A SETBACK IN THE LABELLING WARS

It's been five long years since transgender Samart "Namwarn" Meecharoen was labelled on her Sor Dor 43 military-discharge paper as "suffering from permanent psychosis". Prospective employees are legally required to see this document, and that meant that Namwarn - like so many others in her situation - had trouble getting a job.

This week the Administrative Court finally hears evidence in the landmark case brought by the Sexual Diversity Network against the Ministry of Defence on November 29, 2006 - a date now commemorated as National Human Rights Day for Sexual Diversity. 

There were smiles and sighs of relief in the courtroom when one of the judges read an initial opinion that the military had indeed violated Namwarn's rights and dignity.

However, the judge also decided that Namwarn should be reclassified as a katoey. 

LGBT activists see the issue as one of human rights, dignity and equality - not human categorisation. And they insist that, should classification be unavoidable, katoey would be inaccurate anyway since it legally refers only to hermaphrodites - people with the sexual organs of both genders. 

With the support and leadership of foundation director Teeranart Kanchana-aksorn and former National Human Rights comissioner Naiyana Supapung, the Sexual Diversity Network worked out acceptable terms with the military to be used for all future transgender conscripts. 

With the court ruling still pending, the hope remains that Namwarn's dismissal paper will be corrected to contain the term "incongruity between current gender and at-birth sex". This wording was a compromise derived from the medical diagnosis "gender identity disorder" that the military insisted on, citing the World Health Organisation's classification system. 

Advising the Administrative Court, the International Commission of Jurists said it was "diminishing" to use the label "gender identity disorder". It noted proposed revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to replace the phrase with the term "gender incongruence", defined as "a marked incongruence between one's experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender, of at least six months duration, as manifested by two or more indicators".

The American Psychiatric Association has a working group updating that manual. It calls gender incongruence "a descriptive term that better reflects the core of the problem: an incongruence between, on the one hand, what identity one experiences and/or expresses and, on the other hand, how one is expected to live based on one's assigned gender (usually at birth)".

The working group surveyed "consumer organisations for transgender people" and found that "many very clearly indicated their rejection of the GID term because, in their view, it contributes to the stigmatisation of their condition".

In France, "transgender identity" has been removed from the list of long-term psychiatric disorders. The government agreed that listing transgender identity as a psychological affectation was highly stigmatising.

Let's hope that the final court decision on September 13 will be made on the basis of human rights, equality and dignity rather than the categorisation of the multitude of human diversity into makeshift boxes by ever-changing medical opinions.