The DSM V

Well it finally looks like the new DSM version 5 is going to be coming out early next year. The Huffington Post reports,

DSM-5: Psychiatrists OK Vast Changes To Diagnosis Manual
By LINDSEY TANNER
12/01/12

_Eliminating the term "gender identity disorder." It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender. But many activists believe the condition isn't a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with "gender dysphoria," which means emotional distress over one's gender. Supporters equated the change with removing homosexuality as a mental illness in the diagnostic manual, which happened decades ago.

So we are going from a “disorder” to a “dysphoria” which is a step in the right direction but I would have liked to see it taken out altogether and listed as a medical condition. I would like to see that the only reason that you have to see a therapist is if you have a problem with being transsexual, not in order to get treatment to transition. Kelly Winters on her website on GID reform says…

It is time for the medical professions to affirm that difference is not disease, nonconformity is not pathology, and uniqueness is not illness

It is time for culturally competent psychiatric policies that recognize the legitimacy of cross-gender identity and yet distinguish gender dysphoria as a serious condition, treatable with medical procedures.

It is time for diagnostic criteria that serve a clear therapeutic purpose, are appropriately inclusive, and define disorder on the basis of distress or impairment and not upon social nonconformity.

It is time for medical policies which, above all, do no harm to those they are intended to help.

However, crossdressing is now listed as Transvestic Disorder changed from Fetishism and it says that “occurs in heterosexual (or bisexual) men for whom the cross-dressing behavior is for the purpose of sexual excitement.” I believe that it should also be removed from the DSM and replace by a “Crossdressing dysphoria” if you are uncomfortable about crossdressing.

Update 12/7/12 4:55PM
Kelly Winters just published this on her website GIDreform...
Dr. Jack Drescher, a member of the DSM-5 task force, confirmed yesterday that the Gender Dysphoria Diagnosis will be removed from the sexual disorders chapter and placed in a separate category in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders:

     GD is supposed to be placed in a chapter of its own, no longer linked with sexual dysfunctions and paraphilias (which will also have chapters of their own)

This reclassification, along with the change in title from Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Dysphoria, is a significant improvement in the diagnostic coding used for access to medical transition care, for trans and transsexual people who need it.
[...]
Unfortunately, the DSM-5 Task Force and APA Board of Trustees retained the Transvestic Disorder category in the sexual disorders chapter. Previous known as Transvestic Fetishism, it is grouped with paraphilic diagnoses such as pedophilia and exhibitionism and authored by Dr. Raymond Blanchard of the Toronto Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (formerly called the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry). This punitive and scientifically capricious category maligns many gender variant people, including transsexual women and men, as mentally ill and sexually deviant, purely on the basis of nonconforming gender expression. It is written to promote Blanchard’s unfounded theories of “autogynephilia” and “autoandrophilia” that conflate social and medical gender transition with fetishism.