To Devotee or not to Devotee ...

In a world where we upload our pictures and share our lives, where everyone knows what we are doing at any time of the day, where we have over a thousand “friends” on Facebook, and just as many “followers” on Twitter, do we really know who we are “sharing” our information with?

As two “old” ladies in the community, we’ve been around the “devotee” subject many times. But, it will always come up, because they will always be there… but we wanted to share our thoughts on it, and give you a little insight on the controversial subject... so you can decide to devotee or not to devotee?

We can both still remember our first encounters with devotees, and have had many more since that time. As a person with a disability, you may have received that Facebook private message saying how beautiful you are and how sexy your “purple, floppy feet” are too, even though you have no actual pictures on your profile of your feet or legs. Or the IM from the person who has no actual profile picture of themselves, but rather a picture of feet or just a wheelchair, asking you if you get frequent spasms. Odd, you think? Yes, it is odd, and it is most likely a devotee.

Disability devotees have been around and studied, as a rare pathological attraction, since the late 19^th Century, according to Wikipedia. In the mid-1970s, there was a reappearance of the group, that at the time was classified as “acrotomophilia”, which refers to a paraphilia in which an individual expresses strong sexual interest in amputees. It wasn’t until the 1990s, that it was classified as “factitious disability disorder” because it was known that devotees were not limited to only obsess over people with amputations, but people with all different disabilities.

By scientific definition, a devotee is a person who has a paraphilia(c) (def. (psychiatry) any abnormal sexual behavior; the practice of, indulgence in, or addiction to unusual sexual activities; attraction to disability and has a sexualized interest of people in the appearance, sensation and experience of disability. In the paraphilia, the attracted devotees are specifically aroused by people with disabilities, simply because of their disability. The disability may be minor like missing fingers, or profound, like blindness and amputation or quadriplegia. Some devotees desire people with cognitive disabilities as well.(Lawrence, 2006.)

In the devotee population, there are also people who desire to pretend to be disabled and to acquire a disability. These people fall into the spectrum of the pathological disorder. About half of all devotees occasionally pretend. These “pretenders” are also known as “wannabes”. They seem to number not more than five percent of the devotee-wannabe population. (Attraction to disability.)

(WARNING: IMPORTANT CONTENT!) Some DPWs collect personal data on people with disabilities, follow and photograph them candidly, call and write to them, contrive to encounter them and seek them out at healthcare establishments and disability gatherings. When it spills over into stalking, such behavior may give grounds for prosecution. So basically, NEVER give any personal information out to a stranger... UNLESS you can verify that THAT person, is who they say they are! Hello, BACKGROUND CHECK!

The wholesale circulating of images of people with disabilities is a behavior under attack from some sections of the DPW community. Most images are obtained candidly. Distribution (if commercial) does not benefit those depicted, and risks compromising them, since the content is sexual. Alongside this, commercial images of disabled models are “copywronged” by DPWs hosting them on the internet for free, used by others, thus depriving models of expected income.

People attracted to disability appear to have been obsessed with images for as long as the attraction has been known. Stories are told within the community of collectors who had succeeded in garnering tens of thousands of images in the pre-internet era. (Attraction to disability.) Yea, again, don’t give anyone your pictures.When on Facebook, click the option that makes someone get permission from you before they are able to “share” your photos. Come on, do you really want to be the person some random guy sits at home with on a Saturday night staring at on a computer screen? (EWW.)

(OK. Enough with the SCIENTIFIC STUFF. Here is some BRAIN CANDY.) Check out this young woman and her thoughts on devotees. Erik Kondo also wrote a great blog on DWPs which we loved, and want to share with you. You can check that out here.

With all of these scientific and psychological facts, we now have filled you in on the fact that, contrary to some beliefs, devotees are people who have an actual disorder (shocker!!!)… but this is not to say that ALL devotees, apart from sometimes being a little on the creepy side, will cause harm by stalking you or selling your photos without your permission. We have both come across devotees who are harmless and just really look at us as being beautiful women in chairs and never say anything or do anything to us that is out of line.

It is always smart to be aware of people who send you friend requests, emails and who may view your private information online, because it is sometimes very hard to distinguish a sexual predator from a curious on-looker. So, just be sure to do your homework when deciding whether to devotee, or not to devotee!

Until next time! Happy Rolling!

Remember if you have any questions, comments or just overall general concerns, we want to hear them! E-mail us at: urconfessions@gmail.com.

Attraction to disability. (n.d.). Retrieved December 8, 2011, from Wikipedia: www.wikipedia.com.

Lawrence, A. C. (2006, June). Attraction to disability. Retrieved December 8, 2011, from Wikipedia:www.wikipedia.com.