trans day of visibility

I am complicit in a system that harms trans people. In a system that people use to back their transphobia: the mental health care system. Psychology has a LONG and ESTABLISHED history of harming folks who are not the authors of and founders of the field: white men. I could write entire posts about that, but on Trans Visibility Day 2023, it feels incredibly urgent and important to acknowledge a massive part of the discrimination that trans people around the globe have to fight (and have to heal from) has direct connections to the field of psychology.

As late as 2019, there was a direct mental disorder “gender identity disorder”, that pathologized transgender people. In some countries, up until 2022, it was required to receive a diagnosis from the diagnostic manual and be STERILIZED in order to have access to legal and medical alignment of gender. Now, today, in 2023, people in positions of governmental power around the world are continuing to use these violent remnants - as “gender-incongruence” is still used by the World Health Organization - to harm trans people of all ages.

Last week, a state in the US (Iowa) is forcing children receiving life-saving healthcare to stop. I mean life saving as protection against violence by others, against suicide, as in, children being able to live into adulthood. Saving their lives. Governments who put out statements on Suicide Prevention Months that they care about mental health, encouraging people to reach out for help. The same state governments (Texas) who called on mental health professionals to police their transgender clients and patients by reporting they have been ‘abused’. And this is just in the United States. There are countless examples across the world where psychology and the mental health field at large are used to harm, other, ostracize, take away rights, of trans people of all ages.

As I said in the beginning, complicit, I don’t mean that as a way to shrug off my responsibility in a long standing fight for trans folks to be able to live and love and be. It’s a commitment to awareness, to interrogate, to participate in the creation of a world where trans people not only survive, but flourish.