Oops indeed.
We have covered this misunderstanding many, many times already. Gender dysphoria is indeed a mental health disorder (although of course DSM5 puts it in a separate class to most other disorders, for obvious reasons).
No, DSM5 does not put GD in 'a separate class’. DSM5 covers a wide range of different types of disorders, some of which are loosely grouped in categories and some of which are not. If you are referring to GD being moved into a separate chapter in DSM5, we have been over this several times already.
The reason for separating the three classes of Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders that were in one chapter in DSM-IV and DSMV-TR is explained in Zucker et al. (2013), p903.
Memo Outlining Evidence for Change for Gender Identity Disorder in the DSM-5
“......each of these three diagnostic classes have their own specialists and the theoretical overlap among these conditions is far from complete. For example, sexual dysfunctions are of little direct relevance to GID as it manifests in children. Some critics have also complained that inclusion of GID in a section of the manual that also includes the paraphilias is somewhat stigmatizing. Although there can be a co-occurrence of one paraphilia, Transvestic Fetishism, with GID in adolescents and adults, it was the consensus of the entire Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group that the three diagnostic classes be uncoupled, with each having a separate chapter in DSM-5.”
Aside from that,
transvestic disorder still remains a diagnosis in the DSM5 and is recognised as a risk factor for late-onset gender dysphoria.
It's experienced by some - but not all - people with transgender identity. It's to do with the internal struggle, usually pre-transition, which some transgender people experience around the conflict between their trans gender and the gender that matches their sex assigned at birth (along with associated anxieties over things such as how their trans gender might be viewed by the likes of family, friends, employers etc, or how society at large views transgender identity).
The adoption of the phrase ‘sex assigned at birth’ by organisations is itself a clear sign of science being subordinate to ideology (in this case, sex denialism).
If gender is a set of social expectations about personality, roles, preference etc that society assigns based on sex, then a person who does not identify with this is simply a gender non-conforming person. The only logical difference between a GNC person who identifies with their sex but rejects the gender stereotypes associated with it, and a GNC person who wants to change their sexual characteristics, is that the latter is unhappy with their sex or sexual characteristics. However, sex denialism means that activists cannot say that somebody is unhappy with their sex.
What is being promoted is not increased acceptance of gender non-conformity or declassification of trans identity as a mental illness; it is sex denialism, or replacement of sex with gender identity.
But that, obviously, is a completely different (though consequential) condition from transgender identity itself. Which is now viewed by mainstream medicine and medical science as NOT a mental health disorder. All of the medical institutions in my list subscribe unequivocally to that understanding.
As previously stated, following the removal of homosexuality from the DSM an additional criterion was added to many diagnoses, including gender identity disorder and the paraphilias, to require the presence of clinical distress, functional impairment, or risk of harm to others. This was to ensure that harmless conditions not requiring treatment did not get classed as disorders in future. This took place decades before, and has nothing to do with, the current rise in trans activism based on sex denialism.
Now, transgender identity denialists would say that on top of gender dysphoria being a mental health disorder, transgender identity itself is a mental health disorder. Such people believe that there's no such thing as valid transgender identity: that all those "claiming" transgender identity are actually mentally ill. Such people subscribe to the theory that the core matter of transgender identity is an illness requiring diagnosis and remedial/"curative" treatment.
What you repeatedly do is imply that disagreeing with gender identity ideology (that gender should replace sex, and words like ‘man’ and ‘woman’ should refer to gender identities rather than sex) is equivalent to saying transgender identity is a mental illness. This is due to a
fallacy of equivocation over the meaning of ‘valid’.
Moreover if gender is separate from sex, encouraging somebody to accept their biological sex cannot possibly be conversion therapy for gender identity.
However mainstream medicine (including all of the institutions in my list), while believing that gender dysphoria requires diagnosis and treatment, believes in the affirmation model for transgender identity: in other words, if a person presents to a medical professional with gender dysphoria, and once that disorder has been diagnosed, the correct treatment in most cases is 1) an affirmation of the person's transgender identity and 2) therapeutic treatments to help the person resolve the conflict between their transgender identity and the gender matching their sex assigned at birth.
And to date, no significant institution/body in any liberal democracy (nor any supranatural body, eg the WHO) has either questioned the validity of transgender identity or questioned the efficacy/validity of the affirmative model (which, of course, necessarily implies a belief in the validity of transgender identity itself).
Every country that has undertaken an independent systematic review of the evidence for the affirmative approach in minors has changed course due to poor quality of evidence. Yet every medical organisation in the US continues to support affirmation for minors, insists that the science is ‘settled’, and portrays criticism as 'transphobic'. Both perspectives cannot be correct. When there is disagreement within medical organisations in different countries, one looks to the evidence. When organisations are shown to be ignoring evidence that is politically inconvenient, one concludes that they have abandoned science.
