Eat Your Heart Out, Chloe Jennings-White
This was the last words on Melanie Reid’s excellent article in yesterday’s Times, where she describes the lifestyle of a post-op transsexual called Clive Jennings-White, who through choice lives most of his life in a wheel-chair and wants his spinal cord cut, so he can be a paraplegic. Obviously, Jennings-White is as they used to say is as daft as a brush. He reminds me of an American psychiatrist, who deliberately got pregnant and when the child was born, had her adopted, so she could understand the feelings of mothers, who had had their children adopted. C used to know the daughter and to say she was disturbed and difficult would have been an understatement.
We have enough disturbed and disabled people in this world, who ended that way through no fault of their own, so I hope Clive/Chloe Jennings-White doesn’t get his or is it her wish!
Melanie, who broke her back in a riding accident, leaves everyone in no doubt about where she stands. This is one paragraph from her article.
Indeed, in the race to see who can be the most disabled, in this age of barmy victimhood, Jennings-White puts many a nose out of joint because she is hard to trump. Especially disabled gay women, a fearsome pressure group, who on the internet froth with rage. “It is already so hard for disabled lesbians… this man is appropriating so many identities and causing so much harm,” posted one.
She admits to not having enjoyed researching anything as much for a long time.
The Anonymous Widower 
It’s disturbing to say the least, knowing that there are people out there who want to be disabled to the point where they will need a carer and this man/woman wants to have her spinal cord cut so she could be a real paraplegic?? In all honesty, the transsexual thing is just a tiny blip but for someone to WANT to be disabled, with all the extra, small, annoying aches and pains as well as the big issues real paraplegics go through… I’m sorry but there is just no way you can call that normal behaviour. I don’t buy the Body Integrity Identity Disorder thing… these days there’s a need to put a name to every little bit of behaviour people show, but Jennings-White is obviously not paraplegic enough to get out of her chair and walk up the staircase in a normal fashion. BIID suddenly is far away, or at least until she’s at the top of the staircase, and then picks up her wheelchair again and she turns out to have BIID again.
This kind of behaviour is a slap in the face of real disabled people! Jennings-White should go live with disabled people for a few months – or even a year – to see what it’s really like to be disabled. No getting out of the wheelchair to get up the stairs, oh no stay in your chair and see what real disabled people have to battle every day. And to hide it from your family is just one other thing that shows that suddenly her psychological disorder is gone again and she can act all normal.
Clive/Chloe Jennings-White, you have no idea what you are doing, asking doctors to cut your spinal cord. Are you so desperate to want to be in a wheelchair every minute of every day, so people can feel sorry for you???
I have MS, I am not wheelchair-bound (yet) but that prospect might happen in the course of my life. Every day I pray NOT to end up in a wheelchair, to be able to go to work again and not being stuck at home every single day. I had to quit my job at the age of 36 because of the severe fatigue and daily/nightly aches and pains I have. I wake several times a night because my body hurts, I am sometimes so tired I can’t even walk or talk and every second of every day I wished I was still at work, enjoying life with my friends, family and colleagues. So put yourself in my shoes Jennings-White, and you will be ashamed of what you want. I am almost 39 now and I still wish my life had turned out differently, and every day I hope that one day my neurological illness will be able to be cured so I don’t and won’t end up in a wheelchair every day. Shame on you, absolutely shame on you!
Comment by Willeke | May 13, 2012 |
I hope life gets better for you, as I hope it is for me.
Comment by AnonW | May 13, 2012 |
We live in hope, don’t we? It’s important to stay positive but when I heard about this person wanting to be disabled, willingly… I am sure I am not the only one up in arms over it. It’s shameful really. Take care and keep smiling!
Comment by Willeke | May 13, 2012
I am sorry for your struggles. I too hope things improve for you.
Your assumption that Chloe does not know about what it is like to really be paraplegic is incorrect. Chloe has a vast nmber of friends with various disabilities, including many paras. From a young age, people with BIID immerse themselves in information about their identified disability. (It’s not about the disability, it’s about a neurological disconnect between the brain and the body part(s) in question.) It is not an idle fantasy, hah, wouldn’t it be cool if I didn’t feel my legs and wheeled about, it’s a serious, deep and distressing discomfort of trying to reconcile a brain map that doesn’t match the body. It is painful.
You are also wrong in your assumption that Chloe on wheels where it is easy.
Moreover you are wrong in the assumtion that Chloe wheels to simulate paraplegia. She doesn’t. She wheels to manage the distressing symptoms of BIID. She is NOT paraplegic, she does not tell people she is paraplegic and she does not wheel because of paraplegia. She wheels because of BIID. She manages her symptoms through the use of a wheelchair, much as someone with MS or fibromyalgia might do.
With the assumptions you have made, Chloe does seem mad, childish and living in a fantasy world. But she isn’t. If you remove the assumptions and find the truth, you find a very intelligent compassionate woman who happens to have BIID.
Comment by Gravity | May 16, 2012 |
What I think a lot of people struggle with is with the way Chloe seems to be able to switch from sitting in a wheelchair with leg braces on to hillwalking and not telling her family about her non-paraplegia. I also understand that she is not wheelchair-bound because of the paraplegia but that it’s her mental illness guides her to being in a wheelchair and leg braces.
I am honestly trying to understand, and it’s been on my mind for the last few days. I don’t doubt Chloe means well and that she’s a compassionate woman but since BIID is still such a new form of mental illness, it hasn’t imprinted on people’s minds that much yet. Probably that’s why such a large amount of bad comments have been directed towards Chloe, simply because people do not yet understand, and I know that is why I was rather poisenous in my reply to this blog entry here.
There are a couple of things though that I can’t find an answer to. Why and how was Chloe able to hide that she’s not paraplegic from her family (BIID-present?), yet she goes hillwalking 12h straight (BIID-absent?). How can someone hide it from people that close to her, yet she can go out walking, taking flights of stairs etc without her wheelchair? It seems that Chloe does have a choice when it comes to her mental illness, she either pretends to be paraplegic to one set of people, or she is totally not to another set of people.
I struggle understanding this, and now I know that this is what made me angry earlier on. Someone wanting to have her spinal cord cut… it goes against everything doctors and healthcare workers vowed to do. People with disabilities only want one thing in this world: to be able-bodied. People with MS, people who’ve been in accidents, people born with physical disabilities don’t have a choice, they simply ARE physically disabled and they HAVE to use a wheelchair, and we don’t and can’t choose whether we’re going to show people our disabilities or not. We don’t have a choice at all, and it seems Chloe is able to distinguish mentally and physically who she will show her paraplegia (although not present) or whether she’ll just be happy as Larry to go hillwalking and be seemingly as fit as a fiddle. I think this is what so many people are struggling with. I know I am because at the end of the day… some people are denied a choice, the choice of life, of being able to live a full life and to be physically fit. Chloe has shown she has a choice. And at the end of the day, it’s only until you have lost something very dear to you, like the use of a limb, or an eye or other physical abilities that you realize how important that part of your body really is.
I wish Chloe all the best but I wished she would totally understand what it is disabled people go through. No psychologist, tablet or surgery will ever show that to her until she really loses that part of her life.
Comment by Willeke | May 16, 2012
Just watching the programme about Chloe Jennings-White. She does tell people she’s paraplegic; she’s doing it now! Obviously very disturbed.
Comment by Weasill | May 17, 2012
If you ever get a chance, read Melanie Reid’s column in the Saturday Times. Very uplifting!
Comment by AnonW | May 13, 2012 |
I have not the energy to read through another pile of ill-informed drivel on the subject of Chloe. However I do wish to add just a few words, perhaps to shed a little light on what has been reported in an extremely biased way.
I have fibromyalgia. I am disabled. It is horrible and hard.
However, when I came across the site Chloe blogs at, along with other people with BIID, I read at length and grew (over a long period of time) to understand and sympathise with these people.
Chloe has become my friend. She is compassionate and honest and extremely brave.
I urge you to read a bit more about Chloe before making your appalling conclusions about a fellow human being with feelings. The reporting described here came from a respected broadsheet but has the bias of the worst tabloid to be found in the gutter.
Also, I find it very difficult to take seriously any article that insists on referring to a trandgendered woman using her previous male name and the incorrect pronoun. Does that not indicate bigotry and a lack of education to the rest of you?
Comment by Gravity | May 16, 2012 |
I wonder if she wants to sit in her shit and piss for hours. Of fall out of her wheelchair and not be able to get up and get cold and wet on the ground. How about we make her arms useless as well. How about her being not able to speak, that could be arranged. This woman needs to get some treatment for her fanciful silly ideas. She can NOT be allowed to choose her disability. It doesn’t work like that. Unless we give her all the disability I have described above I reckon she should just get a life. I have a severe life long disability and I am angry with her trivial attitude. As I said get some help and just get over yourself Chloe.
Comment by Glenda Lee | July 18, 2013 |