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Monday, November 02, 2009
Ray Blanchard at Toronto’s notorious Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has accused me of spreading “misinformation” about him, so let’s get all his biographical details out on the table in order to make my point more clearly.
Blanchard is widely reviled by transsexual people. He once declared that a trans woman who has transitioned is merely “a man without a penis,” and said of trans men, “They get a kind of lump that in the best, most expensive, $100,000 cases, kind of, maybe, look like a penis from across a room.” His comments on trans people’s genitalia echo his fixation on “phallometrics,” the measurement of penile length, width, and tumescence when subjects are exposed to erotic stimuli. The field of “phallometrics” was developed by Blanchard’s mentor at CAMH to determine if army recruits were gay or not. Blanchard, who has not disclosed his own sexual orientation publicly, is considered an expert in determining the size and tumescence of male genitalia.
Blanchard took umbrage at my publication of his 2008 taxpayer-funded salary and my comment that he and Zucker both left America for Canada during the Vietnam War. Why is Blanchard so touchy about military matters, and what personally motivates his life’s work? What drives this key figure in the oppression of sex and gender minorities? Since he feels entitled to ascribe labels and motivations to others, let’s turn the tables. Why is Ray so reticent about revealing his own sexual interests and behavior, when his career involves “catching” people not being open and honest about their sexual interests and behavior?
This article examines Ray’s childhood, family life, sexuality, Catholic upbringing, and interest in penile tumescence. It also examines how CAMH became the world’s largest publicly-funded forced feminization sex dungeon and transgender reparative therapy clinic. Finally, it examines what Blanchard’s most important legacy will be: the broad expansion of “paraphilia” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) to further oppress sex and gender minorities as mentally disordered.
In this section:
* Ray Blanchard motivations for oppressing sex and gender minorities
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-motivations.html
* Toronto: epicenter of pathologization of sex and gender minorities
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-hypotheses.html
* Ray Blanchard’s problematic place in history
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-history.html
* Notes, updates, further reading
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/ray-blanchard-notes.html
This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Lynn Conway notes:
This interactive map reveals that the Centre for Addiction and mental Health (CAMH) not only controls the fate of gender transitioners in Ontario, but in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland too. It also reveals that CAMH requires a two-year RLE in all cases, in non-compliance with the WPATH Standards of Care.
Sex reassignment surgery in Canada: what’s covered and where
http://www.xtra.ca/public/Ottawa/Sex_reassignment_surgery_in_Canada_whats_covered_and_where-7706.aspx
Province-by-province breakdown of SRS coverage
http://www.xtra.ca/BinaryContent/stories/77/06/7706/7706-SRS/212_SRS.swf
This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
From my newest tsroadmap.com article:
Transgender taxpayers in Canada help foot the bill for their own pathologization, helping to pay nearly $328,000* in 2008 to two conservative Toronto psychologists working to turn back the clock on the rights of sex and gender minorities worldwide.
Public disclosure documents show that Ray Blanchard was paid over $172,000 in 2008, and Kenneth Zucker was paid over $155,500. Both men work at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. This former “lunatic asylum” is home to the most notorious and regressive facility in the world dedicated to preventing and “curing” gender non-conforming behavior in children and adults.
Both Blanchard and Zucker are also heavily involved in the political push within psychology to continue labeling sex and gender minorities as disordered and diseased. Homosexuality was depathologized in 1973, but these men have an obvious and substantial financial interest in not just maintaining the status quo, but in expanding the definitions of sexual “disorders” that can be applied to all people. Their CAMH clinics are major recipients of taxpayer funds via the provincial and federal healthcare systems in Canada, so more “disordered” people mean more money for their clinics and themselves.
The full article discusses their reactionary opinions about sex and gender minorities, why both men headed to Canada during the Vietnam War, and why their “support” for transpeople is tied to their job security.
*Figures are in Canadian dollars. That totals over US$300,000 based on current exchange rates.
Full article:
http://www.tsroadmap.com/info/zucker-blanchard-salary.html
This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.
Monday, September 21, 2009
I’m pleased to see plenty of real intersex people stepping forward to discuss this matter rather than having “experts” hog the money and media resources and speak for them! Sarah
Graham notes:
Intersexuality is a word that is hardly ever mentioned
in the media. When it is mentioned it is as some kind of slur.
Something a bit seedy, dirty, and very wrong.
Intersexuality both titillates and frightens people because it
threatens our very basic idea of how the world is made.
When a baby is born the first question anyone asks is is it a girl or
a boy. That’s it. Two options: pink or blue. But the truth is that
nature isn’t that clear-cut.
The really shocking truth is that in the 20th century there was a
massive cover-up of this. The medical and legal know-it-alls tried
their very best to erase intersexuality from society.
They took it upon themselves to try to force everyone into two
categories: male or female. Nothing else was acceptable.
Full article:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/life-style/real-life/2009/09/14/i-feel-for-caster-semenya-i-am-a-woman-with-male-chromosomes-115875-21671255/
This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.
Richard O’Brien notes:
“All my life, I’ve been fighting, torn in two and battling – never belonging, actually. Never being male. Or female. Wondering if I was born transgender? Did it happen in the womb? That might have made it easier. I don’t know. Or was it psychological? I’d been going to therapy, treating what I was as though it was some kind of illness – getting more and more depressed, wondering, ‘could I be cured?’ I went mad, really.”
Full article:
http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/stage-visual-arts/richard-o-brien-lays-himself-bare-1.921225
This is talk, not advice. See Terms of Use for details.
Posted by
Andrea James on 09/21 at 11:40 PM
Well-Being •
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