Gender Identity Disorder
Children with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) exhibit the typical gender nonconforming patterns of behaviours, such as a preference for toys, playmates, clothing, and play-styles that are typically associated with the opposite-sex. Children with GID will sometimes display disgust toward their own genitals or changes that occur in puberty (e.g. facial hair or menstruation). A diagnosis of GID in children requires evidence of discomfort, confusion, or aversion to the gender roles associated with the child’s genetic sex. Children do not necessarily have to express a desire to be the opposite-sex, but it is still taken in consideration when making a diagnoses.
Some advocates have argued that a DSM-IV diagnosis legitimizes the experiences of these children, making it easier to rally around a medically defined disorder, in order to raise public awareness, and garner funding for future research and therapies. Diagnoses of gender identity disorder in children (GIDC) remains controversial, many argue that the label pathologizes behaviours and cognitions that fall within the normal gender of variation. The stigma associated with mental health disorders may do more harm than good.
Read more about this topic: Childhood Gender Nonconformity
Famous quotes containing the words gender, identity and/or disorder:
“Most women of [the WW II] generation have but one image of good motherhood—the one their mothers embodied. . . . Anything done “for the sake of the children” justified, even ennobled the mother’s role. Motherhood was tantamount to martyrdom during that unique era when children were gods. Those who appeared to put their own needs first were castigated and shunned—the ultimate damnation for a gender trained to be wholly dependent on the acceptance and praise of others.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“The “female culture” has shifted more rapidly than the “male culture”; the image of the go-get ‘em woman has yet to be fully matched by the image of the let’s take-care-of-the-kids- together man. More important, over the last thirty years, men’s underlying feelings about taking responsibility at home have changed much less than women’s feelings have changed about forging some kind of identity at work.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)