I've made it to the initial round for favorite progressive blogger in the Air America Cruise Contest. I have to stay in the Top 5 before the second voting round begins, so your vote is appreciated! First voting round:
The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend: "a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."
He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior."
(CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)
Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).
"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008
Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:
A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist." (Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)
"A nutty lesbian blogger." (MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)
Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
--Impeach Bush
who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
Mila Pavlin of Trans-Ponder has posted the second video from the GID Reform Now protest at the American Psychiatric Association 2009 Annual Meeting. She edited the video as well. A group of five filmmakers -- Andrea James, Elayne Wylie, Breanna Anderson, Jayna L-Pavlin, and Mila Pavlin -- provided the footage for the protest.
Here is the approximately 4-and-a-half-minute speech of Kelley Winters, Ph.D., that she made to the approximately 150 protesters at the event. A transcription of the speech is below the video (emphais added).
Hi. I'm Kelley Winters. I'm a proud member of the trans community from Keystone, Colorado, and my identity is not disordered.
...So, our own [Randall Ehrbar, Psy.D] here in San Francisco, he worked with me preparing a presentation today [for the 2009 Annual American Psychiatric Association (APA) Meeting], and we talked about the diagnostic nomenclature of Gender Identity Disorder and Transvestic Fetishism in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
And, for too many years, our community has been divided. We've been balkanized. We've been fractured by the premise -- by the assumption that we must chose between accepting the social stigma of mental disorder and sexual deviance or lose access to transition medical care for those of us who need it. And in truth, the current nomenclature of disordered gender identity has failed us on both counts. It's time for diagnostic reform.
So, we believe it is possible to reinvent -- to redefine -- Gender Identity Disorder to address both issues of social stigma and medical access.
But there is another issue that our community often overlooks. And, that is the issue of Transvestic Fetishism, which defines virtually all expression of feminity by people who are assigned male at birth as sexually deviant -- as paraphilias. That diagnosis needs to be removed from the DSM.
And finally, we asked the elected leadership of the [American Psychiatric Association] -- independent of the DSM-V Task Force -- to issue public policy statements affirming the worth and dignity of trans people, and our need for access to medical care.
So let me read these...
[Transcribed text continues below the fold. Also below the fold, there is a link to Kelley Winters' description of the presentation to the APA with Randall Ehrbar, Psy.D.]
(I've talked to a few folks who attended the protest, and more them one of them commented on how few LGB people were either at, or involved in the preparation for the protest (Cindi Creager as the protest Media Contact was one non-trans key player, for example). So, what eastsidekate guessed was true about the protest actually was true. And, she's correct about the lack of media coverage of the protest as well -- I've been looking to find what media coverage, and I've only found less than a half-a-dozen mainstream media outlets that covered the event, and very little coverage of the protest by bloggers who aren't trans. - promoted by Autumn Sandeen)
Update: Danielle Askini, who's name was on the media release for this protest as the GIDReformNOW Organization Contact, commented on this diary.
~~Autumn~~
*ahem*.....little help?
For those of you keeping score at home, roughly 150 people gathered outside the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in San Francisco to protest the continuing inclusion of transgender people in the "Bible" of mental illness. 150. Word of the protests was all over the web in past weeks. Ten speakers made the case that the APA should stop pathologizing trans people.
Aside from posts at Pam's from Autumn that feature video from protest organizers, I haven't seen much coverage of the protest after the fact. Perhaps the APA took notice. However, I get the sense that the larger LGBT community didn't.
I know it's hard work showing up at a protest, but this frustrates me. The organizers of this protest undoubtedly put a ton of work into making this a success. Because of the personal importance of this issue, I would have gladly taken off work and travelled to any Northeastern city to take part. Alas, the Bay Area is a bit out of the way for me. There are people in the Bay Area, though.
I have the sinking sensation that only (or certainly mostly) trans people showed up to protest. I understand that we can't all show up at every protest, but seriously? Isn't there one cis person in the Bay Area who could show up? Maybe someone who was willing to spend a lot of time twittering and blogging about Angie? I know painfully well that LGB and T communities aren't homogenous and aren't one-in-the-same, but seriously, if you're going to ride trans people's coattails when our issues (er, murders) are in the spotlight, could you at least pretend to care about our lives every so often?
There's a trend here..... trans people have been bitching about our issues (and how they impact all people) since before "trans" was a widespread label, but we mostly get lip service from cis-folks in return. It's the same with issues of people of color (let alone LGBT people of color), disability activists, immigrant-rights activists, or any other "interest" group. We make our case over and over and over again to nodding heads, but when push comes to shove, nobody comes out to support us. It's not that we're arguing for "special rights," it's just that our fights aren't yours, right?
This is mostly venting. If anyone's interested, I'm sure we can find someone to write yet another essay about why stopping the pathologization trans people matters to people who, um, actually matter..... sigh....
Mila Pavlin of Trans-Ponder has posted the first video from the GID Reform Now protest at the American Psychiatric Association 2009 Annual Meeting. She edited the video as well.
Here is the approximately 7-minute speech of MadelineDeutsch, M.D., that she made to the approximately 150 protesters at the event. A transcription of a large portion of the speech begins below the video.
My name is Madeline Deutsch, M.D., and I am a queer, transgender woman. And I'm here to tell Dr. Zucker and the rest of the world that my identity is not pathological. My identity does not belong miscategorized in your book. We live in a society based on individual liberties and informed consent. Each individual should be allowed to make decisions about how to live their own life.
It is true that transgender people do, in many cases, suffer from other conditions, such as anxiety, depression, panic disorder, etc. But, the question is how much of that is due a stresses of being a transgender person in a transphobic world? My answer: Most, if not all of it.
I look at the world around me, and I see a world full of personality disorders, behavioral disorders, and psychotic disorders, which are undiagnosed, untreated, or unattended to. But no one forces these people into a psychotherapeutic environment. It is time to stop forcing the same on transgender people. It is time to change society, and change the system, rather placing the social, financial, and psychological burden on transgender people.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring.
Resuming the transcript:
Transgender persons who transition have been shown to have [satisfaction and success rates] in up to 99% in some outcome studies. I challenge you Dr. Zucker, Dr. Blanchard, Dr. Lawrence, or anyone else to find other conditions with such his satisfaction and success rates after treatment.
We live in a world where you can walk down any city street, and buy a McDonalds' Big Mac, A pack of cigarettes, a case of beer, and a box of Twinkies. You can do this regardless of your health status, if you have diabetes, or if you have recently have had open heart surgery at the expense of Medicare tax dollars.
In fact, a McDonalds was recently opened in the food court at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country -- the Cleveland Clinic. Imagine that: In Ohio, transgender people are so pathologied, in part of as the result of the DSM-V categorization, that they are not allowed to change their birth certificate -- ever! Yet, if you have open heart surgery in Ohio, at the expense of taxpayers, you may stop by the hospital cafeteria on your way out for a big make and fries.
We need to change these double standards; we need to change the system.
I'm always amazed by the reach of Pam's House Blend. Looking at our website visits and page view numbers, we're now averaging between 9,000 and 10,000 visitors a day. This is up by roughly a factor of two from our pre-Democratic National Conventions numbers.
If the end of the world occurs soon after the Alliance Defense Fund (a legal organization that was created byJames D. D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries and James Dobson of Focus On The Family/CitizenLink) has linked to us, the end of the world is coming soon, eh?
Some familiar disorders may be dropped and diagnostic criteria for others are in line for substantial revision in the forthcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V).
Schizoaffective disorder and gender identity disorder are among those that may be on the chopping block, according to members of the working groups leading the revision who spoke here at the American Psychiatric Association annual meeting.
...The elimination of homosexuality as a mental illness in the third DSM edition issued in the 1970s, for example, is now widely viewed as a watershed development in changing society's view from outright hostility to varying degrees of acceptance.
...A four-member group has been charged with developing recommendations and two of its members appeared at a separate forum here.
As described by its chairwoman, Peggy Cohen-Kettinis, Ph.D., of VU University in Amsterdam, the group is facing three main options: keep gender identity disorder approximately as it is, jettison it entirely, or change the name and diagnostic criteria.
As transgender activists protested outside the American Psychiatric Association (APA) meeting, speakers at the meeting were presenting on the same topic: gender identity disorder (GID). Some of their words would add clinical weight to the political slogans.
Some of the speakers are activists themselves, including Rebecca Allison, MD, cardiologist who is transgender, widely published author Sarah Hoffman, whose son is gender variant, and Hewlett-Packard engineer Kelley Winters, PhD, founder of GID Reform Advocates. Winters1 has called on the APA to use the DSM-V revision to affirm that "in the absence of dysphoria, gender identity and expression that vary from assigned birth sex are not, in themselves, grounds for diagnosing a mental disorder."
Some mental health professionals made the same point in their own presentations. Sidney W. Ecker, MD, a former clinical professor of urology at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, Washington, DC, and chief of urology at the Washington DC VA Medical Center, was scheduled to review studies documenting that factors that influence gender identity are present before birth. While social and hormonal influences act later during childhood, he wrote, "gender identity is determined before and persists despite these effects."2
Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, Calif, had a message more difficult for psychiatrists to hear. "The mental health profession has been consistently doing harm to children who are not 'gender normal,' and they need to retrain," she told Psychiatric Times. Ehrensaft has specialized in therapy for foster children as well as for children with gender issues...
Trans-Ponder's Jayna L-Pavlin and Mila Pavlin have promised us some video from the protest after they've processed it.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with a message that the approximately 150 GID Reform Now were sending to the American Psychiatric Association:
"We got homosexuality out of the DSM because of protests at the APA," [Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, a professor at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, California] pointed out. "Now it's time to do the same with GID."
This is an eleven minute video from a couple of months ago that helps frame what Gender Identity Disorder (GID) reform is about. The description of the In The Life video LOOKING BACK, PUSHING FORWARD:
The American Psychiatric Associations Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) - the bible of mental illness is currently being reviewed in preparation for its fifth release. Among its nearly 300 entries is Gender Identity Disorder (GID), a diagnosis applied to every transgender person who enters the healthcare system. Because GID pathologizes the identity of those diagnosed, many gender nonconforming children are subject to so-called reparative therapies by parents and mental health professionals that regard adult transexuality or homosexuality as a bad outcome. But transgender adults are as reliant on GID as they are stigmatized by it, because the American healthcare system requires the diagnosis before a doctor will prescribe hormones, or perform sex-reassignment-surgery. Adding insult to injury, no private insurer will cover trans-specific healthcare needs, even with a diagnosis. The intersection of institutional and parental authority, healthcare policy, and the adult desire to live in a body that matches ones identity has sparked a wide-ranging controversy. IN THE LIFE looks at the battles being waged within the psychiatric and transgender communities over whether to reform or eliminate GID as a diagnosis, and the implications for transgender healthcare.
I don't believe the HRC "gets" exactly how hated a figure Joe Solmonese is in the transgender community. Most trans people I know remember Mr. Solmonese's statements in 2007 at Southern Comfort regarding 2007's/2008's ENDA, and his follow-on flip-flopping over the next few months on ENDA. Not only have his statements not been forgotton by most trans activists I know, the statements have not been forgiven either.
If the HRC did feel this was a protest that they really needed to comment on to provide support, this probably would have been a really good time for the HRC to have Allison Robinson to send the message to trans people. This is because respect for Allison Robinson by many transgender activists actually is actually growing -- I haven't talked to many who have a bad thing to say about her, and those who do have a bad thing to say usually only mention her affiliation with the HRC as their issue with her.
From the HRC press release:
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, today issued a statement supporting the efforts of the transgender community and their allies who are calling for the reform of gender identity related diagnoses in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
Tonight at the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) annual meeting in San Francisco, GID Reform Now, a coalition of transgender and allied leaders, will lead a protest calling attention to grave concerns about the direction of the APA Work Group on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders, the group responsible for recommending changes to the DSM.
Statement by Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese:
"In 1973 the APA wisely voted to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The result was a very real decrease in bias and prejudice faced by lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in our society. Today, America's psychiatric professionals are considering changing the way diversity of gender identity and expression are classified in this important document. This work has far-reaching implications not only for the health and well-being of transgender people, but for the civil rights of the transgender community and of all people.
As GID reform advocate Dr. Kelley Winters states so poignantly, 'Difference is not disease, nonconformity is not pathology, and uniqueness is not illness.' Much of the distress that many transgender and other gender non-conforming people feel comes not from within, but from outside - from the prejudice that is directed against them by people who don't understand them or don't want to. The APA can help heal these social ills by carefully examining their policy and practice as the process of revising the DSM moves forward.
We join those transgender community leaders and their allies who gather at the APA meeting today in calling for (1) the expansion of the DSM V Work Group on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders to include more diverse views from behavioral science, bioethics, and philosophy of science professionals on this important subject and (2) a published position statement from the APA affirming human gender diversity and denouncing the misuse of current diagnoses to deny civil rights to transgender and gender-variant people."
This fight over GID is much like the lesbian, gay, and bisexual fight over the DSM-I and DSM-II inclusion of Homosexuality. When one's sexuality was listed as a mental health disorder, then there is stigma attached -- Homosexuality was not included in DSM-III and beyond.
But, GID may be included in DSM-V. Many trans activists believe this is wrong.
This is what GIDReformNOW, a group of GID Reform Activists, want:
We call for:
1. A more representative Work Group
The APA Work Group on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders is currently compromised by some members who have clear conflicts of interest in retaining and expanding specific diagnoses they have been involved in creating or promoting.
We urge the APA to expand the Work Group to represent more diverse views from behavioral science, bioethics, and philosophy of science.
2. A published position statement from APA
APA has often shifted public policy and perception through the publication of approved position statements. We urge the APA to state that diagnosing normal variants of human gender identity and expression as psychiatric disorders encourages an adversarial relationship between psychiatry and sex and gender minorities. We also urge the APA to state that these diagnoses are misused by some people outside of psychiatry who wish to deny civil rights to trans and gender-variant people.
What we advocate
Transgender health services should be viewed as a medical necessity. Published outcomes from the past 50 years show that access to trans health services and harm reduction initiatives improve trans people's lives and mental health.
Trans health services can be provided without diagnosing gender identity and expression as disordered. We believe any clinical distress may arise from attempts to suppress, shame, or "cure" social or somatic gender expression.
Evidence-based medicine and long-term outcome data related to sexual and gender minorities should be the focus of any diagnostic revisions. Discussions should include published work in related fields, including behavioral science, bioethics, and philosophy of science.
To learn more about these important issues, please visit GIDreformNOW.com.
The American Psychiatric Association can view sexual and gender minorities as having psychosexual pathology (i.e. Erotomania, Paraphilia, Fetishism, etc.), psychopathology (i.e. Gender Identity Disorder, etc.), pathology (i.e. birth defect, etc.), or natural human diversity (gender variance, neurological variance, etc.).
Personally, I believe in embracing the concept that sexual and gender minorities are part of natural human diversity, and the treatment model should look similar to what Kelley Winters has proposed on gidreform.org.
I'll be posting a diary or two related to the protest event over the next few days.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) Board of Trustees has established a task force on the treatment of Gender Identity Disorders (GID) to address concerns about the relative lack of evidence-based treatment guidelines and to determine if guidelines should be developed. The task force was created on a recommendation by the APA Committee on Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Issues. For the full release.
Online advanced registration for reporters will be open through May 8. Reporters can also register on site. For more information and to register, visit the newsroom. Additional information on the meeting and the scientific program can be found here.
The APA Office of Communications & Public Affairs is available anytime to arrange interviews on any mental health topic.
Hold my breath, close my eyes...keep hoping we end up with good output from the committee as activists communicate to, and work with this committee.
Way back on March 30th, in the Ideas section of the Boston Globe, there was a a Q&A with Dr. Norman Spack. Dr. Spack has a clinic at Children's Hospital Boston; he's "a doctor who helps children change their gender." The article is about the clinic, about the treatment, and about why the clinic exists.
IDEAS: At what age do you give kids drugs to delay puberty?
SPACK: The puberty-blocking drugs work best at the beginning of the pubital process, typically age 10 to 12 for a girl and 12 to 14 for a boy. Stopping puberty is, in itself, a diagnostic test. If a girl starts to experience breast budding and feels like cutting herself, then she's probably transgendered. If she feels immediate relief on the [puberty-blocking] drugs, that confirms the diagnosis.
IDEAS: So the aim of your treatment is to protect children from harming themselves?
SPACK: Transgendered kids have a high level of suicide attempts. Of the patients who have fled England to see me, three out of the four have made very serious suicide attempts. And I've never seen any patient make [an attempt] after they've started hormonal treatment.
There are no genital surgeries taking place. We're talking about blocking hormones and later giving adolescents hormones -- this is how Dr. Spack addresses this:
IDEAS: At what age should children be allowed to take hormones, like estrogen and testosterone, that will forever change the way their bodies develop?
SPACK: Well, the Dutch would say 16. But I think more flexible guidelines will be coming out. For some kids, 16 might be appropriate. For others {hellip} you lose opportunities if you wait. [One of my patients, a] transgendered girl from the UK, was destined to be a 6-foot-4 male. With treatment, she's going to end up 5-foot-10.
Dr. Spack isn't providing for or arranging for minors to receive genital reassignement surgery as minors.
How the story has been told and emphasized -- from being about the quality of children's lives and suicide prevention to one emphasizing conservative Christian beliefs and theology; from focusing on these children to focusing on the statements of Dr. Paul McHugh -- the John Hopkins professor who advised the Catholic Church regarding sexabuse and transsexuals -- and whether or not Dr. Norman Spack is a "nutjob", or whether treatments offered to transgender children at Dr. Spack's clinic are "barbaric," "a rejection of the lawfulness of nature," and "cooperating with psychosis."
The National Association For Research & Therapy Of Homosexuality's (NARTH's) Dr. Richard P. Fitzgibbons mixes the treatment of transsexual adults with his Catholic faith -- and the treatment of youth diagnosed with gender identity disorder (GID) -- in his NARTH piece The Desire For A Sex Change:
[After the fold, NARTH, the Liberty Council, and the Catholic Medical Association weigh in, and the tie-in to NARTH's unique diagnosis of Same Sex Attraction Disorder (SSAD) for adolescents and adults.]
