The Medical And Behavioral ( Dsm ) Community

“I'm not like other girls,and I don't want to be. The person who people want me to be isn't who I am, but that doesn't mean I'm going to change my gender to fit the stereotypes. I'm going to remain a girl who loves boy things” (Anonymous). Science has crossed the line with gender reassignment surgery. The process of gender reassignment surgery is an unnecessary mutilation. It reinforces gender stereotypes. Also there is no scientific proof that the ‘disease’ that people claim to have even exist.

With the establishment of these gender identity clinics, and the financial backing of philanthropist Reed Erickson, a transsexual man, the health care needs of transsexual people gained increased attention and support. Despite this new attention, the clinics used Benjamin’s model of “true” transsexuals. This differentiation between “true” transsexuals and other gender variants became a serious and highly important diagnostic decision as gender affirming surgeries were irreversible. This resulted in many transsexual individuals to be denied access to hormones and surgery. Specifically, transsexual men encountered difficulties, as transsexuality was primarily seen as a male-to-female only transition. In fact, during the late 1960s the United States leading UCLA Gender Identity Research Clinic debated whether trans men should be considered transsexuals. Many trans men themselves did not label themselves as transsexuals as they only knew about other transsexual women (Meyerowitz, 2002; Beemyn, 2014).

In “Intro-How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States,” Joanne Meyerowitz writes about the beginnings of transsexuality. She beings the article by defining cross-gender identification, as “the sense of being the other sex, and the desire to live as the other sex” (Meyerowitz 432), while transsexuality, “being the quest to transform the bodily characteristics of sex via hormones and surgery” (Meyerowitz 432). According to Meyerowitz, transsexuality began in the early 20th century. Experiments on changing sex, began in europe on animals. Then in 1920, on humans. Joanne Meyerowitz writes that “the debate on the visibility and mutability of sex” began after Christine Jorgensen, an american who went to Denmark to get a sex change in 1950, became a media sensation in America. While professionals were figuring this out, people “who identified as transsexuals, transvestites, lesbians, and gay men” (Meyerowitz 433) were having the conversation and creating the language within themselves. This conversation on sex change, occurred alongside the sexual revolution in the 60’s, opening “the movement of the organizing of programs, clinics, conferences, and associations to promote study of and treatment for transsexuals” (Meyerowitz 434).

A person’s sex is determined on the basis of three fundamental human physiognomies, chromosomes (XX for a female and XY for a male), gonads (ovaries for females and testes for males) and the obvious being genitals (vagina for a females and a penis for males). However socially, gender identity is formulated on the grounds of stereotypical roles from both

Discussion of issues related to non-normative sexual and gender identities as related to mental health began in the 19th century (Drescher, 2010). Initially medical and psychiatric providers viewed issues related to gender identity as resulting from delusional thought processes (Drescher, 2010). As a result the concept of surgery as a solution to gender identity differences was viewed as unnecessary and ultimately an incorrect form of treatment (Drescher, 2010). In 1952 the first gender reassignment surgery was performed in Denmark on an American citizen (Drescher, 2010). The publicity in the American media that followed this surgery brought the concept of gender identity to the public eye. During the 1960s research about gender identity started to develop and it was the work of Money, Stoller, Benjamin, and Green that ultimately change professional and public concept of Gender Identity (Drescher, 2010). These four individuals were among the first to conduct clinical and academic research on gender identity and gender roles (Drescher, 2010). As a result of their research beliefs about non-normative gender identity shifted from a problem of the mind to a biological disorder that was fixed and should be treated with

In rational, ‘transgender’ is a natural and non-judgmental word that used to describe the people who have gender identity different to the biological sex. Most of the transgender people will change their facial appearance to the opposite sex through clothing, hormonal therapies or the transsexual operation. Their appearances, behaviors and psychological attitudes are same as the normal people. However, most of the people have a stigma about their sex based on the traditional gender roles. According to the Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, the distinctive mind of gender identity diagnosed as a mental disorder called gender identify disorder. However, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) mentioned that it is not a mental illness.

Bradley et al., also mention a similar case in which a 2-month year old male was injured during an electrocautery circumcision and his entire penile shaft was burned and the penis eventually sloughed off. At 7-months the rest of the penis and testes were removed and the parents made the decision to reassign their son to a female and to raise him as a girl. The patient was interviewed at two separate times. The first time was at age 16 and the patient stated that she had been living a female life and had no uncertainty about being a woman. The patient mentioned that during her childhood she viewed herself as a “tomboy” but she still maintained her circle of friends to mainly girls. She wanted to have sexual intercourse with males so she arranged a vaginoplasty. She was interviewed once more at age 26 and reported that she had been attracted to women in fantasy, and enjoyed experiences with both women and men. She now

Through examining the ways intersex individuals are treated in a medical setting, one can see how science only allows binary bodies to be created. Crawley et al. (2007) discusses intersex individuals and the standard treatment of intersex children, being to alter their ‘abnormal’ genitalia to resemble one of the two genders. This has become the normal treatment as if this is necessary, but the only threat the child is in danger of is not fitting perfectly into the heteronormative standard of correct genitalia. Because surgical intervention proves we alter and change one’s sex, it becomes difficult to claim that sex and gender are solely biological, when clearly one’s gender and sex becomes largely altered the moment they are born into society. Anne Fausto Sterling, outlines her concept of the five sexes, explaining that intersex is a term used to describe any individual that doesn’t fit into the narrow categories of male and female. She explains that the same process that was in play in the Middle Ages is

Media coverage of transgender people and their medical transitions appeared as early as 1952. Sweeping headlines across the country, including in The New York Times, Christine Jorgensen became a household name because she was the first American to ever to have a sex change. Former Army Private Jorgensen was featured in the December 2nd, 1952 article “Bronx ‘Boy’ Is Now a Girl”. For her sex changed she had to travel to Denmark. Although people had begun to speak publically about transgender people and it was a known mental and medical condition, it wasn’t until 1966 when Doctor Henry Benjamin published The Transsexual Phenomenon, that doctors in the United States had a guide to follow in terms of treating transgender

“One’s sense of gender resides in the brain” (“Gender Identity Disorder”), and this sense of gender is often there before you are born. Dr. Eric Vilain, a professor at the University of California, “identifies fifty-four genes that play a role in the expression of sex in a fetus before hormones are even released” (Windfeild 71&73). One of the biggest mental health issues that are out there is gender identity disorder which “may be as old as humanity (“Gender identity Disorder”). This disorder cause a person, normally a kid, to have a feeling of being the opposite sex . Another reason people need to be aware of people who have gender identity disorder is because if they feel as if they are not safe they may turn to a thing like suicide. “Suicide attempts and substance abuse are common” (“GID”) in people with Gender Identity Disorder. This is so because they often grow up feeling out of place or rejected by family and friends. To help with the mental health of these people with GID people should learn more about

“The Five Sexes Revisited” focused on the importance of therapy over surgery. Medical ethicist Laurence B. McCullough of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor Collefe of Medicine in Houston, Texas “contend[ed] that in the process of assigning gender, physicians should minimize what he calls irreversible assignments: taking steps such as the surgical removal

Kristen A. Burgess, Emory University School of Medicine and Charles F Gillespie M.D., PhD, department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, state that “gender identity disorder is a mental disorder in which gender identity is incongruent with anatomical sex”. Individuals experience different degrees of unhappiness with their sex at birth, which in turn causes them to pursue the life and body of the opposite sex (2010).

By having the responsibility of gender assignment belong to the medical professional of children at birth, children and their parents have suffered after the details of their physical beings had been disclosed. The results of this inappropriate use of genital surgeries for gender assignment usually lead to bullying, gender identity disorder, self-harm, and suicide. However, when this treatment came into practiced, doctors had believed that it would be traumatic for a child to remain intersexed. It was also widely believed that by fixing the child’s gender immediately after birth that the child would have a better chance at becoming “normalized.”

In this day and age, psychologists as well as the media have been giving Gender Identity Disorder or now known as Gender Dysphoria by DSM-V, a lot of publication. Whether the media stating it does not exist and psychologist stating it indeed does exist. As defined U.S. National Library of Medicine in medical terms, “Gender Dysphoria is a condition in which there is a conflict between a person 's physical gender and the gender he or she identifies with.” Other names for Gender Dysphoria are transgenderism or transexualism. Gender Dysphoria does indeed exist in this world because those whom are diagnosed are Transgender whom struggle on a day-to-day basis. That is, not being accepted by family and friends, denial of employment, and medical advancement for treatment with going through Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) and Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS).

Gender Identity Disorder can make a child; adolescent or adult feel awkward and alone. Gender Identity Disorder paired with either Gender Dysphoria or Transsexualism will disrupt the development of social skills and create more problems behaviorally. Normative studies present evidence of the co-morbidity through parent report data revealing that children with Gender Identity Disorder have on