Officially Not Sick

With the release of the new DSM-V, a person with gender identity issues is no longer officially sick, just not well, and still not normal. While some in the transgender community hail this as a, even only small, victory away from the stigma of a "disorder", some openly criticize it as insufficient toward the goal of removal from the DSM.

The reality is that the whole issue of gender identity is mostly, and to some almost completely, a semantic argument, words trying to define a small segment of normal people who express themselves differently than most people who believe their values, their morality and their standards defines normal.

The truth is normal is relative to time and place, and even in the United States, normal society standards have differed and changed over our histoyr with people and place. It has only been in the post World War II period when the standards we live with today were born in the people who were prominent in the 1950's.

Yes, our world about sex and gender was defined 60 years ago and while it's changed and everything else around it has changed, the fundamental values and standards have remained because of the legacy of those people still remains in the (older generation) people in charge and making decisions about other people because they like to play god with people, aka patients.

That's what the whole gender identity issue is about, morality and psychiatrist playing god with their morality. Extreme? Really? Not if you look at and consider the careers of some of those on the commitee and subcommitte charged with writing the new DSM standards on gender identity.

Why do they even think it's anything other people being normal expressing themselves? Because they have and can label people and claim control over them through the DSM. That's what the DSM is about, partially defining protocols for diagnoses and treatments, but mostly controlling access to medical care.

There's nothing mentally or emotionally wrong with people who have gender identity issues. What the DSM has failed to recognize and still doesn't recognize is that it's not the gender identity that's the problem, it's their body but most of all, it's the world they live in with ostracizes them as different, even not a person.

The fact and reality that some people are born with a conflict between their body of one sex and their mind the other gender isn't abnormal, just not common, but above all people with gender identity need help, not psychological labels and rules about what they can do to get treatment to be who they are and live they life they want.

It's not rocket science, it's human nature, and the DSM and medical community should be helping them than labelling and controlling them through access to the medical treatment which not only ameliorates the feelings but provides the treatment which resolves their internal conflict.

It's the simple idea long expressed by transpeople, but not seen by all but a few psychiatrists, it's not the mind that's wrong, it's the body. Fix the body and everything else improves. It's not rocket science, it's human nature, and most of all common sense.

And that shows where the problem lies, the medical community, specificially the psychiatrists and their DSM, and lies with the health insurance companies denying coverage for a condition long, and wrongly, labelled, not because there's anything wrong, but because it's their definition of normal.

No one with gender identity issues is sick, abnormal or anything other than human and normal, and the issues they have with the body is easily solvable with existing medical intervention long practiced for those who pass through the gates to get treatment, and of course either find a financial help, eg. employer, family, etc., or write their own checks.

And that's the sad reality, the vast majority of transitioning women don't have the money, don't have a good employer who pays for this, don't have the health insurance company which covers it, and don't have family or friends to help.

That's not sick, it's a tragedy, easily fixable like all the other probems with our healthcare and health insurance system. It's about politics, power, money and control, not human lives. And that's the greater tragedy of our country, the morality, about people's morality toward others they don't think are normal.

And it's all there written in the DSM. You need look no farther than it and the APA.