Lets face it, these proposals (and probably my post) will offend someone, somewhere, right now!! Age and experience in life and legality just make it seem this way to me, and no offense to people living of sound mind is meant. For most of the reasons Sarah gave I actulally see good coming out of this revision. I can and have written legal and other professional material that was meant to be so specific and restrictive that it would give you choking claustrophobia as never before and have you wearing a pinstriped straightjacket when it came to educated judgment!
I am actually happy to see this written more generally so that Malpractice Insurance Companies and medical insurance companies let the licensed professional have some freedom to use professional judgment, and do not use billing clerks to perform medical evaluations via a to-the-letter check list. Too much and too specific reduces a professional to a technician, and having been a supervisor over both types of worker, I have an appreciation for the fact that we need to deal with the full professionals in our lives. At one point in my career, I had to forbid access to the technicians guidebooks by my professional staff since they were using the books' checklists in place of the professional judgment that they were being paid to use. I noted difference in pay between the two classes and suggested that continued misuse could result in their receiving the lower salary. End of that one.
"Other gender" does not mandate binary, unless that is the limit of your imagination. "Other" means "not this/that" one, and if more than one choice is represented by Other, go for it. A good example there is Baskin Robbins Ice Cream stores with 31 flavors "You have chocolate ripple here, what is the other flavor on your double scoop cone going to be?
Keeping post (of any kind) therapeutic patients in this diagnosis is either helpful (to allow continued hormone or other followup care) or of no importance at all, other than hurt feelings that are suitable for therapy groups --- but oh that is past!! -- horrors --- it is a book entry that is not cash or assets, and not meaningful to the world you wish to leave free of knowlege of your therapeutic past.
If the definition could allow a Cross Dresser to be covered by the diagnosis, I know that the CD's I know would decline the "honor" of the title and not have any concern above the hurt feeling suitable for therapy groups. (Oh, but they are not looking for therapy, are they! Its society that has the problem, not them.) Those of us, (and I am one) who want to be able to obtain therapy of all types, will happily use it to obtain our goals which are "post therapy". I do not wish to have Gender Dysphoria as a lodge title for life, but only long enough to obtain my true life and persona and want it bad enoough that I don't care who is pushing the train uphill. As I said, age and experience, I just wish they could have waited for WPATH though.
