TRANSEXUALITY A MENTAL HANDICAP 
OR A PHYSICAL DISORDER?  

A position statement
 by Sandra Laframboise and Deborah Brady 
 High Risk Project Society
449 E. Hastings Street, Vancouver
(604) 681-3202


In the press and other media, there has been a lot of discussion regarding the issue of Gender Dysphoria as a mental handicap.  Transgendered activists are uniting to fight for justice and recognition.  

In the United States, the organization Transgender Nation has been and is lobbying the American Psychiatric Association to remove transgenderism from the DSM III R's list of mental illnesses.  

At High Risk Project we believe that transgendered people are not mentally ill.  Furthermore, we also believe that as insured consumers within the medical healthcare system, as citizens and tax payers, we have a right to medical services specifically related to our gender needs.  

Transexuals are people who have the gender identity (psyche, mind or feelings) of one sex and the body of the other.  Transgenderism has been an ancient and persistent part of diversified human cultures.  Since the early 1800's there have been thousands of documented cases in medical journals (such as "Die Kontaire Sexualamp" findings -- German journals).  It is not surprising to us that the Judeo-Christian Western culture labels us as pathological when we transgress the rigid binary gender boundaries, since these boundaries attempt to enforce conformity to social norms.  Before colonization, transgendered persons in North American society were highly regarded and considered shamans.  

How then, can we claim to need medical services when we are not sick?  In this country, an individual has the right to express their identity through non-coercive means and may alter their physical appearance as desired.  

Our society needs to embrace this kind of diversity rather than concentrating on repression and conformity to a norm.  Sex is what you are, sexuality is an action or preference, and gender is what you feel.  It is essential that there be harmony between the body and gender identity for an
individual to achieve happiness.  For most transexuals, sex re-assignment surgery is like liberation from a prison.  The whole issue of transexuality has to do with gender identity, the core feeling of who one is. Transexualism is not a mental disorder.  

However, there are few or no positive laws that establish exactly what legal rights and obligations transexuals have when involved with  our social systems or medical services. This lack of recognition creates intense alienation and leaves the door open for discrimination in regard to access to those services.  For the transgendered indiviual, even simple daily activities of life, such as going to the store and getting food, can be very difficult because people see transexuals as freaks of nature.  

Coping with intense discrimination, unemployment, poverty, lack of housing and lack of medical care specific to our needs -- these are the real issues we face.  We at High Risk Project find it deplorable that the transgendered must ask, "Please may we have the right to exist!".  We are now demanding our rights.  

In conclusion, to say that we are handicapped is as much a crime as to say that a person of colour is disabled.