GenderLife Forum: The Information Exchange

From: C. Michael Woodward
To: TRANSSOC-L@GC.LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2008 4:22 PM
Subject: [TRANSSOC-L] Please sign the petition - Protest Zucker's appointment to DSM-V



Hi friends, family, and allies:

Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this message, but better too many than your missing this important announcement.

If you have not already heard, a dangerous thing happened this week that poses a very serious threat to the transgender and allied community, and could potentially impact lesbian, gay, bisexual, and allied people as well.

The American Psychological Association (APA) recently appointed Dr. Kenneth Zucker to chair the task force responsible for updating of mental health language and treatment of diagnoses such as Gender Identity Disorder (GID) for the upcoming DSM-V (Diagnostics and Statistics Manual, Fifth Edition).

Don’t let his recent appearance on NPR sounding like a nice guy fool you. At a time when the American Medical Association (AMA) is supporting stopping discriminating against and stigmatizing transgender people, Dr. Zucker is a widely recognized proponent of reparation (“ex-gay”) and aversion therapy for children and youth. These techniques have been proven to be ineffective at best and--more often--severely damaging to the mental health of people who are LGB or T.

Please see the article that follows for more information.

Dr. Zucker holds the fate of our young people in his hands. WE MUST ALL TAKE ACTION to remove Dr. Zucker as well as his cronies from this all-important APA working group, based upon his approach to clinical treatment of transgender and gender non-conforming identity in children & youth.

Please sign this petition to remove the most outrageous members from the DSM-V GID committee, and then the link on to everyone you know:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/petition/412001300

It only takes a moment or two, and your signing could literally save lives.

Thanks so much for your help and support.


Michael Woodward
Tucson, Arizona

No.303 Done.

What I'd like to know is which transphobic shrinks appointed this quack to the committee at all, let alone as the chair, in the first place?

I am not supportive of any person who would continue to propagate an environment that would marginalize myself or others like me as mentally disordered persons in need of a cure. It is the so called "work" of persons like Kenneth Zucker and Ray Blanchard who have helped keep American society in the dark ages when it comes to gender. I am horrified that such an appointment could be made to the “Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders” task force ( the very name of which is ominously dark about the future of the DSM V decisions).

I've signed the petition, Hopefully it will have some effect.

I was #46, but please, don't forget to send a physical letter to the APA. They will have a much stronger response to 1,000 letters arriving at theier offices than 2,000 names on an online petition.