Fantastic, exciting news from our friends in Sweden, from the mailing list for the group "Revise F65" which has been dedicated to educating and motivating the medical community to stop treating kinky sex as if it was a disease. They've succeeded! Kinky sex will no longer be viewed or treated as pathological in Sweden, and European activists are getting closer to convincing doctors in Norway to do the same.
Below, the full history on this victory for rational thinking:
Fetishism and Sadomasochism, along with four other sexual behaviours, has been struck from Sweden's official list of medical diagnoses since January 1st, 2009.
Monday 17th of November 2008, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen) announced that six diagnoses of sexual behaviours will be deleted from Sweden's official version of medical ICD diagnoses. The six diagnoses include sadomasochism, fetishism, transvestism, fetishistic transvestitism, gender identity disorder in youth, and multiple disorders of sexual preferences. http://www.thelocal
.se/15728/ 20081117/ It all started 23rd of November 2006 when Mika Nielsen wrote an article in the biggest Gay and Lesbian swedish online newspaper QX. She encouraged the Swedish sexual political movement to follow the example of the Norwegian "Revise F65" pioneer group and start the work to remove transvestism and BDSM-diagnoses from the ICD-10. http://www.qx.
se/nyheter/ artikel.php? artikelid= 4727 [Sorry. Swedish text only] A working group was established after the model of Revise F65 with members from Swedish gay, lesbian and heterosexual fetish and SM groups (Club Sade, LASH, Club Sunrise, Dekadance and RFSL). Mika Nielsen wrote a new article in "Ottar", the newspaper of RFSU (the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education). Once more she referred to the Norwegian Revise F65 efforts. http://www.rfsu.
se/smisk_ eller_vanilj_hur_gor_du_det_.asp - [Sorry. Swedish text only] The winter of 2007 the congress of RFSU for the first time in history decided to work for education about fetishism and BDSM and to work for abolishment of the same diagnoses as is on the agenda of Revise F65. The Swedish Lesbian and Gay Organization RFSL was however not willing to support this agenda in the same way as the Norwegian Gay Organization LLH did in 1997.
Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, celebrated Europride in July/August 2008. As the leader of Revise F65 I was invited to have talks with the RFSU BDSM group and give a presentation about the Revise F65 work 29th of July 2008. I shared all our information, arguments and experience with the RFSU group and also participated in two BDSM panel discussions.
Revise F65 is very happy to have supported Sweden in their important work. Now we really feel the Swedish decision as a big support and encouragement to bring about the same changes in Norway. The Norwegian Directorate of Health has announced that they will take a decision before May 1st 2009.
The Norwegian Directorate of Health attended a professional lecture from psychologist. Odd Reiersøl in Sidney 2007 about the F65 diagnoses and the Revise F65 group have for several years argued with The Norwegian Directorate of Health to remove the diagnoses in question. In 2003 we also delivered an open letter to The Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services asking them to remove fetishism, transvestism and sadomasochism as diagnoses from the Norwegian version of ICD-10. We never got any answer from them.
In the June issue of 2008 psychologist Odd Reiersøl got an article published about the ICD diagnoses of Fetishism and Sadomasochism in the Journal of the Norwegian Psychological Association.
After the good news from Sweden on the radio 17th of November, I phoned one of my press contacts in the online newspaper "Nettavisen". Very soon he received a pretty good statement from the leader of The Norwegian Directorate of Health, Bjørn-Inge Larsen. And one of the most well known Norwegian psychologists, Thore Langfeldt, for the first time supported the Swedish changes. http://www.nettavisen.no/jobb/article2402153.ece [Sorry. Norwegian text only]
After some communication with the Directorate of Health for a couple of days, I was told that key persons in the Directorate of Health now for the first time were reading the Revise F65 article "The ICD Diagnoses of Fetishism and Sadomasochism" publised in The Journal of Homosexuality and in the book "Sadomasochism, Powerful Pleasures".
Revise F65 also released a press statement with our point of view, and the Norwegian BDSM Organization SMil sent a letter to the The Norwegian Ministry of Health and Care Services asking him to remove the fetish and SM diagnoses. In an answer December 19th the Ministry of Health and Care Services said they had given the Directorate of Health the responsibility to take decision in the case.
Revise F65 has now finished a paper which we will present to The Directorate of Health with health-political and profession arguments to remove the diagnoses.
This is the situation in the Scandinavian countries for the moment. As you know, Denmark removed their diagnoses of Transvestism and Sadomasochism already in 1994/1995.
We really hope that we can celebrate a victory regarding these diagnoses during Christopher Street Days in Oslo in the end of June 2009!
Sincerely,
Svein Skeid,
Leader of Revise F65
So what does this mean to the average kinky person in Sweden? It means that if they go to a therapist because they are depressed or having relationship issues, the doctor won't look down his or her nose and say "it's because you are sadomasochist." Instead, they will treat the problem you really have instead of acting as if BDSM is the root of all your woes.
This is a victory for kinky people all over the world. It gives me hope that doctors in other nations will begin to see the light on this issue -- including in the US where activists (most notably Dr. Charles Moser) have been working diligently to get our DSM revised along similar lines.
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