Glosario

Pathologization of the transgender population

Glossary

Pathologization of the transgender population

It is the belief that transgender people suffer from mental or biological disorders that cause them to be different from the cisgender population. It was installed by the American Psychiatric Association APA and the World Health Organization WHO through their disease manuals after they depathologized the homosexual population and began to pathologize the transgender, under the same diagnostic criteria they used with homosexuality. The pathologization of the transgender population transcends other situations such as discrimination in access to health, education, work and legal identity through the obligation of mental health diagnostics before allowing access to rights already enjoyed by the cisgender population. It is also evident in hate speech against transgender people many of whom talk about being “sick people”. Currently WHO no longer considers transsexualism (pathologizing name for transgender population) as a mental illness but still maintains a diagnostic category of disease to refer to the transgender population under the name of Gender dysphoria as well as APA in its diagnostic manual DSM V.

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