🚀 go-pugleaf

The students and faculty of the Graduate Psychology Program at New College of 
California are hosting a free event examining the psychiatric abuse of 
lesbian, gay, transgendered, and transsexual youth. The event, scheduled for 
Tuesday May 19th from 6-8pm in the Cultural Center at 766 Valencia Street, 
will feature Daphne Scholinski, author of The Last Time I Wore A Dress. Ms. 
Scholinski will be speaking on her experience of incarceration in psychiatric 
hospitals as a result of her being diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder. 
The event is designed to educate students and community members regarding the 
prevalence of psychiatric abuse of youth and to mobilize people within and 
outside of the mental health care profession to take part in the emerging 
national movement against the Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis.

Ms. Scholinski was invited to speak at New College as a result of the recent 
San Francisco Bay Guardian article by Thomas Mournian detailing the forced 
hospitalization of young people who do not conform to traditional gender 
identities.  The Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis has come under increasing 
criticism from psychologists and psychiatric patients, as well as gay and 
lesbian leaders and youth activists who see the diagnosis as being used to 
stigmatize lesbian, gay, questioning, and transgender people.  It is the ease 
of use of this diagnosis as a means of incarcerating youth that has galvanized 
the New College community.  "We believe that the criteria for GID is 
sufficiently vague to allow any clinician based on his or her ideological bent 
or cultural biases to label anyone with this so-called "psychiatric disorder", 
especially when most adolescents are struggling with their gender identity and 
sex role identities,"  explains Dr. Hale Bolak, Dean of the Graduate 
Psychology Program.  

The City of San Francisco is already on record in opposition to the diagnosis. 
 In a 1996 resolution passed by the Board of Supervisors, the City recognizes 
the GID as being "..established to identify so-called 'pre-homosexual' and 
'pre-transsexual' children for the purpose of preventing them from growing up 
to be gay or transsexual.." The resolution also calls on mental health care 
professionals to "..investigate and speak out against coercive and 
inappropriate treatments of children and youth based on GID�"  a mandate the 
students and faculty of the Graduate Psychology program at New College take 
seriously.  

"As a department, we support the resolution passed by the San Francisco Board 
of Supervisors against the Gender Identity Disorder, and have a commitment to 
be part of the nationwide effort to educate and organize around this issue"  
says Dr. Bolak.  It is a sentiment embraced by students in the program as 
well. "I have no intention of practicing in a field where young people are 
routinely locked up and tortured because of their sexual orientation or 
because they challenge someone else's views of normalcy," explains Robin 
Metcalf, a first year student in the Graduate Psychology Program at New 
College and one of the organizers of the event.   Ms. Metcalf considers the 
event a first step in a much longer process that students and faculty will be 
engaged in, "We need to ensure that the American Psychiatric Association takes 
a stand against these practices."  Convincing the psychiatric professional 
organization to change its ideas regarding gender identity is a daunting task 
and one that the students and faculty at New College look forward to. Plans 
are already being discussed for the College to host a conference focusing on 
Gender Identity Disorder, reparative therapy, and the psychiatric abuse of 
gay, lesbian, transgender, and transsexual youth in the Fall of 1998.