Auswahl der wissenschaftlichen Literatur zum Thema „Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association“

Abstract In 1998 the authors circulated a questionnaire asking transgender respondents their reactions to various and assorted terminology and usage, including information about what the respondents did and did not wish to be called (N = 134). The authors followed up with focus groups at two trans conferences and presented their results at the 2001 symposium of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association. In 2011, to see how language usage had evolved, the authors circulated a similar questionnaire (N = 2,633) and presented those results at the 2011 symposium of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. These results are now presented in print.

German Society for Sexual Research, Academy of Sexual Medicine and Society of Sexology formulated standards for evaluation and treatment of transsexuals. The creation of the standards involved Sophinette Becker, Hartmut A. G. Bosinski, Ulrich Clement, Wolf Eicher, Thomas M. Goerlich, Uwe Hartmann, Götz Kockott, Dieter Langer, Wilhelm E. Preuss, Gunter Schmidt, Alfred Springer, Reinhard Wille. Since 1980, the Federal Republic of Germany has a law on transsexualism, which regulates the right of the individual to change the sex. However, until now there were no specifically defined standards of assessment and treatment of transsexuals. For the first time, in 1979 Harry Benjamin invited the International Medical Association of Germany to revise the standards of medical care for gender dysphoria. The following standards of assessment and treatment of transsexuals have been developed at a conference convened by the German Society for Research Expert Committee under the leadership of Sophinette Becker. The review of currently valid standards for evaluation and treatment of transgender is the subject of this article.

AbstractThe author argues that the Norwegian welfare state has renounced its duties toward a majority of citizens with gender incongruence (i.e. lack of correspondence between sex assigned at birth and a person’s gender identity). The National Treatment Centre for Transsexualism (NBTS in Norwegian), the sole authorised provider of healthcare for gender dysphoria (discomfort related to gender incongruence) in Norway, exercises a strict interpretation of the diagnostic criteria for transsexualism, and rejects all but a quarter of annual referrals. Those “disqualified” do not have access to a second opinion, nor has the Norwegian public health sector established alternative healthcare services, thereby failing its transgender citizens. With regard to legal issues, the Norwegian state failed its transgender citizens by requesting irreversible sterilisation until July 2016 before individuals with gender incongruence can claim legal gender recognition. This is an obvious breach of human rights. Additionally, those rejected by NBTS for not being so-called “real transsexuals” do not have an opportunity to request a legal gender change, and thus the state discriminates, once again, against these gender variant people. Moreover, the author points out that NBTS has a major say in the framing and implementation of trans healthcare policies, building on the conventional gender binary model, which is supported by the “gender-corrected women and men” of the Harry Benjamin Resource Centre (hereafter HBRS), the Clinic’s patient association. This policy framing ensures necessary trans related healthcare only to a very small proportion of citizens with gender incongruence, namely those “selected” by the NBTS, thus causing a grossly unequal distribution of resources within public healthcare services. In order to conceptualise these biased and discriminatory policies toward a considerable number of transgender and gender variant citizens, the author applies political science scholar Nancy Fraser’s conceptual framework of “recognition, (re)presentation and (re-)distribution”. Gender variant groups’ lack of recognition excludes them from access to political representation, and reproduces non-recognition of gender diversity in the transgender spectrum. The author understands the Norwegian authorities’ inept management of large groups of citizens with gender identity issues as institutionalised cisgenderism.