Coming on the heels of the National Transgender Day of Remembrance, news has recently broke that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) will (finally) remove transgender and gender non-conformance from its list of mental disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The change is expected to be “official” in May 2013.

Instead, the APA will categorize people who experience “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender,” as having “gender dysphoria.” The APA chose this phrase in hopes of helping to describe “the emotional distress” that gender non-conforming and transgender people experience when their assigned birth-sex does not align with their gender identity, or lack thereof.

While we must certainly applaud the APA for finally shedding the archaic classification of transgender and gender non-conforming people as having some sort of mental disorder or illness, I am very wary of trading one classification for another. (Normally I would lead into a verbose retelling of Judith Butler’s heterosexual matrix, but fear not, I will spare you).

In this case, the APA changes its classification of transgender and gender non-conforming folks as having mental disorders, to transgender and gender non-conforming folks having a form of gender dysphoria, which will still—mind you—be categorized and listed in the APA’s hugely epic Manual of Mental Disorders.

Is this progress?

Wouldn’t it have been more powerful to eliminate gender identity disorder altogether from the DSM, than to replace it with another, albeit milder, classification?

Think about it.

Think about the history of the DSM and its classification of “homosexuality.” The APA decided to eliminate “homosexuality” from its list of mental disorders in the DSM 1973, only to replace it with “ego-dystonic homosexuality,” which stated, “The gender identity or sexual preference (heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or prepubertal) is not in doubt, but the individual wishes it were different because of associated psychological and behavioral disorders, and may seek treatment in order to change it” (my emphasis). Here, we can see that the transition of classifications from “homosexuality” to “ego-dystonic homosexuality” was hardly progressive or positive for gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals. Indeed, this new “classification” painted them as remorseful or ashamed of their sexual preferences, desires, or habits, and did nothing to reaffirm the fact that non-heterosexual people do not experience mental illnesses or disorders at any rate greater than heterosexual individuals. (Thankfully, “ego-dystonic homosexuality” was eventually eliminated from the DSM in 1986).

And while I will certainly take fire for carrying on the much-chagrined comparisons of sexual orientation to gender identity, I can’t help but think this lesser classification is still nonetheless a classification that continues to naturalize the idea that transgender people and gender non-conforming people have mental disorders, even if the APA gives it a new/different name.

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