 Hello my beautiful internet friends and welcome back to, I don't know, my personal new favorite series that I'm doing, Taboo Tuesday Topics. So I love tackling a new topic every week that is something that maybe isn't super comfortable for people to talk about or people wouldn't feel comfortable asking an amputee or someone who's dealt with any of the things that I've dealt with because I think it's important to talk about things that are uncomfortable. Now if you put out a string on the internet asking people, ask me something Taboo, I'm an open book, what do you think they're going to ask you about? Sex! They're going to ask you about sex. Though actually most of the questions are about phantom pain which I thought was interesting and then they were about my sex life which I'll absolutely address in the next video but this video, I wanted to tackle something that has been one of the most challenging things for me to deal with and something that has been completely unexpected which is unwanted sexual attention because I'm an amputee. There's a whole world out there I wasn't aware of and that is what we're going to talk about today. Before we get started, two things, first of all, I got a nose ring. I feel like tattoos and piercings are a legitimate way of dealing with life but I got this kind of as a spare of the moment thing and so far I like it. I mean, what do you guys think? Let me know in the comments down below and secondly, this video is sponsored by one of my all-time favorite services and sites audible.com. I love audiobooks as you guys know, I listen to them all the time. If I don't have a YouTube video on the background or sometimes a podcast it's always an audiobook. Right now I'm listening to a book called The Life We Bury. I don't even know what it's about yet but it's got a really great author, a really great mariter and I'm enjoying it so far so thank you so much to Audible for sponsoring this. If you follow the link, link down below, you could be the proud or secret of a totally free audiobook and no, you don't have to commit to anything. There's no commitment required, you just sign up, you get a free audiobook if you follow that link and it helps me out too so check it out. With that out of the way, let's talk about devotees and the amputee fetish community. I am a sheltered homeschool girl from the woods of Colorado and there are a lot of things about the world that still surprise me that probably shouldn't and I met with a gal, a friend of mine before I had my amputation and she told me something you need to be aware about is if you put any pictures online, if you talk about this publicly, you're gonna get weird messages. Not to stereotype against guys, men, I love you, I think you're fabulous people but men are gonna send you some weird ass stuff and I was like, wait, what? What are you talking about? And she was like, there's a whole community dedicated to amputee fetishes and they're called devotees and they'll find you and they'll take your pictures and they'll put them on different sites and they will send you things and send you pictures and you just need to be aware of that and that was something that hadn't even crossed my mind that by having this major life altering surgery, I would be making myself into a fetish for other people. I know that's the wrong way to say it but I mean that's essentially what I felt like and it was just kind of something that was good to note, good to know and then when I decided to actually make my story very public, it was good to keep that in mind. It was good to know that okay, I'm probably gonna get some odd comments, I'm probably gonna get some odd messages and man, she was not wrong. Now the comment in particular made me want to address this is this comment, can't find the comment, hold on, I know it was here because I've been thinking about it for weeks and now I can't find it, found it, okay, so this person wrote, an interesting point would be about devotees, I identify as one but I'm a respectful person, I know that this can be problematic because some of the devotees are absolutely horrible, stalkers and rude in general terms but I know that most of us want a really good relationship and it's not only about physical attraction. I really appreciated this comment and it really got me thinking because prior to that moment, the only interactions I had were extraordinarily uncomfortable ones. Going through something borderline traumatic, losing my leg and then all of the problems that have come as a result of that so far and then to be basically turned into more of a sex object by other people, socks, just straight up socks. You know as a human in this world, I think specifically as a woman you're already subjected to unwanted sexual attention, unwanted sexual comments and harassment but it got a lot more specific. People have said really gross things in comments, sometimes I'll do live streams and there will be people being like just show me your stomp, like I just want to see your stomp, like show me your leg and it's not in a nicer, respectful, curious way, it's obviously sexually motivated and it's gross and I've had a lot of people tell me to like go into porn, I'd make a killing and things along those lines and I have gotten messages from people like sending me pictures and asking me to send them pictures of my stomp. That's not okay in like any regard that's disrespectful and I don't like it and I don't appreciate it and I know, I actually know of people who took their amputation story public and literally took it down because of stuff like this, because the continual attention in a disrespectful way from devotees did not stop and that just sucks because honestly I don't think that there's anything wrong with having an attraction to a certain type of person or having a fetish or whatever as long as you are not hurting anybody and there are two consenting adults or more in any situation, go for it. But the second that you start disrespecting people and you start saying things that are obviously unwanted that you are being told are unwanted and you send them things they don't want and you treat them like they are literally a sex object because of a horrible thing that they have gone through, losing a leg, losing a limb, that turns my stomach, that makes me feel sick and especially because of the stuff that I've gone through, the trauma that I've gone through being a survivor of sexual assault, it makes me feel like really uncomfortable, it makes me feel really vulnerable and just gross. It just makes me feel icky but in response to the comment that I received, this person saying that they are a devotee but they're respectful about it, I couldn't have less of a problem with that. Like I said, if you have an attraction to a certain thing or a certain type of person or some whatever and you do it in a respectful way where consent is involved and you're not pushing yourself on anyone in any way, shape or form, awesome, good for you, that's great. Sincerely, I couldn't have, I would never have anything wrong with that but the problem is when lines start getting crossed and people start saying in my live stream like show me your stump and much worse things than that. So that is one aspect of being an amputee that's like just, it's unnecessary crap to deal with and by the way it's not just women who deal with that, it's like men too. I've talked to guys and I've heard stories from men as well who get weird unwanted attention from women saying super inappropriate things to them and it seems unfair. It seems just kind of unfair that as you're trying to adjust to this major life change that's really difficult and hard and you're like trying to figure things out that people are now coming at you basically harassing you sexually about this thing that you're having a hard time adjusting to. Again, if people are into it, if two or more parties are into it or whatever it is and everybody's on board, fantastic. But sending unwanted messages and pictures and saying things and telling me that I should go into porn and crap like that is so incredibly disrespectful and makes me really uncomfortable especially given the history that I have and so that is like I said one aspect of being an amputee that I did not predict and I get why people remove themselves from the public light. You know I know of people whose pictures have ended up on really gross websites just because they like posted a picture of them. Getting casted for their prosthetic for the first time and now they're on some weird ass porn site without their permission and I'm sure that I am there. There was a channel that stole a bunch of my videos, a bunch of pieces of my videos and there were like 80 videos on this channel. Every video was just titled like amputee girl and it was just like clips of amputee girls and that's just uncomfortable. So my thoughts on unwanted sexual attention because I'm an amputee are I don't like it. I just really don't like it. It makes me super uncomfortable and I wish it wasn't a part of this process but it is. It is one and it's not going away and yeah it's definitely been odd. Again to clarify, zero judgment, zero anything if someone's a devotee and they never send anyone inappropriate comments or messages if they ask respectful questions and want to enter into a relationship or whatever. From a place of respect, from a place of consent, awesome that's not hurting anybody. When you kind of force yourself on people by saying extremely inappropriate things many of which I'm not going to repeat here and sending them pictures that are extremely inappropriate which I would never show here that's not okay. That's crossing all kinds of lines and you're making this process so much more difficult. You're making me very uncomfortable with myself because I can't throw my leg back like I can't just fix this. I can't make the attention go away and that sucks but at the same time it's nothing that would ever stop me from being in public. It's nothing that would ever stop me from continuing to run this channel from continuing to post what I post. But also I am kind of careful about what and how I post what I post if that makes sense because of that community and the way that they have treated me and my friends. And that's the tea coffee. This is coffee. As always thank you so much for listening guys and a huge thank you to all of my patrons. Today's patron of the day is Emily Dixon. Emily, thank you sincerely for supporting me. Thank you for being a part of my Patreon team. You do so much for me. You all do so much for me and I am eternally grateful. I love you all. I am thinking about you and I appreciate you being with me through you know kind of an uncomfortable topic today but I hope that maybe I've shed some light on a topic that I mean I didn't know anything about before I became an amputee and kind of entered into this process and it's good to know about and I think it's good to warn people about just like the unwanted attention side of it. Thank you so much. I will see you guys in the next video. Bye.