Andre García Becerra
Andre Garcia Becerra
Master Teacher and Student - School of Gender Studies
Faculty of Humanities
Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Bogota
Hi, I'm Andre, a transsexual Colombian anthropologist. I’m worried about the mobilization against appearing in the next DSM - V manual, which is a complex issue with multiple edges. It is not something so simple I think, especially for transsexuals and transvestites like us who change our bodies to search our true identity. Despite the fact that it is important to fight for not classifying the transsexuality and transgender as a pathology; I believe that it may be advantageous for us that we are recognized as a disorder of gender identity, because in that way you can fight to ensure the variety of health systems to cover our treatment of gender and sex changing. Hundreds of trans girls in our cities prescribe their own medicine and are operated on risky interventions without any medical supervision or with the slightest care. To me this should be shown as a pubic health problem, as many other seriously ill or causes of death while the search of true identity. The states and health systems keep silence about it. I think it can be good to appear on the DSM - V again (as we appear on the DSM - IV), to claim our right to continue processing treatments and that they can be charged on the state. It doesn’t mean being recognized as sick people, but to be strategic in our struggles and to give priority to the body because it is the foundation of our identity for many of us. In my opinion, not all transgender people should be included in the DSM - V, but maybe the trans ones that transform our body. From my point of view it is a matter of "strategic essentialism" to use an idea of Spivak (an important indian post-colonial feminist). We must not think that the debate is over and that all of us are against the DSM - IV. This is to simplify the multiplicity of our struggle. It is to impose a perspective and treat ourselves in the same terms. Our movement is diverse, like all social movements. Not all of us agree with the idea of being excluded from the DSM - IV, and thus we do not feel sick. I’m straight against the mobilization that looks to arrange us in the same category of the DSM V. We can think different according to the way we look like or the role we develop, such as academic person, trans and activist. Not all the people who belong to the T are equal. There are differences about social status, race, identity, age, etc., and we must recognize these differences in the group. Let’s recognize the particular side of it, to be independent without creating environments of separations. Let’s fight together, not only the T members but also lesbian, gay, bi, farmers, the proletariat, women, immigrants, etc. We’d better join our forces against this heterosexist system, sexism, capitalism, classism, racism; but not losing the autonomy.
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Dear Andre:
Thank you very much for your letter. As you say this is a complex subject and makes clear the differences not only between identities represented in the T, but the various agendas that exist in different regions of the planet. This campaign is driven mainly from Europe and in Spain where it already has taken place several years ago. In Latin American countries there are other priorities such as how to access the health care, how to fight against violence and the access of job positions, not just trans people, but in the general population, that makes explicit the large gaps on having a common agenda.
As The World Trans Secretary Committee that we are, we have to pay attention to the variety of needings and to disseminate and give voice to precisely this diversity of proposals. In Latin America there isn’t a campaign for removing the disorder of gender identity out of the manuals of psychiatry, although in the past we have supported this initiative. However, you are asking a very interesting question about if leaving the textbooks implies that the State don’t cover the costs of operations and physical interventions that many trans people perform. My impression is that we can access to free health services, as in many European countries, even without the diagnosis of gender disorder.
Anyway, this is an issue that we will be discussing and the following newsletters will include some articles about that. We share your question with the organizers of the campaign so add your reply here to give you a broad opinion.
We thank you very much once again for writing to us.
Greetings,
Bethsabé.
Bethsabé Human Andia
Editor-Researcher
Bulletin T-News
ILGA Trans Secretary Committee
http://trans_esp.ilga.org
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Dear Andre:
My name is Michael and I wrote an article last April in the newsletter of ILGA Trans-rise where I suggested organizing a network coordinator to fight against gender identity disorder. I read your ideas carefully and I answer.
I am a young sociologist, but especially a trans activist from Barcelona. I also spent a few years working for the visibility of this group. Some boys and girls after passing the entire process to get a psychiatric certificate dysphory in gender, we decided to explain and question in public these diagnoses. This was the beginning of a story that has become one of the most important axes of our struggle: to require the elimination of trans identity in the catalogs of mental illness.
We have discussed and debated very deeply with activists who raised the issue of "strategic essentialism" and I think it is one of the most frequent criticisms of our claims. Therefore, I think it is worthy to discuss again, to speak out and move positions.
Without a doubt, I think it is important that we build something together, beyond the strategies of the endless debates and terminology that split our movement. I am not interested in the struggle for identity as I am about certain social rights. I say this because, for me, it is not a question about health issues as it is about an inclusive and universal health care system for all of us, a system for users and not for sick people.
Let's go step by step. I think that mixes two issues. One that is related to the historical claim to access public health for not selfhormoning and to avoid the risk of surgery or everything about body changing. The second, which deals with the rights of trans people to recognize their lifestyle or their situation with dignity and legitimate them all, and not as a mental disorder.
After reading what u said, I think we agree on these two premises. In our discourse, we explained that we support the idea of the public health care for the trans community, and that the pathological issue must be strategic because they do not have a disorder. What sets us apart, it is clear, is referred on which strategy we use to defend these two issues.
I explain this because I think we tend to forget the reasons of our fight, and despite the miles and the words, we have common goals and we must work together to build something in spite of the nuances, strategies to get close allies, to discuss and to strengthen all of them.
The speech against trans pathological term that I know and that I try to build explains that we can not accept the label of psychiatric strategically because we do not have any disorder of gender identity for being transsexuals (or transvestites or transgender people) and because we must require to be treated according to the health basis without assuming the label of being sick. Foucault explained much better than me what was considered a deviation goes as a pathology and that much of the psychiatry task is an instrument of controlling everything that was previously penalized and criminalized. In that way, trans is no longer considered a matter of public policy and became a psychiatric issue. And this is not an accident and we must question it. It is not a coincidence either that the psychiatrists who will decide whether transsexuality should be in the next DSM are the same who used electroshock therapy to our gays and lesbians mates.
Talking about the strategic essentialism. For some activists is to maintain the strategic label of mental disorder in order to have a diagnosis and access to healthcare. I think it's more interesting to modify the logic of our health system rather than classifying everything in pathological terms. Public health must be a system for users or for citizens and not just for patients. Indeed, the very World Health Organization defines health as "not merely the absence of disease but the physical, social and emotional development of the individuals." I believe that this can answer trans questions. I'm not sick but in order to develop fully in our society I may need an intervention. Moreover, the health system involves cases in which diseases are not diagnosed: pregnancies and abortions, cosmetic surgery of ears or body part reconstruction if it is removed (in the chest for breast cancer).
It is not that we have forgotten to think about what will happen when the gender identity disorder with the treatments are pulled out through treatments We have concluded that we can not make a minimum claim, being afraid of what we can be taken out. We do not have a mental disorder and we have the right to speak out, without feeling ashamed, without fears. The claim has a legitimate meaning for the society. Moreover, there are many people that have no trans-militancy in the movement protesting against the disorder supporting us.
And after that, we, like many other people need the medical knowledge to develop and live our lives. Therefore, the public health system must cover these needs. Maybe we could go further and say that these needs are referred to the societies, our beauty standards, our way of educating on the basis of male and female roles. Perhaps if we focus on how we build our environment and learn how to read body (and not to read it too) we will understand why so many people need to modify themselves to live.
Well, finally coming back to the fight against gender identity disorder, I am not interested in any discussion on the causes of transsexuality. I think it is a clumsy way of dividing ourselves. I am not interested to know if it is biological or cultural change because I do not know anything. I think everyone is on the right to explain the life in a personal way, with definitions that best suit each one. However, if I have to say very clearly that transsexuals (or transvestites or transgender) have a mental disorder it is discrimination. We want the DSM-V to disappear this documentation because we do not want to spend over 20 years and the generations that come later set the label of the disorder just because we seem "strategic." We want the health care system to recognize our situation without branding as "dysphoria". Above all, we want to make this fight a claim, a pressure that does not leave indifferent to psychiatrists who decide for us every day in their appointments: they pollute the genre with a philosophy that we do not share, the Assembly of the American Association of Psychiatrists, eventually leaving no one indifferent.
This is only one possible answer, an argument, speech, and there are surely many others. But this is the proposal we advocate and we are ready to discuss, to talk and find points of agreement. Perhaps it is because we know how important the fight is not only the goal but also the path, empowerment, reflection, and certainly everything that you know for sure.
A big hug Andre.
Miguel Missé
Tran’s activist of Barcelona
dormirensantiago@gmail.com
