Gender Identity Disorders: Jorgensen's Transition

In 1980 the DSM III was released with a new diagnosis that is still causing controversy today. It was called “Gender Identity Disorder”. When the DSM V was released, one of the changes happened to be the term “Gender Identity Disorder” was now renamed as “Gender Dysphoria”. This sparked a lot of controversy and a lot of conversation.
The controversy began the moment the news hit about the change in terms. The word disorder often has a negative connotation attached to it and we think the worst as a society when people come out and say they have a disorder. People with any kind of disorder are often looked at as different and even dangerous. So when we use the term and diagnosis Gender Identity Disorder, it implies the issue is the client and
Christine Jorgensen was born George and after she was drafted in the army, she traveled to Denmark and go permission to undergo surgery for her transition in 1951. Drescher (2009) stated “The publicity surrounding Jorgensen’s transition, beginning with a 1952 New York Daily News headline: ‘Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty,’ eventually led to greater popular, medical, and psychiatric awareness of a scientific concept that would eventually come to be known as gender identity, as well as recognition of an increasing number of people wishing to ‘cross over’”. So we know transgender surgeries began before
Homosexuality was a major cause in therapy and people being institutionalized. In the diagnosis it was stated that the diagnosis was for people with unwanted homosexual feelings and desires. But with the homophobic society that we live in, many people felt or were forced to change and we were left with very few “happy well adjusted homosexuals”. Though the term homosexuality was taken out, it was replaced by “sexual orientation disturbance” for those conflicted with their sexuality. This being very familiar to the change in terms and diagnosis for transgenders. It was not until 1987 that homosexuality was completely out of the DSM. Neel Burton (2015) from Psychology Today stated “The evolution of the status of homosexuality in the classifications of mental disorders highlights that concepts of mental disorder can be rapidly evolving social constructs that change as society changes”. Though homosexuality was taken out of the DSM, that very same year Gender Identity Disorder was added to the list of