Transgender People Want Shrinks to Stop Calling Them Crazy
But will the new diagnosis from the American Psychiatric Association cause them other trouble?
—By Beth Schwartzapfel
| Wed Dec. 5, 2012 3:03 AM PST
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/transgender-psychiatry-dsm-dysphoriaBy just about every standard, Dr. Nick Gorton is like any regular, well-adjusted guy. A 42-year-old veteran emergency-room doctor in the San Francisco Bay Area, he is happily married to his partner of 16 years. He is a self-professed science geek who enjoys hanging out with his Chihuahua-Jack Russell mix and spending too much time online.
But according to the American Psychiatric Association, Gorton has a major mental illness: gender identity disorder. Gorton was raised female, though as early as nursery school he knew he did not feel like a girl. Or, in the phrasing of Diagnosis 302.85 in the fourth edition of the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), he had "a strong persistent cross-gender identification" and "persistent discomfort with his or her sex or sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex."
Transgender activists have long called for this diagnosis to be revised or removed altogether from the DSM, arguing that being transgender is not a disease but a human variation—more like being left-handed than schizophrenic. The manual listed homosexuality as a form of "sexual deviation" until 1974, and some advocates say that in a generation most people will see the diagnosis of gender identity disorder as equally absurd. Now, a new diagnosis has just been approved by the American Psychiatric Association, but challenges remain for transgender people in need of help.
