From Zachary to Aurora and back to Zachary. Zachary was the name she was given when she was born. But what did the doctors know? What did the parents know? Obviously they didn't know at the time that their child was a girl, but little Zachary did! At the age of two, she renamed herself Aurora and went on to develop into a typical little girl. She loved to play dress-up with her Barbie and was fond of frilly gowns and pretty shoes. And her parents loved their beautiful and creative daughter. And then came the dragons! They captured her and carried her off to the dark depths of their subterranean gloom. They took her to a place where they intend to devour her soul and replace it with that of a stranger. That is how a six-year-old child must see what is happening to her. She must be terrified! How else can you interpret what is happening to Aurora Lipscomb? When her parents went to enroll the six-year-old in first grade as a girl, an anonymous caller, a do-gooder who was "concerned" for the child, called Franklin County (Ohio) Children's Services (FCCS). Within days FCCS took the child from her home, placed her in a foster home where they are denying her most basic of human rights. Aurora is being forced to be a boy. According to the attorney retained by Aurora's parents to get their daughter back and to get the FCCS out of their lives, "She is being treated as a boy. They took away all her girls' clothing and are addressing her as Zachary. They will not use the name Aurora and they intend to cut her hair." |
Aurora is very clear about what her gender is. She left no doubts when she said to the two social workers, "You told me I was a boy and couldn't use my girl's name. My name is Aurora and I am a girl." Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in Children is a diagnosis in the DSM-IV that has routinely been used by the narrow minded and ignorant to torture gender-different kids. Aurora's case is certainly among the most blatant abuses of GID. Any parent should be horrified by the thought that a government agent, with the court's blessing, could remove a child from a loving, supportive environment, and place her in a cold, uncaring institution. But this goes on all the time. It is not just confined to some backwater town in the middle of nowhere. Aurora and her parents live in a suburb of Columbus Ohio. It goes on all over the country. It goes on right here in Illinois. It goes on right here in Chicago and Cook County. It's Time, Illinois, the state's advocacy organization for the gender variant community, has documented numerous cases in which a young person was locked up in a mental facility and subjected to electric shock therapy in an attempt to cure the child of the dreaded Gender Identity Disorder. Last year, 4 cases of GID abuse of youth by mental hospitals were reported in It's Time, Illinois' annual report on discrimination and hate crimes. One 17-year-old transsexual girl who had been held in a facility in Cook County, told It's Time, Illinois, "My mother had put me in a psychiatric hospital to 'cure me' of wanting to be a girl. While I was in the hospital I was given what they called aversion therapy. I called it torture. Because there had been another person like me in the hospital a couple of months before, the staff kept saying; 'Oh we have another one.' But nothing they did made me feel any different about myself." |
As long as GID is allowed to remain in the DSM-IV, there will be abuses of the diagnosis, and gender-different kids and teens will continue to be tortured in the name of cure. In 1973, the classification of "Homosexuality" as a mental disorder was deleted from the 7th edition of the DSM-II. Yet 27 years later, GID still remains in the current edition of the manual. Imagine the additional abuses that might have been visited on gay and lesbian youth if homosexuality had been still listed in the DSM. A defense fund has been set up for Aurora Lipscomb. If you would like to help Aurora's family in their legal battle, please send funds to the following address: Aurora's Defense Fund But in the long run, we have got to figure out how we can get GID de-pathologized. Just getting GID deleted from the DSM is not the entire answer. Unlike homosexuality, transsexuals require medical intervention in order to live their lives. Any medical procedure requires a diagnosis, which in the case of transsexuals is GID. But GID isn't a pathology any more than pregnancy is a pathology. GID is just a condition that requires certain medical procedures to bring it to its logical conclusion, just as pregnancy requires medical procedures to assist in the transition from the pregnancy to motherhood. GID is a normal state of the human condition that needs to be recognized and dealt with. The sooner the psychiatric professionals get that message, the quicker we will be able to slay the dragons that are tormenting our gender-different kids. |
Photo by Israel Wright, Copyright 2000, Lambda Publications,
Chicago