As we head into what is hoped to be a grand, brand spanking New Year, a lingering question remains in the air, much like the remaining tangy, stale odor of last night's silent pile of empty Don Perione champagne bottles...Just when is society going to take a hint that we as Trans-experienced people, are not "mentally ill" and are as natural as squirrls and granola?
There is mounting consensus that the damaging and stigmatizing "diagnosis" in the DSM can be replaced by a more somatic (relating to whole treatment of the body) medical diagnosis of physical misalignment from inherent Gender Identity, place that within the ICD9-10 for insurance and theraputic purposes, eliminating the notion that Trans people are "mentally ill" while still being able to access medical treatment. A large number of mental health practioners and physicians are currently supporting an atmosphere of condemming Trans people into the "defective human being" catagory.
The general media, in all of it's glory and predicatable focused concern about the bottom line, seizes upon any opportunity to portray Trans individuals as disordered freaks and "interesting gender imposters with mental afflications" to draw audiences, ratings and earnings.
Notice how they have inserted even Intersex people into the DSM via the "diagnoses" related to the rejection of "assigned" (forced upon) sex and gender role after Intersex birth and the forceful introduction of the concept of Intersex as "abnormal condition"; Re: GIDNOS ("Gender Identity Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified") and DSD ("Development of Sex Disorder"): http://ts-si.org/guest-columns/27504-dsm-5-disordering-intersex-disobedience
http://intersexnews.blogspot.com/2010/03/oiis-objections-to-apa-dsm-v-committees.html
Herstory (yes, a feminist reform of the word: history) has recorded the use of the DSM as weapon and a tool of social control and stigmatization, against women, gays and minorities in the past as well: http://books.google.com/books?id=T5zs0VVWmCAC&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=African+Americans+in+the+dsm&source=bl&ots=2Y3nb2UiKj&sig=gvls18an4NDb0-M4y4Mcs0Zn_iA&hl=en&ei=IWAeTdn_OcWt8AaCntiFDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&sqi=2&ved=0CFgQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=African%20Americans%20in%20the%20dsm&f=false
An elightening read!:
DSM: Diagnosing for Money and Power, Summary of the Critique of the DSM
By: Ofer Zur, Ph.D., and Nola Nordmarken, MFT: http://www.zurinstitute.com/dsmcritique.html
I re-interate that the DSM is used as a weapon and tool of control - I point out the socially encouraged images of Transsexual/Transgender people as being individuals who are "insane", "abnormal", "sick", "things to be pitied" and the general stigmatization that the need to outwardly express inherent internal gender (which includes identity), which runs counter to an "assigned" gender role and presentation, is just about equal to committing a criminal act - are results of that being presented within the DSM as a "disorder".
Even the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) strongly argue that there is a need to eliminate Inherent Internal Gender as a "disorder" from the Diagnostic Statitical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM): http://www.socialworkers.org/diversity/new/lgbtq/51810.asp
