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Forum: Your Voice

Topic: Trans Kids
I have to say, TVO couldn't have picked a worse guest for the Your Voice show on Gender Identity and Children than Ken Zucker PhD. Along with his colleague, Ray Blanchard, he has become known within the trans community for crackpot theories like autogynephilia, an invented label that insinuates that transsexual women, i.e. male-to-female, transition purely for sexual purposes, instead of because of their core identities. He advocates reparative therapy, a controversial line of thought that tries to strip anything that might be remotely feminine from a born-male child, even something as innocuous as a pink crayon, in the hopes of 'forcing' a male identity on the child. A detailed report on his reparative therapy methods can be found here. He has connections to religion based, so-called 'ex-gay' groups in the US, such as NARTH. He has tried to legally shut down any criticism of his methods, including websites that only link to one that does. His employer, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, is notorious amongst trans people because of the 'lab-rat' mentality that infests the place, to the point where a Facebook group is actively campaigning for the closure of the Gender Identity unit, the former Clarke Institute. All in all, this is NOT someone you want around your kids, trans or not. As you can see from the NPR story linked above, there are better ways to deal with the issue besides inflicting what amounts to mental and emotional torture on your child. This should really be about helping the child establish an identity that truly shows who and what they really are.
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Started on 08 Jul 09 at 7:58 PM
by RadarGrrl

Gender: Boys, Gender: Girls

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Zucker
Let me agree with my friend RadarGrrl Dr. Ken Zucker practices child abuse in the form of Reparative Therapy " yet TVO see's fit to try and give him credibility by airing his insanity on YouTube and the Canadian air waves ! I have personally started a campaign against these kinds of abusers and now have 400 members in 4 days on facebook , growing at around 100 people a day. Having stopped Dr Phil from re-airing his abusive programs pushing Reparative Therapy on children and parents and the time has come to deal with the "Canadian " problem . We will focus on the mental abuse of Canadian transgender children by the government and by the education system . Below you will find the facts gathered by Gladd where absolutely no medical organization validates this blatant mental abuse of children and in fact says it's use is harmful and dangerous , something I am sure that he has not told his patients parents . Ken Zucker experiments on children ! THIS WILL END ! These kids are not guinea pigs for wacky theists with crazy theories to play with. - http://www.glaad.org/Page.aspx?pid=421 - Reparative Therapy - The nation's leading medical and mental health authorities have uniformly dismissed the idea that being gay is something that needs to be "treated." Among them: - American Medical Association - American Academy of Pediatrics - American Psychological Association - American Psychiatric Association National Association of Social Workers American Counseling Association American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists The American Academy of Physicians Assistants In 1998, the American Psychiatric Association unambiguously condemned attempts to de-gay people: The potential risks of "reparative therapy" are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient. Many patients who have undergone "reparative therapy" relate that they were inaccurately told that homosexuals are lonely, unhappy individuals who never achieve acceptance or satisfaction. The possibility that the person might achieve happiness and satisfying interpersonal relationships as a gay man or lesbian is not presented, nor are alternative approaches to dealing with the effects of societal stigmatization discussed. Therefore, the American Psychiatric Association opposes any psychiatric treatment, such as "reparative" or "conversion" therapy which is based upon the priori assumption that homosexuality per se is a mental disorder or based upon the assumption that the patient should change his/her homosexual orientation. In 2006, the American Psychological Association also noted that efforts to de-gay people are scientifically unsound and "create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish." For over three decades the consensus of the mental health community has been that homosexuality is not an illness and therefore not in need of a cure. The APAs concern about the positions espoused by NARTH (The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality) and so-called conversion therapy is that they are not supported by the science. There is simply no sufficiently scientifically sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Our further concern is that the positions espoused by NARTH and Focus on the Family create an environment in which prejudice and discrimination can flourish. NOTE FOR JOURNALISTS: If it becomes necessary to report on individuals and practices that claim to de-gay people, please consult with credible scientific authorities before proceeding.

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Posted on 30 Jul 09 at 3:42 AM
by Darlie

Trans Kids
I'm Karen, the producer of this show. You don't have to do much research to find out how much controversy there is around the way Dr. Ken Zucker approaches dealing with kids with so-called Gender Identity Disorder. As the show points out, in fact, that very title is in question and may change soon. I wanted to have him on the panel despite the controversy because his clinic sees hundreds of these kids a year and many, many parents are trusting him and his colleagues with their children. Like it or not, his approach is popular. And the only way to change the way things are done is to first know how they are being done and let the public know. That is what we hoped to do by having Dr. Zucker explain his approach on our show. To balance what he said, we made sure to have the mother of a child who appears to be 'gender disordered' and a trans man, both of whom took great exception to what Dr. Zucker was saying. Our host Cheryl Jackson was also sure to put some hard questions to the doctor. We need to get the truth out there in order for the public to decide things can't go on the way they are, if that's what people decide. Our job as journalists isn't to hide what's really going on, but to shine light on it. I am very glad, meanwhile, to see how active the gay and trans community continues to be in their fight for basic human rights for these kids for whom life can be so difficult. You really are fighting the good fight for little people who can't yet do it for themselves.

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Posted on 04 Sep 09 at 11:32 AM
by kbridson

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