Mixed Messages

Thursday, August 17, 2006

The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association is a professional association dedicated to gender identity disorder research and therapy. It has come to the attention of various and sundry gender acivists that a number of websites have appeared on the horizon...some new...some a bit older...that either blatantly distort the facts or couch them amongst truths and half truths so that reality is obscured. It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine if there a concerted effort to disseminate untrue information or if this is a case of ignorance. In either case, those who have acknowledged gender identity disorder (GID) in themselves and who are directed to these sites are becoming indoctrinated into a chorus of inaccurate and incorrect assertions.

Amongst these misnomers is the definition of "Intersex", which is an actual physical condition in which an individual was born with both sets of sexual organs, in varying proportions, perhaps one dominating the other. These websites purport to broadly assign the term "Intersex" to any individual experiencing GID. This is not only inaccurate but fully undermines the identity and treatment of those who ARE genuinely intersexed. The percent of the population which is classified as Intersex is smaller, by far, then the percentage of the population which has been diagnosed as having GID.

Perhaps even more frustrating is the conflating of such conditions as autogynophila and other fetishes, which are often concommitant with GID, with fetishistic dismemberment. This is not only absurd, but is a throwback to those hackneyed concepts that only those who are gay and have GID are bona fide transexuals. To disseminate such fallacious information is not only damaging to the community but persists in preventing a more tolerant and understanding posture from developing between the GLBTI communities and society at large.

We, therefore, advocate a more truthful approach, particularly when impressionable and previously uneducated researchers and self explorers, may go on to repeat these untruths or half truths and undermine all the positive work that has been and is being done to work towards a better understanding of gender identity dysphoria issues.

trickster108