BOOKS

AUGUST 2, 1996 GAY People's ChroNICLE 25

Child abuse in the name of 'correcting' gender identity

Gender Shock

Exploding the Myths of Male and Female

by Phyllis Burke Doubleday, $23.95 hardcover

Reviewed by Dawn Leach

Phyllis Burke makes a persuasive argument in Gender Shock that rigid gender roles are not emotionally healthy. The book focuses especially on the effects of strict gender roles for children, and systematically

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EXPLODING THE MYTHS OF MALE & FEMALE

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challenges commonly held beliefs about gender and emotional health.

In Gender Shock, Burke shows that scientists have found that most talented and intelligent people tend to have a mixture of both masculine and feminine traits. She asserts that people who rigidly conform to their gender roles tend to have difficulties in relationships, as well as health problems for men and self-esteem problems for women.

“The thing that was most important in this book is that the girls are never going to be truly liberated until the boys are. Gays are never going to truly be liberated until the straights are. Because those gender roles are warping us."

Burke wrote Gender Shock as a result of questions raised in response to her previous book, Family Values, Two Moms and Their Son, about her experience of legally adopting her partner's son. After that book was published Burke was sent on a promotional

tour

"On every radio show, television show, and in any straight book stores I went into, and sometimes gay bookstores, I always got the question 'What are you going to do about getting a man for him?' or more specifically, 'Who is going to teach him to be a man?' Burke said in a telephone interview.

She began to read psychiatric journals and conducting interviews to explore the concept of gender, and how it affects emotional health. "I thought that I was going to overturn

every stone, look under every rock, and be painstakingly honest with myself about gender issues, so that I could know in my mind very, very clearly whether or not I needed to find a man in order for him to develop into the best human being he could be. Because I'd do anything for this kid. I just adore him."

She found records of government-funded studies of children diagnosed with "gender identity disorder." They included athletically gifted girls, and boys with artistic talent or a tendency to nurture. Burke searched the case histories for clues about the children's emotional health.

What she found was that they did not seem to have been disturbed at all, and in most cases, were of above-average intelligence. Many of the children were targeted for treatment because of the difficulty that other children and adults had adjusting to their nonconforming behavior. Burke points out the irony in treating a nonathletic boy for a mental disorder, while ignoring the behavior of the children who harass and bully him.

Burke interviewed specialists in the field of gender studies, as well as intersex and transgender people, and as a result of her research, concluded that a parent's sex is not as important as the parent's behavior.

"What a child needs, I think, is a variety,

a diversity of adults of all different kinds, who can model for him all different kinds of behavior,' "Burke said. "The most important thing about that person is not their sex, it's what they do."

What Burke said matters most in childrearing is that children are given love and the freedom to express themselves.

"It's so important not to deny boys the affection and physical intimacy that we give to girls," said Burke, "just as it is so important not to deny girls that rough-and-tumble play, the wrestling and chasing them around just because they're girls."

Gender Shock particularly calls into question the practice of psychiatric treatment for children who do not conform to stereotypical gender roles.

Even after the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of psychological disorders in 1973, psychiatrists have justified drastic treatments of non-conforming children on the basis of a fear that the children will grow up to be gay or lesbian.

Burke shows that even though. the profession's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual has specific guidelines to determine what constitutes "gender identity disorder," these guidelines have been selectively applied. The diagnosis has been used against gay and lesbian teenagers to institutionalize them and stigmatize them.

"What underlies these therapies is the desire to prevent children from growing up to become gay or lesbian, but now in recent years they're starting to deny that. Instead they say, 'Oh, we're trying to prevent

transsexualism, "Burke said. "Well in all of the case studies, none of the children became

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transsexuals. The truth of the matter is, [attempting to treat homosexuality] is what GID is being used for. And it's being used against lots of lesbian and gay teens who are being locked up in psychiatric hospitals."

The book describes in detail cases in which children as young as four years old were diagnosed with gender identity disorder and given various forms of treatment, designed to make the children abandon behaviors considered inappropriate for their gender, and play in ways approved by the therapist.

One of the children was a four-year-old boy named Kraig, in treatment to "prevent" homosexuality, whose mother was told by doctors through an earphone to ignore him whenever he acted "too feminine." The child, who didn't understand why his mother suddenly turned her back on him, panicked and was eventually taken screaming from the treatment room. In a later therapy, Kraig was given blue poker chips for masculine behavior, and red ones for feminine behaviorwhich included saying, "Oh, my goodness." When his father got home, he was to spank Kraig once for each red chip. Terrified of being gay, Kraig attempted suicide at age 18.

The parents of Becky, an athletic sevenyear-old, were concerned that she played too much with boys and disliked feminine toys and clothing. Her treatment involved constant monitoring to prevent her from playing in ways generally reserved for boys. Her "cure" was declared when she abandoned her favorite sports and activities, began wearing jewelry and became obsessively attached to her male researcher.

"I was thinking, what would a little girl future Olympian look like?" Burke said. "Well, she'd probably like to play sports, she'd probably be as dedicated to her sports as a boy. She probably wouldn't particularly want to wear dresses while she's doing those

sports, they kind of hamper you. She might prefer to play with the boys, because they're more practiced and so they're more competitive. And sometimes, she may wish she were a boy, because she wouldn't have to deal with always having to break through the sex barrier. And she may feel certain distress about being a girl.

"All of those things qualify her for a mental illness diagnosis of gender identity disorder. Becky would have been 25 today. I thought, wow, if she hadn't been trained in the way she was, she could be walking onto that field in Atlanta. We keep doing this to the girls, and it's just astounding."

Although many of the treatments described were done in the 1970s as research projects, Burke's later interviews with the researchers indicated they would do the same thing today. One researcher, when asked if he would repeat a treatment that forced a nine-year-old boy to think himself inadequate for being non-athletic, replied, "Exactly."

Burke said that she hopes people will be able to read Gender Shock and draw their own conclusions.

"I don't think [this book] is the last word," she said. "It gets us to a certain place and then it passes the baton off to whoever just read it, because that person then has to take those ideas, the ones they agree with on Tuesday and disagree with on Wednesday, and write their own next chapter. The most important thing that can happen as a result of reading this book is that you maybe get to question some things that you took for granted, you get to think about them a little bit. I think that's the most you can ever hope for as a writer, is that you might be able to give someone your work and they go "Hmmm, I'll think about that."

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