http://slate.msn.com/id/2085402/
“Costing an Arm and a Leg: The victims of a growing mental disorder are obsessed with amputation.” The author thinks this is partly a social phenomenon: “What needs particular attention are the reasons why some people come to be sexually attracted to amputees or to the image of themselves as amputees. The form paraphilias take differs not merely among individuals, but from one culture and historical period to another. When Richard von Krafft-Ebing was writing about paraphilias in 19th-century Vienna, he described men who were sexually obsessed with handkerchiefs. That paraphilia has largely disappeared. Yet many others have emerged. What is it about our own time and place that has helped create an obsession with amputees?”
What wants should society encourage, discourage, forbid? Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, coke? Fast cars, safe cars, no cars? Homosexuality, sex-reassignment surgery, amputation? (Link from the past: “Tiresias redux,” in which my favourite conservative writer, Theodore Dalrymple, complains about Professor Donald N. McCloskey’s decision to become a Deirdre.)