GenderLife Forum: The Information Exchange

Part 1 of a 2 part news piece:
Two Families Grapple with Sons' Gender Preferences

Warning, Dr. Ken Zucker is one of the shrinks mentioned, in context with treatment of one of the two boys in the article.

This article requires a response. My blood started to boil listening to the treatment dished out by Zucker.

My blood boiled, too. Now, it's cooled a bit.

I guess today's approach to kids saddled with our lovely phenomenon is somewhat better than the medieval village psychology that most of us experienced as children. However, as this uncomfortable bit of journalism demonstrates, we still have one leg deeply-mired in the Dark Age of transgender mental healthcare.

In the meantime, we would serve humanity well to tar and feather "Dr." Zucker and send him running to a turkey farm. What an ass.

I got major issues with that way of thinking...

What if the child was white and acted black... Listening to rap music, dressing in black fashion, speaking in black slang, acting like a black person... Would the therapist call the family enviroment dysfunctional?

I hope not... frankly it should be encouraged as it is part of their identity in how they relate to the world!

So if a black child wishes to dress like white styles including redneck cowboy, go to a predomintly white church, listen to country music or opera or rock music, hang out with white kids, speak like rednecks or very proper english, what the hell is wrong with that?

These therapist need a reality check!!!

So do I. It's also unscientific. I have two very normal, hetero, non-transgender siblings, a sister and brother, who both grew up in the same household. Neither of them are recovering alcoholics or addicts or anything else like that. If my "GID" were a result of nurture then my siblings should also have been affected. Clearly Zucker puts no credence on the BSTc or other neurological cause of transsexualism, no doubt because it would put him out of business. And while I hesitate to get too conspiracy theory minded, could Zucker's lofty position on the DSM committee be to assure that we stay pathologized?

I don’t think it’s at all paranoid to make that assumption. Since Zucker chairs the committee, he is also part of the American Psychiatric Association DSM-V Task Force. As chair of the committee, I’m also wondering how much influence he had in choosing committee members, since Blanchard is on the committee as well. Zucker and Blanchard have an agenda they are pushing. The only question is why. It certainly isn’t to further the understanding of transsexualism, since they aren’t doing any real research. I may be a bit biased and cynical, but it seems to boil down to two motivators. Either it is a sexual or power fetish, or it is a calculated business decision. Either way, it sickens me.

Maybe we should look into their affiliation with religions, in addition to your well pointed out motivators.

I can't believe I missed that obvious one. Thanks Ana.

"Zucker, who has worked with this population for close to 30 years, has a very specific method for treating these children. Whenever Zucker encounters a child younger than 10 with gender identity disorder, he tries to make the child comfortable with the sex he or she was born with.

So, to treat Bradley, Zucker explained to Carol that she and her husband would have to radically change their parenting. Bradley would no longer be allowed to spend time with girls. He would no longer be allowed to play with girlish toys or pretend that he was a female character. Zucker said that all of these activities were dangerous to a kid with gender identity disorder. He explained that unless Carol and her husband helped the child to change his behavior, as Bradley grew older, he likely would be rejected by both peer groups. Boys would find his feminine interests unappealing. Girls would want more boyish boys. Bradley would be an outcast."



I was raised this way. It doesn't work. It just wastes time.

Zucker is the charlatan we should be targeting now, compared to him, Bailey's a clown. Zucker is not even an MD with a license to practice, just a Phd with a research budget. It is time to focus some serious flack on the APA.

I had the same experience Darlie. All it did was delay the inevitable and make me miserable in the interim. I learned how to lie about how I felt, how to put on a "happy shell" even though I was miserable inside, how to withdraw from those around me and become a loner, an outcast. Didn't matter that well meaning folk were trying to "help me be a man", it just wasn't who I was. And the longer that who I really was inside was denied the more depressed I became. Suicide attempts, drug addiction, not continuing with education, etc., all manifested out of a denial of my spirit. Following Zucker's path only results in more damaged unhappy individuals, contrasted with the compassionate approach taken to treat the other child who was happy and growing. It was obvious from the way the parents of Bradley were talking that she was not happy, was not comfortable with the sex that she was born with, and that all Zucker was doing was making things worse, not better.

It's about time that our condition be recognized for what it is, just another variation of the human spirit and a cause for celebration, not denial. I hope that I get to see this in my lifetime. Meanwhile, I've got letters to write....