12/27/10

Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender & Queer Jamaica: Ten Reasons Why the Transvestic Disorder Diagnosis in the DSM-5 Has Got to Go

Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender ; Queer Jamaica: Ten Reasons Why the Transvestic Disorder Diagnosis in the DSM-5 Has Got to Go
Kelley Winters, Ph.D.
GID Reform Advocates
www.gidreform.org
kelley@gidreform.org

Click title or link for Queer Jamaica: "Ten Reasons Why the Transvestic Disorder Diagnosis in the DSM-5 Has Got to Go"

The classification of gender diversity and nonconformity to birth-assigned gender roles as mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has drawn growing protest and outrage from transpeople and and allies worldwide. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the APA, is regarded as the medical and social definition of mental disorder throughout North America and strongly influences international diagnostic nomenclature. The fifth edition of the manual, the DSM-5, is in development and scheduled for publication in 2013. While the diagnostic category of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) has garnered most of the controversy, a second category of so-called Transvestic Fetishism (TF) has harmed transwomen, including transsexual women, as well as male-to-female crossdressers, dual gender and gender nonconforming people since the earliest days of the DSM. Trans and LGB advocates have been inexplicably quiet about the TF category, even after the APA proposed to expand the category in the DSM-5, renamed Transvestic Disorder, to implicate gender nonconforming people of all sexes and all sexual orientations.

The proposed DSM-5 diagnosis of Transvestic Disorder, even worse than its predecessor Transvestic Fetishism, labels gender expression not stereotypically associated with assigned birth sex as inherently pathological and sexually deviant. The diagnosis is punitive and scientifically capricious, serving to punish social and sexual gender nonconformity and enforce binary stereotypes of assigned birth sex. Here are ten reasons why the Transvestic Disorder diagnosis should be eliminated entirely from the DSM-5."

Click the the link or post title for Kelley's Queer Jamaica' complete incredible article.

12/23/10

Petition the American Psychiatric Association: Remove Transgender from Proposed Changes in the DSM-5

Becuse our Identities are Not Disordered

The DSM is regarded as the medical and social definition of mental disorder throughout North America and strongly influences international psychiatric nomenclature.

On January 10th, 2010, the American Psychiatric Association released proposed draft revisions for the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) to be published May 2013.

Although the proposed changes for the DSM-5 has substituted "Incongruent" a less offensive word for "Dysphoria", the ramifications of this diagnosis still exists as illustrated recently by our exclusion from the DADT repeal.

Transgender people's civil rights advancement has been and will be severely limited by our diagnosis in DSM as mentally ill by the American Psychiatric Association.

Anti transgender organizations cornerstone evidence for our dehumanization is the DSM which links our identities with with autogynephilia and pedophilia. Without fail the roundhouse blow during our engagement with anti trans forces has been delivered by quoting the DSM prognosis of our 'mental illness'.

Our diverse gender identities are a natural gift, not a psychiatric disorder.

Petition site:
Change.org petition

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There are arguments we would be "cutting of our noses in spite of or faces" by getting our gender diversity de-listed in medical references as a treatable pathology. That is not my opinion. Why would a perfectly normal socialy functional human be satisfied with being labeled as mentally ill?

APA's DSM-5 Development Page


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