Where is the line between a disorder and else?

Why cannot it be both?I don't see a conflict between something being natural, yet a disorder.To give a simple example, my hypertension is completely natural, yet I have no problem saying that it is a disorder. Nature has it's own natural way of handling hypertension, namely death. I take my prescribed medication, which is an unnatural way of handling it.So, back to BIID. What would not seem natural for me can be quite natural for somebody with that disorder. Nature has its own way of coping. A person born blind finds his blindness quite natural, while a seeing person who lost sight later in life would find that very unnatural.I would be inclined to say that BIID is abnormal, but not unnatural. We judge "normal" by what is common, and BIID falls outside of normal.On the question of whether a disorder, it seems to me that the person with BIID does see it as a disorder, and the desire for amputation is an indication that the person would like to correct the disorder however he/she could.

I'll say a word for the black folk.Their homophobic attitudes come from their churches. Their churches are particularly important, because for many years they were their community. As racism reduces, we will likely see a corresponding reduction in the importance of the black churches, and a consequent reduction in homophobia. But we cannot expect that to happen all at once, especially since the racism didn't end all at once.

What comes to mind, for me, in this discussion is the question of the right to die; the right of a terminally ill person to die on his own terms and the right to assisted suicide in such cases.Some of the arguments against allowing the BIID person to amputate have been presented in a way that would deny a terminally ill person the right to die.Much like Rahvin, I don't have a settled position on BIID. But I am troubled by some of the arguments that have been given in this thread.

I was thinking of comments such as that in Message 14. But perhaps I was reading more into that than intended.