Jenny Brown lost her leg below the knee when she was just 10 years old. Today, as a grown woman, animal activist and book author, she runs a farm animal sanctuary dedicated to helping abused and neglected animals, some of whom are also amputees.
And while she does feel a special connection to the animals who are, like her, amputees, she is passionate about giving every one of the 200 animals at the sanctuary the \"fantasy farm life.\" She's dedicated her life to the cause of helping farm animals, to educating the masses on seeing them in a different light -- more than commodities, she said.
fantasy amputee
\"People are so disconnected form nature. They come and it's like they're living out a fantasy of rubbing pig bellies and frolicking with goats. We try to educate with a gentle message, because it's what we find most effective. The animals themselves are the greatest ambassadors. They have amazing stories to tell,\" Brown said.
Launched several years ago in South Africa, this series is newly published in the United States. It stars Rae Valentine, an ex-junkie turned private detective and motivational speaker. Serially marginalized as a woman, person of color, amputee, recovering addict, and rape survivor, Rae has a deep well of compassion for the broken souls she encounters. Unfortunately, the same trait leaves her prone to manipulation and double-crossing. And worse.
In the end, it was the 13-year-old double amputee who surprised everyone with her outlook on life, despite having bilateral knee disarticulation surgery in June to address a congenital condition called arthrogryposis.
"There was absolutely no reason to shoot a double amputee in the back 11 times who was hobbling away from officers," Della Donna said. "Both the officers and the public were not at threat. He was a handicapped person suffering from a mental crisis."
Hodge wants to be the first double amputee quarterback in the NFL. He loves football. Breathes football. And his favorite player is Matthew Stafford. Which led him to Detroit, to Ford Field and to a moment he'll never forget. Hodge, who artificial-turf company FieldTurf helped bring to Lions practice, thought he was heading to watch Stafford and the other Lions quarterbacks work out.
More than anything, though, he wants to inspire. He won an ESPY award given out locally this summer and has been contacted by parents of amputees who were born with a similar condition. Hodge said he offered one mother the same advice he lives by.
In this article we explore fantasy, disability and desire in the groundbreaking 1998 Australian TV documentary My One-Legged Dream Lover. Based upon self-reflexive documentary conventions, the video uncovers journalist-cum-freak raconteur Kath Duncan's explorations into the world of amputee fetish. Duncan is a double congenital amputee. She says, "I've tried most things men, women, sex toys, unusual locations, dominance and submission games but I wanted to know what it was like to be desired because of my impairments." Gerard Goggin is a temporarily able-bodied (or TAB) academic with his own history of queer desire and a personal investment in exploring issues of difference. Duncan's and Goggin's collaboration includes accessing each other's edgier fantasies, aiming to give voice to some of the negotiations, anxieties, pleasures, and risks we have taken, speaking across the chasm of our personal histories, different genders and respective bodies.
Yes, says Kath Duncan, star, writer, and researcher, of the ground breaking 1998 Australian TV documentary My One-Legged Dream Lover. Dream Lover uncovers the world of amputee fetish from the vantage point of Kath, a double congenital amputee and a media practitioner, teacher and performer. Since the documentary's release worldwide, Kath has enjoyed email and real-life seductions, been fascinated and disenchanted, and lives to tell the inside story of life post-Dream Lover.
Based on self-reflexive documentary conventions, the video reveals in intimate detail some most contradictory feelings about disability and desire. It traces Kath's search for lovers of her stumps as a reflection of her profound desire to belong in a society that sees her largely as "other". It also maps Kath's quest for new sexual adventure. As she reflects on it now: "I've tried most things men, women, sex toys, unusual locations, dominance and submission games but I wanted to know what it was like to be desired because of my impairments." Dream Lover positions itself at the complex intersections of intimate pleasures and desiring exchanges between those who identify, and are identified, as disabled people and those who are designated (temporarily) able bodied (or TAB). Fantasy is central to its theme: Kath's fantasy of being a Love Goddess, to be appreciated for all of her unique body and mind; the fetishists' fantasies of their "dream lovers" people without limbs; plus society's desires to police bodies and desires.
Dream Lover explicitly interrogates this contact between the cultures TAB and amputee and its power. Similarly, writing this article has provoked an analysis of power between Gerard and Kath. And some fun strategies. We took this problem of power the academic and the freak, say and played with it. Rather than the inquiry, like the lens, focussing solely on Kath, Gerard too declared what was at stake for him personally in this collaboration which revealed his interests in fantasy, in sexualities, in bodies, in exploring edges. We found common ground in our fascinations. We did not want to get too serious creating this article appealed to both of us because we could see that unlike a standard academic or even journalistic investigative piece about other people, we could make this piece about us just as much as about Dream Lover.
We were inspired by this approach where the congenital amputee perspective comes from another place than being "less than" or "the examined" which Dream Lover also foregrounds, where Kath's perspective as narrator forms the "norm" against which the TAB world is judged. The documentary utilises voice-over and direct address, positioning the viewer, perhaps even seducing the viewer into identifying with Kath's point of view. While negotiating how we would work together, we realised on a fundamental level each of us felt as weird in a bodily sense, placed as the other to the other. In exploring such discursive positioning and the structure of "othering" it may entail, amplifying the contradictions and discomforts we felt, we structured writing workshops where we exposed ourselves to the other in dialogue and performance exercises interrogating the traditional privileging of the TAB position. Kath: Don't you think it's in some way interesting, even if you can just perceive it in an intellectual kind of fashion, to let the "freak" investigate the TAB theory expert? I find it intriguing that you reacted so strongly against the idea of doing "confronting, in your face" activities with me... This is fabulous are you scared of or embarrassed by showing your physicality to me? (Kath, private e mail to Gerard)
We decided to negotiate trust agreeing to keep our discoveries confidential and agreeing to have equal say over what ended up in this article. We pushed our games as far as we were prepared to go over a weekend residential. In such play, we used fantasy as a vehicle revealing our desires as openly to each other as we could. Of all the material we played with and developed, we decided this fantasy material was most compelling. In this process we deliberately kept the fantasies as non-gender, non-body specific as possible. (Kath has given many talks on sexuality and disability to college groups and has become rather weary of participants asking her how she does "it" feeling that her short limbs do not turn her sexual expression into some alien articulation. She usually tells her audience to close their eyes, imagine themselves having sex with a favourite person then to take away half an arm and half a leg. "Is it any different?" she asks them. Most are surprised to report that desire still feels like desire, no matter your limb count, perceived "difference", or "classified disability" (Baldwin 2000). 2ff7e9595c
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