Making gender identity disorder of childhood: Historical lessons for contemporary debates

@article{Bryant2006MakingGI,
  title={Making gender identity disorder of childhood: Historical lessons for contemporary debates},
  author={Karl Bryant},
  journal={Sexuality Research \& Social Policy},
  year={2006},
  volume={3},
  pages={23-39}
}
  • Karl Bryant
  • Published 1 September 2006
  • Sociology
  • Sexuality Research & Social Policy
Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood (GIDC)—a psychiatric diagnosis given to gendervariant children—has been controversial since its creation. Critics inside and outside of the mental health professions have called for the removal or revision of GIDC, arguing that it has served to pathologize homosexuality, to enforce normative notions of masculinity and femininity, and to recast a social problem as individual pathology. Drawing on published clinical and research papers, archival materials… 
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Understanding about embodied distress among gender-nonconforming youth is mapped out and feminist bioethics and queer-inflected clinical perspectives are used to inform thinking about ethical, nonpathologizing health care in the case of gender-related distress.
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