I really don't want to get into this issue again, but here I am. And I'm echoing a few other people.
I have always felt that if a particular syndrome is a mental disorder, then it can be most effectively cured, controlled, or managed through psychotherapy, psychotropic treatments (specifically, psychiatric medications, not "recreational" drugs or self-medication like booze or acts like self-harm)--or a combination of the two.
This is not the case with us. I won't speak to the umbrella of TG, but (almost by definition) a transsexual is someone whose conviction cannot be "cured" through talk therapy; and, as a few people have pointed out, we don't really have any drugs specifically for TS. One might argue that TS can be managed with psychotherapy, but that tends not to be the case for long. In fact, I think it's safe to say that more often than not, therapy reveals or clarifies TS. It doesn't make TS go away.
We CAN run into problems when we consider the mind and the body as separate, but I think the border is actually fairly clear here. And it's true that we don't know all that much about TS and the brain. But as it stands, I don't see much support for the "mental disorder" diagnosis, and I see plenty of support for a physical diagnosis or some sort of combination diagnosis that does not code the mental part as disordered.
In and of itself, an atypical gender identification does not have to be coded as a disorder. A certain degree of dysphoria should not be classified as disordered, any more than a desire to lose weight, restyle one's hair, or get a nose job should be seen as disordered. Do we say that people are disordered when they say, "I'm not happy with my haircut" and then take a matter-of-fact approach to finding a better option? No, not unless that happiness starts to significantly interfere with the person's function. And if the person becomes acutely depressed over the haircut (or nose or extra pounds or whatever), do we really need a specific classification of "depression due to bad hair day/week/month" or "depression due to large body mass" or "depression due to bump on nose"?
I also feel that one element of the argument is completely irrelevant to the taxonomy question. I feel that when deciding whether transsexuality (or GID) is a disorder, we should go on the available medical evidence and make a medical (or psychological) classification instead of focusing on what the treatment arc will be if we take the syndrome out of the DSM/keep it in the DSM. That's a separate issue.
My two bits' worth (adjusted for inflation).
