Political Activism Supplying Medical Evidence in the New International Diagnostic Manual
WASHINGTON, DC, June 7 (C-Fam). Transgender rights activists announce major victory as World Health Assembly (WHA) adopts up-to-date version of diagnostic manual, removing "transsexuality" from its chapter on mental disorders and adding "gender incongruity" in a new chapter on sexual health.
The proposed manual, called ICD-11 (11 th edition of the International Classification of Diseases) was published last year by the World Health Organization (WHO), led by the WHA. However, the reclassification of the transgender situation has been anticipated for years.
The media coverage of the amendment emphasized that it stems mainly from a rapidly changing political landscape, led by a wave of transgender activism, and not by significant scientific or medical discovery.
Although the manual does not come into force before the beginning of 2022, it is already brandished to the faces of lawmakers around the world. Graeme Reid, the LGBT rights director at the Human Rights Watch, said "governments should quickly reform their national medical systems and their laws based on this now officially outdated diagnosis."
For example, some governments request a diagnosis of "gender disorder" before changing the names and legal types on official documents.
ICD-11 shifted transgender situations out of the mental disorder chapter in response to activists' claim that this classification caused stigmatization. This argument, perhaps ironically, slams current efforts to destigmatize mental illnesses in general. But if being classified as sick is stigmatizing, why do transgender activists want "gender incongruity" to remain in a volume whose title refers to the classification of diseases, even in another chapter?
As was said a WHO spokesman, "there remain significant care needs can be better met if the situation appears in the ICD." In other words, for sex reassignment treatments, such as surgery or hormones, to be considered as normal care and not as optional procedures,
one must still be in a situation that can be diagnosed.
However, the position of the Human Rights Watch and its allies is that the "procedure for the legal recognition of gender identity should be separated from any medical intervention". Thus, if the diagnosis of a professional is required to require insurance or government health services allowing transgender body treatments, the legal recognition of transgender status would require nothing more than a desire to obtain it. .
Despite all the excitement surrounding the new manual, a coalition of transgender activists is far from claiming victory, referring to the update as a "temporary and imperfect solution". In addition to describing the term "gender incongruity" as "pathologizing" and "stigmatizing", activists call for "fully removing all legal and bioethical safeguards, standardizing gender stereotypes" and, to a large extent, " all forms of socio-economic injustice ".
The activist coalition also calls for abandoning the category "gender incongruity of childhood," noting that there is no reliable research to distinguish between a child who will continue to experience gender dysphoria and the one who could finally define himself as homosexual.
Thus, they argue that this category "amounts to re-pathologizing homosexuality".
Not mentioned in their position, but widely reported elsewhere, is the fact that the majority of children who experience gender dysphoria "withdraw", or end up accepting their body, before reaching adulthood.
The proposed manual, called ICD-11 (11 th edition of the International Classification of Diseases) was published last year by the World Health Organization (WHO), led by the WHA. However, the reclassification of the transgender situation has been anticipated for years.
The media coverage of the amendment emphasized that it stems mainly from a rapidly changing political landscape, led by a wave of transgender activism, and not by significant scientific or medical discovery.
Although the manual does not come into force before the beginning of 2022, it is already brandished to the faces of lawmakers around the world. Graeme Reid, the LGBT rights director at the Human Rights Watch, said "governments should quickly reform their national medical systems and their laws based on this now officially outdated diagnosis."
For example, some governments request a diagnosis of "gender disorder" before changing the names and legal types on official documents.
ICD-11 shifted transgender situations out of the mental disorder chapter in response to activists' claim that this classification caused stigmatization. This argument, perhaps ironically, slams current efforts to destigmatize mental illnesses in general. But if being classified as sick is stigmatizing, why do transgender activists want "gender incongruity" to remain in a volume whose title refers to the classification of diseases, even in another chapter?
As was said a WHO spokesman, "there remain significant care needs can be better met if the situation appears in the ICD." In other words, for sex reassignment treatments, such as surgery or hormones, to be considered as normal care and not as optional procedures,
one must still be in a situation that can be diagnosed.
However, the position of the Human Rights Watch and its allies is that the "procedure for the legal recognition of gender identity should be separated from any medical intervention". Thus, if the diagnosis of a professional is required to require insurance or government health services allowing transgender body treatments, the legal recognition of transgender status would require nothing more than a desire to obtain it. .
Despite all the excitement surrounding the new manual, a coalition of transgender activists is far from claiming victory, referring to the update as a "temporary and imperfect solution". In addition to describing the term "gender incongruity" as "pathologizing" and "stigmatizing", activists call for "fully removing all legal and bioethical safeguards, standardizing gender stereotypes" and, to a large extent, " all forms of socio-economic injustice ".
The activist coalition also calls for abandoning the category "gender incongruity of childhood," noting that there is no reliable research to distinguish between a child who will continue to experience gender dysphoria and the one who could finally define himself as homosexual.
Thus, they argue that this category "amounts to re-pathologizing homosexuality".
Not mentioned in their position, but widely reported elsewhere, is the fact that the majority of children who experience gender dysphoria "withdraw", or end up accepting their body, before reaching adulthood.
