“Crossing St. Marks Place, David seems like a fairly ordinary veteran of the East Village, with several visible tattoos and a backpack slung across his shoulders. In conversation, he is gentle, thoughtful, and clearly well-read; many of his sentences start with, ‘There was an article in the Atlantic . . . ‘ He enjoys modern classical music, and has a particular liking for the works of Philip Glass and Steve Reich. He also has a fondness for disposing of his fingers and toes, most of which he has removed himself, unaided by doctors or friends. A closer look at his hands reveals stumps of varying length where his fingers belong, with only his thumbs and right index finger left intact. Most of his toes, except for the two big ones he needs to walk, are cut down to stubby knobs. And his perfect pearly whites aren’t God-given — he wears dentures, having yanked out his real teeth with pliers several years ago.
David’s predilection for amputation is an occurrence of a well-documented condition to which the medical and psychiatric establishment has applied several labels, including apotemnophilia, amelotasis, and body integrity identity disorder. However, David and many like him don’t feel they suffer from a disorder at all…” — Village Voice (US)

You won’t often see PervScan say this, but this profile of an auto-amputator is a must-read. Please go read it… Ok, confess: how many of you blanched when reading the descriptions of David severing his own fingers and toes? Or when you imagined opening his freezer for an ice cube, only to find his toes on ice? Or when you listened to him contemplate removing a leg? You know he would do it, right?

PervScan has only written at length about apotemnophilia once before. A commenter took exception with the piece, claiming it confused sexual perversion with body integrity identity disorder. It is true that, whatever you want to call this fetish, it occupies a no man’s land between perversion and pathology. If you look at it from the outside, it certainly seems pathological. If you look at it from the inside — well, maybe that’s not possible, but if you take David’s statements at face value — then there is definitely pleasure involved in the activity. David “admits that he finds amputation sexually arousing.” It is unclear whether this means that he is aroused by other amputees, his own amputations, or both. But since he identifies amputation with sexual arousal, can it be assumed that this is a perversion?

This is a difficult question and makes you wonder not just about his fetish but about perversion in general. Many perversions have dubious relationships with sex or sexual pleasure anyway. For example, because it has become a cliché, people automatically assume that foot fetishism is sexual. And yet if you look closely at it, you see that a guy sucking someone’s toes is not engaged in an obviously sexual activity. He probably won’t climax or cause climax that way. There is a gap between his activity and a properly sexual activity, and yet that does not cause anyone to deny that his fetish is somehow sexual.

Presumably the same is true for a guy such as David, the auto-amputator. There is a gap between what he does and the pleasure he receives. To an outsider, it is difficult to understand how some spark leaps across that gap. However, he claims that it does — he claims that he attains some mysterious satiation from self-mutilation — so it is difficult to deny that he does. How do we know?

If you’re inclined to view this as a disorder, you’ll think that David’s pleasure conceals some other form of pathology or unhappiness. You might note how his fetish began with the dissolution of his long-term marriage. Were there not mental anxieties which he appeased by giving them physical form? It’s the same psychology underlying any number of self-destructive behaviors. Adolescent girls cut themselves or make themselves puke for the same reasons.

So does David indulge in an extreme perversion or does he suffer from an egregious disorder? Have a look at his picture before you decide. When you look at those hands, you automatically think, “Wow. How’s he jerk off — with his thumbs?” Or maybe he doesn’t masturbate at all, and that could well explain why he talks about his hopes for meeting someone who will “put up with [his] nonconformity.” Hopefully he will meet that special someone, because putting a happy ending on this story would somehow go a long way toward resolving the uncomfortable questions that David’s fetish raises.

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