Beacon Broadside

Today’s post is from Matt Kailey, the author of Just Add Hormones: An Insider’s Guide the Transsexual Experience (Beacon Press, 2005), the editor of Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices (Johnson Books, 2007), and the managing editor of Out Front Colorado, Colorado’s oldest and largest GLBT publication.

Trans people aren’t broken. We aren’t looking to be "fixed," and we have no need of a repairman. We have spent decades trying to convince the Western world of this, and forgive us if some in our ranks were starting to feel a little optimistic about our progress – until, maybe, now.

Just when we thought that an end to the tinkering around with our brains might be in sight – at least for those who are very far sighted – along comes a repairman in the form of Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a non-transman who, like so many before him, thinks he knows what’s better for us than we do. Dr. Zucker thinks he can "fix" us – whether we want him to or not.

Now Dr. Zucker might be merely an annoying interruption in our otherwise peaceful day – some scam artist who knocks on our door and tells us that our roof or our driveway or our air conditioning is in disrepair and that he can fix it for cheap – and we could easily tell him that we have our own service, thank you very much, and close the door in his face. Unfortunately, in this case, there’s one small catch – Dr. Kenneth Zucker has been appointed by the American Psychiatric Association to serve as the chair for the Sexual and Gender Identities Disorder task force that reviews the new version of the DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual that is used by psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists to diagnose mental illness. And, in this regard, Dr. Zucker is no mere annoyance knocking on our door. He is a very dangerous man – and not just to trans people.

Dr. Zucker believes in reparative therapy. Just say the words and
shudders go through the gay and lesbian communities as members recall
involuntary hospitalizations, forced hormone "treatments," and even
electric shock "therapy" designed to "cure" same-sex attraction.
Luckily for gay men and lesbians, homosexuality was removed from the
DSM in 1973. Same-sex attraction is no longer considered a mental
illness, and even though ex-gay programs still exist, the failure rate
is high, and most national professional medical and mental health
groups – including the American Psychiatric Association – have taken the position that homosexuality is not an illness and cannot be "cured." The American Psychiatric Association even issued a position statement in 1998 saying, in part, that it "opposes
any psychiatric treatment, such as reparative or conversion therapy
which is based upon the assumption that homosexuality per se is a
mental disorder or based upon the a priori assumption that the patient
should change his/her sexual homosexual orientation." But, with Dr. Zucker’s appointment, those days may be over – and they may be nowhere in sight for trans people.

Consider the case of Bradley, recently featured on a two-part series on transgendered children presented by NPR.
Physically a male, Bradley began expressing preferences for "female"
toys, clothing, and activities as a toddler. He refused to play with
"boy" toys or with male peers. At the age of six, he entered therapy
with Dr. Zucker, who insists that the way to treat young children who
display signs of gender identity disorder is to immerse them in all
things appropriate to their birth gender, so Bradley was forced into
boys’ clothing and boys’ activities. The problem was that, when his
"girl" toys were taken away, he refused to play at all – an
unfortunate, unhappy, and unhealthy position for a six-year-old to be
in.

After eight months of therapy, Bradley’s mother says that he has
made some "progress." He still can’t be exposed to "girl" toys, or he
will want to play with them. He panics when he sees the color pink and
insists on covering his eyes so he won’t be drawn to it. But he has
been able to tell his parents that he no longer wants to be a girl,
although his mother says that it sounds like a "stock" answer –
something that he is saying because it’s what she wants to hear. She
believes that he still plays only with girls at school – but he then
comes home to an entirely different set of expectations. And this is
"progress"?

Compare Bradley’s situation with that of Jonah (featured in the same
NPR segment as Bradley), who was two years old when his parents
realized that no amount of persuasion would entice their "son" to play
with typical "boy toys," and nothing they could say or do would steer
him away from the dresses he was so desperate to wear. Luckily, his
parents recognized that Jonah was really a girl – that it was his body,
not his identity, that was the problem – and they took steps to allow
their daughter to start living the life she was meant to live. Jonah
became Jona, and she is now a happy little girl. Jona’s therapist,
Diane Ehrensaft, has a different view of transgenderism than does Dr.
Zucker. In fact, she thinks Zucker’s mode of therapy is "unethical,"
and likens it to the reparative therapy foisted on gay men and lesbians
before it was determined that homosexuality was not a mental illness.

Armand, another child profiled in the NPR series,
had an experience similar to Jona’s. His need to be female also became
apparent around the age of two, and his parents tried to seek help for
their unhappy "son" until they finally found a therapist who diagnosed
gender identity disorder. Armand, now Violet, is undergoing a
controversial treatment designed to block male hormones and thus a male
puberty, making it easier for her to transition later on if she decides
this is what she wants to do. The ramifications of this type of
intervention are not fully understood, but with fifty percent of transgendered children ideating suicide,
according to Jenn Burleton, the Executive Director of TransActive
Education & Advocacy (TEA) and West Region Coordinator and Board
Member of PFLAG-Transgender Network (TNET), this type of treatment is
probably far better than the potential alternative.

As profiled in the NPR series, both Jona and Violet are much happier
and emotionally healthier since being allowed to live in the female
gender that matches their internal identity. Bradley, on the other
hand, is still struggling with his attempts to remain male and seems,
with little joy, to be saying and doing the things that he knows are
expected of him. Is he "fixed"? It is unlikely, since even the current DSM
says that treatment for childhood gender identity disorder is "likely
to be long-term with small gains made on underlying issues as treatment
progresses" and that a prognosis for treating the disorder is "mixed"
and that "same-sex identification may be very difficult to achieve."

Given all this, it’s a strange turn of events indeed that Dr. Zucker
has been appointed to serve as the chair for the Sexual and Gender
Identities Disorder task force for the new DSM, made even more bizarre
by the fact that Zucker believes that there is a relationship between
gender identity disorder and homosexuality. Writing for the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Zucker says, "Follow-up
studies of boys who have GID that largely is untreated, indicated that
homosexuality is the most common long-term psychosexual outcome."

If this is truly the case (and I would
be interested in seeing these "studies," because my experience in
meeting literally hundreds of male-to-female transsexuals and hundreds
of gay men over the last ten years does not bear this out), then it
appears that Dr. Zucker’s reparative therapy for children with gender
identity disorder is aimed at preventing adult homosexuality. And if
homosexuality is not a diagnosable mental illness, as per the American
Psychiatric Association, then it would follow that attempting to stop
it by using reparative therapy with children with gender identity
disorder would not be appropriate.  To go even further, it would seem
that, combining Dr. Zucker’s argument about reparative therapy for
gender identity disorder and the American Psychiatric Association’s
position on homosexuality, gender identity disorder, like
homosexuality, should not be a diagnosable mental illness.

I put no stock in Zucker’s argument or
in his therapeutic methods. While I agree that GID should be removed
from the DSM, my reasoning is simplistic and has nothing to do with
homosexuality – I don’t believe that gender identity issues constitute
a mental illness.  But if the American Psychiatric Association supports
Zucker’s views, and it must, given his appointment on the DSM task
force, then it has only two choices for recourse: put homosexuality
back in the DSM or take GID out. Oh, wait – there is a third: dump
Zucker. Get him off of that task force before he damages – beyond
repair – any more lives.

If you agree that Dr. Kenneth Zucker should be removed from the task force, sign this petition. You might also want to read "Drop the Barbie!" by Stephanie Wilkinson from Brain, Child magazine; Matt Kailey’s post on pregnant transman Thomas Beatie; and this NPR story about new therapies for transgender adolescents.