The Gender Gulag: Voices of the Asylum
Filed by: Guest Blogger
December 4, 2008 2:00 PM

http://www.bilerico.com/2008/12/the_gender_gulag_voices_of_the_asylum.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.

kelley winters.jpgIn 1860, abolitionist and suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony risked arrest to help a battered wife who had been committed by her husband to an insane asylum for over a year. Mrs. Phoebe Phelps, a school principal and accomplished author, was imprisoned and allowed no contact with her children, friends or family for nonconformity to the submissive role expected of women. It was remarkably easy to incarcerate women of that time with a diagnosis of "delusions" or in later years "hysteria." After her release by writ of habeas corpus, she asked Ms. Anthony to help her flee the grasp of her abusive husband, a Massachusetts Senator. On Christmas night, Anthony took Mrs. Phelps and her daughter by train to New York City and a chance for freedom.