“France has removed transsexualism from an official list of mental illnesses, according to an order issued by the French Ministry of Health reported Friday by French news media. The order issued Wednesday removed “gender identity disorders” from an article of the social security code related to “long-term psychiatric diseases.” According to media reports, France is the first country in the world to do so.”
Full article at NY Times (thanks, @JoyDaley)
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Shocker! This has only just happened? Let’s hope it spurs the rest of the world.
P.s. All the best for the Enigma tour derren.
How can transgenderism be classed as a mental illness? A mental illness is something that makes you behave in the way you do. Transgenderism is supposed to be a natural cause.
Outstanding news
I do hope the rest of the world follows along. As a transsexual, I can’t begin to say how much the phrase “gender identity disorder” or “gender dysphoria disorder” frustrate me. I haven’t got a gender disorder, I have a gender, it just doesn’t happen to be the same as my sex. I don’t think of myself as having a disease.
However, I hope that this decision will not affect state funding for sexual reassignment surgery. Plenty enough transsexuals live in misery because they can’t get surgery as it is.
This is good to see, and would be nice to see it followed elsewhere, with one serious and significant proviso. This MUST NOT be used as an excuse to deny treatment, the one (only) benefit of the current classification is that it does at least provide a route to treatment.
well lets get a little Transexual!! ?
x
The problem a lot of people (trans and doctors) have is that health care providers will not provide a service unless there is an official diagnosis. Vaginoplasty would count as elective sugary rather than necessary physical (and in turn mental) intervention.
This announcement could serve to harm more trans people than it would do good for. As a trans person myself and a researcher in the area, I believe it is a mental disorder, or rather so aspects of it are. Gender variance is a huge spectrum of disorders all quite different from one another.
Alas, it’s very much a double-edged sword.
I personally do not think of it as a mental disorder, but a biological one like many scientists now believe. However, it being classes as a mental disorder allows patients such as myself to be on the receiving end of treatment in order to make a medical transition.
Without that diagnosis, it may risk possible treatment.
It’s difficult enough at the moment trying to get the NHS to pay for any treatment with things as they are now.
Well, it isn’t psychiatric, but I do think it’s neurological — the brain bits to do with gender are clearly those of the opposite sex. So it would still be a ‘disorder’, or maybe more like a birth defect — something that needs funding to correct, anyway. But proper categorization does seem like a good thing to correct the stigma that’s somehow still attached to transgenders.
Yeey! That is excellent news! Shocked to find out they saw it as a mental disorder. Makes me wonder about Sweden… A big kissy Valentines Day hug to all of you sweeties!
Wow, first gay people aren’t considered insane anymore, and now transsexuals aren’t either. In one country, at least. The zeitgeist’s excrutiatingly slow to move forwards, but it looks like it’s still moving, so that’s something. It looks like transsexualism’s more of a neurological issue, so hopefully it can be reclassified as more physical than mental. It all depends on your point of view — are you a brain inside a body, or a body housing a brain? Personally, I think wherever my brain and body disagree, my brain should get the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, thanks for the support to everyone who’s happy about France’s move!
Well how very big of them!
Scientist have proven that gay men have an abnormal (for men) amount of female hormones, which in turn effects the neurological pathways. This is not a mental illness. And is true when a man says he is a woman trapped in a man’s body. I think this labelling is appalling, we are not in the Victorian era, so why do we have the need to label what we don’t clearly understand as a mental health issue. I stay stop labelling people and trying to control the public with labels and restrictions and let us live.