Post by Ayla on Mar 8, 2016 11:58:46 GMT 8
The decision to remove “gender identity disorder” from the DSM provoked a variety of reactions from trans people, to say the least.
For the most part, many have seen this as a positive step, but others such as Chase Strangio in The Huffington Post have pointed out that this could prove detrimental for trans people, usually women, of colour within incarceration or controlled living circumstances in accessing medical services. As a trans person with mental illnesses, my feelings are very ambivalent.
I have a variety of disabilities and some of them are things that I don’t know if I would “cure” if given the option. Disabled people have such a wide variety of feelings and opinions on how they process their disabilities and their stigmas that it’s impossible to simplify it all.
In many cases, my mental illnesses fall under the disorders that I would “cure” if given the chance. While some of the disabilities I have I feel make up part of who I am and aren’t things I would “cure” for the sake of being “normal”, I will admit that even the ones I won’t “cure” create obstacles in my life. It just so happens that my mental illness is not something that I feel, as some others do, brings many positives to my life.
My mental illness holds me back and prevents me from really doing the things I want to do. I would “cure” my paralysing anxiety if given the chance, my OCD, all of it, because it seriously impairs me.
“Transgender” being a mental illness
I don’t believe my gender impairs me. I don’t see being non-binary as a “disordered” way of thinking or existing. I don’t believe that having a sexual development disorder is the same as having paralysing anxiety. My gender doesn’t prevent me from doing anything. People prevent me from existing to them (not to myself) as who I am by their inability to accept anything beyond a gender binary. I don’t believe I am disordered about my gender, I believe society is disordered about gender. I suffer discrimination on the basis of my mental illness.
People often don’t understand anxiety, they don’t understand why I can’t do certain things, why I obsess about things, why I think the way I do, etc. But I feel as though I would have these problems regardless of the way people treat me currently. So, for things I do consider “disorders”, things I would “cure”, I feel as though I would have them and they would be hugely problematic regardless of the way people saw them. My anxiety does stem from treatment I have had in the past, but at this point it is so well engrained that it exists on it’s own. Sure, the treatment of others can exacerbate my anxiety, but positive treatment won’t cure it.
I don’t feel I want to “cure” how I view my gender. To put it simply, my mental illnesses are about the disordered way in which I relate and interpret society, whereas my status as trans is more about the way a disordered society misinterprets and doesn’t relate to me.
In reality, trans experiences are too varied for us to really be able to draw lines and decide whether or not is or isn’t a disorder of our own minds or a disorder of society. The most crucial issue that hangs within the balance of this classification is the access to resources and the ways in which a cis dominated and centric medical establishment has control over trans people and they way they experience their bodies. I don’t necessarily feel that gender identity disorder always prevents or helps that case.
In my variety of disability experience, I’ve found that control over my body has always been an issue. Having nurses take my blood as I physically fought them when I was younger, I learned pretty quickly that body autonomy was a privilege I didn’t have. My disorder created circumstances that made it impossible for me to do certain things from sleeping over last minute at a friend’s house to running away from home when I desperately wanted to. Still, despite the obstacles my disabilities cause me, despite feeling that I would “cure” some of them if given the chance, I do not feel ashamed to have disabilities or disorders.
Mental illness stigma
The thing that concerns me about the celebration of “gender identity disorder” from the DSM is the continuation of the mental health stigma, the continuation of the idea that a “disorder” is not only something negative but something to feel shame over and it makes me feel a bit lax to celebrate. In general, I feel that what should be focused on more than just removing or adding a disorder from the DSM, is a joining of perhaps trans and disabled (or indeed trans disabled) individuals to argue for more bodily autonomy for trans people and people with disabilities.
In the case of being trans and disabled, I’m told twice over that I’m not the boss of my own body. I’ve been given medications and treatments all of my life for disorders without doctors explaining to me what these do, now forced to continue oestrogen replacement therapy because there is no alternative other than osteoporoses.
Doctors have always, whether on trans or disability issues, assumed that my say in my own body, in my own treatments, is the least important or not worthy any at all of consideration. Focus has never been put on prioritising my comfort and my ability to understand my conditions or even inhabit my own body over the doctor’s ability to treat me and, in my own experience, doctor’s ability to examine me.
One of the things I love about the analogy of mutants is how applicable it can be across a wide variety of marginalisations. I think Erik’s relationship with Shaw illustrates is the ways in which your difference can be exploited for someone else’s gain and thusly shaped by it. Even though a lot of other things can bring out Erik’s abilities, because he has been so trained to use it in conjunction with anger, that ends up being a huge part of his character. I feel like the ways other people have responded or characterised my disability have had a huge impact on the way I interpret it.
Because I grew up poor, I went to a university hospital that treated me without charging. But the cost of that was that I’d be inspected by medical students like a lab rat. It’s an experience I look back on with disdain and frustration when I wonder how my treatment and my experience of my own disorder would have been different if I were wealthier, how I might have been able to find some pride in being “different” if I hadn’t been treated the way I was.
My mother, being only 18 with a very sick child and coming from a broken home herself, had little preparation for navigating the medical establishment and quite often felt ill equipped to contradict people in white coats. I’m grateful for the times when she put her foot down, when she said no when they tried to do exploratory brain surgery on me. When she was adamant that I was blind in one eye because of the way I played Peek-a-boo, despite several, probably condescending white men in coats telling her that I just had a lazy eye.
But there was only so much that a poor woman working at McDonalds to feed four kids could do. And it doesn’t surprise me that something like the removal of GID from the DSM will affect the poorest and most vulnerable of trans people. I’ve already seen the wreckage when disability and poverty or disability and trans status can collide. I can’t imagine what happens under multiple intersections.
Disabled and trans people both need more bodily autonomy within medical systems. Whether trans gender identities are considered “disordered” or not, medical professionals and establishments need to make more room for the people they’re treating and understand them not as just “patients” but as fellow human beings with a right to their own bodies.
medium.com/@thelolaphoenix/is-being-trans-a-mental-disorder-e858f62c436c#.lueg1jh4n
For the most part, many have seen this as a positive step, but others such as Chase Strangio in The Huffington Post have pointed out that this could prove detrimental for trans people, usually women, of colour within incarceration or controlled living circumstances in accessing medical services. As a trans person with mental illnesses, my feelings are very ambivalent.
I have a variety of disabilities and some of them are things that I don’t know if I would “cure” if given the option. Disabled people have such a wide variety of feelings and opinions on how they process their disabilities and their stigmas that it’s impossible to simplify it all.
In many cases, my mental illnesses fall under the disorders that I would “cure” if given the chance. While some of the disabilities I have I feel make up part of who I am and aren’t things I would “cure” for the sake of being “normal”, I will admit that even the ones I won’t “cure” create obstacles in my life. It just so happens that my mental illness is not something that I feel, as some others do, brings many positives to my life.
My mental illness holds me back and prevents me from really doing the things I want to do. I would “cure” my paralysing anxiety if given the chance, my OCD, all of it, because it seriously impairs me.
“Transgender” being a mental illness
I don’t believe my gender impairs me. I don’t see being non-binary as a “disordered” way of thinking or existing. I don’t believe that having a sexual development disorder is the same as having paralysing anxiety. My gender doesn’t prevent me from doing anything. People prevent me from existing to them (not to myself) as who I am by their inability to accept anything beyond a gender binary. I don’t believe I am disordered about my gender, I believe society is disordered about gender. I suffer discrimination on the basis of my mental illness.
People often don’t understand anxiety, they don’t understand why I can’t do certain things, why I obsess about things, why I think the way I do, etc. But I feel as though I would have these problems regardless of the way people treat me currently. So, for things I do consider “disorders”, things I would “cure”, I feel as though I would have them and they would be hugely problematic regardless of the way people saw them. My anxiety does stem from treatment I have had in the past, but at this point it is so well engrained that it exists on it’s own. Sure, the treatment of others can exacerbate my anxiety, but positive treatment won’t cure it.
I don’t feel I want to “cure” how I view my gender. To put it simply, my mental illnesses are about the disordered way in which I relate and interpret society, whereas my status as trans is more about the way a disordered society misinterprets and doesn’t relate to me.
In reality, trans experiences are too varied for us to really be able to draw lines and decide whether or not is or isn’t a disorder of our own minds or a disorder of society. The most crucial issue that hangs within the balance of this classification is the access to resources and the ways in which a cis dominated and centric medical establishment has control over trans people and they way they experience their bodies. I don’t necessarily feel that gender identity disorder always prevents or helps that case.
In my variety of disability experience, I’ve found that control over my body has always been an issue. Having nurses take my blood as I physically fought them when I was younger, I learned pretty quickly that body autonomy was a privilege I didn’t have. My disorder created circumstances that made it impossible for me to do certain things from sleeping over last minute at a friend’s house to running away from home when I desperately wanted to. Still, despite the obstacles my disabilities cause me, despite feeling that I would “cure” some of them if given the chance, I do not feel ashamed to have disabilities or disorders.
Mental illness stigma
The thing that concerns me about the celebration of “gender identity disorder” from the DSM is the continuation of the mental health stigma, the continuation of the idea that a “disorder” is not only something negative but something to feel shame over and it makes me feel a bit lax to celebrate. In general, I feel that what should be focused on more than just removing or adding a disorder from the DSM, is a joining of perhaps trans and disabled (or indeed trans disabled) individuals to argue for more bodily autonomy for trans people and people with disabilities.
In the case of being trans and disabled, I’m told twice over that I’m not the boss of my own body. I’ve been given medications and treatments all of my life for disorders without doctors explaining to me what these do, now forced to continue oestrogen replacement therapy because there is no alternative other than osteoporoses.
Doctors have always, whether on trans or disability issues, assumed that my say in my own body, in my own treatments, is the least important or not worthy any at all of consideration. Focus has never been put on prioritising my comfort and my ability to understand my conditions or even inhabit my own body over the doctor’s ability to treat me and, in my own experience, doctor’s ability to examine me.
One of the things I love about the analogy of mutants is how applicable it can be across a wide variety of marginalisations. I think Erik’s relationship with Shaw illustrates is the ways in which your difference can be exploited for someone else’s gain and thusly shaped by it. Even though a lot of other things can bring out Erik’s abilities, because he has been so trained to use it in conjunction with anger, that ends up being a huge part of his character. I feel like the ways other people have responded or characterised my disability have had a huge impact on the way I interpret it.
Because I grew up poor, I went to a university hospital that treated me without charging. But the cost of that was that I’d be inspected by medical students like a lab rat. It’s an experience I look back on with disdain and frustration when I wonder how my treatment and my experience of my own disorder would have been different if I were wealthier, how I might have been able to find some pride in being “different” if I hadn’t been treated the way I was.
My mother, being only 18 with a very sick child and coming from a broken home herself, had little preparation for navigating the medical establishment and quite often felt ill equipped to contradict people in white coats. I’m grateful for the times when she put her foot down, when she said no when they tried to do exploratory brain surgery on me. When she was adamant that I was blind in one eye because of the way I played Peek-a-boo, despite several, probably condescending white men in coats telling her that I just had a lazy eye.
But there was only so much that a poor woman working at McDonalds to feed four kids could do. And it doesn’t surprise me that something like the removal of GID from the DSM will affect the poorest and most vulnerable of trans people. I’ve already seen the wreckage when disability and poverty or disability and trans status can collide. I can’t imagine what happens under multiple intersections.
Disabled and trans people both need more bodily autonomy within medical systems. Whether trans gender identities are considered “disordered” or not, medical professionals and establishments need to make more room for the people they’re treating and understand them not as just “patients” but as fellow human beings with a right to their own bodies.
medium.com/@thelolaphoenix/is-being-trans-a-mental-disorder-e858f62c436c#.lueg1jh4n
