Should I date a devoté?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Okay, that sounds creepy, I’ll give you that. Some people have no manners.

Would you see it differently if you and a hypothetical girl had been dating for a while, had a mutually fulfilling sex-life where she was attentive to your needs, you both attended underwater basket weaving classes, dealt with tax-unduced stress, watched each other floss, loved the same movies, spent hours discussing Chauser and Football statistics, and were thinking of moving in together AND she occasionally asked to be allowed to look at your legs because it turned her on? Would that still be creepy, or just a thing?

Sorry for being nosy, I just find stuff like this fascinating.

Edit: Reply to post by Ambivalid

62

I thought there might be potential for use of the term “negative” in relation to ‘disability’ to cause some misreading or whatever. I am using it strictly in it’s literal sense. What does disability mean? The inability or difficulty in performing a task (generally speaking). So it’s an inherently negative concept. The ability to walk has been taken away from me; it has been subtracted from my life. This is clearly a negative factor. The ability to feel from below your neck has been taken from you; this, on it’s face, is a negative factor.

What a devotee is attracted to in a disabled person is usually what has been taken away from that person’s life; rather than anything that is an active component to it.

I dont consider my disability to be totally negative, in the sense that I feel that nothing good has come from it; not at all. Honestly, I feel that nothing could be further from the truth.

63

Who is saying that? Definitely not me. I want someone who is into me because they like, and are attracted to, the person that I am, and everything I’ve accomplished in spite of the wheelchair, and all the limitations it presents; not because of it. To believe as if such people aren’t out there, that seems like the real “no way to live” to me.

64

This is interesting about the foot-binding. But, wouldn’t you say that the foot-binding attraction is in itself a very short aberration in social history? After all, evolutionarily, women with crippled feet are ill-suited for a “survival of the fittest” world. Whereas carrying around some junk in the trunk could be an extremely helpful adaptation for survival in many scenarios, I can’t imagine one in which being paralyzed from the neck down would be an advantage.

This is a good point. What I know about the devote community confirms that most devs are into traditionally attractive people who also use whatever really sends them to the moon sexually (braces, wheelchair, protheses, etc). I think most devotes would definitely choose Gisele Bundchen in a chair, if that were an option. BUT, if they had to choose between an able-bodied Gisele and a disabled girl-next-door, they’d go for the disabled girl.

Yup. I think at least 50% of guys don’t even bother to rate me on an attractiveness scale, because the chair is an instant disqualifier. I’m not a “zero” on a scale of one to ten. I’m an “n/a.”

Maybe. :slight_smile:

65

What do you mean exactly? Would she be waiting until this much-later date to even bring up her little ‘thing’, or would I know the entire time and she just wouldn’t be acting on it? Because I don’t think either one would be too likely. If she had a thing for atrophied legs, and was in a relationship with a man with atrophied legs, do you really think a “mutually fulfilling sex-life”, for her, wouldn’t include those skinny legs somehow?

And I don’t know if I’d have a problem with someone I was with finding my skinny legs sexually attractive or not. I mean sure, I’ve had girlfriends who thought they were “cute” and I’ve never had a girl I was with express any dis-pleasure from the sight or feel of them; but to have them be an outright source of sexual arousal I think might be too much for me.

66

But so here’s the question that it all distills down to, I think - is something that’s qualitatively negative in that sense something that is necessarily unattractive? If it isn’t, then we’re going to have a problem identifying what’s behind the nagging sense that it seems like we all have about a person who is super into it. Moles and lisps and gaps in teeth are all things that are negative in roughly the same sense, and they’re things that are for the most part OK to be attracted to. At the very least, it isn’t presumptively crazy to think they’re compelling. At some point you reach a level of negativity, though, that we’ll all agree is unattractive - when a person is mentally ill to the point of incompetence, for instance, it’s creepy to get off on that.

If being in a chair isn’t objectively unattractive, then there’s nothing worrisome about a person being attracted to somebody specifically because they’re in a chair. Even if they’re incredibly specific about what they’re attracted to, i.e. atrophied legs. It would still just be like saying the first thing you noticed about somebody was that they have big breasts or wear glasses or the t-shirt of a band you like. It opens up a whole Pandora’s box to start questioning attraction in terms of what are and what aren’t legitimate touchstones. When you get down to a fine enough level of detail about what attracts you to another person specifically as compared to a million other superficially identical people, it all starts to sound kind of horrifying. Which is all to say that, one way or another, we are making determinations about what is and isn’t rationally unlovable. Otherwise we have no basis to be suspicious of people’s professions of love.

67

HOLY SH*T.

That is intense. I’m really glad you shared that, because I think that’s my fear. We can go on and on about how it’s just a preference, but I have this gut feeling that it’s not the same thing as being into brunettes. Just read that devopara or whatever site. All those stories–they’re not normal. They’re not like “Jane met Jim and he used a wheelchair and it was hot. They got married.” It’s all twisted, with–yes–the emphasis being on what’s missing from the disabled person’s life. It’s just…it’s just…weeeeeird.

68

Moles, lisps and gaps in the teeth aren’t typically sought after as traits in and of themselves, however. It’s not like someone who has a thing for girls with moles is going to go for the girl he finds with the most gigantic mole hanging from her lip. No, he’s going to find a physically attractive girl who also has a mole (or moles). With the atrophied legs girl, the more atrophied the legs, the more turned on she became. Now I’m not saying all devotees are like this. Not at all; some do have disability as just another thing that attracts them to a person.

69

I have a couple very strong and long term fetishes. Not for disabled people…(no offense intended). But it is more than the fetish aspect. If he genuinely likes you and values your company, the devotee aspect shouldn’t necessarily be viewed as creepy, more like icing on the cake. If he doesn’t care deeply for you as the person you are…the “devotee” aspect will never be enough. Go slow (!) but give it a chance.

70

Maybe not typically, although I think that’s probably a dangerous word to start using in this context. I imagine it all falls on some kind of a boring spectrum, like most things. Still, though, there’s things like this, is all I’m saying. It’s not so much about what’s typical as it is about what’s reasonable. If it’s possible for it to be fashionable and therefore legitimately desirable to have that sort of imperfection, it makes sense that it could be fashionable to have any kind of imperfection, if it’s all just a kind of social game. In which case being really into atrophied legs makes a person more of a trailblazer than a deviant.

I don’t know that I buy that, but I do know that I’m basically incapable of articulating why I find basically anything in particular attractive, and that gives me pause.

71

If umkay was wholly without dating experience and a virgin I might buy that argument, but she has already stated that she is sexually active and has had more than one relationship. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised, based on her posts, if she has significantly more past sexual relationships than this (admittedly very choosey) AB gal.

Umkay has empirical evidence she’s able to get a date and have sex with other people - this isn’t a case of her settling for just what she can get because there isn’t anyone else. If they have mutual interests outside of the bedroom I don’t see a problem here. His kink is seen as bad or icky by many, so the reasoning is he must be a bad or icky person - but that doesn’t necessarily follow. His interest is unusual, that doesn’t mean it’s evil.

72

You know, a lot of men hate being bald and view it as a defect, yet there are women who are really turned on by baldness.

I’ve known women who view a “Roman” nose as a grievous defect and can’t wait to save the money to get it surgically “fixed” - but there are men who find those sorts of noses very attractive.

I don’t think the line is quite as cut and dried as people think on occasion. I think the devotees that get the most attention are also the most extreme ones. You don’t see the folks for whom this sort of things is a mild preference that is no way a requirement for their relationships.

(And yes, I am taking a somewhat devil’s advocate position here - I’m in no way denying that some fetishists are really creepy people, I’m just arguing that one can find something inexplicably appealing without being sick in the head or a danger to others.)

73

Not really - it lasted from the late 900’s into the early 20th Century, about a thousand years.

Of course, not ALL women were subjected to the most extreme foot-binding, but the higher up the social ladder the more likely a woman was to be crippled in the name of beauty.

74

Again, these traits that you mention are in concert with the person’s other physical features; which give that person their individual appeal. A woman who is attracted to bald men is going to have other physical attributes for that man other than baldness that he must/should meet before she is attracted to him.

But for many devotees, those traditional features are irrelevant. And yes, for some devotees, the fact that a pretty girl (or handsome guy) happens to be sitting in a wheelchair is just another attractive feature making that person all the more attractive. But I don’t think that number is as high as many people are assuming it to be here.

75

No, but I would have to say that these “devotees” are not really devotees but just regular people who have tastes that are a bit outside of the norm. (Of course this is strictly my opinion; I know what the definitions are.)

76

Well, here’s an anecdote for you:

I like short men. Specifically, I like men either my height or shorter. Now, since I’m not a particularly tall woman that’s sort of a small subset of men. I don’t exclude tall men - the second-longest relationship I’ve been in was with a man over six feet tall - but I really didn’t find the height attractive at all. I don’t seek out men who are specifically short, either - no dwarves in my dating history (although I’m probably more likely to date one than the average woman as neither shortness nor disability rules out a potential mate for me). I didn’t troll websites with short men back when I was single (and not just because we didn’t have websites back then) or go to Little People of America conventions. However, all other things being equal I find short guys more attractive than really tall ones.

Now, due to my spouse’s spinda bifida his legs didn’t grow as long as they should have. Based on his upper body proportions he should have been six feet or taller but he’s not, he’s five foot six. Coming from a family of six foot men he does lament his height that never was and views it as a defect and if he could change things he’d definitely want to be six feet. Or taller.

I actually prefer him the height he is.

Now, if tomorrow he woke up with no disability and six feet tall I wouldn’t reject him. I’d still love him. But his physical attractiveness, in my eyes, would be less and not more in that case.

Am I a creep or just someone with an unusual preference? I like a physical attribute he views as a defect. Then again, there are other physical attributes I like in a man that he doesn’t have. (Like someone else said, we all “settle” to one degree or another)

Let’s look at Ambivalid’s Atrophied Leg Girl - she was trolling Facebook for guys in chairs, apparently with that being the primary motive. It wasn’t that she just happened to meet him while going about daily life or introduced by a mutual friend, she was actively hunting guys with atrophied legs. Maybe if she was using a dating service that matched ALG’s with guys in chairs, where both parties were aware of the hunting and what to expect, that might have been OK but really what she was doing was along the lines of a guy demanding to see women’s bra sizes in an inappropriate manner.

Now, back to umkay’s situation - is this a guy who is going through life and by chance encounters someone that scratches his unusual itch, or did he seek her out solely because of the chair? If it’s the former I don’t see a problem. If it’s the latter I do.

77

Wait…did you just call me a slut? :wink:

78

That whole story was fascinating. Just fascinating. I can’t think of a way it’s not applicable to my dilemma. Hm. Food for thought.

I don’t know for sure, but he did mention that he was really intrigued when my brother first mentioned off-hand that he had a sister in a wheelchair. So I know he already knew I was in a chair before he met me two months ago. Did he conspire to meet me through my brother? Or was it just the way things played out naturally? I dunno…:dubious:

79

No, dear, you’re sexually liberated and I’m an inhibited prude :slight_smile:

80

I don’t think Ambivalid’s description of his experience with Atrophied Leg Girl is a fair comparison.

Sexuality is always strange and intense/obsessive when you are on the outside looking in.
Remember how revolting sex was when you were a ten year old looking at found porn? That you scratched your head and hoped that your dad/mom would not be into such dirty, debasing nonsense, and neither would you be when you grew up?

Remember how alienating it is to have sex with someone when that person is really horny when you are not? You lie there while they busy themselves, red in the face, as they close their eyes, withdraw mentally into themselves, mutter dirty words and generally go to their own internal sexy place. And you lay there and feel objectified and lonely and not sure you even like this person that much anymore.

That one-sidedness is hardly restricted to kinks. It is just a hallmark of a bad lover not in tune with his partner and going too fast too soon, like I think Atrophied leg girl did. Or of the partner not being comfortable enough to get in the mood, and not having admitted that to themselves or their partner, like Ambivalid may have felt.