Late last week, an amazingly unhinged screed was posted on the NARTH website. By the end of the day yesterday, it had been yanked off NARTH's website, apparently after they got a significant amount of heat.
The screed was a reaction to a private school in Oakland, CA taking specific steps with respect to how they handle cross-gender identified students.
Perhaps what is most surprising is the emergence in the recent years of parents who are acknowledging and actively supporting their children who claim a cross-gender identity. On one hand, I commend the parents for being open to a surprising twist in life; on the other hand, I worry a little about whether this is setting things up for a reverse problem later in life should the child conclude that they are not transgender after all. However, that is a complex psychological topic for further investigation on my part.
The
original post on NARTH quotes Dr. Berger as follows:
Dr. Berger reacted to the San Francisco Chronicle article by observing:
I think that a lot of this is nonsense and is being pushed by people who have an agenda to disrupt society in order to further some perverted goals such as the acceptance of pedophilia, and, of course, the attempted "normalization" of homosexuality.
From a medical/scientific perspective, the notion of a child of five being "transgendered" is absolute garbage. This is a child wanting attention and wanting to play "dress-up," with an added layer of unhappiness.
That essentially is the issue for most of these children. They are unhappy. They don't have a "biological" based "gender identity disorder." They are unhappy; they have an envy of certain aspects of the opposite sex role -- and wish to pursuit it for as long as they can.
Tolerant parents, tolerant schools, tolerant societies, might let them get away with it. No one should be surprised that avant-garde California or sun-drenched Florida should be places where the tolerance is highest.
The notion that a person is really someone of the opposite sex "trapped in the wrong body" is poetic stupidity. It doesn't exist in reality. A person wishing to change their external manifestations to appear to be a person of the opposite sex is someone very unhappy with being their "real" sex and/or believing in some idealized fantasy of how much better it is to be of the opposite sex.
We don't treat distorted fantasies with mutilating surgery.
Here in cold Canada, I often talk with mothers of small children who routinely complain about how difficult it is to get their children dressed in the winter in the multiple layers of clothing they need to go off to school. I suggest to them that they make it clear to their children that they will leave home -- or that the school bus will come -- at such-and-such time, and they will go whether they are ready or not. I suggest that going just one day in their pajamas or underwear will be enough to "cure" them of their procrastination.
I suggest, indeed, letting children who wish go to school in clothes of the opposite sex -- but not counseling other children to not tease them or hurt their feelings.
On the contrary, don't interfere, and let the other children ridicule the child who has lost that clear boundary between play-acting at home and the reality needs of the outside world. Maybe, in this way, the child will re-establish that necessary boundary.
It is a mistake for various interfering, ignorant, and biased busybodies to try to "counsel" the other children into accepting the abnormal. It is very healthy to be able to draw the line between what is healthy and what is sick.
I am sure that if we looked carefully, we could find some significant personal issues and aberrations in the parents of these children. These children don't have such problems without there having been some groundwork laid by their parents in some way.
Dr Joseph Berger, FRCP, DABPN, DLFAPA
I can guess that NARTH received a lot of static for posting that in the first place - it is uniquely unhinged, especially for someone who claims to be a psychiatrist in the first place. At the very least, he should be professionally censured for several reasons - not the least of which is essentially advocating bullying as an acceptable form of socialization in the schoolyard.
Looking further at what he writes, I'm going to have to dissect it assertion by assertion:
From a medical/scientific perspective, the notion of a child of five being "transgendered" is absolute garbage. This is a child wanting attention and wanting to play "dress-up," with an added layer of unhappiness.
No, this is not garbage. Most people's first long term memories anchor somewhere between the ages of 3 and 5 years (a few people like me have memories that are clear and go back further, but the average seems to be around 3 to 5 years of age). The anecdotal evidence from transgender people in their adult years is quite clear that their sense of being 'boy' or 'girl' - and in the "wrong body" goes back to their earliest memories, whether or not they were able to express those feelings at the time.
The notion that a person is really someone of the opposite sex "trapped in the wrong body" is poetic stupidity. It doesn't exist in reality. A person wishing to change their external manifestations to appear to be a person of the opposite sex is someone very unhappy with being their "real" sex and/or believing in some idealized fantasy of how much better it is to be of the opposite sex.
I dare say that just about every transsexual that is now living in their chosen gender would disagree with this entire assertion. The psychological aspects of gender identity are complex and multifaceted. I'm appalled that a man who is ostensibly a trained psychiatrist would dismiss the experiences and feelings of so many people out of hand as "invalid" simply because he is unable to comprehend them.
I suggest, indeed, letting children who wish go to school in clothes of the opposite sex -- but not counseling other children to not tease them or hurt their feelings.
On the contrary, don't interfere, and let the other children ridicule the child who has lost that clear boundary between play-acting at home and the reality needs of the outside world. Maybe, in this way, the child will re-establish that necessary boundary.
This is the point where I got quite upset reading this screed. As far as I am concerned, this is nothing more than an incitement to bully children who are different. I didn't appreciate the thugs that decided to make my early school years unpleasant, and it certainly didn't change my behaviour to be something other than it is. I fail to see how applying Berger's reasoning to GLBT students is going to change those students. Will it isolate them? Yes. Make them bitter and resentful? Yes. Change their identity? Highly unlikely.
Berger then ends his tirade with the classic "blame the parents" line:
I am sure that if we looked carefully, we could find some significant personal issues and aberrations in the parents of these children. These children don't have such problems without there having been some groundwork laid by their parents in some way.
Few things are dafter than such statements. The claim that GLBT people come out of dysfunctional families is patently false. For every case like that, there are ten that suggest otherwise. How functional - or dysfunctional - a family has little to do with such issues. If that were the case, children raised by gay parents would have a higher probability of turning out gay - they don't.
Berger, along with his "colleagues" in NARTH need to be censured for doing nothing less than putting prospective clients into a form of jeopardy - making it painfully clear that judgement will be a part of their treatment.
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