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DANGER: Transphobes appointed to re-write DSM-V
Objection to DSM-V Committee Members on Gender Identity Disorders
Written by:
Lupe Ficara
June 18, 2009The American Psychiatric Association, the influential organisation has just appointed several transphobic people, to supervise the writing of the DSM-V, a diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists worldwide. The chairman of the panel for ‘Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders’ is a Dr Kenneth Zucker. He is anti transsexual, and is famous for forcing gender-variant children into ‘reparative therapy’ -so they will conform to his expectations for male and female behavior in children, instead of allowing them to express themselves and their gender identities as they grow up.
Also on the panel is Dr Ray Blanchard, head of the gender program at Toronto’s notorious Clarke Institute, and another proponent of aversion therapy. He is a transphobe, and his transphobia is quite shocking. He believes a transwoman is quote; “A man without a penis”.
He is also the author of the controversial theory of “Autogynephilia”. and believes transsexualism is a sex-fueled mental illness revolving around “a man’s paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the thought or image of himself as a woman.”
Neither of these people accept the currently held medical viewpoints re:transsexualism. Despite the fact Zucker’s work has been discredited, and despite the fact his clinic in Toronto was eventually defunded by the Canadian government he nevertheless has somehow managed to assume power within the group that writes the internationally recognised psychiatric manual.
Despite the fact that many members of the psychiatric community no longer regard transsexualism as a mental illness per se, Zucker and Blanchard will, given their track record, almost certainly redefine gender identity ‘disorder’ from an independant diagnosis to a form of ‘homosexuality’ -which they also regard as pathological.
Doing so will enable homosexuality and lesbianism to be placed as a mental illness in the DSM, for the first time since 1973.
Their appointment thus represents both an attack on not only the transgender community, but the rest of the LGBT community as well.
In addition to this attack, for a long time Zucker, and Blanchard have been disseminating the theory of ‘autogynophilia’ in order to create divisions the transgender community according to their categories of’homosexual’ and ‘autogynophile’. They want to diminish our solidarity as a community by creating divisions between straight and lesbian or queer transwomen.
They don’t recognise MTF transwomen, or FTM transmen.
They are both neo-Freudians, and both of them believe that the primary motivation for gender transitioning is sexually motivated. Because chidren aren’t sexual and therefore repute this hypothesis, they therefore want to preclude trans youth form any treatment other than destructive forms of what they terml ‘reperative therapy’ -ranging from aversion therapy to the use of psychopharmacology to alter their young minds by force.
Thir policies, if implemented globally in the countries that rely upon the DSM will preventing trans youth from expressing themselves until they reach an age of sexual maturity. Not only will this be destructive in itself, but to add insult to injury, their emergent sexuality will then be blamed for their motivation to transition.
If Zucker and Blanchard suceed their hurtful, pseudo-scientific policies will be very damaging to the transgender community.
They need to be stopped.