A Healthy Man Identifies Himself as a Disabled Transgender Woman

Jørund Alme in her wheelchair with her wifePhoto byScreengrab from Good Morning Norway TV

In what became one of the most talked about stories to come out of the European continent, a healthy 53-year-old man and father of two, Jørund Viktoria Alme, who works as a senior credit analyst, has now come out identifying himself as a disabled woman. Despite having a clean bill of health and no disabilities, Jørund stays true to herself and uses a wheelchair.

While one may be tempted to question Jørund’s lifestyle choice, her history reads like any successful and stable relationship. When Jørund was a man, for 31 years, he had been in a healthy relationship with his wife Agnes, and the two had two sons together. However, life took a turn when Jørund one evening came home in a wheelchair despite not needing one, and for the next five years, he used the wheelchair to get by.

Moreover, the wheelchair came with a turning point that profoundly changed the couple’s life. Jørund claimed he had a moment of realization where he began to feel he was a woman. Explaining to reporters the first time he came home with the wheelchair, Jørund said, “I didn’t know what it would do, but I had a very ‘aha’ experience when I got to sit in that chair.” Since then, Jørund has never left her wheelchair, which she uses daily, and only walks when necessary, like when boarding and disembarking a plane.

Although Jørund is an extreme example, she hails from Norway, one of the wealthiest countries in the world and one of the first countries to enact anti-discrimination laws that were mainly formulated to protect LGBTQ minorities.

Moreover, Norway became one of the first European countries in 2016 to pass self-determination laws allowing people to change their legal or assigned gender to become transgender. In addition, among the Nordic countries, Norway is one of the most LGBT-friendly nations, where besides a high societal acceptance, most Norwegians support gay marriages.

However, even for a country that is very LGBT friendly such as Norway, Jørund’s coming out as a disabled transwoman, despite being healthy and able-bodied, was too much for some sections of Norwegian society. Nonetheless, Jørund claims to suffer from body identity disorder, a condition that is also known as body integrity dysphoria. Although Jørund suffers from the rare disorder, the condition is nevertheless characterized by a “desire to acquire a physical disability and an associated sense of incompleteness at being able-bodied.”

Even so, Jørund explained that her body integrity dysphoria began early on in her elementary school when one of her fellow students came to school with crutches due to a splint on his leg. Reflecting on that day, Jørund said,

“My heart pounded, my pulse increased and I was activated in my body. I was incredibly focused on him and what this was all about. As I understand it in retrospect, it was a recognition of the situation and that it was I who should have been there.”

While Jørund identifying herself as a paralyzed transgender woman despite being healthy and able-bodied has sparked a backlash, Jørund insisted she does not use resources meant to help disabled people. She explained herself more,

“I hope that no one takes it badly that I use the wheelchair as an aid because it helps me. For example, I do not use handicap parking because I have no use for it in my situation.”

Even though Jørund is a professional with a steady job who claims her condition makes her want to identify herself as a disabled person, it nevertheless takes to another level what it truly means to identify with something. For Jørund’s wife, Agnes, her husband and father of her two sons one morning went to work as a healthy man.

However, when Jørund came home to Agnes, he claimed he was a disabled woman in a wheelchair because that’s who he felt he was. Yet despite Jørund’s interesting story, one can’t help but think about Agnes and her two sons and wonder how Jørund’s newfound reality will impact them.