In addition to the people who feel they were born in the wrong gender, there also are apparently many people who think they were born with too many limbs, and want to have one extremity or another removed. Sort of a hard thing to do, as few doctors will not perform elective amputations on perfectly good limbs.

Among the many strange aspects of this is that such folks are drawn to amputee support groups, since they consider themselves amputees in every aspect except one. This does not work too well, as the amputees generally consider them truly sick people.

Yeah, yeah, who am I to judge what rows someone else's boat, but I did find the one story of some guy trying different strategies to remove his hand at home without killing himself, or at least damage it enough so a doc would be forced to remove it, to be one of the most perverse things I have ever heard.

The psychologists they interviewed agreed that this is rare, but far from unique, and could not really explain it. Whatever the cause, they did seem to think it was more related to the wrong gender feeling than anything else, and was not strictly speaking any kind of mental illness. Turned out the producer of the show was an amputee, and her final spin was that it was really the first time she had ever considered her condition to be something admirable, enviable.

Just weird to me, but I know I live a sheltered life.

zig