Responding to Dr. Keith Ablow's Anti-Transgender Rhetoric
By Dan Rafter
September 12th, 2011 at 10:07 am
http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2011/09/responding-to-dr-keith-ablows-anti-transgender-rhetoric/#.Tm9gLk9aPUJThe following post is from Allyson Robinson, HRC Deputy Director of Diversity:
I like to think I have a pretty strong stomach, but reading Dr. Keith Ablow's response to the upcoming appearance of Chaz Bono on ABC's Dancing with the Stars literally sickened me. It took me back to the early days of my own gender transition, and to a particular moment when all the shame, fear and uncertainty of hiding my true self finally became more than I could bear and I realized I needed help.
[...]
I shudder to think what would have become of me had my counselor been someone like Dr. Keith Ablow, who wrote last week that the time-tested Standards of Care for transsexual people by which I was treated are "very nearly insane" and a "destructive myth." I wonder how much deeper my pain might have become as he tried to "pry loose every family secret" from a childhood that was, in reality, happy and secure – as he wrote he would like to do for Chaz. What un-truths might he have cunningly compelled me to believe about my parents, my siblings, my teachers and friends? Who would he have sought to scapegoat for my pain?
