"DSD" supporters on track to get intersex listed among DSM-V's disorders
Posted by Andrea James on 06/22 at 11:08 PM
http://www.tsroadmap.com/notes/index.php/site/comments/dsd_supporters_on_track_to_get_intersex_listed_among_dsm_vs_disorders/ (http://www.tsroadmap.com/notes/index.php/site/comments/dsd_supporters_on_track_to_get_intersex_listed_among_dsm_vs_disorders/)
Anne Tamar-Mattis, an intersex activist with Advocates for Informed Choice, has embraced the problematic concept of DSD (Disorders of Sex Development). She has just published a piece in which she seems surprised that this short-sighted choice is about to usher in a new era of repathologization of the people her organization serves. She notes:
I am very concerned about the move to classify people with intersex conditions who reject their gender assignment as a subtype of the gender dysphoria diagnosis.
For years, many of us have pointed out that Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and Disorders of Sex Development (DSD) are merely variations on a theme. Both turn traits into diseases.
I'm becoming increasingly concerned that, the inclusion of a problem as a mental health issue, is being used for what appear to be political/social reasons.
This is, effectively using mental illness as a tool of repression. It is utterly disgusting, politically, socially, democratically and medically.
I may, of course, have been misled by the reporting. All of the information I have is from that. I know, from experience, that these documents tend to be written in a manner that suits medicine, not the law. But strangely, there doesn't appear to have been much defense made, even by clinicians.
I am also deeply aware that the US standards of care for those legally detained, are among the poorest in the world. Most countires would consider, physical restrainsts for example, to be barbarac, cruel and uncivilised. Yet the US appears to have a list of protocals for these.