Just got done with my Thanksgiving week reading for my Gay and Lesbian
Studies class. It was a wonderful book by Daphne Scholinski, "The Last
Time I Wore a Dress."
It's an autobiography chronicling her time spent in mental institutions
diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder (as well as family issues). Anyone
else read it? Or have comments about "Gender Identity Disorder"? In the
appendix of the text, she includes the textbook definition (and diagnosis)
of Gender Identity Disorder, which is QUITE scary.
Several times when reading this book, I thought of my sister and I. We are
both jeans-and-tshirt kind of girls, uncomfortable in dresses and makeup.
She has worn her hair short (especially when she was younger, she's 16
now) and taken a lot of crap for it. When at my wedding this last May, we
were both told "see how pretty you can be if you put a little effort into
it", "you should dress up like this and wear makeup more often", "see how
good you look, wow". Do these people realise that there is NOTHING more
damaging to your self esteem, or no better way to tell you in your regular
clothes, you're ugly??
I can't help but think that if we hadn't had the family we do, we'd have
gone through something very similar. A strange attempt to "cure" what
Daphne called "being a girl the only way I knew how to".
In this course, we also watched a video of a "Dateline" episode (for you
non-USers, Dateline is a primetime-ish show with "investigative"
reporting, shown on a major TV network) which shows a "study" being done
on several girls who are super-tomboyish. They are going to watch the
girls all the way into adulthood to find out if they end up lesbians or
bisexual. (!!) Scary stuff.
Just some thoughts. This was an *excellent* book. I'm definitely giving it
to my sister to read... I think it's so much more powerful when some of
the things she's experienced, you've experienced. (Incidentally, Daphne's
interest in girls does turn out to play a role in the book also, more
toward the end of her "treatment")
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1573226963/o/qid=974926588/sr=8-1/ref=aps_sr_b_1_3/107-5953971-9314152
-nicole
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