The late Charles Silverstein explained the effects of invalidating psychiatric terms like "ego-dystonic homosexuality" and "autogynephilia"
There is a long history in psychiatry to treat the results of marginalization and maltreatment as proof of someone being mentally ill.
Dr. Charles Silverstein, American gay activist, has passed away. Back in 1973 he managed to convince the American Psychiatric Association to take homosexuality out of the American psychiatric manual.
However, as Silverstein explained in a later interview, the DSM continued to include a diagnosis for homosexuality:
A lot of people misunderstand what happened in ‘73. They think that homosexuality was removed as a diagnostic category. It wasn’t. They decided there were two kinds of homosexuals, those that were ego-syntonic and those who were ego-dystonic. This is all jargon. The ego-dystonic are people who are very unhappy with their homosexuality, and if you got such a person, it was okay to treat them and try to cure them. If a person was ego-syntonic, that means that he was happy about his homosexuality, and it was not a disorder.
Given that the “dystonic” part of being gay was caused by homophobia and the previous crimes of American psychiatry, this made absolutely no sense. Silverstein said:
“You teach people to suffer so that the distinction between ego-syntonic and ego-dystonic is artificial."
This logic is the same as the one used to defend the inclusion of the transphobic term “autogynephilia” in the DSM-5.
On the increasing interest in transgender pornography
In January we posted an article on the increasing interest in transgender "erotic entertainment" over at Crossdreamers.
This triggered Blogspot (on which platform the blog is published) to add a warning screen regarding problematic content.
We suspect Google, who owns Blogger, is not able to distinguish between pornographic content and articles about such content.
So we have moved the post over to our Substack site:
“Why are so many men and women interested in transgender pornography?”
On the techniques used by racists and transphobes to harass marginalized people
The master suppression techniques is a framework presented 1945 by the Norwegian psychologist and philosopher Ingjald Nissen. In the late 1970s, the concept was popularized by Norwegian social psychologist and feminist Berit Ås.
It fits well with the anti-trans tactics used by TERFs and far right extremists.
More about the master suppression techniques and transphobic activism here.
Selected posts from Transgender World and Medium
George Santos’s drag queen denial harms all queer and transgender people
Good News: 9 out of 10 American Anti-LGBTQ+ Bills Failed in 2022
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