Read the discussion at Bilerico. Right now. The comments are most enlightening.

Galling Galla has a post about it too.

This is EmmaG’s commentary.

Alma Cork also has a post.

Check out Lynn Conways excellent transgender news site.

Download the APA’s press release.

This is a copy of the disclosure that each of the members of the ‘task force’ had to produce before selection. Thankyou to my boy for digging this up for me.

I know that the DSM-V wont be instituted until 2011… 3 years away. I am also in Australia, where the American Psychiatric Association is influential, but not the be all and end all of thinking on these matters.
I have been asked… why do I care? I’ll get to transition. I’ll be ok. I’ve been told I am over reacting.
I don’t think so. This has massive potential to adversely effect trans rights and deserves an international response.

Lets face it, transgendered people already get the raw end of the deal. We are beaten up, killed, raped, fired, refused treatment, evicted from home, disowned from families… I am not playing ‘Our Oppression is Worse than Your Oppression’, I am just saying that we get FUCKED OVER. We have a reason to fight even if this wasn’t happening. It is happening, and it is a threat to those few rights we have managed to eke out.
All the more reason to fight. The DSM-V should be an opportunity to make sure that things are about to get better for us.

Now I would like to echo Emma G’s comment:

The personal and emotional impact of this announcement are high for me. Which seems to require that the degree of careful rational thought be proportional to that impact. I’ve cross posted Mercedes post & links, and have received a few responses. This has lead me to ask further questions of myself.

1) What & How: What can I do to have any impact on this and how do I go about exercising any options? As satisfying as expressing anger, frustration, disagreement or annoyance may be personally, I fear that such expressions will not be heard by anyone who needs to hear them. In the worst case scenario, they might be dismissed as an attempt by the “inmate” (me) attempting to take charge of the “asylum” (the APA in this case). Therapists do not routinely allow their patients to direct the methods or guidelines under which they deliver therapy.
Academic structures are at least somewhat susceptible to peer pressure. I assume “professional” sympathy and advocacy would be beneficial. Peraps my own GP and therapist to start, but there are other gender specialist internationally who might not be commonly identified.

2) Who & Where: Where and who provides accurate and necessary information in an accesible method and where do we refer to if we need or acquire information ourselves? As has been pointed out, partial and presumed information opens the door to discrediting information itself. The emotional and personal importance cannot be allowed to taint the information.

3) Can we define a commonality of impact beyond our personal interests? I do not presume that my right to define my gender identity is in any way “secured”. If the medical basis for transition is removed, I do not expect any legal right to self identify to be maintained.
If GID is removed from the DMS are there other, unassailable legal protections in place? I would not want to rely on a presumption that such protections will continue to exist or that they would be entirely maintained as is.
Both Blanchard and Zucker base their “treatment” theories currently on implied “homosexuality” and that implication is very much additionally treated as a disorder which necessitates “Treatment”
Could their influence return homosexuality to an inclusion in the DMS?

I don’t see any of these questions as being alarmist inherently considering how poorly my rights have been served by the current DMS-IV. The addition of two blatantly anti trans appointees to the work group does nothing to lend creedence to an expection of improvement of conditions.

The hair splitting over labels of self definition becomes meaningless if you no longer have the right to self define.