The review process of the DSM 5: is gender a cultural or diagnostic category?
The review process of the DSM 5: is gender a cultural or diagnostic category?

Summary/Abstract: Never before has there been an intellectual production on the transgender population as observed in the last decade. Many researchers have tried to find a biological explanation for the origin of gender identity of transgender people. There is, however, a different field of research that has tried to prove that it is impossible to find a biological explanation for the diverse expressions of genre because “gender identity” is a cultural question. These two positions are not new, but the dispute between both of them has intensified due to the reviewing of the process of the Manual of Diagnostic and Statistical of Mental Disease (DSM) with its fifth edition completed in 2013. Should trans identity continue to be diagnosable? This is the question that almost all articles written in the last 10 years have tried to answer. The DSM is a manual from the American Psychiatric Association (APA), but its power is not limited to the borders of United States, generally, psychiatrists worldwide use it. The objectives of this article are the following:1) Presenting the process of debate that resulted in the name change of diagnostic category from Gender Identity Disorders to Gender Dysphoria. The name change, as pointed out by several researchers, does not solve the problem of stigmatization or of health care: 3) Presenting the changes in the new version of the DSM-5, the chapter on “Gender Dysphoria”. For the first time, gender appears in a separate chapter of sexuality. The methodology of this research has been based on file research that happened between 2013-14 in the database of CUNY (City University of New York).

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