Psychology and Gender Dysphoria ─ Feminist and Transgender Perspectives

Psychiatry and psychology have a long and highly debated history in relation to gender. This includes the framing of femininity and women’s experiences as hysteria (Showalter, 1987), borderline personality disorder (Warner, 2005), premenstrual dysphoric disorder (Caplan, 1995) and major depressive disorder (Ussher, 2010). This pathologization of femininity has attracted much feminist attention over the years yet psychiatry and psychology’s controversies don’t stop there. They closely police the boundaries of ‘normal’ gender expression through the gender identity diagnoses of transvestism, transsexualism, gender identity disorder and gender dysphoria, which have attracted similar criticism.

Drawing on discursive psychology, this book traces the historical development of psychiatric constructions of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ gender expression and contextualises the recent reconstruction of gender through the DSM-5 criteria for gender dysphoria. This latest diagnosis illustrating disagreement and debate within the profession surrounding gender identity as ‘disordered’ provides an opportunity to reflect on the conflicting history between feminist and transgender communities in the changing context of a more trans-positive feminism, and the potential implications of the DSM-5 for these distinct but linked communities.

Psychology and Gender Dysphoria examines debates and controversies surrounding psychiatric diagnoses and theories related to gender and gender nonconformity by exploring recent research, examples of collaborative perspectives, and existing feminist and trans texts. The book will be relevant for postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers of gender (including gender dysphoria, transgenderism and intersexuality), feminism, and critical psychology as well as historical issues within psychiatry.

Jemma Tosh is Research Manager at the Faculty of Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Canada, as well as Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow for the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British Columbia, Canada.