00:01Well, I think reading the diagnostic criteria, I have to say, makes me feel pathologized for just being a normally
00:08gender-variant child and adult.
00:10And it seems like this very odd way to box people into this pathologizing label. That seems totally inappropriate.
00:17Being trans is not a problem. Being trans is not a medical diagnosis or mental health care. It should not
00:22be a mental health care diagnosis.
00:23The acquisition and expression of gender is something that's really complex and, you know, historically and culturally variable.
00:31And that, you know, I'm perfectly willing to say that my experience of gender is not most people's experience of
00:38gender.
00:38But that sense of being atypical or, you know, minority of some kind doesn't make my difference pathological. It just
00:46means it's less frequent.
00:48There never was a part of me that thought I was broken.
00:51I've always, I think, partly because of the support of my family, always had the sense that there was something
00:57about the world that I didn't fit into.
01:00But I myself never felt I was putting on something just to be a rebel or that I was pretending
01:07to be something I wasn't.
01:08I've always just been who I am and who I know myself to be in the truest sense.
01:13That the society around me doesn't have room for that, that's the problem. That's the source of stress for me.
01:19I feel more about the diagnosis than I think about it. You know, it's something that has heavily influenced my
01:24life in the way that I view the world.
01:26Basically, that diagnosis took away my identity. Or it gave me a, you know, a new identity, which was, you
01:31know, the sick one.
01:32And I guess that wouldn't be so bad if I, you know, if I wasn't treated for four years for
01:37it.
01:37Certainly, you know, it sends a very powerful message to a person to be removed from the world. Like, that
01:41you're so much of a threat.
01:42I experienced that the label of sex and gender isn't large enough to contain who I am.
01:48No, my gender identity is not a disorder at all.
01:50When we see or so...
02:06...
02:09You
