[Note: As with all sensitive topics, I’ve been sitting on this one so I can read it over a few times and make sure it sounds relatively sane. It’s almost old news now and the APA has recently released this statement regarding the work group process and Dr. Zucker’s experience. I’m posting this anyway, cause I think it’s still an important topic.]
Certain parts of the blogosphere have been buzzing about the APA’s announcement of the DSM-V work groups and their members: specifically page 11 wherein Kenneth J. Zucker, PhD is named the chair of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group. I don’t know how well known Zucker is to the population at large, but NPR’s recent piece, “Two Families Grapple with Sons’ Gender Preferences: Psychologists take radically different approaches in therapy” has certainly raised his public profile. There are quite a few folk upset that Zucker has been named the chair of a work group tasked with taking another look at gender identity disorder (GID). Some folk, count me among them, think GID needs to go. There is some justified concern that with someone who believes in treating GID chairing that committee, there will be little or not change to GID. Some even seem to fear there will be some backsliding.
There are a couple of things people seem to be missing in the discussion. First, one writer has suggested perhaps that the APA was not fully aware of Zucker’s work. Charitable, but not bloody likely. You can be damn sure that the APA is fully aware of Zucker’s work and theoretical framework. The fact that Zucker has been named the chair tells you two very important things. One, it tells you the state of establishment thought on GID. I doubt that numbers even exist, but I’d be stunned to learn there are more Ehrensaft’s than Zucker’s out there (see the NPR article). Get into the professional establishment and the ratio undoubtedly drops even more. Two, it tells you that whatever your disagreements with Zucker and his philosophy and approach to gender issues, he is most likely not the quack/hack some are making him out to be.
Second, people are also wondering how the APA, which dropped homosexuality as a mental disorder from the DSM-III in the 70s, could appoint someone with such “backward” notions about gender to chair a committee set to re-evaluate GID. Some have stated that Zucker and his work with children diagnosed with GID is about preventing homosexuality. Based on what little I know, I find that unlikely. Nothing I read in the NPR article suggests that is the case. Also, a local psychologist who is quite familiar with Zucker’s work recently refuted an email claiming that Zucker is a supporter of the ex-gay movement. The hysteria that we are heading back to pathologizing homosexuality is unwarranted and unfounded. Gender expression and sexuality are completely different concepts and one has little or no bearing on the other. It is perfectly consistent, from a theoretical/professional point of view, to be fully accepting of homosexuality while believing in GID.
Third, we are talking about children here. We are not talking about adults. Scientific literature does suggest that gender identity is somewhat to very plastic in children. One text I read stated that gender identity is fixed by age seven. Zucker works with children under ten. If we can modify a child’s gender identity to be more consistent with social expectations shouldn’t we at least try? The answer to that question is unequivocally, “It depends.” It depends on the child. It depends on the parents. It depends on what sort of philosophical/religious/moral stance any one of the parties involved takes. I think children who don’t conform to society’s gender expectations are in for a rough ride, no matter which path they take.
At the ages we are talking about, the parents exert an enormous influence on the lives of their children. Little girls aren’t the only ones who like to stomp around in mom’s high heel shoes. Does that mean little boys have a latent desire for the feminine or does it just mean that mom’s shoes are colorful and make cool noise? What meaning do the parents assign to these behaviors? Some fathers will flip if they see their little boys wearing mom’s shoes. Others won’t flip until he puts on a dress. How many of you would feel okay if your child started wearing underwear of the opposite sex? The NPR story is as much about the respective parents’ ability or lack thereof to accept their child’s gender bending.
My biggest problem with GID is how culturally dependent it is. To me it seems the last vestiges of an outmoded way of thinking about male and female. I can pretty much guarantee that the discussion and the definition of GID would look quite different if society didn’t have such rigidly defined pink and blue boxes; if society didn’t insist that a human being can only stand in one and only one box; if society didn’t apply enormous pressure for an individual to pick the box that has traditionally been associated with the anatomical bits between their legs. GID is more often diagnosed in boys than in girls. You’ll have a very difficult time convincing me that’s biological. I suspect it has more to do with gender bias in our society. Like Madonna said, “Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots ’cause it’s okay to be a boy. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, ’cause you think that being a girl is degrading.” Which gets your heart pounding more: your daughter in boxers, your daughter in briefs, or your boy in panties?
It would be interesting for NPR to do a follow up story in 10 years when Bradley and Jona are adolescents. Will Jona’s popularity continue into adolescence when the rest of her peers start paying more attention to gender and sex? How well do you think it will go over if Jona insists she should be allowed in the girls’ locker room? Still, even if Jona runs into some land mines while navigating adolescence, it seems to me the odds of successfully navigating adolescence increase dramatically with a firm and sound sense of self.
Where Zucker, in my opinion, ultimately falls short is in his conceptualization of the problem:
“Suppose you were a clinician and a 4-year-old black kid came into your office and said he wanted to be white. Would you go with that? … I don’t think we would,” Zucker says.
If a four-year old boy came into your office insisting his penis was a vagina, I don’t think anyone would go with that. He’s got to come to terms with reality. The quesiton becomes, “What does it mean that your skin is black (or that you have a penis)?” Does having black skin mean you can only have a future in professional sports? Does having a penis mean you can’t play with dolls? Perhaps Zucker didn’t think his race analogy through, but he’s basically validating racism by implying that there are behaviors assigned to people with white skin that people with black skin may not adopt. While that my still be an unfortunate reality, few would (openly) suggest there is some biological order that dictates such restrictions. For me the concept is not a whole lot different. Skin color or anatomical bits between the legs, either way whatever definitions and behaviors society has assigned to those anatomical realities need to be examined and, in most cases, eventually dismantled.
Brandon’s tale is heart wrenching for anyone who has come from a place where they were taught to hate or fear some particular aspect of themselves. His mother’s talk of his “addiction to pink” ticks me off in more ways than one. Still, I’m not convinced Zucker is the demon some are making him out to be. Indeed, I was recently pointed to this post by Alice Domurat Dreger
How do I know these are wrong? Well, I asked Zucker. Point blank. … I asked Zucker: Do you think if a child ends up transitioning sex as an adolescent or adult, that’s a bad outcome? No way, he said. In fact, he pointed out that in that case–when a child grows up to be an adolescent who needs to change sex because that means s/he will be better off–Zucker helps arrange it to make sure it happens.
Wild allegations and hysteria are not the way to address this issue, certainly not with a scientific body like the APA. Get your facts straight…err…correct…and develop a well reasoned argument to support your case. Humanity is slow to change, but truth will eventually win out. We accept the world is not flat. We accept the earth is not the center of the universe. That may seem self evident now, but those are truths that were a long time gaining widespread acceptance.
