Kenneth Zucker & APA Task Force on Gender Identity, Gender Variance, and Intersex Conditions |
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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 20002-4242Dear 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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