海外の動き2つ。
ひとつは、APA（アメリカ精神医学会）のDSM改定メンバーにZuckerが任命されたことへの批判の盛り上がり。
Zuckerが子供の性同一障害を病理化し、強制的な治療をしていることへの批判。
議論の盛り上がりはさらに、DSMからGIDを削除せよ、との展開にも。
WPATHのメーリングリストも議論沸騰中。
もうひとつは、Stephen Whittleが Transgender Europe (TGEU)のプレジデントに。
Whittleは、現WPATH代表で、名称論争も解決し、全権力を掌握？した法律学者。
でTGEUは、
"Transgender Europe (TGEU) emphatically refuses this pathologisation and will assist the next reformulation of the APA list in a critical manner, when this is carried out in 2011."
（TGEUは、トラスジェンダーを病気扱いすることに強く反対し、２０１１年のDSMの改定では、疾患リストに乗ることへの批判を支援していく）
http://www.tgeu.org/news.php?readmore=9
と述べている。
この勢いだとDSM-VではGIDは削除？。
あと、TGEUには
＞There were representatives from 83 groups and 38 countries, among them Peru, Namibia, Japan, Armenia, the USA, Turkey, Israel, Kyrgyzstan and Iceland.
と日本からも参加者あったようだが、誰だろう。詳細不明。
以下英文貼り付け。
http://www.washingtonblade.com/2008/5-30/news/national/12682.cfm
Activists alarmed over APA
Head of psychiatry panel favors ‘change’ therapy for some trans teens
LOU CHIBBARO JR
Friday, May 30, 2008
Transgender activists have raised strong objections to a decision by the American Psychiatric Association to name a prominent Canadian child psychologist as head of a committee that will recommend changes in diagnosing persons with an ailment defined by the group as gender identity disorder.
In a flurry of blog postings and an online petition, trans activists and some gay rights supporters have called for the removal of University of Toronto psychiatry professor Kenneth J. Zucker as chair of the psychiatrist association’s Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group on grounds that Zucker supports therapy to discourage transgender children and adolescents from changing their biological gender.
The Work Group is charged, among other things, with making recommendations for changes in how transgender persons are classified under the APA’s internationally recognized Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is being revised for publication in 2012.
“We believe being transgender is just as innate as being gay or lesbian,” said transgender advocate and blogger Mercedes Allen of Alberta, Canada.
“Our concern is that Zucker favors a form of reparative therapy for trans youth that amounts to the suppression of their true gender identity,” said Allen. In a telephone interview Tuesday, Allen said Zucker’s treatment philosophy for trans youth appears to yield to societal norms about gender conformity rather than acting in the best interest of the transgender child or adolescent.
But a prominent gay psychiatrist and former chair of the APA’s gay advisory committee, Dr. Jack Drescher, said the fears by trans activists are unfounded and that Zucker, while favoring possible therapy for some trans teens, supports gender reassignment therapy in most cases — for both youth and adults.
Drescher said he was especially concerned about claims by some trans bloggers that Zucker and at least one other member of the APA’s Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group would push for reinstating homosexuality as a diagnostic disorder under the APA’s revised diagnostic manual in 2012.
“[T]here is absolutely no possibility that the diagnosis of homosexuality will be put back into the DSM — anyone that tells you that it can be, could be, would be, or will be put back in, knows not of what they speak,” Drescher said in a May 13 statement.
The APA removed homosexuality from its DSM classification as a mental disorder in 1973 following a lobbying campaign by gay activists in which veteran D.C. gay rights leader Frank Kameny played a key role.
Zucker could not be reached by press time. A statement released on his behalf by the APA on May 23 says Zucker does not advocate change therapy for transgender adults or for trans youth in all cases, and he opposes change therapy for gays under all circumstances.
“The goal of his therapy is the opposite of conversion therapy in that he considers well-adjusted transsexual, gay, lesbian, or bisexual youth to be therapy successes, not failures,” the APA statement says.
Drescher noted that Zucker was one of 10 people serving on the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group and that “hundreds” of other experts, including scientists and academic researchers, would be contributing to the base of knowledge and information on which any changes are to be made concerning transgender issues.
“No single person will have a controlling influence over this process, which takes four years,” said Drescher, who has also been appointed to serve on the Work Group.
Despite those assurances, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force issued a statement Wednesday questioning the APA’s decision to appoint Zucker and a second member of the work panel, Ray Blanchard, a University of Toronto psychiatry professor. Blanchard has argued that certain manifestations of transgender behavior should be classified as a “paraphelia” or “tranvestitic” fetish, terms to which transgender advocates object.
“These appointments are raising great concern within the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community,” the Task Force statement says.
“Zucker has built his reputation on the position that children can be directed away from nonconforming gender expression via therapy, while Blanchard has a long list of articles [labeling as pathological] commonplace expressions of sexuality and gender,” the statement says.
A separate statement released this week by four transgender organizations, including the National Center for Transgender Equality, stopped short of specifically criticizing Zucker and Blanchard. The statement — also signed by the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, Transgender Law Center and Transgender Youth Family Allies — expressed confidence that any changes in the APA’s diagnostic manual on transgender issues would be based on science rather than bias.
“We have met with and strongly encouraged the APA to closely adhere to its stated commitment to scientific process regarding diagnosis of transgender people,” the joint statement says. “We are confident that a fair, unbiased review of current knowledge can result in a DSM-V that can move society toward a more rational and humane understanding of transgender people.”
The controversy over the appointment of Zucker and Blanchard to the APA panel has drawn attention to the fact that many prominent transgender activists disagree over whether the APA should ultimately remove transgender people from the current diagnostic category of Gender Identity Disorder (GID).
Some trans activists argue that listing their condition as a mental disorder stigmatizes trans people and contributes to discrimination and stress. They cite researchers who theorize that a biological or genetic cause will soon be discovered as the underlying condition that prompts people to believe their true gender is different from the biological gender into which they were born.
However, other trans advocates note that the consensus among most in the psychiatric and mental health professions is that persons diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder should be treated humanely through gender reassignment therapy. This includes careful medical supervision for hormone treatment and eventual gender reassignment surgery. Without an official diagnosis and classification of GID, these activists argue, proper medical and mental health supervision and guidance through the gender reassignment process could be cut off.
“My concern is that the existing entry in the DSM-IV [the current APA diagnostic listing] provides us basic access to medical services,” said Canadian blogger and trans activist Mercedes Allen. “Without legitimization in the medical community, our entire treatment becomes a ‘cosmetic’ issue.”
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-7648.html
British activist becomes President of Transgender Europe
By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk • May 15, 2008 - 17:02
Dr Stephen Whittle, one of the UK's leading trans activists, has become President of Transgender Europe (TGEU) at an international conference in Berlin.
More than 200 activists from across the world attended the event at the start of May.
There were representatives from 83 groups and 38 countries, among them Peru, Namibia, Japan, Armenia, the USA, Turkey, Israel, Kyrgyzstan and Iceland.
Dr Whittle is Professor of Equalities Law at Manchester Metropolitan University, President of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and Vice-President of UK trans organisation Press for Change.
In December 2005 he was awarded an OBE in the Queen's New Year's Honours list.
At the plenary meeting of Transgender Europe (TGEU) on May 4th a new Executive Board and Steering Committee were elected.
"Despite much scientific controversy, forms of transgender continue to be listed as illnesses by the American Psychological Association (APA), just as homosexuality once was, and on the World Health Organization (WHO) list of psychological disorders," the conference organisers said.
"The guideline manuals used in healthcare to standardise the definitions of what constitutes mental illness.
"Transgender Europe (TGEU) emphatically refuses this pathologisation and will assist the next reformulation of the APA list in a critical manner, when this is carried out in 2011."
The first comprehensive study of the legal rights situation and experience of health care of transgender people in Europe, compiled last year by Press for Change, TGEU, ILGA Europe) was presented for the first time at the Council.
The study, which had more than 2,000 participants, found that transgender people continue to face massive violations of their human rights in most European states.
These include the legal requirement that surgery to alter primary and secondary sexual characteristics, which of necessity also includes compulsory sterilisation, must be carried out before a person has the legal right to change the forename in five EU member states.
In nine EU etates these surgeries are preconditions for changing a person's legal sex.
"In the coming years, activists working under the flag of the international NGO Transgender Europe (TGEU) will intensify their existing campaign against the violation of human rights of transgender people," said the conference organisers.
"To do so, TGEU will strengthen its cooperation with ILGA Europe, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, ILGA World (Trans Secretariat) and Amnesty International.
"The Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, ratified in 2006, are important instruments for this political work.
"Global networks are being planned as new tools to achieve these political aims.
"The Transgender Europe Research Network is to serve the purpose of bringing together scientists and scholars whether transgender or not, who are working on the subject of transgender into an international network, and to continue to research the living conditions of transgender people worldwide."
A Transgender Europe International Media Network is also planned. It will link journalists internationally and perform public relations work.
For more information on Transgender Europe visit their website.
