Eating Disorders and Gender Identity Disorder

    In an article titled Gender Identity Disorder and Eating Disorders, by Hepp, Urs and Milos, Gabriella there was a case study on three adult patients who were seeking out GID treatment who had also been diagnosed to have eating disorders.  Through studying these patients in the out patient program they tried to loosely link GID to cause higher risk factors for eating disorders. In psychology however, it is very hard to prove that one thing causes another because everyone is different.


     There was an interesting quote used in the article that said:

"Homosexual men are more likely to desire an underweight ideal.." (Hepp and Milos 2002)

This statement i'm sure was based on the idea that society pushes our women to be super skinny and model like, and ideally homosexual men want to fit into society's idea of a perfect woman. This is bold to say because not every homosexual man is pushing to be transgender or possess woman like qualities, so how do push this mainly on homosexual men.

     It was also really hard for me to go with what this article was saying because it pushes the on the idea that people with GID will push themselves to eating disorders because of the fact they are so unhappy with their bodies only. From prior knowledge there is plenty of information on how most transgender people have to go to sex work and alcohol abuse (one disorder mentioned in the article), so it may have come to them trying to make their body look good to make a living or it may be because of messed up living situations that causes depression that leads to abuse of their bodies.

     To simply link a disorder based on skeptic belief that everyone wants to fit in to this perfect woman, is absurd, to me at least. While I am sure yes there are situations in which such reasons create a backdrop for disorders, its hard to put a label that transgender people are at risk because of an ideal body shape. It does not make sense really, because a lot of people with eating disorders transgender, homosexual, heterosexual, or asexual for that matter can develop an issue with their body image on the basis of societal pressures, equally.

References

Hepp, Urs, and Gabriella Milos. "Gender Identity Disorder and Eating Disorders."International Journal of Eating Disorders. Wiley Periodicals Inc, 2002. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.emich.edu/doi/10.1002/eat.10090/abstract>.

-Brittani Moorer