Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Mercedes Allen of AlbertaTrans.org asked of my post on the consultant brought in to clean up the CAMH Clarke Institute:
I am not familiar with Annemarie Shrouder and her presence at CAMH. What is it she was brought in to do specifically? Is this public knowledge? This could give emphasis to our concerns of Zucker and Blanchard being on the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group for the APA, depending on the specifics. Please let me know more.
This is the note quietly sent out by CAMH in November 2007 (I learned of it through Kristen Worley):
We at CAMH recognize that significant issues exist between parts of our organization and LGBTTTQQI communities. We have had several opportunities to hear the frustrations, desires, needs, concerns and hopes about and for mental health and addictions programs and services. And we havebeen listening.
We are committed to improving our service to and care of LGBTTTQQI clients. We recognize that in order for us to do this well, we must first bridge the gaps and build our relationships with LGBTTTQQI communities by making internal and external changes.
A crucial component of this commitment as an organization is to develop a strategy based on the feedback we have received over the years. And a crucial component of our strategy development is your input. We are inviting you to join this focus group so that we can share the (draft) framework for this Strategy as it relates to this service and receive your feedback.
If you plan to attend, please RSVP to Annemarie by Dec. 3rd at:
annemarie_shrouder@camh.net or 416 535 8501 x 3418
Individual meeting times are also possible. If you would like to speak privately, please contact Annemarie.
Toronto activists noted:
Annemarie Shrouder is on an 8 week consultancy contract with CAMH, and now into her 4th week. She has to do a follow-up report of her findings. In true CAMH fashion, she has been left in the dark and to her demise - She had no idea of all these past developments around Zucker/Blanchard, Garfinkle and Cantor and Co.
I have not seen this final report.
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Posted by
Andrea James on 05/13 at 07:42 AM
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Here’s an interview where you can hear reparative therapist Kenneth Zucker in his own words as he advises parents to take away the toys and other items they love.
National Public Radio, May 7-8, 2008:
“Two Families Grapple with Sons’ Gender Preferences - Psychologists Take Radically Different Approaches in Therapy” (a heartbreaking contrast between the effects of Zucker’s decades-old reparatist treatment and more modern, humane treatment):
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90247842 (part one)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90229789 (Q/A re part one)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90273278 (part two)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90234780 (Q/A re part two)
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Posted by
Andrea James on 05/12 at 01:24 PM
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Below is a letter I sent to a consultant brought in to address longstanding problems at Tornto’s notorious CAMH Clarke Institute, the source of nearly all institutionalized oppression of trans people in North America.
To Annemarie Shrouder:
Thanks for your efforts in addressing serious issues at the CAMH Clarke Institute. I am a longtime critic of their role in decades of institutionalized oppression of trans people, not only in Toronto, but throughout the world. Since you’ve probably been inundated with partisan viewpoints, I will keep this brief.
1. The Clarke has a “parole board” mentality common among old-guard gatekeeping facilities that controlled access to trans health services. It is nearly the last “clinic” of its kind in North America, and should be disbanded in my opinion.
2. The Clarke staff members have been worldwide leaders for decades in several problematic areas:
* Reparative therapy on children ("curing" trans children)
* An “addiction” model offering “treatment” for those unhappy with their sexualities
* Phallometrics and application of forensic psychology for gender nonconformity (dating back to Freund)
* Etiology and taxonomy for trans people based on sexual arousal (definitions based strictly on sex assigned at birth)
* Focusing on the “problem” of trans women and ignoring health needs of trans men
* Turning down the vast majority of surgical applicants when The Clarke controlled funding (over 90% rejected)
* Prohibitive requirements that drive most clients to private or extralegal healthcare options
* Selecting participants/test subjects based on those who fit their taxonomies (convenience sampling)
* Using their nonrepresentative samples to conduct and publish research
* Using academic journals to suppress and discredit criticism
* Sociobiological/eugenic underpinnings present at the Institute since its opening in 1966.
3. Below are published statements by and about people working there:
* Ray Blanchard: “A man without a penis has certain disadvantages in this world, and this is in reality what you’re creating.”
* Kenneth Zucker: “Zucker found several predictors of adolescent GID: lower IQ, lower social class, immigrant status, non-intact family, and childhood behavior problems unrelated to gender identity disorder.”
* Susan J. Bradley: (with Zucker) “a homosexual lifestyle in a basically unaccepting culture simply creates unnecessary social difficulties.”
* James Cantor: “These people are erotically attracted to the idea of being female...like a cross-dresser who wants to appear female all the way down to the bone, rather than just by the clothes.”
* Maxine Petersen, an older transitioner and Clarke collaborator: “Most gender patients lie.”
It is this atmosphere of distrust and contempt that is the root of all the problems. Everyone listed above should in my opinion be fired, which would probably take care of 90% of the problems at The Clarke.
4. In the heyday of the “gender clinic” system, patients learned the “right” responses to match pet theories of gatekeepers at each clinic. Most trans people who see the Clarke Institute favorably are older transitioners who identify as “disabled” and are frequently recipients of government assistance. Because they are rarely able to assimilate after transition and are typically low-functioning socially, their identities are validated by programs at the Clarke, where they are classified in more socially acceptable ways than they might be under other taxonomies (which described them as “pseudotranssexual” or “nontranssexual"). Many actually enjoy the rigid requirements and humiliation, which somehow validates them and even plays into their fantasies regarding feminization.
I believe the CAMH Clarke Institute’s research will be the historical equivalent to gender that the infamous “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” is to race. I am not saying this to be rhetorical or hyperbolic, either. They are really that bad.
You are welcome to use or share the contents of this letter in any way you see fit. Thanks very much for your time, and feel free to contact me if you require citations for anything above or have any questions.
Sincerely,
Andrea James
PS: Some of my writings about CAMH Clarke list my tsroadmap.com email address as a contact, which has been closed due to spam. Please contact me via my University of Chicago email address.
If you are in the Toronto area and seek trans health services, do not under any circumstances go to the CAMH Clarke Institute. Instead, please contact
LINK: Ottawa Transition Support (ottawatransitionsupport.com)
http://www.ottawatransitionsupport.com/
Includes local resource listings.
LINK: Trans Youth Toronto!
http://www.the519.org/programs/trans/tyt.shtml
A drop-in in downtown Toronto for transsexual and transgender youth age 26 and under.
LINK: Sherbourne Health Centre
http://www.sherbourne.on.ca/
At Sherbourne Health Centre, we offer a wide range of primary health care programs and services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, two-spirited, intersex, queer, or questioning individuals. Our goal is to provide you with dignified, non-judgemental services to help you feel better, cope better with day-to-day challenges, and address specific LGBT health issues.
LINK: Transcend: Transgender Support & Education Society (transgender.org/transcend)
http://www.transgender.org/transcend/
LINK: Transgender Health Program Vancouver (vch.ca/transhealth)
http://www.vch.ca/transhealth/
Their work in Canada illustrates that alternative architectures are possible for trans healthcare. The monolithic, controlling, centralised gender centre approach is not a given, merely a rather unfortunate byproduct of a marginalied history, just as there was nothing to commend backstreet abortion when unwanted pregnancies were similarly problematised by society. Includes a great overview of services [PDF]
LINK: Vancouver Trans Advocacy Group (VanTAG) (vantag.org)
The Vancouver Trans Advocacy Group (VanTAG) is a team of activists advocating the fair recognition of medical needs and human rights of transgendered people in BC. VanTAG’s members include transgendered individuals; family members and friends of trans people; and loved ones affected by inequities present in our social systems. Our aim is to facilitate a peaceful and productive conversation between the community and care providers.
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Posted by
Andrea James on 05/12 at 01:07 PM
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Reparative therapist Kenneth Zucker of Toronto’s notorious CAMH Clarke Institute is influential in both the American Psychological Association, where he is on the Task Force on Gender Identity, Gender Variance, and Intersex Conditions and the American Psychiatric Association, where he was just named Chair of the DSM-V Committee on Gender Identity Disorders.
Below is a letter I sent to Clinton Anderson about Zucker and his cronies. Anderson had solicited comments on a draft of the Task Force report. That paper has been pushed to August according to Anderson.
23 September 2007
Clinton W. Anderson, PhD
Director, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns Office
American Psychological Association: Public Interest Directorate
750 First Street, NE, Washington DC 20002-4242
Dear Dr. Anderson:
Thank you for the opportunity to address several serious concerns about the draft of the Final Report of the APA Task Force on Gender Identity, Gender Variance, and Intersex Conditions. I have provided specific page and line citations per the instructions, but I want to note five key points at the onset.
1. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH Clarke Institute)
Nearly all of the regressive and problematic practices and terminology concerning gender-variant people in the last three decades were developed at “gender clinics,” primarily by psychologists affiliated with Toronto’s CAMH Clarke Institute. The three most problematic are:
∑ Reparative therapy, especially when directed at gender-nonconforming children
∑ Sexual taxonomies using problematic terms such as “homosexual transsexual”
∑ A psychosexual pathology coined “autogynephilia” by Clarke Institute allies
The inclusion of both Kenneth Zucker and Anne Lawrence on the APA Task Force echoes the ideological deck-stacking Dr. Zucker has done as Editor-in-Chief of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, which has effectively become the house organ for the Clarke Institute. In fact, one of Dr. Zucker’s upcoming ASB issues features the longest article ever published in that journal’s 36-year history, devoted to discrediting key critics of Dr. Zucker and his allies. I am among the chief targets of this criticism. The subversion of both ASB and this Task Force is part of a much larger problem of “experts” putting their personal and political interests ahead of the populations they are supposed to serve. Dr. Zucker and his allies have attempted to suppress dissent by wielding their gatekeeping power against our community and by taking strategic positions in key professional groups and publications, including APA Division 44. Most peer criticism of Zucker and his allies that has reached the public comes from anonymous and pseudonymous psychologists and sexologists who fear career damage and retribution if they dare speak openly about what Dr. Zucker and his allies at the Clarke Institute are doing in the name of psychology and the APA. As you know, trans people involved in the Task Force have resigned for the reasons described above. Joshua Mira Goldberg, who first made the community aware there even was a Task Force, recently wrote that since “the Task Force had refused to work constructively with trans and intersex community groups throughout their process, I did not wish to lend any credibility to their process by engaging in review of their final draft.” I suspect this letter will be treated in the same manner, and I urge the APA to take a hard look at what is obviously a pervasive and ongoing problem with this Task Force.
2. Disease models of gender variance
This Task Force is on a parallel track with what will undoubtedly be a historically significant debate over “mental illness” diagnoses related to gender variance in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-V. Dr. Zucker and his allies are laying the groundwork for arguments in line with their practices and viewpoints, while shutting out opportunities for open debate.
3. Sex science
“Sex science” is as problematic for our community as “race science” is for populations which face race-based discrimination. Dr. Zucker and his allies have deep and long-term ideological ties to sociobiology and anthropometry (especially phallometrics). Because of potential for abuse in these fields of inquiry, methodology must be sound and presentation of findings must be based on carefully gathered data, presented responsibly.
4. Prevalence
Conventional conclusions about prevalence data on gender variance have recently come under question. Taking the subset of transsexualism alone, the most-cited prevalence estimates are based on counts of gender reassignments in European clinics many years ago. Reanalysis of those early reports shows lower bounds on the prevalence to be between 1:1000 and 1:2000, using those reports’ own data. More recent incidence data and alternative methods for estimating indicate that the lower bound on the prevalence of transsexualism is at least 1:500, and possibly higher.
5. Task Force name and “disorders of sex development”
“Intersex Conditions” should be changed to “Intersex Traits.” A disease model of intersex is not unanimously embraced. A trait is merely a characteristic, with no pejorative connotation or denotation, but a condition denotes a state of fitness, especially an ailment or abnormality (like a heart condition). Prominent activists and experts question the proposed term “disorders of sex development” (DSD), which conflates issues of function and cosmesis and implies an “order” based on fundamentally heterosexist notions of phenotypic normativity and reproductive fitness.
I do not know by what means you can compel the Task Force to consider and include important data and references that differ from the Clarke Institute viewpoint. Dr. Bockting seems to have worked to bring some balance, but my last-minute involvement suggests others have already lost the war of attrition waged by Dr. Zucker on this front. I hope my involvement is not another empty gesture toward consensus by the Task Force.
Sincerely,
Andrea James
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Posted by
Andrea James on 05/12 at 12:56 PM
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