EPT
APA Revises Manual: Being Transgender Is No Longer A Mental Disorder
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/08/21/721441/apa-issues-position-statements-supporting-transgender-care-and-civil-rights/
thinkprogress wrote:
This Saturday, the American Psychiatric Association board of trustees approved the latest proposed revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, what will now be known as the DSM-V. This marks a historic milestone for people who are transgender and gender non-conforming, as their identities are no longer classified as a mental disorder. Homosexuality was similarly declassified as a mental disorder in 1973.
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This Saturday, the American Psychiatric Association board of trustees approved the latest proposed revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, what will now be known as the DSM-V. This marks a historic milestone for people who are transgender and gender non-conforming, as their identities are no longer classified as a mental disorder. Homosexuality was similarly declassified as a mental disorder in 1973.
...
This is following a long struggle by many pushing the American Psychiatric Association to remove the classification of transgender people as mentally ill. The use of terms like "Gender Identify Disorder" basically painted trans people as mentally ill and allowed for discrimination against trans people adopting, getting jobs, and leading happy lives. There will still be standard set by the DSM-V for individuals to be diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria for "a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender.”
Personally, I'm glad this change is taking place. The assignment of a mental disorder to transgendered people marginalized them in courts allows them to be discriminated against legally in the US. I'm not sure how I feel about a diagnosis of some sort still existing, but I like the way it's worded-- as it is, it would allow for medical insurance to pay for gender reassignment surgery and other things that some people want when they transition. Ideally this would prevent discrimination against transgendered people and let them access the services they need as well.
I think this is a victory for America moving towards a more just society.
It seems a lot of this stuff was discussed and approved a couple years ago, and in six months when the new manual rolls it out will be official.
-As a note before any discussion on this topic, please keep the hate out.
There have been a lot of great posts in this thread, and if you don't have time to read the whole thread, please at least read these posts before contributing your thoughts.
packrat386 on being a gender:
On December 04 2012 12:53 packrat386 wrote:
Well for starters is not a question of believing you should have been born another gender. Transgendered individuals already consider themselves to be the gender that they identify with, what they find traumatic is that their body does not match.
Assume that you are a guy, and one day you wake up, physically altered in that you appear to be female (enlarged breasts, higher voice, even female hormones and its all different down there). Would you still consider yourself a man? I think many men would since they still think like a man, and act like a man, and to them it would seem perfectly reasonable to even call themselves a man.
The problem is, the whole female body thing would get in the way of a lot of daily activities. You're going to get a lot of strange looks if, for instance, you try to use the mens room. There is also the issue that you would no find your own body unattractive (nay repulsive) and that would only make your life more difficult. That's gender dysphoria.
For any of this to make sense we have to start with the assumption that gender identity is independent from sex organs you are born with, but that has been backed up by a variety of psychological studies and is the primary accepted interpretation. So it isn't believe that you should have been born the other gender. You ARE one, and now you just want to look like it and have other people recognize that reality
Well for starters is not a question of believing you should have been born another gender. Transgendered individuals already consider themselves to be the gender that they identify with, what they find traumatic is that their body does not match.
Assume that you are a guy, and one day you wake up, physically altered in that you appear to be female (enlarged breasts, higher voice, even female hormones and its all different down there). Would you still consider yourself a man? I think many men would since they still think like a man, and act like a man, and to them it would seem perfectly reasonable to even call themselves a man.
The problem is, the whole female body thing would get in the way of a lot of daily activities. You're going to get a lot of strange looks if, for instance, you try to use the mens room. There is also the issue that you would no find your own body unattractive (nay repulsive) and that would only make your life more difficult. That's gender dysphoria.
For any of this to make sense we have to start with the assumption that gender identity is independent from sex organs you are born with, but that has been backed up by a variety of psychological studies and is the primary accepted interpretation. So it isn't believe that you should have been born the other gender. You ARE one, and now you just want to look like it and have other people recognize that reality
shinosai on definition of terms, cissexual privilege, and gender:
On December 05 2012 05:53 shinosai wrote:
Hi there. I myself identify as a trans person and I'd just like to clear up a lot of misconceptions in this thread. First, some vocabulary:
Transgender: umbrella term for people who do not line up with the gender binary as it is usually conceived. Includes transsexual, genderqueer, intersex, transvestite, agender, etc.
Transsexual: Someone whose gender does not align with their sex.
Cissexual: Someone whose gender does align with their sex.
Ok, so that being said, one of the major problems in this thread is that there is a huge prevalence of cissexual privilege that most are not even aware they have. It's completely impossible to appeal to reason with you when you don't recognize your privilege, so hopefully, I can make you more aware. The examples in this thread so far (imagine if you were born a girl but still had the same mind) will not and cannot work, for the cissexual assumes that if he were born a girl, he would simply identify as a girl. Thus, a different sort of mindset is required.
Try this example: Suppose you (a cissexual male) wake up tomorrow in the same mind and body that you are in right now. You feel exactly as you always have. You drive to the store to do some shopping. While in the men's clothing section, someone says: "Excuse me, madam, you are in the wrong section." You use the restroom, they say: "It's against the law to use the wrong restroom. Please leave." You walk around in your male clothes, and people say things like: "You're not REALLY a man. Stop pretending you sick fuck."
This is your cissexual privilege. You have never been questioned about your gender identity. You have never had to defend yourself as being who you really are. But one does not have to have a great deal of imagination to see how this could happen: Perhaps you got into a car accident, and it damaged your genitalia such that you no longer produced testosterone. And perhaps your vocal chords got damaged so you no longer have a deep voice. Indeed, people would question who you are. But you KNOW you're a guy, because you always have been. And no matter how much people treat you as female, do you really think they could someone socially mesmerize you into identifying as being female?
The other point I want to make is that there is a clear error in both gender constructionist and gender essentialist views, and neither are compatible with transsexualism. Gender constructionist says: There's no such thing as a "real" gender - we just made this stuff up. Therefore, there can be no such thing as a transsexual, because there's nothing innately female or male in the world, just stuff we made up. So there's no reason for you to want to change your body other than social norms.
Gender constructionists must ignore decades of research on intersexed individuals. Scientists thought with intersex, if you just remove one of the "defective"genitals, you could raise the child as if they were the sex (and gender) of your choice. Turns out, this was a fucking disaster. It was wrong. Intersexed individuals often end up discovering their condition and wish to revert to the other sex.
Gender essentialists, on the other hand - those that believe that we are "born" with genders - are equally wrong. We clearly have a wide variety of gender preferences and roles in society, from tomboyish women to effeminate men. And clearly to some degree these traits can be influenced by our upbringing. Female mannerisms such as occupying little space, having a weak handshake, walking in a particular way, wearing makeup, being "pretty" - are not necessary to being a woman. Nor is being a strong alpha male necessary to being a man.
It's high time we stopped pretending that gender is either completely constructed or essential to our biology. Gender and sexuality is fluid, it occupies far more than a mere binary. It's both constructed and biological, just like intelligence, work ethic, social skills, etc. We have innate tendencies that we tend to go towards, that can be enhanced or downplayed based on our in environments.
A final point, specifically to the people that say we must identify men and women based on their chromosomes or their genitalia: This completely ignores the fact that whether we are treated as a man or woman has absolutely nothing to do with these things. No one walks around with their birth certificates, and I am willing to bet that not a single fucking person in this thread has ever had their chromosomes examined (and if they did, they might get a surprising result, like xxy). Nor do we treat people as women or men based on their primary sexual characteristics (penis or vagina) at first glance. Rather, 99% of the reason we treat someone as a man or woman is based on an instantaneous evaluation of their secondary characteristics. To claim anything else is ad hoc reasoning applied after the fact.
Also, being transgender is not a mental disorder in my opinion because this implies that transsexuals need "therapy." The reality, though, is that the existence of the strict requirements for medications and surgeries to transition is more about protecting cissexual people that might be mistaken (perhaps .00000001% of the population) rather than helping people who actually are transsexual. That's why it's called a disorder - to protect cissexuals.
Hi there. I myself identify as a trans person and I'd just like to clear up a lot of misconceptions in this thread. First, some vocabulary:
Transgender: umbrella term for people who do not line up with the gender binary as it is usually conceived. Includes transsexual, genderqueer, intersex, transvestite, agender, etc.
Transsexual: Someone whose gender does not align with their sex.
Cissexual: Someone whose gender does align with their sex.
Ok, so that being said, one of the major problems in this thread is that there is a huge prevalence of cissexual privilege that most are not even aware they have. It's completely impossible to appeal to reason with you when you don't recognize your privilege, so hopefully, I can make you more aware. The examples in this thread so far (imagine if you were born a girl but still had the same mind) will not and cannot work, for the cissexual assumes that if he were born a girl, he would simply identify as a girl. Thus, a different sort of mindset is required.
Try this example: Suppose you (a cissexual male) wake up tomorrow in the same mind and body that you are in right now. You feel exactly as you always have. You drive to the store to do some shopping. While in the men's clothing section, someone says: "Excuse me, madam, you are in the wrong section." You use the restroom, they say: "It's against the law to use the wrong restroom. Please leave." You walk around in your male clothes, and people say things like: "You're not REALLY a man. Stop pretending you sick fuck."
This is your cissexual privilege. You have never been questioned about your gender identity. You have never had to defend yourself as being who you really are. But one does not have to have a great deal of imagination to see how this could happen: Perhaps you got into a car accident, and it damaged your genitalia such that you no longer produced testosterone. And perhaps your vocal chords got damaged so you no longer have a deep voice. Indeed, people would question who you are. But you KNOW you're a guy, because you always have been. And no matter how much people treat you as female, do you really think they could someone socially mesmerize you into identifying as being female?
The other point I want to make is that there is a clear error in both gender constructionist and gender essentialist views, and neither are compatible with transsexualism. Gender constructionist says: There's no such thing as a "real" gender - we just made this stuff up. Therefore, there can be no such thing as a transsexual, because there's nothing innately female or male in the world, just stuff we made up. So there's no reason for you to want to change your body other than social norms.
Gender constructionists must ignore decades of research on intersexed individuals. Scientists thought with intersex, if you just remove one of the "defective"genitals, you could raise the child as if they were the sex (and gender) of your choice. Turns out, this was a fucking disaster. It was wrong. Intersexed individuals often end up discovering their condition and wish to revert to the other sex.
Gender essentialists, on the other hand - those that believe that we are "born" with genders - are equally wrong. We clearly have a wide variety of gender preferences and roles in society, from tomboyish women to effeminate men. And clearly to some degree these traits can be influenced by our upbringing. Female mannerisms such as occupying little space, having a weak handshake, walking in a particular way, wearing makeup, being "pretty" - are not necessary to being a woman. Nor is being a strong alpha male necessary to being a man.
It's high time we stopped pretending that gender is either completely constructed or essential to our biology. Gender and sexuality is fluid, it occupies far more than a mere binary. It's both constructed and biological, just like intelligence, work ethic, social skills, etc. We have innate tendencies that we tend to go towards, that can be enhanced or downplayed based on our in environments.
A final point, specifically to the people that say we must identify men and women based on their chromosomes or their genitalia: This completely ignores the fact that whether we are treated as a man or woman has absolutely nothing to do with these things. No one walks around with their birth certificates, and I am willing to bet that not a single fucking person in this thread has ever had their chromosomes examined (and if they did, they might get a surprising result, like xxy). Nor do we treat people as women or men based on their primary sexual characteristics (penis or vagina) at first glance. Rather, 99% of the reason we treat someone as a man or woman is based on an instantaneous evaluation of their secondary characteristics. To claim anything else is ad hoc reasoning applied after the fact.
Also, being transgender is not a mental disorder in my opinion because this implies that transsexuals need "therapy." The reality, though, is that the existence of the strict requirements for medications and surgeries to transition is more about protecting cissexual people that might be mistaken (perhaps .00000001% of the population) rather than helping people who actually are transsexual. That's why it's called a disorder - to protect cissexuals.
Befree on discrimination:
On December 06 2012 09:01 Befree wrote:
There was a report in 2011 that went over a lot of the discrimination they face. I don't think most people are aware of how much they deal with so I really encourage everyone to look through the report summary. The study is based on 6,145 transgender and non-gender conforming participants from throughout the U.S. Here are some excerpts from the executive summary (source http://endtransdiscrimination.org/PDFs/NTDS_Exec_Summary.pdf ):
The amount of discrimination is absolutely terrifying. But the saddest part of all this is how ignored it still is, and how so many still seem to think this discrimination is okay.
This was a big step, though. And hopefully we can start moving towards getting rid of institutional discrimination completely, which unfortunately still exists in laws in the United States for homosexuals and transgendered individuals.
There was a report in 2011 that went over a lot of the discrimination they face. I don't think most people are aware of how much they deal with so I really encourage everyone to look through the report summary. The study is based on 6,145 transgender and non-gender conforming participants from throughout the U.S. Here are some excerpts from the executive summary (source http://endtransdiscrimination.org/PDFs/NTDS_Exec_Summary.pdf ):
The amount of discrimination is absolutely terrifying. But the saddest part of all this is how ignored it still is, and how so many still seem to think this discrimination is okay.
This was a big step, though. And hopefully we can start moving towards getting rid of institutional discrimination completely, which unfortunately still exists in laws in the United States for homosexuals and transgendered individuals.
