The Moderate Voice: Doctors and demons and unsung heroes

May 9th, 2008 by JOE WINDISH
It turns out that one of the doctors in yesterday’s piece on families coping with gender identity issues, Kenneth J. Zucker, Ph.D., is on the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group for the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Pam says that’s not good news:

Needless to say, gender-variant LGBT and straight youth, as well as transsexual adults, will likely have to deal with another decade plus of being considered seriously disordered — with its conversion therapy implication for children.

Reform models for, or different takes on Gender Identity Disorder in DSM-V aren’t likely to be seriously considered with forceful advocates Zucker and Blanchard on the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group, advocating to continue listing gender-variant youth and adult transsexuals as disordered.

Pam makes the analogy to 1973, when Homosexuality was was removed as a disorder from the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Second Edition (DSM-II).

It was the step that recognized that individuals whose sexual interests are directed primarily toward people of the same sex weren’t afflicted with a psychiatric disorder.

I make that leap, too. And will share this personal story only to inform the reader of how my experience shapes my beliefs…

As a runaway still in Harrisburg, PA, in 1973, I went to a psychiatry clinic and cried, “I’m a homosexual, please fix me.” The psychiatrist looked at me with kind empathy and answered back, “Why do you think you need fixing?”
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