The Board of Directors of the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE) has issued the following resolution:
Resolution
Whereas people are naturally endowed with a wide diversity of gender expression, identities, and sexual orientations;
Whereas, the distress felt by gender non-conforming people is fundamentally due to social prejudice and heterosexism, and is not a characteristic of their identities;
Whereas diagnosis of psychological disorders has been used as a form of social control;
Whereas, the inclusion of normal variations of behavior as diagnostic criteria has been widely used to justify discrimination against gender non-conforming people by individuals, governments, and corporations; and has resulted in material harm to people;
Whereas, the principle responsibility of medicine is to “Do No Harm;”
Therefore, be it resolved that we find the American Psychiatric Association to have a responsibility to ameliorate this harm, and hereby call for the following remedies:
(1) We hereby call on the Board of Trustees of the American Psychiatric Association to issue a declaration stating that: Gender variance, and gender non-conforming behavior do not constitute a psychological disorder;
(2) We hereby call on the American Psychiatric Association to remove the diagnosis of so- called “Transvestic Fetishism,” which explicitly pathologizes gender non-conforming behavior, from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual;
(3) We hereby call for the reform of any diagnosis that can be made solely based on gender non-conforming behavior, specifically including “Gender Identity Disorder in Children.”
Resolved this day May 15, 2009 by the Board of Directors of
The International Foundation for Gender Education
(Via IFGE, link here)
Whether the APA listens and takes note of this resolution remains to be seen. Somehow, I have my doubts.
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Previous posts about the DSM on this blog:
- Transsexuality will no longer be classified in France as a mental illness (May 17, 2009)
- APA protest – San Francisco, May 18 (May 16, 2009)
- Looking back, pushing forward (April 30, 2009)
- APA Task Force reviews possible Gender Identity Disorder treatment guidelines (April 29, 2009)
- Close the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic – Facebook group (April 28, 2009)
- OII receives a letter from Dr Zucker’s legal representatives (March 21, 2009)
- Lynn Conway targeted by Kenneth Zucker for speaking out against his appointment to the APA Task Force (March 5, 2009)
- TGEU Policy Statement on DSM Reform (November 3, 2008)
- Developing DSM-V in Secret (October 17, 2008)
- Reminder: Demo against Zucker at RSM tomorrow (1st October 2008) (September 30, 2008)
- Demonstration against Kenneth Zucker at RSM, 1st October 2008 (September 22, 2008)
- Zucker *still* to speak at RSM conference (September 9, 2009)
- Zucker to Speak At Royal Society of Medicine Conference (August 15, 2008)
- WPATH Clarification (July 19, 2008)
- With God on Our Side (July 7, 2008)
- Crazy love (June 1, 2008)
- Still mad: more on DSM-V/Zucker/Blanchard (May 18, 2008)
- Mad as hell (May 6, 2008)
