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from Gender Identity Disorders
NYU Students Find Accepting Campus
For Transsexuals
March 8, 2007 - The New York University campus is an accepting place for individuals who cross-dress or believe they are men or women trapped in opposite sex bodies.
Brooke Donatone is a licensed clinical social worker at the NYU Student Health Center. She notes: "Few things fit into neat boxes and gender is one of them." Donatone disagrees with the DSM's definition of nonconformance with birth gender as a Gender Identity Disorder. "I don't see the purpose of pathologizing gender identity."
Andrew Fanelli is a cross-dressing NYU student who wears women's clothing but does not wish to have a sex change operation. According to Fanelli, "I'm a straight man who wears women's clothing. I refuse to let who I am and how I feel comfortable being become repressed."
According to NYU junior Adam Brown, "NYU seems to be a particularly open place. Especially being in the Village provides the opportunity to break apart social constructs."
NYU Professor Carolyn Dinshaw, chair of the social and cultural analysis department is former director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Studies. She observes: "I think that the match between body morphology and gender identification doesn't have to be perfect. There can be a disjunction."
NYU has a non-discrimination employment policy that welcomes transgendered employees.
Christopher Rosik, Ph.D., a member of the NARTH Scientific Advisory Committee, has observed: "While transgendered students are clearly in need of our compassion, I suspect that simply affirming their disjuncted gender identity does them a disservice. A preferable first response would be to determine if any help can be provided to lessen the disjunction for these individuals.
"Follow up studies of transsexuals have suggested that, while interventions such as sex change surgery reduced distress due to the perceived gender incongruity, their relational, vocational and emotional difficulties continued unabated. The collusion of NYU officials with these students' psychological reality to the apparent exclusion of encouraging them to seek help is therefore ill advised."
Additional Reading: Gender Identity Disorders.
Updated: 27 February 2008
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