“Humans struggle with difference. We shape stereotypes and patterns of behavior that help us navigate an often perplexing and confusing world, but they often fail us by reducing the full humanity of others to a dull set of characteristics. When faced with difference, whether in regard to who someone finds sexually attractive or how someone conceives of their gender, we have often fallen back onto the well-worn belief that the problem is them. Psychology does not exist above and beyond our prejudices, no matter how much it aspires to scientific objectivity. It has too often started not with a concern for the mental health of others but rather our own discomfort, and mental illness becomes the label we use to classify that discomfort by reassuring ourselves that "they" are the problem.
But "they" are also "us," of course. There are trans mental health professionals just like there were gay mental health professionals back when homosexuality was pathologized. Our understanding of gender and sexuality has grown significantly in just the past few decades, but our diagnoses and our nomenclature have proven slow to catch up. This is a matter not just of proper labeling but of justice; as long as gender dysphoria remains, trans people can still be diagnosed with a mental illness if some facet of them is uncomfortable with being trans, not a difficult task to accomplish in a still-transphobic world. This can impact their ability to be parents, to work the jobs they want, to work at all, to be housed, to be protected from discrimination. Gender dysphoria as a diagnosis is an improvement over gender identity disorder, but it is far from perfect, and it continues to give ammunition to the Rowlings and Singals of the world. Hopefully, in due time their arguments will appear as irrational and off-base as the belief that men became gay because their mothers loved them too much.”