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Well-Being
Information about your state of mind, as well as emotional and spiritual well-being.
Standards of care
Therapy
Self-acceptance
Gender tests
Spirituality
Coming out
Family issues
Friday, September 26, 2008
University of British Columbia professor Chris Shelley just had a book published by University of Toronto Press that finally tackles the ongoing problem of “experts” who think they know more about trans people than trans people themselves, thus dismissing their lived experiences and effacing their identities.
Shauna Lewis reports for Xtra!:
Shelley’s new work Transpeople: Repudiation, Trauma, Healing, which grew out of his doctoral thesis, delves into the social, political and academic sources of trans repudiation, which he posits is transphobia, but more than just phobia. The author, along with those who contributed their personal narratives, takes a look at the complexities of trans experiences and provides ways of “talking back” to marginalizing forces.
Through in-depth interviews with 20 subjects who self-identify as two-spirit and/or transsexual (TS) or transgender (TG), Shelley identified nine broad arenas in which transpeople encounter repudiation, including health care and employment, and through threats and violence.
Shelley’s interviewees are quoted at length throughout. “In this book,” he writes, “transpeople are assumed to be the primary experts on their own lives.”
Full article:
http://www.xtra.ca/public/Vancouver/Book_Transpeople_Repudiation_Trauma_Healing-5577.aspx
This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Kelley Winters at GID Reform has announced a drive to add more diversity of opinion to the American Psychiatric Association Task Force that will determine the fate of trans people in the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). Headed by Arlene Istar Lev, they are calling on all professionals to write in support of expanding the group. Trans people have protested the heavy representation of people and views associated with Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). The CAMH has promoted reparative therapy on trans children they felt could be cured of gender identity disorder, and they advocate a taxonomy that asserts all trans women are either homosexuals or paraphilics.
More info:
http://www.professionals.gidreform.org
Dr. Winters’ blog post:
Balancing Views on Gender Diversity in the DSM-V Process
A new group of concerned mental health and medical professionals and scholars is calling upon clinicians and researchers supportive of gender transcendent people to press for reform of gender diagnoses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Organized by author and Clinical Social Worker Arlene Istar Lev, they are urging colleagues to write the American Psychiatric Association with recommendations that new members be added to committees responsible for gender nomenclature in the upcoming fifth edition (DSM-V).
Professionals Concerned with Gender Diagnoses in the DSM urges all trans-supportive medical and mental health practitioners and researchers to write the APA DSM-V Task Force and request that the Sexual and GID Work Group be expanded to include more affirming views of gender diversity and transition care. A web resource at http://www.professionals.gidreform.org provides specific recommendations for nomination with biographical information and sample letters. For more information, contact GIDreform@gmail.com.
Kelley Winters, Ph.D.
GID Reform Advocates
http://www.gidreform.org
kelley@gidreform.org
This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.
Posted by Andrea James on 09/16 at 11:08 AM
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Monday, September 15, 2008
Noted UK trans activist Stephen Whittle weighs in on the debate about a “real life test,” something I do not advocate. He notes:
Well, for a start I truly believe that fully informed patients who are able to, and will take full responsibility for the decisions they make, can have what surgery they want, so long as a surgeon is happy to do it.
However, my experience of the 15 - 20 cases of ‘trans’ people who regret their treatment including genital surgery so much as to seek to change back, I would estimate that three quarters expedited their genital surgery, paying privately and not completing a RLT of longer than a few months at most. 8 or 9 of these people did not undertake any RLT at all before their surgery.
Full post:
The Real Life Test: to be or not to be, that is the question.
This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.
Posted by Andrea James on 09/15 at 11:04 AM
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Monday, September 01, 2008
The American Psychology Association Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance recently released a report that perpetuates a number of problematic misconceptions about trans people. As the analysis of this report is underway, Professor Lynn Conway has released a report about a key problem with the APA’s refusal to acknowledge recent data on prevalence. She notes:
The APA’s “Report of the Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance” has already come under fire for perpetuating “gender identity disorder (GID)” as a label for gender-variant people, and for failing to distance the APA from the DSM’s representation of gender transitioners as “mentally-ill”. The APA is also criticized for including a gender-reparatist (Zucker) on the Task Force, lending credibility to his inhumane clinical methods.
I want to alert you to another serious problem:
The APA report also grossly underreports the prevalence of “gender identity disorder” by a factor on the order of 10 to 20, as discussed in the following document (attached)
“Falsification of GID prevalence results by the APA Task Force on Gender Identity and Gender Variance”.
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Prevalence/APA/Falsification_of_GID_prevalence_results_by_the_APA_Task_Force.html
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Prevalence/APA/Falsification_of_GID_prevalence_results_by_the_APA_Task_Force.pdf
The APA’s underreporting of GID prevalence is the result of a knowing misuse of clinical definitions and a failure to mention known calculation errors in cited sources. The unreasonably low GID prevalence values are also given to three significant figures in the report as if they were precisely accurate - while failing to mention well-known sources of estimation error. The Task Force openly dismisses work by Olyslager and Conway that has exposed large errors in earlier studies, calling it a “minority position” - further dismissing it by insinuating that citations by “transgender activists” reduces its validity. The Task Force also fails to mention recent scientific studies reporting far higher-levels of GID prevalence than they do.
Who might be responsible for this falsification?
It appears that the APA Task Force relied on Ken Zucker and Anne Lawrence for the section on prevalence. Zucker and Lawrence are considered WPATH’s ‘experts’ on prevalence, having been assigned responsibility for the revision of that section in the 7th Edition of the SOC. Furthermore, Zucker presented the exact same numbers for GID prevalence at the WPATH 2007 Symposium as presented in the APA report.
Why do the prevalence numbers matter?
Factors of 20 are important. By maintaining the old misimpression that fewer than 1 in 10,000 people experience gender dysphoria, the APA creates an illusion that it is an extremely rare “disorder”. If people were aware that gender dysphoria is experienced by at least 1 in 500 people, transgenderism would increasingly be seen for what it is - a natural variation in gendering. Furthermore, by maintaining the illusion that gender dysphoria is incredibly rare, gender-repartists such as Zucker can assure parents that it’s extremely unlikely their gender-variant child will become “transsexual” and suggest that all the child needs is some minor gender-repairs.
What to do?
Who’s to say whether the APA’s falsification of prevalence values was intentiional, or whether it was due to careless ignorance and group-think about old, oft-cited numbers. It would be interesting to ask Zucker and Lawrence and see what they have to say about it.
Meanwhile, what really matters is that the APA’s numbers must be challenged and corrected.
This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Kelley Winters Ph.D. notes:
While the existence of a diagnostic coding has helped affirming, supportive care providers to make hormonal and surgical transition procedures available to some transitioning individuals, the specific diagnostic criteria and supporting text of the current Gender Identity Disorder category support the opposite approach – punitive gender-conversion therapies intended to change or suppress gender identity or expression which differ from assigned birth sex roles. The consequences of the doctrine of “disordered” gender identity in the latest DSM-IV-TR include barriers to medical care for transitioning individuals far beyond the scope of transition itself. It is time for mental health policies that do not harm those they are intended to help.
Full article:
http://gidreform.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/diagnosis-vs-treatment-barriers-to-medical-care/
This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.
Posted by Andrea James on 08/14 at 08:36 AM
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