An unjust world or one developing slowly.

Something that has been a fairly constant thread in my life is knowing that is is an unjust world. I've seen this as a child due to my own family's circumstances and it's an unjust world that labels people as having a Disorder when what they experience is an incongruence of their gender identity and the one assigned to them at birth. In the DSM IV being trans is a termed a Gender Identity Disorder (GID). No actually it was thought to be a disorder, an opinion formed in the light of what was known, or more accurately wasn't known. The validity of my assertion can be found on the DSM5.org  website, because if the proposal of the current meta-level update for DSM V is kept the term "Disorder" will be replaced with "Gender Incongruency" (GI).

"because the latter [GI] is a descriptive term that better reflects the core of the problem: an incongruence between, on the one hand, what identity one experiences and/or expresses and, on the other hand, how one is expected to live based on one’s assigned gender (usually at birth)" (End Notes)


The draft proposal also acknowledges that the DSM-IV described gender identity and gender role as a male or female dichotomy rather than a "multi-category concept or spectrum" "a conceptualization of GI acknowledging the wide variation of conditions will make it less likely that only one type of treatment is connected to the diagnosis".

It  continues: 

"Taking the above regarding the avoidance of male-female dichotomies into account, in the new formulation, the focus is on the discrepancy between experienced/expressed gender (which can be either male, female, in-between or otherwise) and assigned gender (in most societies male or female) rather than cross-gender identification and same-gender aversion (Cohen-Kettenis & Pfäfflin, 2009)." (End Notes)

Access to treatment depends on being diagnosed. If the proposals are written into the DSM V one could be diagnosed as having GI if meeting two of the criteria, such as having the feelings of being female and not feeling comfortable living in the role of a man. A more appropriate treatment would be accessible for those who do not want, for any reason, to alter their physical characteristics after the hunt for only the "true transsexual" has been abandoned.

Many of us do not need a road sign to tell us what speed to drive at, many of us do not need a law to instruct us about right or wrong but some people do rely on a higher authority to tell them what is permissible and acceptable. It seems likely that if gender is "officially" recognised by "the trusted experts" as not being a simple male-female dichotomy but one of the multiple possibilities then public opinion will not only change to accept and accommodate gender variability but gender incongruency too. Maybe it isn't simply an unjust world but one that is developing slowly in a positive direction?