Conservative commentators cherry-pick the fact that gender dysphoria is in the DSM-5 to claim that all transgender people are, by definition, mentally ill. They fail to note that the American Psychiatric Association (APA) does not list being transgender as a disorder, that the condition of gender dysphoria is only diagnosable if there is “clinically significant distress,” and that the main reason why the diagnosis was included is because medical professionals need diagnostic codes for providing treatment. Indeed, the APA specifically states that “gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental
...more
