Sociology paper...or "I like being verbose, when i'm stoned."
So, I wrote this, mostly on the fly, in a couple hours. Stoned.
In issue three of Paul*, arguments are presented over whether gender variance is a mental disorder or if, perhaps the DSM needs to be updated. John McDevitt highlights the case of one Billy, who began “treatment” for Gender Identity Disorder (GID) at the age of four. In his argument, McDevitt argues that gender identity is inherently tied to one’s biological sex, and any variance from a strict polar binary gender system is, in fact, a perversion of mental health. Katherine Wilson argues, in her turn, that the vague, nonspecific, and highly connotative DSM-IV** criteria for GID are, in fact, highly influential on the classification and maintenance of transsexualism and transgenderism as a mental disorder, worthy of identification, treatment, and repression. While McDevitt seems entirely incapable of viewing Billy as anything other than a broken psyche, needing repair - while conveniently ignoring the serious problems inherent not in gender variance, but in the possession of a psychopathic mother - Wilson proposes that perhaps the DSM criteria need a serious overhaul. The stance of this writer, dear reader, is that though GID and transgenderism do have a certain prevalence of concurrent mental and emotional baggage, the baggage is more a product of the repression of said gender conformity issues, as well as negative reinforcement of internalized angst and outright backlash to variant behaviour. After all, if people like you, dear reader, were killed just for being who they felt they were, wouldn’t you get a little down once in a while? Wouldn’t that razor blade start to look awful pretty and liberating, on occasion?
McDevitt presents his analysis of Billy, a young boy who expresses strong feelings of gender dysphoria through the eye of a man obsessed with finding a place to holster blame and causality for this, the most detestable of psychological illness. It seems, to this reader’s eye, a desperate search not to find a functional, balanced psychosocial niche for the patient, but to reinforce his mother’s feelings of inadequacy and shame, while simultaneously repressing and depressing the boy, himself. While McDevitt can find incongruence after incongruence with Billy’s emotional development (through the teachings of Freud, of all people), he conveniently ignores both the severe emotional abuse pouring from the boy’s mother and the apparent destruction of a marriage over the irreconcilable difference of the father feeling that “…he was not concerned about nor did he feel any responsibility for Billy’s femininity…[adding] that if Billy became [for lack of better vocabulary] a homosexual he would still love [Billy]” (Paul 47). One hardly finds it likely that McDevitt leapt to provide better vocabulary or even honest understanding of the situation being experienced by Billy. Through the course of McDevitt’s “treatment” of Billy, not only did Billy’s adjustment not improve, it actually regressed into abject depression and self hatred. It seems McDevitt was much happier with the idea of an emotionally obliterated boy than a happy, well-adjusted transgender girl.
The legitimacy of a correlative relationship with biological sex and social gender expression is entirely dependent upon pre-supposed normative social interactions and roles. Chief in the classification of so-called aberrant or alternative gender expression or identity as a negative state of being is a cultural presupposition of the superiority of the one gender above another, not to mention the assumption of the positive reinforcement of normative sexuality and sex/gender roles. In classifying transgender people as aberrant or mentally ill, one automatically subscribes to an entire set of culturally specific, ill-defined, assumptions about the biological/biopsychological relationship of genotypical sex to socially-prescribed phenotypical gender expression. Inherent in many arguments of the validity of classification of transgender status as a mental disorder are implied subscriptions to male superiority, latent - and misdirected - homophobia, and often a significant degree of misogyny. Given the heavy dependence on DSM - IV criteria that highlight clinical significance of transgender issues, disorder classification also biases itself in that many transpeople do not necessarily seek treatment for gender variance-based distresses because they are, all-in-all, highly functional. This is not to say that there are not people of variant gender suffering from various and sundry psychological disorders, but that most of the transpeople that have, at least in the past, sought help are often suffering from other, far more pathological disorders. These people - these functioning transpeople - are being entirely underrepresented in the so-called assessments of transpeople. Beyond even that, many studies of gender variance approach the issue from a need to find etiology, and thus a cure. Basic psychology - hell, basic scientific theory - teaches us that we cannot come at a question with a motive in mind, because the results are thus automatically skewed. By this staunch reliance upon DSM criteria, there is bias implicit in the system of analysis, thus negating realistic views of normal, high-functioning non-repressive transpeople. Given that homosexuality was removed from the DSM criteria in 1973, is it even a stretch, at all, to imagine that the issue of GID will be entirely dropped, if not heavily reworded and reclassified in DSM-V? Perhaps worst of all, the vague, negative, clinically significant criteria for GID doesn’t merely complicate treatment or acceptance, but entirely extinguishes all hopes of achieving mainstream functionality.
In her argument, Katherine Wilson presents a logical, scientific critique of the DSM-IV criteria describing the condition of - and prescribing treatments for - transgenderism vis-à-vis GID. Wilson points out that “[t]ransgendered people do suffer distress and impairment from societal intolerance, discrimination, violence, undeserved shame, and denial of personal freedoms” if not based on, then backed up by the criteria describing GID, transgenderism, transsexualism, and transvestitism (Paul, 61). Wilson argues that, along with homosexuality, which has been absent from the DSM as a category of mental disorder since 1973, transgenderism needs to be considered for what it is; a component of a person’s emotional and spychosexual makeup, while not necessarily relating at all to that person’s physical being, e.g. their genitals. Given the wide open vagueness of the clinical criteria for GID, Wilson argues that the lack of consensus violates the principle of reliability, let alone validity when it comes to impairment based on gender angst. In fact, she argues, “…a growing body of socio-cultural literature that considers gender a social construction, not a biological imperative” is compiling, lending credence - reliable credence - to the assertion that gender variance is just a part of a person, and part of numerous types of people, across a wide spectrum of psychosocial functionalities. As it stands now, the existence of the DSM criteria for GID/Transgenderism shore up negative influence on the transperson, rather than any form of honest-to-goodness therapeutic benefit.
With the misogynistic societal structure and heteronormative male dominated political, medical, and academic environment permeating every nook and cranny of our culture, is it any wonder that the last bastion of sanctioned inequality should be in the classification and oppression of men who would renounce their privilege for physical congruity with emotional conditions or women who would dare attempt to crash through the glass ceiling through a loophole in the most erroneously assumed natural constant? What could possess him to give up the power, privilege, and dominance of the phallus? How dare she try to sneak into our private little oligarchy by achieving our very appearance and orientation? The fact is that power - real power…social, political, and economic power - is still a man’s private playground, and you have to be a real man and just-so at it, or else you’re out, on the sidelines, sitting on the bench with the fat kids and the boy with the dental headgear. The first step to true assimilation of the idea of a more realistic gender spectrum, rather than gender divide, is the delegitimization of medical and psychological classification of non-binary gender expression as a negative condition to be identified, treated and cured. If such “facts” are allowed to remain, the argument can always be made that, according to the APA, transgender discrimination will be perfectly acceptable, because the disorder is scientific fact, not idealistic lore. Just as it was fact that women were incapable of handling the responsibility of making wise enough choices to be trusted to vote. Just as it was fact that Africans were less-than-human, and thus an economic commodity. A system controlled by the patriarchy is slow to change, unless the issue at hand can be analyzed from all directions…from all perspectives. Until there is real, hard data, unbiased and without judgment, there will never be legitimization of humanity over human characteristics.
* The assigned compilation of debates abotu sex and gender
** The Diagnostic and Statistican Manual 4th edition, Text Revision (1980)
-Cj
In issue three of Paul*, arguments are presented over whether gender variance is a mental disorder or if, perhaps the DSM needs to be updated. John McDevitt highlights the case of one Billy, who began “treatment” for Gender Identity Disorder (GID) at the age of four. In his argument, McDevitt argues that gender identity is inherently tied to one’s biological sex, and any variance from a strict polar binary gender system is, in fact, a perversion of mental health. Katherine Wilson argues, in her turn, that the vague, nonspecific, and highly connotative DSM-IV** criteria for GID are, in fact, highly influential on the classification and maintenance of transsexualism and transgenderism as a mental disorder, worthy of identification, treatment, and repression. While McDevitt seems entirely incapable of viewing Billy as anything other than a broken psyche, needing repair - while conveniently ignoring the serious problems inherent not in gender variance, but in the possession of a psychopathic mother - Wilson proposes that perhaps the DSM criteria need a serious overhaul. The stance of this writer, dear reader, is that though GID and transgenderism do have a certain prevalence of concurrent mental and emotional baggage, the baggage is more a product of the repression of said gender conformity issues, as well as negative reinforcement of internalized angst and outright backlash to variant behaviour. After all, if people like you, dear reader, were killed just for being who they felt they were, wouldn’t you get a little down once in a while? Wouldn’t that razor blade start to look awful pretty and liberating, on occasion?
McDevitt presents his analysis of Billy, a young boy who expresses strong feelings of gender dysphoria through the eye of a man obsessed with finding a place to holster blame and causality for this, the most detestable of psychological illness. It seems, to this reader’s eye, a desperate search not to find a functional, balanced psychosocial niche for the patient, but to reinforce his mother’s feelings of inadequacy and shame, while simultaneously repressing and depressing the boy, himself. While McDevitt can find incongruence after incongruence with Billy’s emotional development (through the teachings of Freud, of all people), he conveniently ignores both the severe emotional abuse pouring from the boy’s mother and the apparent destruction of a marriage over the irreconcilable difference of the father feeling that “…he was not concerned about nor did he feel any responsibility for Billy’s femininity…[adding] that if Billy became [for lack of better vocabulary] a homosexual he would still love [Billy]” (Paul 47). One hardly finds it likely that McDevitt leapt to provide better vocabulary or even honest understanding of the situation being experienced by Billy. Through the course of McDevitt’s “treatment” of Billy, not only did Billy’s adjustment not improve, it actually regressed into abject depression and self hatred. It seems McDevitt was much happier with the idea of an emotionally obliterated boy than a happy, well-adjusted transgender girl.
The legitimacy of a correlative relationship with biological sex and social gender expression is entirely dependent upon pre-supposed normative social interactions and roles. Chief in the classification of so-called aberrant or alternative gender expression or identity as a negative state of being is a cultural presupposition of the superiority of the one gender above another, not to mention the assumption of the positive reinforcement of normative sexuality and sex/gender roles. In classifying transgender people as aberrant or mentally ill, one automatically subscribes to an entire set of culturally specific, ill-defined, assumptions about the biological/biopsychological relationship of genotypical sex to socially-prescribed phenotypical gender expression. Inherent in many arguments of the validity of classification of transgender status as a mental disorder are implied subscriptions to male superiority, latent - and misdirected - homophobia, and often a significant degree of misogyny. Given the heavy dependence on DSM - IV criteria that highlight clinical significance of transgender issues, disorder classification also biases itself in that many transpeople do not necessarily seek treatment for gender variance-based distresses because they are, all-in-all, highly functional. This is not to say that there are not people of variant gender suffering from various and sundry psychological disorders, but that most of the transpeople that have, at least in the past, sought help are often suffering from other, far more pathological disorders. These people - these functioning transpeople - are being entirely underrepresented in the so-called assessments of transpeople. Beyond even that, many studies of gender variance approach the issue from a need to find etiology, and thus a cure. Basic psychology - hell, basic scientific theory - teaches us that we cannot come at a question with a motive in mind, because the results are thus automatically skewed. By this staunch reliance upon DSM criteria, there is bias implicit in the system of analysis, thus negating realistic views of normal, high-functioning non-repressive transpeople. Given that homosexuality was removed from the DSM criteria in 1973, is it even a stretch, at all, to imagine that the issue of GID will be entirely dropped, if not heavily reworded and reclassified in DSM-V? Perhaps worst of all, the vague, negative, clinically significant criteria for GID doesn’t merely complicate treatment or acceptance, but entirely extinguishes all hopes of achieving mainstream functionality.
In her argument, Katherine Wilson presents a logical, scientific critique of the DSM-IV criteria describing the condition of - and prescribing treatments for - transgenderism vis-à-vis GID. Wilson points out that “[t]ransgendered people do suffer distress and impairment from societal intolerance, discrimination, violence, undeserved shame, and denial of personal freedoms” if not based on, then backed up by the criteria describing GID, transgenderism, transsexualism, and transvestitism (Paul, 61). Wilson argues that, along with homosexuality, which has been absent from the DSM as a category of mental disorder since 1973, transgenderism needs to be considered for what it is; a component of a person’s emotional and spychosexual makeup, while not necessarily relating at all to that person’s physical being, e.g. their genitals. Given the wide open vagueness of the clinical criteria for GID, Wilson argues that the lack of consensus violates the principle of reliability, let alone validity when it comes to impairment based on gender angst. In fact, she argues, “…a growing body of socio-cultural literature that considers gender a social construction, not a biological imperative” is compiling, lending credence - reliable credence - to the assertion that gender variance is just a part of a person, and part of numerous types of people, across a wide spectrum of psychosocial functionalities. As it stands now, the existence of the DSM criteria for GID/Transgenderism shore up negative influence on the transperson, rather than any form of honest-to-goodness therapeutic benefit.
With the misogynistic societal structure and heteronormative male dominated political, medical, and academic environment permeating every nook and cranny of our culture, is it any wonder that the last bastion of sanctioned inequality should be in the classification and oppression of men who would renounce their privilege for physical congruity with emotional conditions or women who would dare attempt to crash through the glass ceiling through a loophole in the most erroneously assumed natural constant? What could possess him to give up the power, privilege, and dominance of the phallus? How dare she try to sneak into our private little oligarchy by achieving our very appearance and orientation? The fact is that power - real power…social, political, and economic power - is still a man’s private playground, and you have to be a real man and just-so at it, or else you’re out, on the sidelines, sitting on the bench with the fat kids and the boy with the dental headgear. The first step to true assimilation of the idea of a more realistic gender spectrum, rather than gender divide, is the delegitimization of medical and psychological classification of non-binary gender expression as a negative condition to be identified, treated and cured. If such “facts” are allowed to remain, the argument can always be made that, according to the APA, transgender discrimination will be perfectly acceptable, because the disorder is scientific fact, not idealistic lore. Just as it was fact that women were incapable of handling the responsibility of making wise enough choices to be trusted to vote. Just as it was fact that Africans were less-than-human, and thus an economic commodity. A system controlled by the patriarchy is slow to change, unless the issue at hand can be analyzed from all directions…from all perspectives. Until there is real, hard data, unbiased and without judgment, there will never be legitimization of humanity over human characteristics.
* The assigned compilation of debates abotu sex and gender
** The Diagnostic and Statistican Manual 4th edition, Text Revision (1980)
-Cj