It’s got a lot of stigma attached though – it’s hard explaining to an amputee, for example. I don’t want sympathy or to be cared for, and I hate that there are people who lose limbs that they want to keep. But for me, taking the leg away would be like removing a tumour – a massive relief, and a necessity.

I hope I’m not phrasing any of this badly, I don’t mean to cause offence after all. Just hoping I can help explain.

John M. said: “Ultimately, our bodies belong to God, and we should not mutilate them.”

“If your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better to enter [everlasting] life crippled than to have you and your two feet tossed into the burn pit.” — Yeshua of Nazareth, Mark 9:45

“You (meaning all humans) have the right to do what you want as long as what you want does not deprive or harm anyone else.” That means you have the right to do things that other people would consider harm to yourself, as long as you are not harming other people.

There is, of course, grey areas in this philosophy. – ie suicide or doing hard drugs until your life spins out of control.

After much thought I personally believe in many cases(not all) you have the right to commit suicide, even though it does harm your loved ones with your loss.

But if your pain is so severe that you cannot bear to exist anymore, I would hazard a guess that the pain of you existing is greater than the pain caused by your loss.

And for people that do hard drugs, they are obviously trying to escape or numb themselves to…something…

Like, I said…Grey areas. However, overall I would say the philosophy is decent.

After all, any good life philosophy will have many grey areas to be puzzled out based on an internal compass and the circumstances of the moment. Its when humans start creating absolute truisms that we run into trouble.

So in the context of the article, who am I or anyone else to tell a person what they want is wrong?

If people are unhappy with their limbs, and the fact that they have certain limbs is destroying their joy in life, who am I or anyone else to try and force them into a concept of “right’?

Vorador said: “i dont think its a bad thing at all…its our body, not the governments…we can get tattoos and body piercings…of course i agree that they are less drastic but, i also feel that they fall into the same category.”

I agree with you – I feel we also need to problematise the ways in which such things become pathologised. (Apologies for British English spelling)

If something is difficult to understand or contradicts the ways in which so called normal people think and do – we have a need to categorise such things as a form of madness of perversion.

What if we stopped trying to interpret the things people do and attempt to actually understand it? What if we allow people true ownership of their bodies and stopped telling people how they should look, or how to adhere to current trends of beauty and so on?

I think this article is written in a really problematic way – that allows us to just bracket such people within narratives of madness – as we still consider trans people in the same way, and as we once used to consider gay people.

Handy