A Downloadable White Paper and Call to Action
Kelley Winters, Ph.D.
2022 December
Edited 20230204
At 258 pages, the 8th Version of the WPATH Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People is well over twice the page count of the 7th Version, and 29 times that of the first Standards of Care. The 8th Version contains a great deal of thoughtful, evidence-based, affirming content. For example, the chapters on primary care, led by Dr. Madeline Deutsch, and on mental health, led by Dr. Dan Karasic, are exemplary and urgently needed. However, the positive attributes of the SOC8 are undermined by contradiction and compromise of previously established principles of ethical and effective TGD health care. Developed amid growing theo-political extremism that targets TGD people as a scapegoated class, the SOC8 reflects a struggle between factions within WPATH—between those who advocate affirming, medically necessary care and those who see TGD people primarily as mental patients subject to doubt and discouragement. Antiquated stereotypes of psychopathology that that begrudge or indefinitely delay affirming medical care still abound in the SOC8, especially for TGD adolescents. Contradiction and confusion in the SOC8 on WPATH’s foundational ethical principles will certainly be cherry-picked by disaffirming health systems and exploited by transmisist theo-political factions to deny Trans and Gender Diverse individuals access to confirming and affirming care.
I offer this white paper to provide an accessible, tabular reference to help TGD community members, health professionals, and scholars sort out the tangle of affirming vs. regressive content in the SOC8. I urge WPATH leadership and SOC8 editors to recommit to WPATH’s established, ethical principles of care, including depsychopathologization and medical necessity of affirming and confirming treatments. These shortcomings in the Standards of Care need to be corrected without delay.
I recommend that the WPATH leadership place an urgent priority on publication of a corrected SOC8.1 point-revision. These shortcomings must be addressed with consistent, unambiguous cogency on the depsychopathologization of human gender diversity and the medically necessary of affirming and confirming treatments.
Copyright © 2022 Kelley Winters
Trans Policy Reform Blog 