QBits

We’re not mad or sick, trans people tell doctors

Today (20 October) is International Day of Action for Trans Depathologization – a day when transgender people tell the medical world to stop treating them as if they were ill or crazy

20 October 2012| By Jane Fae

Depathologization. Sounds complicated: it’s not. For behind the fancy ideological word lies a stark reality. This is a campaign about power, and control and respect.

Who, in the end, will dictate the futures that trans people may choose for themselves? Will support for the transgender community always to be predicated on the basic, insulting premise that, at some level, we’re all a little bit mad? Or will, finally, the medical profession wake up to the fact the world has moved on – and it is no longer up to them to define and limit the trans experience?

On the one side this is about professional self-interest: a group of mainly white, male, middle-aged, middle-class psych professionals who claim that no-one but they can fully understand trans-ness – and therefore it is up to them to decide who shall receive ‘treatment’, who shall be cast into the outer darkness. On the other, like the perennial underdogs in a Hollywood movie are a growing number of trans folk who have looked around, seen what the medics are offering and declared ‘we’re not going to take this any more’.

Hence today’s campaign, as well as a longer running, slower burning argument over the Diagnostic Standards Manual, the ‘bible’ of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), now in the process of formulating its fifth addition, in the teeth of fierce opposition from a trans community sick and tired of having their condition labeled a ‘disorder’.

The issue has its origins in the dim and distant past – not long after the psychiatric community decided that female masturbation was not a disorder after all, but some decades before they accorded the same courtesy to homosexuality. This was the point when the world first became aware that not everyone was happy with their gender presentation and advances in surgical techniques were, for the first time, allowing the possibility that something could be done about this.

APA Issues Position Statements Supporting Transgender Care And Civil Rights

By Zack Ford on Aug 21, 2012 at 1:40 pm

Following up on guidelines generated by a report on transgender healthcare last month, the American Psychiatric Association has issued official position statements on the care and civil rights of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. The new statements reflect this year’s editions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-V) that will identify being transgender as “Gender Dysphoria,” removing the classification of “Gender Identity Disorder.” The APA explained the importance of standing up for the trans community, citing the “significant discrimination, prejudice, and the potential for victimization from violent hate crimes, as well as denial of many basic civil rights, protections, and access to health care, to the severe detriment of their mental health. Here are the new position statements:

APA POSITION STATEMENTS

The American Psychiatric Association:

1. Recognizes that appropriately evaluated transgender and gender variant individuals can benefit greatly from medical and surgical gender transition treatments.

2. Advocates for removal of barriers to care and supports both public and private health insurance coverage for gender transition treatment.

3. Opposes categorical exclusions of coverage for such medically necessary treatment when prescribed by a physician.

The American Psychiatric Association:

1. Supports laws that protect the civil rights of transgender and gender variant individuals.

2. Urges the repeal of laws and policies that discriminate against transgender and gender variant people.

3. Opposes all public and private discrimination against transgender and gender variant individuals in such areas as health care, employment, housing, public accommodation, education, and licensing.

4. Declares that no burden of proof of such judgment, capacity, or reliability shall be placed upon these individuals greater than that imposed on any other persons.

A lot of public education remains to be done about transgender identities, but no longer designating them as a “disorder” is an important step. As with non-heterosexual orientations, affirmation is key to supporting the mental health of all members of the LGBT community.

Transgender advocates seek new diagnostic terms

Posted: Jul 21, 2012 10:28 AM PDT Updated: Jul 21, 2012 10:28 AM PDT

By LISA LEFF
Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Does a woman who strongly believes she was meant to be a man have a mental condition or a medical problem? Is a man who cross-dresses in need of psychological help? What about a boy who pretends to be a girl in make-believe games and chooses only female playmates?

The nation’s psychiatric establishment is wrestling with these questions, among others, as it works to overhaul its diagnostic manual for the first time in almost two decades. Advocates have spent years lobbying the American Psychiatric Association to rewrite or even remove the categories typically used to diagnose transgender people, arguing that terms like Gender Identity Disorder and Transvestic Fetishism promote discrimination by broad-brushing a diverse population with the stigma of mental illness.

“The label of mental defectiveness really places a burden on trans people to continually prove our competence in our affirmed roles,” Kelley Winters, a Colorado scholar who has helped lead the push for changes, said.

Although the association’s new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is not scheduled to be printed until the end of the year, the updates are taking shape after three rounds of proposed changes. Professionals who have been part of or closely observing the amendment process say the latest wording, while not going as far as many advocates wanted, respects the broader shift in society’s understanding and acceptance of what it means to be transgender since the last major revision of the manual was published in 1994.

American Psychological Association, American Medical Association And Others File Brief In DOMA Suit

07/11/2012

Over half-a-dozen medical groups, including the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics today filed an amici curiae brief supporting Karen Golinski’s discrimination case against the government, Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management, which is requesting federal benefits for same-sex partners.

In their brief, a PDF of which I’ve included below, the good doctors offer scores of scientific data showing that same-sex parents do no hurt children, but that the government’s prohibitions on marriage equality do.

From their introduction:

The claim that legal recognition of marriage for same–sex couples undermines the institution of marriage and harms their children is inconsistent with the scientific evidence. That evidence supports the conclusion that homosexuality is a normal expression of human sexuality that is not chosen; that gay and lesbian people form stable, committed relationships that are equivalent to heterosexual relationships in essential respects; and that same-sex couples are no less fit than heterosexual parents to raise children and their children are no less psychologically healthy and well-adjusted than children of opposite sex parents.

And this comes from a section called “Homosexuality Is A Normal Expression Of Human Sexuality, Is Generally Not Chosen, And Is Highly Resistant To Change:”

Current scientific and professional understanding is that the core feelings that form the basis for adult sexual orientation typically emerge between middle childhood and early adolescence, without any necessary prior sexual experience. Most gay men and lesbian women do not experience their sexual orientation as the result of a voluntary choice.

And then there’s this bit from their final argument:

The foregoing shows that the attitudes towards and beliefs about lesbians and gay men relied on by Congress in enacting DOMA – about their capacity for committed, long lasting relationships, and their ability to raise healthy well-adjusted children – are contradicted by the scientific evidence and instead reflect an unreasoned antipathy towards an identifiable minority. Amici accordingly support the judgment of Judge White that § 3 of DOMA appears to be based on an explicit animus against gay men and lesbians. In institutionalizing greater access by heterosexuals than gay men and lesbians to the many federal resources and benefits accorded married couples and their children, the Act conveys the federal government’s judgment that committed intimate relationships between people of the same sex – even when recognized as legal marriages by the couple’s state – are inferior to heterosexual relationships.

Here’s the PDF of the brief.