Holiday Filler: Medicalization saves your marriage

[differenceblog]

Daniel Amen on the View (7:54). The author of multiple self-help books on ADD and relationships (two separate topics, not a book about managing ADD in relationships) talks to the View about differences in the way men's and women's brains are wired. Daniel Amen's Change Your Brain, Change Your Life clinics use SPECT imaging as a method of

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[rarkrarkrark]

First, having spent more than a decade advocating for the rights of people with mental illness and neurological differences, I find the way many queer activists want to advocate the belief that sexual orientation and/or gender identity are inherently inborn, under the theory that then people would have to accept differences in sexual orientation and/or gender identity in the same way that people "have" to accepted difference in race and sex to be problematic. Usually when I say this I get bombarded by links to studies showing correlations between various physical differences and sexual orientation or gender identity, but that's missing the point. Yes, we have some evidence that sexual orientation and gender identity are affected by genetics and prenatal environment, but it's a red herring. The problem is that the tactic doesn't work. In the case of people with mental illness, physical causation is an excuse for forced medication and removal of civil rights. In the case of people with developmental disabilities, physical causation is a reason for abortion past the time when other abortions would be allowed and also for withholding of medical treatments that would be given a person without developmental disabilities.

If we were to be able to test people for some biological difference that accounts for their sexual orientation or gender identity, would it be defensible to allow those with the biological inherency to engage in homosexual or cross-gender behavior, but to penalize those who engage in these behaviors when they don't have the biological difference? If we were to find that pedophiles are pedophiles because of some biological inherency, would it be arguable that they should be allowed to have relationships with children, because they cannot change their oerientation? I don't think so, in either case. Claiming biological inherency as a basis for equal civil rights won't win what those who advocate it think it will *and* it suggests that we can penalize people for non-harmful behavior as long as they don't have a biological "excuse".

The reason people should not be penalized for being something other than heterosexual and gender normative is because being non-heterosexual and/or non-gender normative are not harmful to other people.

According to Dr Amen my left hand has high testosterone levels, but my right hand doesn't :P (and the foreplay thing...*sigh* I don't like the man much because he thinks he knows what he's doing with people's brains and psych meds better than *anyone* does, at this point, and that sort of psychiatric overconfidence causes a lot of damage that doesn't get acknowledged. I've known a few of his patients socially and he seems to have a mixed record. Of course, given what we do know about the human brain, a mixed record is really as good as you can get.

All that said, there is something to the notion that diagnosis can help people get around bad behavior, separate from the notion that diagnosis ought to blanketly excuse bad behavior. Or maybe it's a deeper paradigm shift -- looking at bad behaviors and asking ourselves if they are really bad behaviors (or just different, but not harmful, like differences in sexual orientation or gender identity) and if they really are problematic, looking at how to change the behavior or circumstances to stop the problem, rather than putting energy towards blame or punishment. A diagnosis that reasonably accurately defines underlying tendencies (i.e. tedencies towards depression or anxiety or mood instability, compulsions, attention or organizational difficulties, etc can help this process. OTOH, the broad stereotypes they speak of on that video clip wouldn't be very useful.

Listening to the women and Amen shouting at each other about the g-spot vs housework issue is interesting. Physical arousal and finding mental space in the midst of the daily chaos are two different things, and it's interesting to me that neither side seems to notice that.