Blinded Me with Science: Devolution of the DSM
Filed by: Guest Blogger
August 25, 2008 2:00 PM
http://www.bilerico.com/2008/08/blinded_me_with_science_devolution_of_th.php (http://www.bilerico.com/2008/08/blinded_me_with_science_devolution_of_th.php)
Editors' note: Kelley Winters, Ph.D. is a writer on issues of transgender medical policy, founder of GID Reform Advocates and an Advisory Board Member for the Matthew Shepard Foundation and TransYouth Family Advocates. She has presented papers on the psychiatric classification of gender diversity at the annual conventions of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Counseling Association and the Association of Women in Psychology.
At the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. Robert Spitzer, Chair of the DSM-III and DSM-IIIR Task Forces, defended the categories of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and paraphilias such as Transvestic Fetishism (TF) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). He declared the inherent pathology of gender identities that vary from assigned birth sex,
Ms. Spitzer makes a rational and true argument. Of course, the question is who the heck will hear it without the sounds of the crashing glass from their own fragile theories as the read it and contemplate the wisdom of placing the DSM-V at the disposal and for the help and treatment of real human beingsa rather than as the sounding-board for social-privilege and theoretical contortionism?
Hopefully someone will and try to understand that human being is variant and diverse and that simply because white guys in three-piece suits and in academic isolation wards where they only have to listen to the sounds of their own ideas extolling their pet prejudices to the exclusion of anyone else's pet life might just allow the second to take precedence over the first. *sigh*
One hopes.
Nichole