WPATH Releases New Standards of Care

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) released an updated Stanards of Care (SOC) Sunday.  It is the seventh edition, and the first since 2001.  "Overall," reports Kellie Winters of GID Reform Advocates, "this newest SOC represents significant forward progress in respecting trans people and affirming the necessity of medical transition care for trans and transsexual individuals who need it."

Significantly, the SOC denounces gender-conversion therapies as unethical.  "“Treatment aimed at trying to change a person’s gender identity and lived gender expression to become more congruent with sex assigned at birth has been attempted in the past ... Such treatment is no longer considered ethical.” (SOC, p 16).  This is truly good news: psychologists have considered reparative therapies unethical for homosexual men and women for decades, but have maintained a double standard in the case of the transgendered.  This can only help further the de-pathologization of trans folk.  Along those lines, it also replaces the language of "disorder" with "dysphoria," and removes some of the barriers for the care of trans people. 


What I noticed about the document is that it acknowledges the breathtaking diversity of gender identity and expression.

"Some individuals describe themselves not as gender nonconforming but as unambiguously cross-sexed . . . [others] affirm their unique gender identity and no longer consider themselves either male or female . . . Instead, they may describe their gender identity in specific terms such as transgender, bigender, or genderqueer, affirming their unique experience that may transcend a male/female binary understanding of gender . . . They may not experience their process of identity affirmation as a “transition,” because they never fully embraced the gender role they were assigned at birth or because they actualize their gender identity, role, and expression in a way that does not involve a change from one gender role to another." (SOC, p 9)

I find this especially heartening to those of us in that middle ground between the proverbial "heterosexual crossdresser" and life-long, on-the-road-to-GRS transsexual.  It gives me hope that people like me might be better understood and respected, not only outside of the trans umbrella, but within its embrace as well.