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Center Blog
A Director’s Perspective: ASYPRE 2013
This past weekend the LGBT Center of Raleigh in conjunction with many other youth serving organizations across North Carolina came together and held our annual ASPYRE Youth Camp. ASPYRE stands for a ‘A Safer Place for Youth to Reach Excellence”… and reach excellence we did!
Tucked away at a quiet YMCA Camp in Greensboro, our team of youth, youth counselors, and adult administrators engaged in a three day empowerment camp: with the explicit goal of bettering the lives of LGBTQ Youth across North Carolina. Our group from OUTright Youth of Catawba Valley was especially eager to learn how to form and maintain GSA’s in their school systems!
I Ain’t Broken
The DSM-5 was released this past Saturday and for gender non-conforming individuals everywhere it is an historic moment. In this revision “Gender Identity Disorder” has been reclassified to what most of us have known for years as “Gender Dysphoria,” or a marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender.
At this point, even if you don’t have a clue, say “wow!”
This classification is several years in the making and has been overlooked in the last two DSM manuals. It may not sound all that spectacular, but this forever changes the societal landscape for transgender individuals. No longer being classified as a “mental disorder” or, in other words a sickness of the mind, opens the floodgates to many things for transgender individuals. For example, opponents of transgender civil and medical rights have often used the previous disorder classification in the fight for equal access to restrooms, adoption, and employment for transgender individuals. No longer can they use this argument. No longer can they use the DSM as a weapon against a trans-person’s right to pee, be a parent, or get a job.