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When Fetish Masquerades as Identity: The Story of a U.K. Surgeon
This may be the craziest story I’ve seen all year.
A respected U.K. surgeon faked sepsis, got both his legs amputated, and was hailed in the press as a heroic family man until he was found guilty of having faked the sepsis to get his legs amputated due to a sexual fetish.
Last week, Dr. Neil Hopper was sentenced to 32 months in prison for insurance fraud and possession of extreme pornography — not for the amputations themselves, which were self-inflicted.
Hopper has what is known as apotemnophilia: sexual arousal at the thought of being an amputee. The media originally celebrated his bravery, running glowing features about his resilience. He was only exposed after investigators found he subscribed to videos from The Eunuch Maker, described by Genspect as “the leader of a castration fetish ring who was arrested for orchestrating and livestreaming castrations and amputations in his London home.”
In court, Hopper’s defense attorney even argued his client “wanted to be a woman.” That’s where this bizarre case touches something bigger.
Apotemnophilia is closely related to autogynephilia, the paraphilia in which a man is aroused by the idea of himself as a woman. According to Mia Hughes, author of The WPATH Files, researchers once acknowledged this overlap openly. A 2005 paper found that nearly 20% of apotemnophiles also wished to be members of the opposite sex.
While attempts to rebrand apotemnophilia as “amputee identity disorder” largely failed, trans activists succeeded in reframing autogynephilia as a legitimate identity — and eventually as a right to be celebrated. Hughes points out that psychiatry’s pathologizing of childhood gender nonconformity swept up many gay and lesbian kids, creating the perfect smokescreen to hide paraphilic men inside a new umbrella of “trans rights.”
The result has been devastating. What was once understood as a niche fetish has been reframed as civil rights, and legions of vulnerable young people have been swept into the medicalization of normal puberty.
And so the world applauded. Hopper’s story is shocking, but it’s also a mirror: when paraphilias are repackaged as “identities,” the media and medical establishment have shown they are all too willing to celebrate — until the truth can no longer be hidden.
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