It's been a year since the announcement by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) that the Diagnostic and Stastical Manual of Mental Illness (DSM) revision team for "Gender Identity Disorder" would be headed by people who have expressed nothing but hostility to the reality that gender and sėx are separate things that don't necessarily mean the same thing within a person, and a year since that disturbing announcement prompted me to write a declaration for a fledgling activist group. Since the APA is meeting this week in San Francisco for it's annual conference where there is lots of discussion about the condition of gender and the inclusion of Gender Identity Disorder in the DSM by those very same people, I would like to post the declaration I wrote last year:
Whereas, it is almost universally acknowledged in all other arenas of humanity, that people's self identity, expression, character, intellect, ability to achieve, heart, and soul take precedence over their bodies, and that the condition of their bodies should not be used to limit or define them against their will;
Whereas, virtually all supposedly scientific data used to categorize trans people as mentally disordered, is based on foundational assumptions which stem from purely biased cultural attitudes rooted in ignorance, tradition, and religious dogma that gender should solely be determined by reproductive capacity, rather than from true objective and scientific inquiry, based on unbiased and humane perspectives, that make no such preconceived false assumptions;
Whereas, the existence of untold millions of Trans people around the world, in every culture throughout human history, provides compelling evidence that the above biased assumption is prima facie untrue;
Whereas, ending debate about whether Trans people are mentally disordered will properly shift scientific focus away from the distraction of assigning false mental illness, and toward objective research into how Trans people can be successfully identified in early childhood so that compassionate and effective medical care, including social therapy and hormonal treatment regimens, can be established and implemented in order to facilitate the assimilation of Trans people into social roles that are suitable to their natural inherent genders prior to adolescence and puberty, and lead to improvements in medical interventions for Trans people during later life stages so that their bodies can be better aligned with their inherent genders, thus allowing for healthier and stable lives;
Whereas, Trans people must be recognized as having a physiological condition rather than psychological disorder, thus requiring medical intervention through surgical and endocrinological means, and Trans people must have the right to determine what is needed to correct their own bodies, to be consistent with their inherent genders, so that they can live comfortable and meaningful lives, and socialize as they naturally need to;
Whereas, surgical alteration of ambiguous birth sex (intersex) performed on children without their consent, is unethical and must be abandoned in favor of waiting for them to communicate for themselves what gender they are;
Whereas, anyone seen by the vast majority of the Trans community as working against the truth of what we know about inherent gender identity, cannot be placed in a position of defining the nature of gender identities with any level of trust from the people who's lives they are so profoundly impacting;
Whereas, we are a coalition of doctors, lawyers, therapists, scientists, educators, artists, other professionals, and community advocates, who have lived our lives under extreme social stigma due to being trans, and have unique perspectives and understandings of life as a result;
2. The World Health Organization must remove all entries in the International Classification of Disease that define gender identity as groups of disorders from the mental illness sections of the ICD, AND reclassify them as physiological conditions, within appropriate locations of the ICD, that will allow them to be recognized and medically treated as such.
3. The DSM and ICD must have entries that acknowledge forms of anxiety and stress that stem from living in a society that tends to reject, stigmatize, and ostracize Trans people, which includes the ever-present threat of violence. Social stressors such as these, require compassionate therapeutic treatment that respects the rights of Trans people to receive competent surgical and hormonal treatment to correct their body conditions.
4. Involuntary surgery performed on intersex children to force gender upon them, without understanding how they identify themselves, must immediately end, and be replaced with care that waits for them to be able to communicate what gender they are, and allows them to chose what kind of surgery, if any, they should have, when they are ready to do so.
5. The qualifications and motivations of anyone placed in a position to outline the care of Trans individuals, must be closely examined. Their participation in any committee commissioned to determine the classification of gender identity must be founded on the trust of the Trans community: if their openly expressed beliefs are seen by the majority of the Trans community as hostile to the reality that Trans people are a natural part of humanity and not mentally disordered, they can not be trusted to act in the best interests of the Trans community.
6. The Trans community, numbering in the millions throughout the world, is competent enough to effectively communicate to the medical and psychological communities who we are in regards to our true genders, and therefore, what medical diagnoses and treatments are appropriate, in order to correct physical conditions we are born with, according to those inherent genders.
7. These changes must be realized during this current revision process so that Trans people are not made to suffer indignantly for another 15-20 years before the next opportunity arises to comprehensively do so.
There comes a time in history when a class of people who have been misunderstood, oppressed, vilified, ostracized, ridiculed, and abused by the institutions of society—due to profound misunderstanding of the reality that humanity is much more rich, diverse, and vibrant than the traditions of those institutions lead people to believe—must rise up in unity against that oppression and proclaim that they are very much a part of the beautiful normal diversity of humanity, and must be recognized as such in order for the institutions of society to sustain and advance humanity as a compassionate and soulful thing.
Those institutions must recognize that this class of people has special and unique needs, partly as a result of the condition of their birth and partly as a result of the systematic oppression imposed on them by society, that are medical and social in nature, and need supported access to medical treatments and remedies to give them an opportunity to function in life as the people they truly are.
So, WE, a coalition of people who identify as Trans or Intersex people (including people who are also known as transgender, transsexual, intersex, and several other terms used to classify people based on being born with a condition where the gender of their mind, psyche, or soul differs from their anatomical sex at birth, or, their anatomical sex at birth was ambiguous) hereby proclaim this resolution:
Whereas, gender variation has been recognized and often celebrated throughout human history, in diverse cultures around the world, and we as a human race are at a crossroads in properly acknowledging and respecting the existence of inherent genders that are unique and separate from reproductive anatomical conditions of the body;
Whereas, it is almost universally acknowledged in all other arenas of humanity, that people's self identity, expression, character, intellect, ability to achieve, heart, and soul take precedence over their bodies, and that the condition of their bodies should not be used to limit or define them against their will;
Whereas, virtually all supposedly scientific data used to categorize trans people as mentally disordered, is based on foundational assumptions which stem from purely biased cultural attitudes rooted in ignorance, tradition, and religious dogma that gender should solely be determined by reproductive capacity, rather than from true objective and scientific inquiry, based on unbiased and humane perspectives, that make no such preconceived false assumptions;
Whereas, the existence of untold millions of Trans people around the world, in every culture throughout human history, provides compelling evidence that the above biased assumption is prima facie untrue;
Whereas, ending debate about whether Trans people are mentally disordered will properly shift scientific focus away from the distraction of assigning false mental illness, and toward objective research into how Trans people can be successfully identified in early childhood so that compassionate and effective medical care, including social therapy and hormonal treatment regimens, can be established and implemented in order to facilitate the assimilation of Trans people into social roles that are suitable to their natural inherent genders prior to adolescence and puberty, and lead to improvements in medical interventions for Trans people during later life stages so that their bodies can be better aligned with their inherent genders, thus allowing for healthier and stable lives;
Whereas, Trans people must be recognized as having a physiological condition rather than psychological disorder, thus requiring medical intervention through surgical and endocrinological means, and Trans people must have the right to determine what is needed to correct their own bodies, to be consistent with their inherent genders, so that they can live comfortable and meaningful lives, and socialize as they naturally need to;
Whereas, surgical alteration of ambiguous birth sex (intersex) performed on children without their consent, is unethical and must be abandoned in favor of waiting for them to communicate for themselves what gender they are;
Whereas, anyone seen by the vast majority of the Trans community as working against the truth of what we know about inherent gender identity, cannot be placed in a position of defining the nature of gender identities with any level of trust from the people who's lives they are so profoundly impacting;
Whereas, we are a coalition of doctors, lawyers, therapists, scientists, educators, artists, other professionals, and community advocates, who have lived our lives under extreme social stigma due to being trans, and have unique perspectives and understandings of life as a result;
Therefore, we, the members of this coalition, declare that:
1. The classification of Trans people as mentally disordered within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) as well as the International Classification of Disease (ICD) of the World Health Organization (WHO), resulting in medical and social stigmatization, must immediately end; we will accept nothing less: Trans people are representative of natural human diversity.
2. The World Health Organization must remove all entries in the International Classification of Disease that define gender identity as groups of disorders from the mental illness sections of the ICD, AND reclassify them as physiological conditions, within appropriate locations of the ICD, that will allow them to be recognized and medically treated as such.
3. The DSM and ICD must have entries that acknowledge forms of anxiety and stress that stem from living in a society that tends to reject, stigmatize, and ostracize Trans people, which includes the ever-present threat of violence. Social stressors such as these, require compassionate therapeutic treatment that respects the rights of Trans people to receive competent surgical and hormonal treatment to correct their body conditions.
4. Involuntary surgery performed on intersex children to force gender upon them, without understanding how they identify themselves, must immediately end, and be replaced with care that waits for them to be able to communicate what gender they are, and allows them to chose what kind of surgery, if any, they should have, when they are ready to do so.
5. The qualifications and motivations of anyone placed in a position to outline the care of Trans individuals, must be closely examined. Their participation in any committee commissioned to determine the classification of gender identity must be founded on the trust of the Trans community: if their openly expressed beliefs are seen by the majority of the Trans community as hostile to the reality that Trans people are a natural part of humanity and not mentally disordered, they can not be trusted to act in the best interests of the Trans community.
6. The Trans community, numbering in the millions throughout the world, is competent enough to effectively communicate to the medical and psychological communities who we are in regards to our true genders, and therefore, what medical diagnoses and treatments are appropriate, in order to correct physical conditions we are born with, according to those inherent genders.
7. These changes must be realized during this current revision process so that Trans people are not made to suffer indignantly for another 15-20 years before the next opportunity arises to comprehensively do so.
