Flap Flares Over Gender Diagnosis
May 16th, 2008
Transgender and gay activists are objecting to some members of an American Psychiatric Association (APA) committee that will weigh changes to the definition of gender identity disorder (GID), a diagnosis that activists say is used to treat young trans and gay people with the goal of curing them.
But the members are not easily pigeonholed as anti-gay or anti-transgender and the diagnosis itself has been used to gain medical care and legal protections for some transgendered people.
“Kenneth J. Zucker, Ph.D., is a name that every gay man and lesbian woman should know, especially if they were treated to become ’straight’ at a camp or an ex-gay affirming psychologist’s office,” Autumn Sandeen wrote in a May 7 post on pamshouseblend.com, a website popular with gay, lesbian, and transgendered progressives.
On May 1, the APA named the members of 13 working groups that will consider the various diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the association’s official list of disorders. The DSM has definitions only for diagnoses and does not make recommendations for treatment.
The working groups will write the fifth edition of the DSM, which is scheduled to be published in 2012. Zucker, a leading GID expert, will chair the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group. A sub-working group, chaired by Dr. Peggy T. Cohen-Kettenis of VU University Medical Center in The Netherlands, will consider the GID diagnosis.
Zucker is accused by activists of being a proponent of reparative therapy, a purported cure for homosexuality, and of treating children with GID with an eye toward preventing adult homosexuality or transsexuality.
A second working group member, Dr. Ray Blanchard, a psychiatry professor at the University of Toronto, is deemed offensive for his theories that some types of transsexuality are paraphilias, or sexual urges. In this model, transsexuality is not an essential aspect of the individual, but a misdirected sexual impulse. Blanchard is not on the Cohen-Kettenis sub-working group.
Tags: center, lesbian, national, rights
May 16th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Canada and the US are each others biggest trading partners. Free trade between the US and Canada was signed in the 80s FTA, before NAFTA (and is a legacy of Reagan, not Clinton). Including Mexico in the deal was pushed for by Bush Sr and signed in by Clinton.
May 16th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Look at the cock on that cock!
May 16th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
If ever there was an article too anthromorphic for it’s own good, this would be it.
May 16th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
When stuff like this happens, you always have to think about who benefits. Obviously on the surface Clinton benefits because Obama looks bad. And if this helps Clinton, then why would Canada want to help Clinton? Well, the obvious reason is that if NAFTA is good for Canada, then they must feel that Clinton would be the safest choice for ensuring NAFTA stays put.As much as Clinton said in the last debate that she would pull out of NAFTA if we couldn’t re-negotiate it to better help the US, the truth is that NAFTA is one of Bill Clinton’s feathers (in his Presidential hat). And Hillary Clinton won’t destroy it and ruin a part of Bill’s legacy. And that’s a point I’m sure Canada is aware of. Clinton would be negotiating from a less powerful position than Obama, and therefore less likely to “pull out”… my opinion anyway…
May 16th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
There’s a big row up here about some allegations by democrats who claim that the Canada is trying to undermine the democrats.
May 16th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Both candidates are pandering to the Ohio constituency. As much as people don’t want to believe it, even with the golden-boy Obama it’s politics as usual.Neither candidate has any intention of making substantive change to the NAFTA agreement. The globalisation and free trade wagon has left the barn and it’s not coming back, regardless of the rhetoric.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
You are so lost. If it wasn’t money, it’d be oats, or trees. But most likely it’ll be something stupid, such as religions or color.Money. Ha. The best wars are always fought for some fucking mythical god. Get real, kiddo. Money is making any particular war happen, it’s collection is just a symptom of profiteering.
May 16th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Why do you think it’s the richest, most democratic nations that have had the worst wars?