step one in what we're now going to see as a real change, a real reckoning, in antigay politics

Sadly, Maddow only told half of the story. For four decades, Robert Spitzer has played pivotal roles in mental health policies - not only on sexual orientation, but on gender diversity as well. Rachel Maddow and other journalists turned a blind eye to Dr. Spitzer's failure to retract a lifetime of trans psychopathologization, stereotyping gender identities and expression that differ from assigned birth roles as mental disease. This omission speaks to the marginal status of trans people within the GLbt rights movement and progressive media, as much as Spitzer's omission speaks to trans marginalization by mental health policymakers.

Shifting stigma from one oppressed class to a more oppressed class is not real change.

Overall, this newest SOC represents significant forward progress in respecting trans people and affirming the necessity of medical transition care for trans and transsexual individuals who need it. Although controversies and issues of transition care access remain in the SOC7, WPATH has announced a more frequent update process that will hopefully be more responsive to emerging evidence and clinical experience in the future.

First published in 1979, the SOC has provided clinical guidance to medical and mental health providers serving trans people, with an emphasis on transsexual individuals seeking hormonal and/or surgical transition care. In many parts of the world, particularly North America and Europe, the SOC has played a role in enabling access to medical transition care and in enabling medical and surgical practitioners to provide it. However, the SOC has been controversial among trans communities and supportive care providers.

Prior versions have been critized for unreasonable barriers to medical transition care, pathologizing language of "disordered" gender identities and "gender-disturbed children," maligning pronouns and terms for transitioned individuals, and compulsory psychotherapy requirements. Fortunately, successive revisions of the SOC have trended toward greater respect for trans and transsexual people and fewer unjustified barriers to transition care. For example, mandatory urological examinations were dropped from the 4^th Version in 1990, and mandatory psychotherapy requirements for those needing access to hormonal or surgical transition care were dropped from the 5^th SOC in 1998.

A run-down of the changes are after the break.

The Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Workgroup of the APA's DSM-5 Task Force has partially responded to concerns about the GID diagnosis in the fifth edition of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. For example, the derogatory title of "Gender Identity Disorder" (intended to imply "disordered" gender identity) has been replaced with "Gender Dysphoria," from a Greek root for distress. DSM-5 authors have expressed a desire to focus on distress with incongruent physical characteristics and assigned gender roles rather than on difference.

Moreover, the workgroup has articulated a historic shift in diagnostic focus away from the stereotype of "disordered" gender identity:

We have proposed a change in conceptualization of the defining features by emphasizing the phenomenon of "gender incongruence" in contrast to cross-gender identification per sé.

However, the workgroup has not reflected these principles in the diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria. They retain much of the flawed language from the DSM-IV, casting differences from birth-assigned roles and desires for medical transition treatment as symptoms of mental disorder. Worse yet, post-transition people who are happy with their bodies and affirmed roles remain entrapped by the diagnostic criteria and specifiers - they are permanently labeled as mentally and sexually disordered. The proposed diagnostic criteria and categorical placement in the DSM-5 continue to contradict transition and describe transition itself as pathological.

While GID has received a great deal of attention in the press and from GLBTQ advocates, the second transvestic category is too often overlooked. This is unfortunate, because a diagnosis of Transvestic Disorder is designed to punish social and sexual gender nonconformity and to enforce binary stereotypes of assigned birth sex. It plays no role in enabling access to medical transition care for those who need it, and it is frequently cited when care is denied.

I urge all trans community members, friends, care providers, and allies to call for the removal of this punitive and scientifically unfounded diagnosis from the DSM-5. The current period for public comment to the APA ends June 15.

The Gold Rush is sponsored by the Gender Identity Center of Colorado, providing support, outreach, and advocacy for all forms of gender identity and expression since 1978. Please join us in Denver for an extraordinary transcommunity conference and incredible skiing/riding in the Rockies nearby.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man [or woman] who wields it. I believe in this method because I think it is the only way to reestablish a broken community.
--Martin Luther King, Jr., December 11, 1964

Forty-seven years after Dr. King's acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, these words remain as inspiring and urgent to us today as they were then. Against a backdrop of national dialogue on hate speech and gun violence, I have been heartbroken this month at escalating personal attacks online among transsexual women and deepening division between communities of gender diversity.

Tonight, we gather once again on this Twelfth International Transgender Day of Remembrance to honor those who lost their lives to hatred and violence. We remember, we mourn, those who were murdered this past year, because their gender identities or expression were judged to differ from stereotypes of their assigned birth sex. This annual Day of Remembrance was founded by Gwendolyn Smith in 1998 and is observed each November 20. Tonight, more than 200 communities around the world are joining us in observing this solemn anniversary.

The publication date for the DSM-5 is now scheduled for May, 2013.

The proposed list of gender related diagnoses in the DSM-V are after the jump.

Petitioner has shown that her hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery treated disease within the meaning of section 213 and were therefore not cosmetic surgery. Thus petitioner's expenditures for these procedures were for "medical care" as defined in section 213(d)(1)(A), for which a deduction is allowed under section 213(a).

However, this recognition of the legitimacy of medical transition came at a cost to the dignity of transsexual women and men. It relied on the flawed diagnostic nomenclature of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and its implication of mentally "disordered" gender identity. Paradoxically, this case fueled opposition to medical transition access, based on the current wording of the very same GID classification and its more virulent companion diagnosis of Transvestic Fetishism. While the Tax Court decision underscored the utility of some kind of diagnostic coding for those who need access to hormonal or surgical transition care, it also illustrated the urgency of reforming the GID diagnosis and removing the Transvestic Fetishism category in the next revision of the DSM, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).

Ms. Rhiannon O'Donnabhain underwent corrective genital surgery in 2001 and claimed a tax deduction for surgical and hormonal treatment expenses as well as the cost of a breast augmentation procedure. Her courageous nine year battle with the IRS to affirm the medical legitimacy of her transition care took a tortuous off-again, on-again path among the potholes of politics and prejudice.

Tonight, on this eleventh International Transgender Day of Remembrance, we come together once again to honor those who lost their lives to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. Our annual Day of Remembrance was founded by Gwendolyn Smith in 1998 and is observed each November 20 in communities around the world today. Attorney and advocate Lisa Gilinger has called this tradition our holy day in the trans community.

Thank you for joining us this evening, for sharing your sorrow, your grief, your fear, your outrage and your support.

The current psychiatric classifications of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and Transvestic Fetishism (TF) in the Fourth Edition Text Revision of the DSM (DSM-IV-TR) inflict great harm to gender variant, and especially transsexual, people in three ways:

* Unfair Social Stigma
* Medical Care Access
* Gender-Reparative Therapies

An in-depth look at each after the jump.

2. Like all people, you are a unique, distinctive blend of feminine and masculine.

3. Nature is diversity. Difference is not disease. Uniqueness is not illness.

4. All human beings possess a gender identity. None are disordered.

5. Hold your head high. Transcending birth-sex assignment is nothing to be ashamed of and everything to be proud of.

6. Closets kill. You bear no guilt for how you were born.

7. Try new paths that are different from those that have failed you in the past.

8. In learning the social conventions withheld from you in childhood, taste everything and try not to choke. You will discover the expressions that fit your soul.

9. You are not alone. Accept help and support when you need it. Offer help and
support when you are needed.

10 Be yourself.

On May 7, content on web sites for the show and the station were replaced a message expressing regret for these remarks but falling short of apology. The statement announced, "We will say what needs to be said this Thursday." The Thursday broadcast included community advocates Kim Pearson, Executive Director of TransYouth Family Allies and Autumn Sandeen, correspondent for the Pam's House Blend blog site, who first broke the story. Show owner Rob Williams began the broadcast stating,

We are here to make things right with the people who give us free speech, our audience
. ... I proudly and fully apologize for those comments completely.

According to a GLAAD Blog update, McDonald's is the 10th major company so far to withdraw advertising from KRXQ.

Nine days ago, KRXQ morning hosts Rob Williams and Arnie States ridiculed and defamed a transitioned Nebraska child and her loving family, going so far as to promote shame and even violence against gender variant youth. States remarked:

"If my son, God forbid, if my son put on a pair of high heels, I would probably hit him with one of my shoes. I would throw a shoe at him. Because you know what? Boys don't wear high heels. And in my house, they definitely don't wear high heels."