"Don't Call Us Nuts"

APA To Be Blasted
By TG Activists

By Riki Wilchins
Just 5 months after demonstrating outside the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting, transactivists have announced they are once again planning to confront APA members over Gender Identity Disorder (GID). [See May 5 release below.]

The peaceful demonstration, to be held outside the APA national meeting in Chicago on Saturday, October 19, has been called by members of the Chicago, Connecticut, NYC and Boston chapters of the direct action group, the Transexual Menace. [Interested parties should contact Riki Wilchins (Riki@Pipeline.Com, 212-645-1753) or Nancy Nangeroni (NRN@world.std.com); free rooms will be found for those needing overnight accommodations.]

Not About Dysfunction, But Punishing Difference

While GID is often used for transexuals seeking sex-reassignment surgery, it is also routinely applied in pathologizing gender variant children, queer teens, non-complaining crossdressers, and transgenders.

Said a Menace spokestrans, "Yes, it's important that people get their surgery and insurance reimbursement. But it's also crucial we do so without pathologizing millions of gendervariant and transgendered teens, adults, and kids. GID isn't about dysfunction. It's about punishing gender difference and enforcing gender norms in the guise of practicing medicine. Just like the earlier disease of `homosexuality,' GID is inevitably used against the most vulnerable among us - our genderqueer kids."

"We think the APA has their *own* disorder -- GenderPathoPhilia -- which we define as `an abnormal need or desire to pathologize any gender behavior which makes you uncomfortable.' They've had their turn `treating' us - maybe it's our turn to render a little treatment back. Pack your bags for Chicago!"

Millions in Tax Dollars for "Treating" Gender Variant Kids

According to Phyllis Burke's new book GENDER SHOCK, for almost 3 decades the US government has been funneling millions in taxpayer dollars to locate, diagnose and "treat" scores of children for having the "disease" of GID.

States Burke, "Government records indicate that, since the early 1970's, at least 1.5 million dollars was awarded from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), adding she believes "[this] is probably the tip of the iceberg."

This "research" and "treatment" continues even today with children as young as 3 or 4 years of age. Often their only "disorder" is running afoul of the APA's traditional fear of sexual or gender difference.

Daphne Scholinski is one such child who was involuntarily committed by her parents from age 14 to 18, after being diagnosed with GID. An athletic teen, Scholinski she did not want to wear dresses or be submissive. After 3 months, she attempted suicide by drinking a facial astringent. "Most people die after they get out. The recovery from the system is what gets people in the end. Life expectancy of my friends is pretty low. Most of my friends are dead."


Activists Protest APA

[May 5, 1996 - New York City] On May 5, 1996 over a dozen gender activists from the queer community, Transexual Menace (CT), Transexual Menace (NY), Transexual Menace (Men), and TOPS, demonstrated outside the annual meeting of American Psychiatric Association and called for an end to diagnosing transpeople as mentally disordered. The diagnostic category of "Gender Identity Disorder" (GID, also known as "gender dysphoria") is routinely applied to anyone seeking sex reassignment surgery (SRS).

Activists handed out over 1,000 leaflets [text follows]. Others held up signs saying "Keep Your Laws OFF My Body" and "Gender Euphoria NOT Gender Dysphoria." The demonstration continued for several hours while attendees arrived, many of whom stopped to chat with demonstrators. Some seemed shocked at the sight of so many black "Transexual Menace" T-shirts outside the convention hall, while others were amused, intrigued or supportive.

NY State Police had initially sought to move demonstrators from their site in front of the Jacob Javits Center where the Convention was held. They relented only when several members of TOPS, the national organization for trans peace officers, including Deputy Sherrif Tonye Barreto-Neto and Lt. Janet Aiello, showed their badges and identified themselves as fellow officers. They patiently explained why they were there and negotiated for half an hour, after which Police allowed demontrators to stay. One trooper privately explained to demontrators that he wanted to be supportive, having done papers on transexuality in college.

Dissension Over GID Within TransCommunity

In spite of the demonstration, removing GID as a psychiatric diagnosis has been a source of continuing dispute within the transcommunity. The diagnosis has enabled many transexuals to obtain insurance reimbursement for the $10-40,000 cost of SRS, without which they could never have afforded it. Notably, most of those at the demonstration who were transidentified were also post-operative.

Other activists point out this reimbursement has been accomplished at the expense of pathologizing an entire class of tens of thousands of people, including non-complaining crossdressers and transgendered people who have no desire for surgery. They further maintain the tide on reimbursement is clearly going out in the current political climate. Some have compared "GID" to "homosexuality" when it was a disorder: more a political than a medical category. Since they show no symptoms of mental impairment or disorder, they state they resent the diagnosis.

GID has also come under increasing fire from the larger queer community, which has noted its use in obtaining "corrective treatment" for non-complaining gender-variant children as young as 2-4, as well as against "butchy" teenage lesbians and "nelly" teenage gayboys whose parents simply fear the stigma of queer offspring.

This has led some to seek a compromise strategey which, while removing GID as a mental disorder, would retaining some medical basis for reimbursement. They point out intersexed "corrective" [sic] surgery is routinely reimbursed without question, although it is often exclusively and openly cosmetic. In addition, they note that childbirth is also reimbursed but is not a disease or a disorder.

Dr. Wynelle Snow, MD, a psychiatrist and member of Transexual Menace (CT), and Riki Anne Wilchins of Transexual Menace (NYC) met with members of the Association of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Psychiatrists during the convention, to air transgender concerns and seek the association's support. The AGLBP will be taking up the issues in its upcoming meetings. In addition, Dr. Snow is formally requesting the group change its name to include "Transgender."


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