Resolution by the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE) Board of Directors to the American Psychiatric Association (APA)Whereas people are naturally endowed with a wide diversity of gender expression, identities, and sexual orientations;
Whereas, the distress felt by gender non-conforming people is fundamentally due to social prejudice and heterosexism, and is not a characteristic of their identities;
Whereas diagnosis of psychological disorders has been used as a form of social control;
Whereas, the inclusion of normal variations of behavior as diagnostic criteria has been widely used to justify discrimination against gender non-conforming people by individuals, governments, and corporations; and has resulted in material harm to people;
Whereas, the principle responsibility of medicine is to "Do No Harm;"
Therefore, be it resolved that we find the American Psychiatric Association to have a responsibility to ameliorate this harm, and hereby call for the following remedies:
(1) We hereby call on the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association to issue a declaration stating that: Gender variance, and gender non-conforming behavior do not constitute a psychological disorder;
(2) We hereby call on the American Psychiatric Association to remove the diagnosis of so- called "Transvestic Fetishism," which explicitly pathologizes gender non-conforming behavior, from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual;
(3) We hereby call for the reform of any diagnosis that can be made solely based on gender non-conforming behavior, specifically including “Gender Identity Disorder in Children.”
Resolved this day May 15, 2009 by the Board of Directors of
The International Foundation for Gender Education
Facebook IFGE: the International Foundation for Gender Education.
http://www.ifge.org/
APA
