The Rise and Fall of #DiscoSexology: Dr. Zucker, CAMH, & Conversion Therapy
Cristan Williams has started a fascinating series on the history of transphobic sexology and its main proponents Zucker, Blanchard and Green.
Williams writes over at Transadvocate:
In the process of doing research for this article I noticed there seems to be a particular set of ideas, propagated around the time of the disco era, that stand in stark contrast to contemporary ethical therapeutic models for working with transgender individuals. I came to think of these particular views as “Disco Sexology.” …
Sexologists who postulated that sexual fetishes and/or gender roles drove trans people to implicitly experience their bodies in the way they do in no small way comprised the ontological foundation of trans care for decades.
For instance, Drs. Ray Blanchard (creator of “autogynephilia”) and Zucker (who believed he could cure trans kids) were opinion leaders at CAMH [Toronto center for mental health] and in the DSM [American psychiatric manual] committee on so-called “gender identity disorders” while Drs. Zucker and Richard Green (creator of the Sissy Boy Syndrome) were opinion leaders at the Archives of Sexual Behavior and in the DSM GID committee.
I believe that over time Dr. Zucker came to represent the power of a particular type of sexology personified at CAMH because he held leadership roles at CAMH, the DSM GID Committee, and the Archives of Sexual Behavior all at the same time.
The power-knowledge Disco Sexology held over the lives of trans people is waning and newer therapeutic patient-centered models, informed by decades of clinically observing the value of Disco Sexology gender postulations, are proving themselves to be more efficacious.
However, Disco Sexology advocates claim they are being oppressed and that their postulations are being discarded because of politics, not clinical observations. Disco Sexology advocates publicly fret that while trans youth and young adults show consistently good outcomes when they encounter treatment informed by contemporary best practices, these youth and young adults may nevertheless, later in life, come to regret that they had not undergone Disco Sexology-informed therapy…
Perhaps most troubling is that Disco Sexology informs the way hate groups target trans people.
Part 2, on the history of this transphobic strand of sexology here!
