Disabled Fetishes

On a couple of occasions, I have discussed how society tends to view persons with disabilities as asexual. Braces, crutches, and wheelchairs presumably are a sexual turnoff to many able-bodied individuals. For others, however, a disability can be quite a turn on.


As perverted as it might sound, some non-disabled persons have disability fetishes. Unless the opposite sex has some form of impairment, the able-bodied person cannot be attracted to them. The latter is referred to as a devotee. The typical devotee is a male who is attracted to female amputees. Thus, the devotee has acrotomophilia, a desire to have partners who had leg or arm amputations. (Now I finally understand why some Greek and Roman statues are armless!) Just as the average man finds large breasts and tight buttocks alluring, male devotees find stumps on female amputees attractive.

Female devotees, on the other hand, pursue men who use wheelchairs or crutches. In “Devotees, pretenders, and wannabes” by Dr. Richard Bruno, he presents a case where a forty-eight year-old woman tearfully admits that she married her husband because he uses crutches and wears braces. She said disabled men have attracted her since high school, where she dated a man with a limp. Just touching his impaired leg excited her. When she met her husband, his crutches and braces made her so aroused that she couldn’t face him for days. But soon after she married him, she lost interest in being intimate with him because he didn’t wear his braces to bed. So, she began fantasizing about other disabled men.

Based on Dr. Bruno’s research, attractions to stumps and mobility equipment are not an issue of sexual control as some might suspect. Instead, the disability attraction stems from a devotee’s childhood. Because some devotees lacked love when they were little, they project the desire to be loved on individuals with disabilities to satisfy their own emotional needs. Dr. Bruno believes that adults portray disabled individuals as lovable and needy. He cites Jerry Lewis as a prime example since the comedian always regards us as those who are desperate for affection.

For example, the female devotee mentioned above didn’t receive any physical or verbal show of affection from her parents. But she remembered how they talked compassionately about a disabled girl who lived in the neighborhood. The memory subconsciously made her want to be with disabled men to satisfy the lack of parental love. At times, she even pretended to be disabled by renting a wheelchair and riding around in malls.

As you’d expect, devotees turn to the Internet to meet persons of their disability dreams. Two such websites called Fascination Online and Amputee Support Coalition of Texas (ASCOT) offer videos and photos of female amputees doing daily activities, nothing very provocative unless the viewer presumes a legless woman doing exercises as arousing. The proceeds from the sites’ activities go towards helping the models buy prostheses.

The websites also list events, such as Fascination Weekends, where amputees and devotees can meet and have fun. According to the founder of Fascination, Bette Hagglund, who’s also an amputee, “fun” entails cheese parties, dinner parties, and swimming. But intimate encounters are bound to occur. Even marriages can blossom out of these events. So far, twelve couples have gotten married since Hagglund started sponsoring the amputee-devotee gatherings in 1985.

But not all devotees want to develop serious relationships with amputees, especially if they ask them “Are your stumps smooth or rough?” Some men who attend Fascination Weekends are married. Like Dr. Bruno’s above explanation about lack of parental affection, a lack of spousal affection may apply to devotees who are already married. Yet, if you are a Freudian, you may believe that stumps elicit phallic images for some devotees.

Devoteeism can become dangerous if the devotee starts stalking a person with a disability. Although no assaults have been reported, disabled women have had frightening experiences. For instance, one woman in a wheelchair received a call from a man who claimed he was a friend of a friend. When they went to dinner, he started talking about his wife and then bluntly admitted he wanted his dinner partner only for sex. He had gotten her name from a list provided by a devotee club. Luckily, the man never contacted her again afterwards.

Although attractions to individuals with disabilities can be very tainted, they can also be very rewarding to them. Rather than having persons who don’t accept them because of their impairments, many disabled individuals prefer devotees who happily accept them. Devotees can show deep care for their mates, more so than those who aren’t attracted by impairments but still have relationships with disabled partners. But if someone asks me if he can touch my wheelchair, I’d immediately direct him to the nearest medical equipment store.