We conclude, from part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4, considering an article by Jack Drescher, M.D., who is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, wherein he complied some interesting data with regards to, as he states it within his relevant paper’s title, “Queer Diagnoses: Parallels and Contrasts in the History of Homosexuality, Gender Variance, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual” which was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, April 2010 AD, Volume 39, Issue 2, pp 427-460.
CHILDREN ISSUES
In the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III; APA, 1980), there appeared for the first time two psychiatric diagnoses pertaining to gender dysphoria in children, adolescents, and adults: gender identity disorder of childhood (GIDC) and transsexualism (the latter was to be used for adolescents and adults).
In the DSM-III-R (APA, 1987), a third diagnosis was added: gender identity disorder of adolescence and adulthood, nontranssexual type. In DSM-IV (APA, 1994, 2000a), this last diagnosis was eliminated (“sunsetted”), and the diagnoses of GIDC and transsexualism were collapsed into one overarching diagnosis, gender identity disorder (GID), with different criteria sets for children versus adolescents and adults. (p. 32)
TO REMOVE OR NOT TO REMOVE? INSURANCE IS THE QUESTION
This diagnosis regarded homosexuality as an illness if an individual with same-sex attractions found them distressing and wanted to change (Spitzer, 1981; Stoller et al., 1973). The new diagnosis served the purpose of legitimizing the practice of sexual conversion therapies (and presumably justified insurance reimbursement for those interventions as well), even if homosexuality per se was no longer considered an illness.
The new diagnosis of SOD also allowed for the unlikely possibility that a person unhappy about a heterosexual orientation could seek treatment to become gay…There is no insurance coverage for unofficial problems. The third is that some of the suffering attendant to these patterns can be ameliorated (pp. 43–44)…many health care insurers and other third party payers claim that SRS is an “experimental treatment,” an “elective treatment,” or “not medically necessary” and therefore not reimbursable…The Swedish diagnostic manual, however, will retain the Transsexualism diagnosis in order to continued providing sex reassignment.
Moreover:
The closing of [most] U.S. gender clinics created a treatment vacuum which resulted in the slow development of a market economy for the treatment of transsexualism. Free from the restrictive policies of the gender programs, transsexuals began to orchestrate their own sex reassignments…By 1985, there were a number of support groups and regional conferences which welcomed both crossdressers and transsexuals. Around 1990, transsexuals, who had been conspicuously absent from the literature, began to publish, adding their voices to those of feminist scholars…(Denny, 2002, p. 40).
One consequence of less medical control of postoperative living and an increased contact among individuals were newly formed trans communities that proposed a:
new [alternative] transgender model, [in which] transsexuals were not mentally ill men and women whose misery could be alleviated only by sex reassignment, but rather [they were] emotionally healthy individuals whose expression of gender was not constrained by societal expectations. Instead, the pathology was shifted from the gender-nonconformist to a society which cannot tolerate difference…Sexual orientation and transgender identities, once conflated, and only recently separated from each other as discrete categories, now found common political cause. One historical fact supporting such a political alliance was that many of the protestors at the 1969 Stonewall riots were transgender (Duberman, 1994; Stryker, 2007).
Also, with regards to “conflated sexual orientation and gender identity,” Jack Drescher states:
Gender identity can be an independent variable in relation to sexual orientation. For example, some people can be born with a male body, have a female gender identity, and, in some cases, be attracted to men (androphilic) while others may be attracted to women (gynephilic).
SAME SEX MARRIAGE
Jack Drescher notes, “Today, polls show a majority of Americans support marriage equality (Langer, 2009).” Firstly, this is the worst possible argument to be made in favor of same-sex marriage as it leave its acceptance in the hands of the majority opinion de jour. Thus, if next year, next decade, etc. a majority of Americans oppose, and note how he refers to it, marriage equality then what? Also, changing the traditional definition of marriage came down to one, just one, single person as one, just one, unelected Supreme Court judge’s vote changed the definition of “marriage” for the entire nation at the Federal level.
It is noted that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) “issued a 2005 position statement supporting civil marriage equality for gay people.”