Disability devotee
Encyclopedia : D : DI : DIS : Disability devotee
One attracted to people with disabilities.
The term "devotee" is said to have emerged in Chicago in the early-mid-1980s among a group of men attracted to amputee women and the women amputees with whom they socialised. It was selected because of its alliteration with "amputee," and because of the alarming and unhealthy feel of psychological (in fact, often pseudo-psychological in view of the absence of rigorous scientific studies of the attraction) terms such as "acrotomophilia," "amelotasis," et c. The women and men who coined the term coalesced around Fascination [exeunt], a quarterly journal of devotee fiction and record, published by an amputee woman and her devotee husband. A bird-like badge was produced and marketed in the mid-1990s via Fascination as a discreet symbol of belonging to a nascent devotee community. The term has now entered scientific usage.
Prior to the adoption of the term "devotee," those attracted to disabled people had also called themselves "admirers," "brothers," "hobbyists," and "collectors," inter alia, while their then-tiny world community (united mostly by mail) had been termed "the brotherhood" or "the hobby." Some think the term "collector" was coined by Louise Baker, a US leg amputee who alludes to men who "collect amputees" in her amusing 1946 autobiography, Out on a Limb. Others think the term relates to some devotees' collections of home movies, photographs, news clippings and ephemera of and about disabled people.
Apart from "abasiophiles," et c., devotees have been (and sometimes continue to be) called by others "amputeeists" (Anne Hooper and Phil Hodson, 1970s et seq., after German devotees who had coined the term "amputists"), "amputee fetishists," "monopede maniacs" and a variety of other labels.
Over the past two decades, the term's scope has broadened to encompass all persons attracted to people with disabilities.
A devotee community is appearing on the internet.
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