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:
“... lynching was ... a woman’s issue: it had as much to do with ideas of gender as it had with race.”
—Paula Giddings (b. 1948)
“There is a terrible blindness in the love that wants only to accommodate. It’s not only to do with omissions and half-truths. It implants a lack of being in the speaker and robs the self of an identity without which it is impossible for one to grow close to another.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“The history of the genesis or the old mythology repeats itself in the experience of every child. He too is a demon or god thrown into a particular chaos, where he strives ever to lead things from disorder into order.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)