A Bunch of Words About Chairem

So Chairem is having a sales contest (again). 

7 women, 21 videos, and you get to vote, with your money, for your favorite. Her prize is at least professional videography services, and sexy new lingerie. Maybe one day she can hope to afford a chair as nice as the one in the silhouette. Perhaps she gets a share of the profits too, though the flyer seems reticent to discuss that end of the deal. Mind you, my skepticism is not without warrant. Chairem is a company with a very shady history of abusing not only their models, but their customers as well.

For those of you who don't remember, Chairem originally operated under the moniker “GMRD” which stood for something like “Greenfield Medical Research and Development”. It was a company founded and run by Playboy's own Miss August 1987, Sharry Konopski, the “Broken Bunny” who sustained a career hampering spinal cord injury at the height of her fame.

They had more to do with developing photographs than medical research, a ruse they perpetuate to this day, though most devs didn't care. The name was weird, but others will use names like “Tropical Productions” so devs can keep their credit card statements relatively presentable. Theirs though proved to be more of a sham than others.

As an aside I do want to note that Chairem has never claimed to provide pornography to anyone. To quote from their front page, “THE MATERIALS PROVIDED HERE ARE FOR MEDICAL OR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY AND CONTAINS NOTHING PORNOGRAPHIC.” The emphasis is all theirs, as are the logical inconsistencies. Officially pornography is defined as, “Pictures and/or writings of sexual activity intended solely to excite lascivious feelings of a particularly blatant and aberrational kind, such as acts involving children, animals, orgies, and all types of sexual intercourse”, or, “Material that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement”. How they can reliably claim this while selling videos like “Simone's Personal Foot Fetish” and “Delicia's Brace Erotica” or holding contests where the winner gets to record themselves wearing sexy lingerie for you is beyond me, but that's America for you.

Caveat: I don't have anything official to back this next part up. It's all rumor.

According to some people in my community, GMRD was run in Canada, on paper at least while it was primarily operated in the U.S. The Canadian birthright lit the way for legal chicanery which effectively held their models in more or less permanent and unnegotiable contracts. They weren't allowed to market themselves any way except for through GMRD, or with GMRD's prior approval.

It was in 2007, around the time all of this was rumored to have ended, that Madonna Long a.k.a. Venus left them and eventually launched Roll Modelz. Chairem was more than happy to “wish her well” with this email they sent April 4^th of 2007.

“Hey everyone, I hope you'll join me in wishing Venus good luck and good
health. She has agreed its time to venture out on her own.

If you have purchased a Venus video from Chairem INTERNATIONAL before
April 4th, please be sure to download your order before May 4th when
all Venus materials will be removed from our server.

As is the case with any model who leaves Chairem INTERNATIONAL, we do
not offer their materials for sale. Anything produced by Chairem
INTERNATIONAL has been destroyed and all original model materials
provided by the model has now been returned to them. Also, please
remember that any future purchases with any model, once they depart,
are no longer secured by Chairem INTERNATIONAL, the name you have come
to trust for over 7 years.

Best regrds Venus! [sic]”

Best regards indeed. Her agency quickly absorbed a few of their other models, and eventually began recruiting some of their own. This was the first time Chairem had any competition from another agency outside from Gimps Gone Wild (GGW) which didn't have quite the same history of poaching their talent. At some point around this time they decided the best thing to do was rebrand their product, thus the name “Chairem INTERNATIONAL” (presumably a portmanteau of “Wheelchair” and “Harem”[and yes they always spell it like that with all caps, don't ask me why]).

Again, I can't confirm the validity of this part of the story about Chairem, it's just rumor. If someone wants to correct me on this then I am more than willing to listen.

Overtime, Chairem seemed to shift to providing more and more models from the third world, or at least those where it's still not uncommon to find people with polio (a disease which has been nearly eradicated across the globe). There was even one hilariously awkward point soon after Roll Modelz began poaching their talent and all the rumors about unfair, if not overtly exploitive labor practices, that Chairem produced a ridiculous group video with their entire stable of models south of the border which was titled something like “We're family and stick together.” Given the circumstance and what was flying through the air at the time it seemed less like a genuine statement from the models, and more like a veiled threat from the producers.

Ahh, the failings of the studio system again rear their head. Though thankfully it was much more hilarious this time round.

Really though, when you get past all of the ridiculous titles and poorly written emails, it's not very funny at all. In the U.S. Being disabled comes with a serious set of disadvantages, and being female comes with its own as well. The intersection of these two categories combine to create something much worse. Furthermore, most of Chairem's models these days come from Central or South America. The brightest lights on that content are the up-and-coming Brazil whose gap between the rich and poor would make the U.S.'s 1% blush, the laughable Venezuela, and the once hopeful Mexico whose combined drug violence and lingering effects of NAFTA have done a lot to reduce the faith of investors hoping to make a quick buck off of strawberry yields. In short you have people who would be economically disadvantaged wherever they lived in the world, hailing from economically disadvantaged countries. Countries which may even be further behind in first world basics like accessibility and fair hiring practices.

For Chairem this makes good business sense. If they can reliably pull a profitable amount of capital from any given, marginally successful model, then they ought to take advantage of that in any way they can. It will maximize profits which will, with any luck, help them stay ahead of their competition.

It even seems sort of philanthropic in a way. Disabled women, an already doubly disadvantaged class are given the opportunity to make a tidy a profit considering the actual filming for each video or photoset might take an hour or two. This small amount of labor can, in theory at least, provide a stream of capital which though it surely winnows over time will be worth more than a full day's labor would have been otherwise.

Delicia Hermosa, is the shining example of this. She's produced a great body of work with marketing and delivery handled for her by Chairem for a share of her earnings. She's produced just shy of thirty videos, the most of anyone in the site's current stable of models, which ranges from polio and paraplegia, to amputations and birth defects. In fact she ended up gaining control of the company after a few catastrophes.

The problems with the philanthropic view are manifold and varied. The idea of behind this philanthro-pornography or “non-erotic educational materials featuring beautiful women in sexy lingerie” is that it looks to an imperfect world, and sees capitalism, a system which necessarily produces poverty, exploitation, and inequality, as the solution to issues of poverty, exploitation, and inequality. This more general notion of philanthropic capitalism has been debunked, and this isn't a blog about politico-economic systems so I'll continue past this diversion. However, everyone should pay attention to Slavoj Žižek.

In my opinion Chairem has always been the industry leader in tacky bullshit and promotional gags nobody really cares about unless they're giving something away, and even then it feels too contrived. They have a proud legacy of unforgivable typos and awkward phrasing littering everything they produce in writing. I do not exaggerate when I say everything. Some of the more recent silliness can be forgiven because I'm positive it's written by Delicia herself, and I'm pretty sure English is her second language. You be the judge.

“DELICIA LEG BRACE EROTICA PART 2

It is March 31 and this year I chose to use the full leather and the legbraces with a short skirt and white stockings then I stepped outside for a walk.”

This is a hilarious legacy that stretches back well beyond Delicia though. This is an email that was sent out to a devotee group in 2005.

“Hello everyone. GMRD, Inc. is the only legitimate, incorporated
company that assists model in marketing materials to the devotee
community. We presently represent 12 models ( see attached web
adresses) and house a library of over 25 hours of devotee DVD's.

If your thinking about making the move to becoming a model, contact
us and we'll share with you the benifits of going with a Modelling
company that protects the content of our models materials, provides
documented records of all sales transaction that occure in your
behalf and most of all, we treat out models with the greatest
respect.

We have a customer base of over 2200 and growing and can provide you
with a positive cash flow.”

Somehow upon my first reading I managed to quash the automatic reflex to delete this, and there it sat in my inbox for seven years until I dug it up a few weeks ago and had a laugh. I'm not going to name the guy who wrote all these but if you've followed Chairem at all in the past few years you're probably used to his flagrant abuse of text sizes and colors.

It was like that, but never ending.

“Chairem INTERNATIONAL doesn't have to beg you to tell us what to
film... we know what you're looking for and continue to strive to make
it happen! We also know that our customers are gentlemen and dont
spend a lot of time talking about their attraction and that's what
truly makes Chairem INTERNATIONAL customers unique and respectable
people.” May 8^th, 2007

They've always been unique and respectable what with their contests and trash talking that made them come across as little more than desperate, but the fun doesn't stop there. In January of 2008, they went for the big one.

“When Rick contacted me about his idea for a devotee community he called www.NEWGENDEV. ORG He shared his vision for his forum. The forum was to be a community where people can share their (non commercial) material, open dialogues on different topics and could do so without being bombarded by SPAM. To achieve this he needed  sponsorship support. I wasn't quick to respond.

Once we agreed that no commercial material from any active vendor would be shared and that our sponsorship would give Chairem exclusive rights to be the sole sponsor, We agreed to fund his community for three months.

This is why we agreed to sponsor it...

Your yahoo groups were once yours to share in. Chairem found them a great way to promote ourselves. Then as others vendors began posting promotions in the same fashion, it soon got out of control. Now your groups are nothing but billboards on the Internet highway. That's one of the reasons we ended our use of Yahoo groups for promotions. [Note: Every email transcript I've posted was received through a Yahoo group

So the end results are this, Chairem INTERNATIONAL is happy to provide basic funding for NEWGENDEV.ORG to allow you to return to having a community free of constant advertising.  Chairem INTERNATIONAL has no control over the content of NEWGENDEV.ORG and takes no responsibility for it's content.

The membership has grown to over 1005 members, you have been communicating with each other and posting. NEWGENDEV.ORG is fast becoming the most active group I have yet to see. Rick has done a good job of keeping most issues to a minimum and I have yet to see any of our material posted without our approval. Everything has growing pains and only mature business people look beyond small obstacles towards a positive future. You as active members have proven there is a need and demand for such a community.

We have agreed to fund NEWGENDEV.ORG for an additional 6 months. We will continue to be active sponsors and offer promotions and specials to www.NEWGENDEV. ORG members.

I want to congratulate everyone in creating a community for yourselves on the Internet.

www.NEWGENDEV. ORG , your devotee community on line.”

If ever the argument was to be made that devotees are inherently socially inept, one would have to look no farther devotee groups for proof. With the sole exception of the ParaDevo Boards, dev groups that aren't centered around sharing pictures etc. never last, and even the ones based around sharing don't always fare too well. NEWGENDEV.ORG was unique not in that it failed, but rather how.

“Hello everyone.

Today, I regret announcing that I am retiring as President of Chairem
INTERNATIONAL.

In the last 6 months, I have lost 2 friends, a family member and faced
difficult health issues with a member of our family. On Wednesday, 30th
of January I experienced a minor heart attack that took me to the
hospital. This coming week I will be undergoing major tests and all the
pleasures that anyone who experiences this encounters. I am releaving
myself of everything stressful in my life.

Over the last 2 years I have been fortunate to know a wonderful person
who is responsible and honest who I feel confident handing the
operations to. She has been involved with the operation of Chairem since
Dec 6, 2006.

Delicia stepped forward and has taken over all operations of Chairem
INTERNATIONAL as of Thursday Jan 31st. I will remain to assist in the
transition period and will continue to provide service maintaining our
websites.

All our models have been notified of what has happened and they remain
committed to working with Chairem INTERNATIONAL. The first model I
contacted was Sharry Konopski who assured me her commitment to our
goals and to Chairem INTERNATIONAL no matter how many times she is
contacted by others.

In closing, I want to thank all Chairem INTERNATIONAL fans and friends
for your support over the past nine years. I assure you that the legacy
of Chairem INTERNATIONAL, our original goals, our dedication to
individuals with disabilities and their loyal friends will continue
under the leadership of Delicia Hermosa.

My best regards,” Feb. 3^rd , 2008

This was continued...

“To all members of this group.
I'd like to make a formal and public apology to the President of
Chairem INTERNATIONAL, Delicia Hermosa, all the models of Chairem
INTERNATIONAL and to you the general public.

In October 2007, I started a community called NEWGENDEV.Org under
the ownership name of Rick Shannon. The idea was for a community
for individuals to share their collections without having promotions
from commercial vendors.

It was my intent to create this community and be the sole sponsor of
the site in an attempt to block any other vendor from marketing in
the site. My goal was to have an exclusive location for the
community to share and also, to be able to post promotions on behalf
of Chairem where no other media outlets could respond.

I created the site without the support of Delicia or the models of
Chairem and hid that I was in fact the owner of the site. I
apologize deeply to Delicia, my friend and all those who have known
me over these many years. Those who know me best, know this is much
out of character.

Recently NEWGENDEV encountered a "suspect member" who used the site
to offer some of our legitimate members a "private file of his
favourite pictures." Those who accepted the file were asked for
their email address to send it to. The "suspect member" then started
sending thousands of spam messages. In turn, The same person has
gone into yahoo groups and gained access to other persons email
addresses and done the same. Be warned: When you post a message in
yahoo groups ( and a member has their account set to receive emails)
they can see your full email address. This person has used this
information to spam members in many groups.

I do not know where this person began this campaign of spamming or
why. I have since closed NEWGENDEV. Even Delicia Hermosa has been
effected by these email spams.

As many of you know, I experienced a heart attack in January and I
have retired from Chairem INTERNATIONAL. I have given full control
to Delicia Hermosa and I have no direction in the operation of the
organization. I ask for the forgiveness of my friends, for
compassion from vendors who I showed none too and that the devotee
community can heal from the damage I have caused. I have not been
active on the internet to be aware of the goings on, nore do I spend
time in groups any longer. This, like many things I have felt
passionate about I have set aside with no plans to return.

Please understand that this reflects on my poor judgement and should
no way be attributed to Delicia or any of the Chairem Models.

Sincerely,” Feb. 20^th, 2008

So, in a ludicrous attempt to corner the "lucrative" disabled fetishist market, they accidentally dropped an a-bomb on the community they were trying to foster, in addition to any associated groups. I'm not sure how connected his heart attack was to all of this, but I felt like he included way more personal detail than was necessary for someone who was simply announcing his retirement.

Despite all of this I cannot fully shame Chairem. They've done some outright shady if not illegal stuff in their time. Yes they are annoying, but that's really just being competitive, and when they sell more the models do benefit; this is undeniable. More than that though we do share a common dream.

“Sharry Konopski, Deeyana and myself are very pleased to share with
you this special announcement that comes with a short history lesion.

In Dec 1999, Deeyana, Sharry and I set forth to develop a modeling
group, that would allow a model the ability to create media for
individuals with a unique attraction in a fashion that was safe for
the model and dignified.

We established a Mission Statement which remains unchanged to this
day ( you may view out mission statement in our file section. Our key
objective was to eliminate the demand or desire to view media deemed
covert, "candid" or stalking. We three believed that if quality
material was made available by models with consent to being filmed,
that media collected by using a hidden camera would be of less
interest and would no longer be in vouge.

The internet is filled with shared clips of unsuspecting women,
transferring from their wheelchair to their cars, women with
disabilities walking through malls unaware they are being followed
and video taped. Mothers and daughters enjoying themselves with
family at Disneyland and other public locations became targets for
hidden video that was then sold and shared on the internet.

In May of this year, I was approached by the person who has spent
nearly 50 years collecting this material who told me he was no longer
interested in selling it (because it had stopped selling). He
approached me with the cost to buy his complete collection ( 640
hours worth approx) that spans from home movie 8mm taken in the
1950's to the high quality DVD video of today. Many of you own his
work.

On April 1, 2007 I received a legal and binding agreement from Bob
Edmonds to sell to me the rights and all materials he has collected
that has become known as the Crutchman collection. In return for
payment, Mr Edmonds released all materials including the
original "Sharry Konopski devotee video" and a multitude of other
known models materials was presented to Chairem INTERNATIONAL.

Mr Edmonds as you have seen in many yahoo groups has retired from
selling video. The materials he sold in the Crutchman catalog has sat
in a large box beside my desk since early April. With over 60 video
tapes purchased at a premium, there was no question as to what I
would do with them.

I am happy to announce that all materials purchased from Bob Edmonds
have been received in good faith and have now been destroyed. They
will never be seen again and as agreed in our legal agreement, Mr
Edmonds will no longer be selling his collection on the internet or
any other marketing means. Let me be clear, these materials bought
from Mr. Edmonds have been destroyed by Chairem INTERNATIONAL.

While portions of this material is still being sold by Kroespage and
others, Chairem INTERNATIONAL and myself, NAME WITHELD remain
committed to ending the demand for covert video that robs a person of
their privacy and dignity.

I want to thank Bob Edmonds for discharging this material and ending
a long career marketing and covertly video taping in this fashion.” May 26^th, 2007

Of the two of us, I'd say they've done more to combat candid filming than I have with my little blog.

All Devotees Are Rapists

Is it true?

The notion itself is ridiculous, and somehow it is still able to mutate into a question or a statement of fact. Still we must reply, no. Devoteeism is so often linked with coercive behaviors that it becomes easy for the uninitiated to fall prey to such a ridiculous argument. I've seen it happen before, and argued against it, but it never really matters.

The mere concept of devoteeism, apart from its actual practice, is enough to light many tempers aflame, and it is here that most of the detractors to devoteeism lose their rationality. It is ridiculous to propose that all devotees are rapists for a number of reasons.

To begin with, it is generally unwise to speak in absolutes. This is just a general principle of theory. It is rare indeed to find a rule to which there exists no exception. This is even more problematic when we attempt to explain human behavior. 

Take cross-dressing for example. Looking at cross dressing only as it applies to men (or those born into male bodies), we can find a number of reasons for this behavior which have wildly different origins.

In gay culture there is drag, once called 'camp', which has a historical legacy of crossdressing as a method of parodying straight culture and normative gender and sexual roles.

Next we have transsexuals. Generally speaking, Transsexuals, who have been diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder, have the brains of women, or at least with many typically female traits, within a male body. In technical terms it has been argued that their behavior is not actually cross dressing because they dress to match their true selves. This is to be distinguished though from transgender people, who simply enjoy taking on the role of the opposite sex but do not feel as though they were born into the wrong body.

Then there are Transvestites, which generally fits what many would think of as the “typical” cross dresser. However, even this isn't complete. There are Transvestites who simply enjoy dressing in and of itself, and then there are Transvestic Fetishists, who find they are aroused by cross dressing. In a technical sense this can be distinguished from Autogynophilia wherein a man is sexually aroused by thinking of himself as a woman.

This is nowhere near where it ends. There are hijras, two-spirits, androgynes, intersexed, bigender, genderqueer, genderfluid, pangender, metagender, and many other labels for describing the feelings and motivations leading to behaviors like cross-dressing. Further complicating this is that the above categories are imposed on humans by humans. They are attempts to organize and distinguish human behavior, and yet they are imperfect. Humans don't always stick to or within just one of these at a time or over their lifetime.

It would be ignorant to say all cross-dressers are like Wild Bill and it is equally ignorant to say all devotees are rapists. However that isn't to say that there aren't some links between a violent sexuality and a fixation on the disabled. There definitely are.

I've seen amputee groups where pictures have been traded of girls, and it more often seems to be girls than guys, tied up with one or more of their limbs chopped off, blood streaming out from the stump(s), usually accompanied by fearful, teary eyed looks of terror. While some devs clearly gravitate toward this it actually occupies a separate fetish entirely, called "guro". The one caveat I can offer, though sadly without any tangible proof, is that in my experience over the years it has been more common to find dev groups which openly and vocally prohibit such violent imagery. It may be disturbing, but this is the truth of human sexuality. Some people, as they mature, find themselves sexually excited at scenes of violence and suffering.

The same thing happens with rape.

There does exist the sub-genre of “rape porn” which involves simulated rape filmed with the explicit intent of causing arousal. Within this sub-genre of film it is possible to find material which features the abuse of disabled women. Of course this sadly has its real life counterpart as well. I have also met self identified wannabes who enjoy, non-sexually, the notion of having a spinal cord injury, and, sexually, the idea of being raped. Ideally, for this person it was both at once.

But which is the devotee? The rape fetishist who enjoys the enhanced power dynamic (physically at least) of a disabled partner, or the wannabe who enjoys being raped? The wannabe I knew did not identify as a devotee. Of course, I can not be absolutely sure, but she never seemed intimately familiar with any of the common devotee locales, and as such I'm inclined to believe her.

What though of the rape fetishist? A quick jaunt into any of the numerous books about BDSM culture will show you people who enjoy the act of rape and/or being raped in a fantastic or fetishistic sense, and yet do not engage in actual rape. I have often read that rape is more concerned with power and control than anything explicitly sexual. I think most of this argument has grown from a desire to quash the fallacy that women invite these attacks by dressing or acting provocatively. While it is true that women do not invite rape upon themselves, and that fault lies entirely on the sexual offender, I have never been able to find a case of a gay man who raped women. Though to counter that there are definitely cases of ostensibly straight men raping and otherwise sexually assaulting other men.

In attempting to define the rape fetishist as either a devotee or not a devotee, we must first examine how we define a devotee. If our definition is a simple one such as, “A person who is, at least in part, attracted to people with disabilities, or a certain type of disability.”, then the answer would appear to be a murky, “Maybe.”

As we have seen with cross-dressing it is difficult to make broad assumptions about what motivates a given behavior. I think it is certainly possible for the rape fetishist to be a devotee, and for devotees to be rapists, and for rape fetishists to be simply fetishists and not sexual predators. You don't need to explore BDSM culture very long before you find people talking at length about the ethics behind “rape scenes” and “consensual non-consent”.

The fact is that sometimes the rape fetishists mentioned above will meet the wannabe and they will find their mutually reinforcing weirdness makes for a wonderful and satisfying relationship. Sometimes that happens and that is as far as it ever goes. In fact, noted dev blogger ParaGirl has written before about playing scenes integrating both disability and consensual non-consent with her girlfriend, Heather.

So we know there are some connections between rape fetishists, and devotees, but there isn't really any empirical evidence about the overlap between the two. Though this may be true I think it is at least possible to infer some trends.

To begin with, I do have my biases. I'm generally unacquainted with “rape porn” save for a single unhappy accident while searching through poorly labeled torrents once upon a midnight dreary. And, yes, I crowed, “Nevermore.” I am, quite predictably, far more acquainted with devotee porn.

There is some slight overlap. Candi, of Candisland.com, did make a movie, as far as I know, at the request of her fans called “The Intruder”. I've never seen it, but here is how it is described on her site,

“This one is so scary. My cameraman has been watching me and breaks in to have his way with me. He takes my chair and I have to crawl and drag myself across the floor and through the house to find a phone. Was it only a dream?”

All 35 minutes of it can be yours for just $199. Dev porn is certainly rare, and most people involved in its production know this and take full advantage of its inflated demand. It normally trades at premium prices compared to virtually everything else “normal” (normal here can refer to anything you'd commonly find in a sex shop, which actually gets quite bizarre). Still though, a quick browsing of Candi's store will show you that she routinely offers videos 1/3 longer than “The Intruder” for ¼ of the price.

Generally the average price I've seen for dev porn hovers somewhere around $1 per minute of video. If this price is derived due to its rarity on the market, then we can infer that, within the dev network at least, rape porn or anything suggestive of it, is even more rare. Indeed, this is the only video of its kind of which I am aware.

The caveat here, is that, as far as I know, “The Intruder” was made based on the requests of her fan club. Candi, and many of the other Dev agencies will allow devs to make very specific special requests for a price which often varies, though I do seem to recall often falling somewhere in the neighborhood of $1000. It could be that there exists an army of dev rapists who also enjoy rape porn, but are economically oppressed and rarely able to finance multiple ventures. 

Indeed, Candi has no qualms about keeping special requests private if you prefer. It is entirely possible that there is a mountain of secretly recorded and distributed rape and non-con dev porn floating around out there. Still though, when I have looked at devotee fan art and fiction, both of which involve a time cost and little more, there is still a startlingly low incidence of rape and related incidents.

So, are devotees rapists? Maybe some of them are, but the bulk appear to be normal people with an exotic kink who are simply interested in seeing and enjoying what turns them on. Rarely does that include scenes of rape or other forms of coercion. So, while many devotees may engage in coercive behavior, it appears to rarely be rape, and more often as a means to an end, and rarely an end in itself.

The Problem of Presence

Devotees, like everyone, have an obligation not to bring harm or needless suffering upon others. There are a lot of ways the argument can evolve from this premise, but I feel that an imperative starting point, especially given the state of relations between devotees and the disabled in the information age, is to examine how we violate this obligation as it regards the disabled. In the past I've talked about both the explicit ways in which devotees impair and harm the disabled. Though there is still more to consider.

Now the basic premise I've set up in the past is one which says that you do not take what is not freely given. Unless you have consent, it is not right to copy and trade someone's pictures, videos, etc. This does even extend into the issue of piracy, and the byzantine network of groups at Yahoo are no stranger to leaked photosets, however I would argue that it is OK to set speculation on piracy aside for the time being. There are much more pertinent issues to consider.

Prior to the internet we did not see the same kind of widespread networks for fetishists, whereby a man in Sweden could form a directory that would connect thousands of people from the U.K. and Germany to the U.S. and Australia in an instant. Devoteeism as we know it today is a thoroughly modern phenomenon. Indeed while it still relies on old methods, it has expanded with the internet, for better, or worse, into Facebook, and MySpace, Flickr and most obviously YouTube.

These are fantastic tools for sharing and allow devotees, and really every other fetish group to do the same. Fetishists have become so ubiquitous that they have created their own social networks. For those of you who remember how the dev webrings and IRC chats ran in the 90's, it seems like things have definitely come a long way since then. The problem is that everyone else has come along too, including the disabled.

I like to believe that devotees and the disabled can peacefully coexist without hurting each other, though realistically I know this won't be possible without a bit of work.

The fact is that where YouTube and every other Web 2.0 success story have done wonders for devs, they have done wonders for everyone. Now we're all existing in much closer proximity. Devs and the disabled are no longer cordoned off into our own separate islands of webspace, but for once we're all sharing certain areas, like YouTube. The problem, as always, is that some devs don't know, or don't care, when they might be hurting or interfering with the disabled.

There are a lot of obvious ways this occurs. There are plenty of devs who will contact disabled women on YouTube pretending to be disabled and hoping to make contact. It's a long heart breaking story, which anyone familiar enough with the issue has no doubt heard or participated in more times than they'd care to admit. While this is one of the more explosive consequences of the presence of coercive devs, and perhaps even a byproduct of devs in general, it is not where the negative effects end.

In The Psychology of Disability, Carolyn Vash recounts how, while initially acquiring a disability may be a traumatizing experience leading many down a long path of depression, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. People who acquire disabilities do learn to adapt and overcome their setbacks and blossom into a happy and fulfilling life. One of the key difficulties she identifies in this process is that of convincing the newly disabled to accept that this is a possibility, though she points out one of the best tools in helping them adapt and overcome is being in contact with others who have endured similar setbacks and emerged fulfilled, sometimes even more than before.

It does not take any magnificent stroke of the imagination to realize how YouTube, Facebook, or Flickr could play a significant role in helping people who have acquired disabilities adapt and overcome by allowing them to connect with others and work toward healing and self acceptance. Yet we can also understand just how much damage devotees can cause in this delicate process by poisoning the well. Perhaps at this time, more than any other, our presence alone is most damaging.

There have been plenty of cases of people in rehab for spinal cord injuries and amputations who have uploaded a video of themselves on an FES bike, or parallel bars, or just recuperating in the hospital who have found themselves the unwitting objects of the devoted gaze. Devotees already earn a bad name for impairing the lives of the disabled online, but as some have pointed out, as our society becomes increasingly integrated with the internet, and embraces public sharing, what we mean by “life online” grows less and less distinguishable from “life offline”. When I was growing up we used to measure our amount of time spent “on the computer”, though with the advent of smart phones it is easier to speak of our time “away from a computer”.

Our presence and its effect has the potential to expand greatly in the next few decades depending on the supply of rare earth metals amongst other things. Whatever the case, we have an obligation to ensure that we do not negatively impact the lives of the disabled through our actions, which at some points may extend to include our presence alone.

When you see videos posted from rehab, do not favorite them, do not 'like' them, do not save them, do not share them, do not post comments to them. Keep them out of the dev network entirely. These are people who are in the midst of an oftentimes painful and jarring transition, one of the more vulnerable periods in someone's life, and it is to be left alone that they and others enduring such a trial may learn and prosper from this. Your presence serves only to pollute the process and bring harm to those you would love.

Furthermore...

There is a very common argument that devotees use when they are berated by the disabled for having their feelings at all. It has been stated many ways in many different languages but generally runs as follows, “The disabled dislike devotees because they cannot accept their disability.” The belief here is that if, and only if, the disabled could come to understand that their bodies are ultimately no different in value from those of the able bodied, that there is no shame to be had in crutches or a leg bag, that they possess equal capacity for love, discovery, style, grace, power, and yes even sexiness, that they would come to realize that there is nothing wrong with someone appreciating what they have to offer.

Some disabled people have come around to the idea, though I find it ultimately too reductive and simplistic to apply to everyone. After all, there are many other terrible reasons why a disabled person may dislike devotees which has nothing to do with how they view their bodies. However, if you accept the common dev argument, then does it not follow that you ought not interfere with the very delicate process of adjustment to one's new body which can lead to such negative opinions of devs?

Harassing the disabled in rehab only works against your own interests.

Shame, Suicide, & All That

In her speech on “Lessons in Leadership”, Mallory Weggeman does a good job of pointing out that there are a number of secondary costs which come with disability. She speaks primarily in relation to her own paralysis, though many of her statistics seem to apply quite well to the broader spectrum of disabilities in general.

“Statistically, I will never hold a job. Statistically, I'll never graduate college. I'll never have a long term relationship. I'll never have a family. I'll spend most of my days in and out of various hospitals...I have a life expectancy of about fifty now because of depression and suicide...”

It is painful to listen as her voice cracks and strains with what sounds like sadness as she reads these off, no doubt in some small way encountering some of the stark realities she and many others like her must navigate. She cares deeply, and likely on some primal level still feels the fear any of us would associate with having such predictions applied to ourselves. Indeed, at one point she refers to having once thought of paralysis as a nightmare. Of course though her speech does not end on that note.

“You figure out how to get along with your life. You make choices about how to fit your desires in. If there were a way to make it go away, I would probably do that. I am face to face with the heartbreaking realization that it is staggeringly unlikely that I will ever be loved...The choice I have now is to spend my life in bitter regret for the life that I could have had, or to accept myself as I am with pride.”

These are words which indicate a struggle for self-acceptance fought within a world indifferent to your strife. They speak of the need to accept yourself and your circumstance and move on, despite what staggering likelihoods may remain. They speak of two roads from which we may choose, reducible to extremes of 'life' and 'death'. These are the words of a devotee.

What is often lost in the common discourse over devoteeism, is that it's not all fun and exploitation. Indeed, for some it is neither. I haven't known a single dev who didn't feel hopeless or depressed in some fashion, for even just a moment, no matter how short lived, regarding their deviant status. The fact that joins Mallory and our quoted dev is that they both have a minority status, and the torment of searching for self acceptance.

Suffering from depression does a lot to shorten your lifespan. People with depression are more likely to suffer kidney failure, strokes, or die of breast cancer, and it can weaken your immune system meaning you'll spend more time sick or seeing the doctor. Depression can disrupt your sleep patterns (and poor sleeping habits can have a host of negative effects on their own), it can raise your blood pressure, if you're a dad your children are more likely to have behavioral, emotional, and social problems, you'll have more pain, and pain actually hurts more when you're depressed.

In fact, most suicides are committed by people suffering from depression. Furthermore, suicide is more common among the divorced and those who live alone. People may roll their eyes, but there is a link between LGBTQ suicides and discrimination. Yes there are differences, though I don't see any reason why that same phenomena couldn't transfer to other groups.

While all of this is a heavy burden to consider on its own, what is truly shocking is that the greatest predictor of a future suicide attempt is a past suicide attempt. As a devotee, you can be more likely to go there, and if you survive, you're more likely to go again.

I've been there.

 This is the rope I tried to hang myself with.

I've been there specifically because I hated myself because of my feelings, and it sucks.

 This is the shell from the gun I had in my mouth.

This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you it doesn't have to be that way and that there is hope and happiness in your future, but it all depends on whether you can bring yourself to accept and love what is. I'm supposed to tell you that you should never commit suicide and that if you ever feel like it you should call 1-800-273-TALK immediately. 

You should, but I say this with a measure of hypocrisy.

Honestly, I've never believed the “It Gets Better” campaign. It's a good strategy, and a nice sentiment, but I can't believe that the universal “it” will naturally improve with time. I was assaulted in my workplace once only because I was “homosexual”. Of course he never bothered to sit down and have a conversation with me about my orientation etc., but that I deviated from the heteronorm at all was enough to incur his wrath. It wasn't the first time. I've worked other places where I was harassed almost daily and threatened as well.

Sometimes, especially tight times like these, you can get stuck in those places. Sometimes it really doesn't get better. You can come to terms with yourself, and that's important. Though other people change on their own time, and tend to be slow and fearful about the whole process. Sometimes things just stay the same.

Devotees & The Disabled: Mutually Oppressed

I went through a long period of my life where I wanted to study the disability rights movement, and the politics surrounding ableism in society, but I felt that as a devotee it was inappropriate. I felt that this was not my, or any devotees place. My thoughts on this have shifted since then.

Currently I believe it is actually beneficial for devotees, the transabled, pretenders, cast fetishists, foot lovers, furverts, Star Wars enthusiasts, and even the disabled to study disability. I believe that there are many barriers we erect without being aware, and this is especially true for devotees.

However, the study of disability by a devotee need neither be one of self flagellation nor of some abstract sexual urge, but rather one of self-advocacy. As some have pointed out, in the West we are held back by an antiquated system of values surrounding sex inherited from the Victorian Era when the act lost its value in pleasure, and instead became one of pure procreation. This system of cultural values is largely what dictates where the devotee finds themselves relative to everyone else.

However, there is something else at work which makes the devotee perceived as more bizarre than say a balloon fetishist or a furry. I believe that in part there is a strain of ableism.

Of course, devotees are no stranger to the fact that there is a stigma surrounding disabled sexuality. Though of course devotees carry their own stigma. In Gendering Disability (which every devotee should read), there is a paper which details the experiences of one researcher who took a serious academic look at devotees. She mostly limited herself to lurking on one board for amputee devs, but what I read was unnerving.

Having grown up a child of the internet generation, I was in many ways raised into sexual maturity amongst a “culture of devoteeism”, as I imagine no person in the history of the world before me has done. I generally thought I had a very good idea of what devotees were like and what they did and did not do, yet what I read here shocked me. I do not mean to downplay the seriousness of issues surrounding the abuse of the disabled by devotees with cameras, but I had honestly suspected that, as far as the internet is concerned, it got no worse than that. I was wrong.

The group observed in this paper was fond of sharing their “sightings”. This refers to sharing stories of something as simple as seeing an amputee in the mall, or a blind person on the sidewalk. While unnerving, this seems to be ultimately harmless enough. However, there is a darker side. These people also felt that there was nothing wrong with posting the time and location of these sightings, along with detailed descriptions of the people they saw.

It is an old and sad truth, which only grows sadder with age, that the disabled are overwhelmingly more likely  to be the victims of sexual assault as compared to the able bodied. When you view the behaviors of these devotees, building the infrastructure for and even tacitly encouraging, stalking, it is easy to understand why we have the reputation we do. What I have read suggests that disabled children comprise the bulk of victims though, so this isn't a phenomenon quite attributable to most devotees.

I believe that devotees are created, not born. As such it becomes important to look at the factors which influence this. The problem we must acknowledge before beginning this is that we do not know why or how devotees are created.

Freud had a theory that as children there are certain moments where their minds become susceptible to influence and whatever they happen to observe they will become fixated on. His reasoning went that because children were often crawling on the floor around the age when this “fixation” happened, that it explained the high prevalence of foot fetishes. More recently the neuro-scientist V.S. Ramachandran, who everyone should know of by now, has made some interesting proposals regarding “neural crosswiring” along the areas of the brain responsible for mapping the body, and the area responsible for sexual function.

I realize that there are a number of theories out there, thus far none of them proven regarding acquisition of paraphilia. However, I feel that it is quite appropriate for us to understand that regardless of how a given paraphilia, in this case devoteeism, is acquired, the world in which the afflicted find themselves has an effect on how they understand themselves, and act.

The dominant stereotypes we hold about the disabled are overwhelmingly negative. These too owe their present manifestations in part to a harmful historical legacy. Things have improved since the Bronze Age when the disabled were not allowed inside Jewish Temples , or the Medieval period when they were dressed up as court jesters and abused for entertainment. Indeed we've come a long way, and yet we still have a long way to go.

The truth of the matter is that human sexuality stretches far beyond our average conception. For example, your grandmother may still masturbate. The disabled are fully sexual beings though this is quite often ignored, or even more absurdly, and harmfully, treated as taboo. 

 This image represents one of the only instances in recent pop-cultural media where the subject of disabled sexuality has been directly addressed. Also, due to reruns and syndication it is one of the most repeated, giving it greater cultural influence than others.

The mechanism through which this occurs is one of imposed silence. It would be political suicide these days for someone to publicly oppose the notion of disabled sexuality, but we have many things to say about that which is done, and less to say about that which is left undone. Ignorance is easier, and harder to detect.

In this way whatever calls to mind a positive association between “disability” and “sexuality” is met with the same, or an even harsher retribution. While things are changing, there is a large part of the world that wants to ignore disabled sexuality. This is where we come in.

In some sense you can argue that the mere existence of devotees naturally works in opposition to this repressive force. The traces we leave behind online, especially in places like YouTube, scatters the notion of disabled sexuality further. We unwittingly carry the message, though rarely in the best of ways.

It broaches the silence imposed on the subject calling it to attention. Now, much can be said for the damage likely caused by someone's first notion of an association between “disability” and “sex” being YouTube slideshow of stolen pictures, though I do hold hope that more positive efforts will counter this. Though devotees wishing to leave behind the shame they often experience for their exotic desire have an imperative to do more than this.

I have heard countless devotees discuss the issue of shame, guilt, and even suicide. I've been there myself, more times than I'd like to recall. If we do wish to one day see a new world where we may live not merely without shame, but perhaps even with pride, if we care not just for ourselves, but for our fellow devotees, and even for those not born yet, then by all means we ought to take an active role in helping create it.

This begins at the personal level. Every devotee must strive to deal with their feelings with integrity. We ought not hurt, nor take advantage of others. As I've said before this means that you can't simply take every picture and video you find. This may not sound like it is the most appealing option, but if you agree that you don't want to hurt those you love, then you won't.

This goes farther than just what you use though. Streetsie is a blog with a lot of devotee content, some of it poorly written and obviously fictional, but still of interest to the well informed dev, however, I don't go there. In addition to all the writing they produce, they have a gallery dedicated to sharing photos. Some of these are fine, but the vast majority are not. I don't give Streetsie my traffic because doing so would be supporting their community of coercive abasiophilia.

While we may work for the creation of a new world through passivity, that is not enough. We can refuse certain material, and ignore certain websites, but this is just a refusal to contribute to their project, and does nothing to stop them. We must do more.

I used to spend a lot of time pontificating to coercive devotees that their behaviors were terrible, immoral, and hurting the disabled as well as themselves, and after months and months of work it barely had an impact. I heard people parroting my arguments from time to time, but it was without sincerity. When I stopped preaching, I stopped hearing my echo.

We can not stop devotees, or anybody for that matter, from acting on impulse ignorance, though that does not mean that we can't work to reduce the incidence of it.

In my experience coercive devotees will rarely listen, though the disabled are another story. I would encourage everyone to do what I do, and take an active role in warning the disabled about coercive devotees. We are still by a large a rare topic of conversation amongst the disabled, and thus there are many who wander the net unaware.

The simplest strategy is, “If you see something, say something.”

Time and again I have seen disabled people on YouTube who unwittingly become the object of dev admiration. Sometimes they realize it, though more often they don't. Here is where you can help. Send them a message. I've sent plenty of these over the years. It doesn't have to be anything dramatic, but explain to them that they might be getting some attention they didn't expect. Let them know what they can do, and how to stay safe in the future. At the end, and this always goes at the end, add something to this effect. “Again, I'm sorry if this has shocked or hurt you in any way, while some devotees do bad things, we're not all bad people.”

It's nice and subtle like that. You are being straight and honest with them by disclosing your status as a devotee (which you ought to do) in a gentle way, while pointing out, with your message as tangible proof, that not all devotees are coercive. Also, it's at the end. You never know what someone's past with devotees may be like. If it's bad, then they might hear devotee and head for the hills. Trust me, always put it at the end.

This part is often controversial enough. I have been on the receiving end of a very harsh stream of devoted vitriol for doing this. To be honest it hurts. I wish we could all get along, especially the small group of people who know what it feels like to live with this condition, but in the end it is worth the effort.

There is one last strategy I would encourage everyone to take up.

It is not merely enough that we warn the disabled as they are violated. It minimizes the amount of harm caused, but we must also invest in more preventative measures. If we can stop the problem before it starts, we can win the game.

I once combed through Google trying to find every Spinal Rehab center I could. Most of them, curiously, did not have any way of being contacted by email. I was too embarrassed to use a phone, but I gathered together about all ten or so I could find that allowed for email contact and sent them a message. I asked that they try to include something in their program which would help their patients understand the importance of privacy settings.

The advent of the information age has had far reaching effects and in many ways society is still learning how to adjust to those changes. In general people have a lack of proper education regarding the internet and digital media. Rehabilitation is the first place to begin explaining to the disabled that it can be wise to act cautiously.

If we act in this way our actions help us two-fold. To begin we work to quash the efforts coercive devotees, stopping their treachery as and before it happens. Further though we work to spread awareness of those devotees opposed to sexual exploitation.

Creating Good Lives

I came across something rather interesting in light of yesterday's post.

I was doing some reading about human sexuality and Abasiophilia, the technical term for devotees of non-amputation related mobility impairment, when I came across a few fleeting references to an interesting, and allegedly successful theoretical approach to helping sex offenders. The interesting thing about the “Good Lives” model is that while it was designed initially for sex offenders it has shown success in helping a diverse array of non-traditionally coercive populations, transvestites for example, appropriately manage their feelings and accomplish their goals while not hurting others OR themselves. I'm still getting acquainted with it, and, as with every theory, it does have its detractors, though I feel the general principles of the model are in line with what I've been discussing.

The devoted are, to put it gently, exotic. We definitely deviate from the norm. I'd argue that this is very likely true cross culturally as well. The common argument coming from a layman's perspective on evolutionary psychology raised by academics, the devoted, and the disabled alike is that humans have a hardwired tendency to seek healthy mates who display a capability for child bearing, and that the physically disabled are thusly disadvantaged in pairing and mating. This has led to a number of theories, some slightly more ridiculous than others, regarding attraction and mating.

As sexual minorities we're presented with our own set of disadvantages, a few of which surely overlap with those of the disabled. We all feel the pressure to meet a mold that does not fit us. It is one which ignores and in some cases works against us. The notion of a disabled sexuality, or a sexuality which appreciates the disabled is treated as a joke. Despite this, the devoted of every stripe and fancy are not condemned to a life of sexless banality. There are other healthier, safer, non coercive options available.

There is something interesting to consider in light of this though.

If we are to assume that there are outlets for devoteeism some of which are “better” than others and which do not promote coercion, then we naturally also assume that some are “bad”. Just as we do not yet know what causes paraphilias, whether coercive or otherwise, or what exactly leads someone to become a sex offender, we also do not know how to stop it. We can run as many episodes of To Catch A Predator as we want, but child sexual abuse will, sadly, still occur. Further, people will continue to fantasize about the sexual abuse of children. The same applies to devotees and literally every other possible sexual preference or turn-on. You can not stop it, you can merely change how and where it flows.

If we assume sexually coercive or exploitive behavior is wrong, then we must also assume behaviors which promote sexual coercion to be wrong as well.

So let's take your average dev. I assume that they A) have a given set of sexual desires and that B) they will seek an outlet for these desires. Generally here I'm assuming a generic person with abasiophilia. The sparse academic literature on Abasiophilia and related “disorders” points out, as anyone could have told you, that these primarily afflict men. While I certainly agree that it's silly to divide the world into only male and female, most of the population identifies as one of these two and it is a decent starting point for looking at human sexuality. Computational-Neuroscientists working within the paradigm have produced some interesting initial findings regarding the differences between male and female sexuality.

Assuming this generic dev though, there are a number of options they are presented with. There are many obvious sources for satiating this desire, and some of those involve coercion, or taking advantage of material obtained through coercion (I call this indirect coercion). There are though some factors mitigating where a given devotee will go to satiate these desires.

By now most everyone on the internet is familiar with with the “troll”, that person who engages in disruptive or outright anti-social behavior often simply because they can. Trolls are everywhere, and sexual minorities are no stranger to their presence in their communities. What I find interesting is that trolls are in a unique position to affect the behavior of devotees. They are, in some ways, like dogs herding cattle, nipping at their heels to keep them in groups.

Trolling is a latter day pass time which generally involves finding idiots, and the internet has plenty of those, and mocking them relentlessly, sometimes treading into morally and legally questionable areas. Though really anyone can be trolled. I think though it is possible for there to be, in the parlance of 4Chan (and I cringe saying this) “trolling for moralfags/great justice” This isn't really anything new. Anyone familiar with the internet at large can tell you about infiltrating websites like Stormfront. Indeed, Anonymous recently hacked a white supremacist group disrupting their operations and conclusively linking Ron Paul to his despicable history of racism.

Regarding devoteeism, trolls have the ability to provide incentives for various behaviors. Consider the following...

If you troll devotees everywhere, that means on fiction sites, picture sites, video sites, discussion groups, really cool blogs (wink wink) then there is really no difference. Sure, men will probably still gravitate toward visual media, but by and large they're going to get trolled equally no matter where they go. However, if you troll unequally, then some areas will inevitably become preferable to others. In effect there is an ability to help guide devs away from coercive behaviors and toward non-coercive ones. Again, this applies to really every sexual quirk. 
 
I'm trying to expand on a point I raised a while ago. When we are treated like trash, it is ridiculous to expect us to behave any other way. We are still responsible for our own actions and by all means ought to place a concern of others suffering over our own sexual gratification, and indeed, some devs do. Though just as we must be careful of the consequences of our actions, so too must trolls and literally everyone else. 
 
There is some evidence coming out now which finds that treating juvenile offenders on an individual basis is rarely successful compared to approaches which involve treating the entire family. This works to help alter the environment the offender is operating in, and help provide more incentives to improve.

Food for thought. 

Examining The Coercive Devotee's Process of Justification

I recently found a quote by a man on a dev group, both of which I'll keep anonymous. This was posted in response to an article by a girl, who either was abused (if so I believe electronically), and/or became privy to the electronic abuse of the disabled by devotees. What is key to note about her article is that it seeks to call out primarily devotees who steal pictures from social networking sites. As with him, she will remain anonymous.

I want to share and discuss this because here we can see, in the raw, one example of what the process of justification is like for a coercive devotee. It is key to remember that writing of any sort is not a pure record of thought, but rather functions similar to the way the splatter paintings of Jackson Pollock which, many say, provide us with a visual record of the artist's movements. We see emotion and thought processes here expressed only after being presumably filtered through the black box machinery of this man's mind. What we have is the input and the output. What we don't know though is even more.

We are not privy to the context this man was operating in, aside from what he provides us with, and even then that could be flawed information. As a point of due diligence, I do not know if the article I read had been edited, so he could be responding to an entirely different text from what I saw. Moreover, we don't know what of the information he actually absorbed, or how much he read, or how long he spent thinking about it. He may have been under the influence of drugs and alcohol, or have a series of co-occurring “disorders” which in some way remove him from the “standard” model of a devotee we each create in our mind when approaching issues such as these.

This is entry level academic hokum, but I feel it is important to keep in mind when attempting to interpret this. We can spend all day raising hypotheticals, and many of them would be pertinent, but the overall message we should acquire from this is one of modifying our approach to include caution. Normally we could hope to follow the maxim of, “Trust but confirm.”, yet here we have a quote and only a quote to dissect for meaning. All that being said, this is a personal blog, and I'm gonna let myself play it a bit fast and loose.

“I must admit to feelings of guilt about videos and photos taken surreptitiously,
some of them by me. I sort-of justify it to myself by arguing that it's no more
than an extension of a bloke admiring and watching a pretty woman, but I don't
completely convince myself, I must admit. In the end, it boils down to this: I
didn't ask for this quirk in my personality which attracts me to disabled women,
and I can't get rid of it (and believe me, I've tried: I've been through agonies
of guilt and shame when I was younger), and it does nobody any harm, unlike some other sexual - shall we say - eccentricities. I wouldn't dream of harming a
disabled woman in any way, and have had mutually fulfilling relationships with
two: my ex-wife, who is blind and has other disabilities, and with whom I'm
still good chums even though we've been divorced for 21 years, and a friend who
is quadriplegic due to spinal muscular atrophy. The latter knows all about my
attraction to disabled women, and accepts it.”

First let's condense the facts as they are presented.

He says he has felt guilt over the existence of exploitative material some of which he produces. He argues that creating a physical record of what he sees is equal to a mental one. Yet he admits that even this does not work to totally convince him.

Here we see his second justification which goes as follows: 1) I am devoted not by choice. 2) It is  an ineliminable aspect of my personality 3) It doesn't hurt anybody. He then compares it to other sexual quirks, yet hesitates to name them.

He goes on to say that he actually doesn't want to harm disabled women. He adds, as proof that he has had two “mutually fulfilling relationships” with two disabled women, one being his ex-wife, and the other being simply a friend. He clarifies that his friend knows “all about” his feelings and accepts it.

Okay, so while he says he feels guilt over the material, and that he has even produced some himself (perhaps he is still “producing”), I think it is also fair to assume that he “uses” it, if you know what I mean. We have two processes of justification for this, the first of which seems to play the role of a placeholder in his mind. He defends the act itself by equating the creation of a physical, swappable  record (and knowing devs, I think it's fair to assume he's done a bit of swapping) with a personal memory. His rather abnormal behavior is held as equal to a natural even arguably somewhat involuntary tendency of humans in general: to remember a pretty face, etc.

He seems to say it to make himself forget that he feels bad, and it works, at least temporarily. Yet there is something inescapable. He feels that this is an ineffective argument, and it's quite presumable that he doesn't really believe pictures and film are not the same as a wandering eye.

Here we encounter his second process of justification, which is composed of three main parts. Now, unlike the above, the first two thirds of this don't seek to defend the act itself, but rather focus on him. He denies responsibility for his feelings both in their genesis and continuation. Next he claims that he actions taken on behalf of these feelings, “don't really hurt anyone”. He accomplishes this last piece by comparing it to the vaguely worded “sexual eccentricities”.

So, reading into this a bit...

He denies control of his feelings, and, by some degree of extension, his actions. There is a common argument you'll find crop up among men which says, though often in many more well veiled words, that they need pornography. It is sometimes upgraded a level whereby some men will claim they need or deserve sex. This is a very common justification for rape, especially cases of marital rape. We see this argument presented in its infant form  here, though significantly declawed.

The article he was responding to drew a very pointed comparison between devoteeism and pedophilia, and I believe that it is at least this to which he compares his fetish. It is worth noting that pedophilia, despite the findings of Kinsey and other facts pedophiles use to defend their actions, almost always leads to at least a few “bumps in the road” for the child in question (which is not to say that victims are irreparably damaged mind you). Pedophilia, when physically manifested upon a child through any medium, can be understood then as inherently damaging, regardless of intent.

More to the point though, I do wonder what exactly his quadriplegic friend knows. Certainly she's privy to his attraction, but what of these behaviors he has trouble justifying simply to himself? Does she know? Does his ex-wife? If no, how would they feel if they did? Would they feel violated suddenly finding this out about him?

So looking at his distillation of the pertinent facts of his situation, does this justify his behavior? He knows two women he assures us he has never violated, and while he feels bad about his other behavior, he never chose and is unable to alter his feelings. Are his actions beyond harm? Should he be allowed to photograph and film women without their prior knowledge and consent?

As I've said before, actions like these are not harmless. While he may not dream of harm to disabled women, he certainly executes it by blocking out some parts of his conscious awareness. Stealth filming etc. may appear to be initially absent of harm, but these acts still carry potential to be harmful. As the internet continually embraces sharing and becomes more widespread, the potential for harm and potential magnitude of this harm rises even further. With every iPhone and PC produced his justification grows weaker.

Furthermore, as I have said in earlier posts, I believe that this behavior is harmful to him. What he's going through is a process known as cognitive dissonance. That alone is generally identified as “bad”. However, he is also allowing himself to lose sight of the humanity of others and the consequences, or at least potential consequences, of his actions. He is allowing himself to literally dehumanize others, and thus in some ways remove his humanity. He willingly subverts his own capacity for reason in favor of an animal drive.

Still though, he didn't choose this, and he can't do anything about it. Does he then have some right or need for material featuring disabled women?

No.

There is no way around this. Even he knows this, but tries to forget. That he is successful in this task explains why sexual exploitation on the part of devotees is so prevalent. Even those with a conscience are able to hide themselves from it, in the pursuit of greater gratification.

If he lived in a vacuum absent any human contact whatsoever, then perhaps we could take some small measure of pity on him but such is not the case. He clearly has regular somewhat private internet access. There are plenty of resources for him to get his rocks off looking at women and men who are entirely consenting. Thanks to the same internet that allows his exploitation to expand beyond his control or knowledge, he can even get a lot of this material for free.

Though with pornography we do encounter a number of arguments in opposition. I'm saving these for a later blog, suffice to say, there are some, and not all of them are poorly wrought.

Let us be more than fair and assume though that, for whatever reason this relative abundance of dev porn just doesn't work for him. Maybe he's blind or severely visually impaired, maybe he just can't get off without looking at stealth footage, maybe he's too poor to afford stuff priced at roughly a dollar a minute, maybe he is a pedophile and can only get off to footage of girls well below the legal limit. It doesn't matter. Is this poor, helpless dev then left with nothing else but his little old imagination to get off with (a trait entirely unique to humans by the way)?

Actually, no, he's not.

Even pedophiles, those latter day dalits, have the ability to craft intricate and artful fiction to their heart's desire. Actually, I'm not positive about that. Maybe it is illegal for pedophiles unless it's sanctified as art, but with devotees such a provision doesn't matter. Whatever disability or combination of disabilities, or devotee mashup slash fiction you like, you can write it to your heart's content.

In fact, many do. There's already a number of thriving communities built around this exact behavior. Now, not all of them are perfect. In fact I've found more than I would like which are run side by side with picture trading. Some even incorporate pictures into their stories. It might sound ridiculous on its face but you can take even something as banal as the internet fan-fic and turn it into a real life coercive sexual experience.

My, the ingenuity of the human intellect!

The painfully obvious points I am arguing are as follows.

1) There is never a proper justification for stealth filming and other coercive practices.

2) Devotees have a plethora of other options for satiating their desires.

3) I hope this guy and other devotees can one day come to admit to themselves that they do feel bad about what they are doing and that there are other, healthier, ways they can joyously and non-coercively express their sexuality.