into TMI territory for some, but I’m hoping the benefits outweigh any negative blowback. A few of my closest friends already know about this side of me, and seem generally accepting of it, even if it’s impossible for them to fully understand it.

One of my resolutions for the new year was to try and let go of some emotional baggage that I’ve been carrying around my neck like an albatross, and this is part of that process. With people all over the country being denied equal rights and bullied to the point of suicide because of who they love, it seems hypocritical for me to champion their rights while keeping my own sexual proclivities safely tucked away in the closet, out of danger. Maybe some good will come of this blog post, and there may be some negative consequences as well. But I think I’ve reached the point where I’m finally willing to stop living in fear of the what-if scenarios, and to let the chips fall where they may.

[carbonateddelusion]

thinkin' abt. centaurs with prosthetics and adaptive devices..

obviously, if you take a Real Life Horse and chuck a fake limb on to them, their quality of life isn't gonna be all that great. they don't know what the fuck is going on. but in fantasy settings, would it be possible for sapient creatures like centaurs to have those kind of assists and mesh with them well? or well. it definitely WOULD be possible, but would it be practical? what would they look like?

[drpushpvardhanmandlecha]

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[androdragynous]

game companies should be fucking EMBARRASSED about being inaccessible. it should be mortifying to ship a game with shit captions or no UI scaling options or no option to disable flashing / strobing effects. games lauding their character customization should be laughingstocks for not including hearing aids or congenital disorders or prosthetic limbs. EA should be publicly fucking humiliated for the sims series being 23 goddamn years old and include cats and dogs and horses and werewolves and zombies and mermaids and star wars and not FUCKING WHEELCHAIRS.

[cy-cyborg]

Limb difference vs amputee

I've been seeing a rise in people using the term limb difference and also rise in (what I think are well meaning) folks shouting "Amputee is not a dirty word, stop talking over disabled people, just say amputee" and while I love the energy, that's not what's going on here lol.

Amputee refers to anyone who has lost a limb or was born without one/multiple of their limbs.

Limb difference is a broader umbrella term to refer to anyone with a physical disability the effects the person's limbs specifically, usually (but not always) in ways that are visible to others to some degree. It can refer to amputees, but also people with single-limb paralysis, people who's limbs didn't develop properly (even if it's not severe enough to be considered an amputation) and more!

All amputees have a type of limb difference, but not everyone with a limb difference is an amputee.

As far as I'm aware, the term actually started in congenital amputee circles (people who were born without a limb) because they felt the word amputee didn't really fit them properly. amputee implies they had the limb but it was removed, but they never had it to begin with. It eventually spread to become an umbrella term, but it was created by and for disabled people.

I do understand some people's hesitation with the word, it does sound kind of similar to "differently abled" but I promise, it's not.

[she-is-ovarit]

Advantages to being female ("AFAB").

Biological differences in being female are often discussed negatively in order to indicate our disadvantages and where and how we are exploited within patriarchal societies.

On Ovarit, there was a thread in which users shared some biological differences to being female that illuminated our strengths. While of course biological differences in males vs. females is directly rooted in reproductive evolutionary strategy (whether someone develops down a reproductive pathway geared towards an overall reproductive system that supports gestating life and creating larger ova vs. not) I thought I would share some examples of advantages not directly connected to childbirth and childbearing. This is not an exhaustive list.

We are more flexible than male people.

We have better stamina and endurance in some extreme long-distance sports in comparison to male people (such as in ultra-marathons).

Some animals (especially other mammals such as wolves, horses, cats, etc.) are instinctively threatened by males, even if they have never been harmed by them. This is not the case with women.

We have better immune systems and survive viruses better than male people.

We survive famines and epidemics overall better than male people.

We survive variations in temperature overall better than male people.

We have better sense of smell than men.

Our chromosomes provide us with extra protection against certain genetic diseases like hemophilia, and we have more genetic diversity.

We have better balance due to our center of gravity being lower, in our pelvis's, while males have their center of gravity in their torsos. This makes us naturally better at sports like rock-climbing, gymnastics, certain martial arts, etc.

"The male fetus is at greater risk of death or damage from almost all the obstetric catastrophes that can happen before birth.2 Perinatal brain damage,3 cerebral palsy,4 congenital deformities of the genitalia and limbs, premature birth, and stillbirth are commoner in boys,5 and by the time a boy is born he is on average developmentally some weeks behind his sister: “A newborn girl is the physiological equivalent of a 4 to 6 week old boy.”

Women and girls have better color perception than males.

Multiple orgasms.

We're biologically better suited to being astronauts and living in space (note: and this was discovered 15 years ago yet this work was never published)

Some articles (debatable on credibility) suggest that we are better able to withstand complete sensory deprivation for several hours in comparison to men, who were able to withstand complete sensory deprivation for minutes.

For unknown reasons, we do not experience the same percentage of macular degeneration that men do in space.

We have a different adrenaline response. Our hormone systems work differently and so we do not lose as much decision making ability and fine motor control as men do in a crisis, making us better snipers and pilots thanks to our reaction time.

We have better life expectancy overall.

[saszor]

image description both in alt text and copied below!

another drawing of disabled* people hanging out chilling living life etc :-)

*technically the carer of the person in the pink wheelchair isn't disabled but carers are a part of the disabled people living life experience sometimes. so it counts 👍

previous drawings of this series

[1] [2] [3]

[image description copied from alt text: drawing of 13 characters on a blue background. on the left side is a fem-presenting Asian guy with spina bifida in a wheelchair. his wheelchair has a much higher footrest to accommodate his short legs. behind him is a man with cerebral palsy using crutches and an AFO. he is wearing a tank top showing his top surgery scars. he has an uneven smile and strabismus. behind them is a drawing from the chest up of a Brown fat man reading in his bed with a CPAP mask on. he's smiling and shuffling the pages of the book. in the center part of the image are three people holding hands with hearts above them. the one on the left is a Black girl in a blue skirt using a cane. she is smiling and looking to the side. the one in the center is a fat Black person wearing a matching pink top, leggings and knee brace. they have a large heart surgery scar going across their chest and a smaller one on their forehead. they are smiling and looking at the person they are holding hands with. that person is an agender person with albinism wearing a hat with a wide rim, sweater and jeans. ze also has a pair of sunglasses hanging on hir collar. hir eyes are unfocused and looking in opposite directions. ze is smiling. below them are two Deafblind people. they are talking using the Deafblind Manual, with one of them finger spelling on the other's palm. the character doing the signing has congenital rubella and cataracts. they are white and have gray hair, acne and a focused expression. the person they are signing to is a white woman with ginger hair. she is smiling and staring forward. she wears a hearing aid. on the top right of the image is a Black man in a large pink power wheelchair with a trach tube. he is sitting still with one eye visibly open. next to him is a white guy with a bottle in one hand and feeding tube in the other. there are speech bubbles with icons indicating 1 eye closed for "yes" and both eyes closed for "no". below them are three kids playing with plushies. the plushies are a crocodile, belonging to a Brown girl with a C-shaped scar on one side of her head, a purple cat with one of it's paws missing belonging to an East Asian girl with an upper limb difference, and a rat belonging to a white girl with intellectual disability and small, spread out eyes wearing a scoliosis brace. they all seem happy.]

[nightmaretour]

Happy disability pride month to disabled people who even other disabled people can't seem to be normal about in particular.

Happy disability pride month to people with paralytic disorders, people with moderate to severe brain damage and people with IDs.

Happy disability pride month to people with facial and limb differences, people with congenital deformities and people with extensive scarring.

Happy disability pride month to people who experience incontinence, people who drool, people with colostomy bags, people with feeding tubes and people with ventilation machines.

Happy disability pride month to people who struggle to or cannot bathe or keep their home clean, people who are fat either because of their disability or not, people who rely on takeout and pre-packaged meals, people who can't exercise, people who smoke, drink or take drugs and people who aren't "doing everything they can" when it comes to managing their disability.

Happy disability pride month to schizospec people, people who experience psychosis, people with stigmatised personality disorders and other widely misunderstood, misrepresented or unknown mental health disorders.

You're all amazing and I'm proud of you even if you're struggling to be proud of yourself. You deserve to be represented, heard and treated with respect. You deserve to be included in discussions about disability just as much as everyone else.

[cripplecharacters]

hey! I recently realized that one of my stories has a serious lack of physically disabled characters (one secondary character has a facial difference) and I'd love advice on what physical differences and disabilities are in more intense need of representation. I know one of my characters is going to be missing a limb, but idk whether they should be an amputee or just born that way, and what limb/ where it should be missing/if it should be underdeveloped or just totally gone. I want to know what type of limb differences are most underrepresented so I can do some research and see if I could feasibly add it to my character. I'd also like to hear some other general physical disorders and disabilities that need more rep (all physical differences need more rep but yk what I mean)

Most if not all of my characters are autistic/adhd or both, although it isn't mentioned (they're just like that because I as a person can't write neurotypical people)

Hello!

As mod Rot has said before, every disability is currently underrepresented (and those that seem represented are often, well, not getting the best rep to say the least). With that said, I do know what you mean, and there are some that are less represented than others.

For a missing limb specifically it might seem like it's "overrepresented", but in reality there's a ton of limb differences that I have absolutely never seen represented in any way, shape, or form. There's simply way more options than creatives ever consider.

The most common cause of acquired amputation is actually not represented much at all - diabetes. Almost all amputations in media are traumatic, but that's not necessarily how it is.

In most cases, the smaller the amputation the more common it is. A lot of characters in media have a shoulder amputation (with a prosthetic, of course), but that's probably the rarest possible one in real life. It's also worth mentioning that the fewer joints you have, the harder it is to use a prosthetic. A knee can change everything.

If they're missing a leg, consider giving them a mobility aid - connecting to the previous point, the higher someone's amputation is the higher the chance they will use them over a prosthetic, but anyone can use them.

Or, they can use both a prosthetic and a wheelchair/crutches at different times. Or they can use prosthetics with mobility aids, like a cane, crutches, or a rollator to help with balance!

Losing a leg is also incredibly more common than an arm, but in media it's the other way around for some reason.

Congenital limb difference of the not-full-amputation variety isn't seen much either, and it has more types than I could possibly list here, but I'll try; phocomelia, symbrachydactyly, micromelia, radial aplasia, ectrodactyly, tetraamelia, polysyndactyly... The only character that I know of with any of these has been made by my friend. Certainly not a popular thing to represent.

To go with the above, think about syndromes that cause limb differences! Some examples could be Ellis–Van Creveld syndrome, Otopalatodigital syndrome spectrum disorders, Pfeiffer syndrome, Joubert syndrome, or the VACTERL association. Or a thousand other things!

Limb loss due to cancer is also a thing! It also relates to a very specific kind of amputation, called rotationplasty, and it's when a person has their knee replaced with their ankle, and their foot is well, rotated. That's how important having a joint is.

Also I know that you said limb and not limbs, but remember that multiple amputations are a thing as well! For example bilateral above knee (often called BAKA), or quadruple amputation are greatly underrepresented :-)

As for non-limb loss underrepresented physical disability ideas, well, all of them, but just for the sake of some new ideas I will try to list ones that AFAIK haven't even been mentioned on the blog at all before (at least as of writing this).

CHARGE syndrome

Hyperthyroidism

Hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia

Hereditary trochlear nerve palsy

Harlequin-type Ichthyosis

Locked-in syndrome

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Primordial dwarfism

Addison's disease

Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Apert syndrome

Charcot Marie Tooth disease

Usher syndrome

Nager syndrome (also, causes limb differences)

Peripheral Artery Disease

[links lead to very basic information pages]

These are just some ideas for disabilities that are 1) physical and 2) very underrepresented, some visible, some not - I hope it gives you some ideas for what to research for your character(s)! I tried to list both very common and rare ones :-)

You can also take a look at our #disabled character ideas tag, or posts like this (there's a lot of facial differences listed, mostly at the end) :-)

I hope this helps!

mod Sasza

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

hello! sorry to bother you but i am currently working on character designs for my next d&d campaign. i am creating a winged elf inspired by avariels, and he will have some form of physical disability which causes them to be unable to fly. however, i am not very educated about physical disabilities, so do you know any which might affect limbs such as wings and any ways i could portray life with them and accommodations for them in a respectful way? any tips are appreciated. thank you :)))

Wing disabilities are a bit harder to research than regular human limb disabilities, but you might be amused to learn that the very first thing i found upon a quick search for bird wing deformities was something called "angel wing", found in many different bird species. I've linked the article I found. It develops over time and can be corrected, but obviously when it happens in wild birds they have no means to fix it on their own and it becomes permanent.

Angel wing is a deformation of the wrist area, making it droop and then turn outwards. Once it's permanent, the crooked shape of the wing makes flight impossible. If a winged humanoid had this problem, they would need to worry about things like how far the crooked wing sticks out, maybe bracing it to alleviate chronic pain. I'm sure something like that would cause pain, even if it wasn't mentioned in the article. It may be helpful to clip the feathers on that part of the wing, so they're not in the way. Finding a comfortable sleep position may also be a bit tricky.

Other possible wing disabilities which I have not researched at all but sound like plausible congenital issues for people with wings:

- underdeveloped wings. They never get big enough for flight, maybe the feathers never grow in properly, possibly they're also shaped wrong for flight. Could come with chronic pain, weak muscles/atrophy, etc.

- missing wing. Somehow just didn't develop a wing, or developed a nub where the wing should be. Could also be missing just the "hand" part of the wing.

- general feather growth problems. Weak feathers, feathers that come in short, chronic molting that causes a lot of unhelpful bald patches, etc.

- chronic joint pain. Wings appear to be normal, but the joints hurt a lot and movement is difficult.

You can also go the route of disability by injury, having a wing broken or amputated or otherwise harmed in a way that is difficult or impossible to recover from.

Overall, the accommodations needed could include pain relief, a brace to keep the wing in a comfortable folded position, feather clipping, massages, etc. Mobitiy aids to let this character fly without the use of their wings is easy to handle in fantasy because you could give him an enchanted flying device of some sort. Magical prosthetic wing might work, but that depends on the disability you're working with and also wing prosthetics are pretty tricky. It would not be as functional as a real wing. If the wings are fully grown and intact, but the problem is something like joint pain, then a flight brace to steady the wings could be useful. They'd only be able to fly for short bursts though, probably. But it would be akin to giving someone leg braces so they can walk, while also having access to crutches or a wheelchair. You can work with your dm on figuring out what's allowed in the campaign setting.

As for being respectful in how you portray the character, I think the most important thing is to let them be a full person. The disability is obviously a major part of their life, but they ought to have more personality than that. Hobbies, interests, attitude.

They're also allowed to be sad about the disability, but this should not be their main defining trait. I think it is pretty normal to be sad that you have a physical difference preventing you from doing something other people can easily do. The problem in fictional characters who are sad about their disabilities is that it often becomes Their Entire Thing and then the character arc is either "so I became evil about it" or "and then they died" or "but there was a magical perfect fix!" all of which obviously don't respect the reality of being disabled. But making them totally happy go lucky about it also doesn't work. So you just need the middle area there, as that's the most realistic one. How does it feel to have a permanent disability? Well, it ends up feeling pretty normal when you're used to it. Sometimes it sucks a lot. Sometimes you hardly pay attention to it. Focus on making your character emotionally varied and give them an interesting personality that makes their interactions with other characters more fun.

Roleplay games are great for that, because you'll have to mesh with the group and really flesh out your character relationships as you go.

Anyway I hope that was all helpful! No illustrations to show, because I'm sleepy today. But good luck with your character! And maybe go check out @cripplecharacters for extra advice on generalized disability rep if you haven't already!

[therianterritory]

People with PLS find the use of "phantom limbs" by the alterhuman community offensive

NOTE: This is a repost of an ealier post with more of an own-opinion/giving people with PLS a voice-approach rather than a community announcement, after having received critique from it that I agree with. I am completely fine with people having different opinions on this.

I might make a video about this in the future, but I'd like to make you all aware of a statement I've received from people with PLS.

The use of the medical term "phantom limbs" is heavily tied to Phantom Limb Syndrome (PLS) which is a medical condition that affects amputees and those born with congenital differences in anatomy. It can be similar but is said to be vastly different from what otherkin and therians experience during phantom shifts. People experiencing PLS and the like have made it known that comparing phantom shifts to the actual loss of a limb or PLS is offensive, so I am of the belief that this should not be done again. I personally recommend using the words phantom shifts, parts or appendages, or specify that appendages such as phantom paws, wings, tails, etc. instead.

I personally take responsibility for having made this comparison in the past, and I'd like to apologize to people who experience PLS or have lost a limb for doing so. It was not my place to make this comparison, as I cannot know what the experiences is actually like.

I urge everyone who may own an Alterhuman platform (whether that be a Discord server or social media platform), and who agree with this statement, to spread the word about this. You are free to use part of this text to explain things.

[drpushpvardhanmandlecha]

Pediatric Orthopedic Doctor in Indore | Dr. Pushpvardhan Mandlecha

Families seeking expert care for their children turn to a Pediatric Orthopedic Doctor in Indore. These specialists address bone and joint concerns in growing children, offering tailored treatments that promote healthy development and a quick return to normal activities.