Η πρώτη επιστημονική απόφαση στην ιστορία της ψυχιατρικής επιστήμης που πάρθηκε με ψηφοφορία.
Ο John Ercel Fryer, M.D. ήταν ένας Αμερικανός ψυχίατρος και ακτιβιστής για τα δικαιώματα των ομοφυλοφίλων γνωστός για την ανώνυμη ομιλία του στο ετήσιο συνέδριο της Αμερικανικής Ψυχιατρικής Εταιρείας το 1972, όπου εμφανίστηκε μεταμφιεσμένος και με το όνομα Dr. Henry Anonymous
Το 1973, το έτος μετά την ομιλία του Φράιερ, το διοικητικό συμβούλιο της Αμερικανικής Ψυχιατρικής Εταιρείας ψήφισε να αφαιρέσει την ομοφυλοφιλία από τη λίστα με τις ψυχικές ασθένειες – οδηγώντας μια εφημερίδα να ανακοινώσει: «Οι ομοφυλόφιλοι κατάφεραν αμεση θεραπεία».
Η Μπάρμπαρα Γκίτινγκς, μια ακτιβίστρια για τα δικαιώματα των ομοφυλόφιλων που είχε πείσει τον Φράιερ να μιλήσει στο συνέδριο του 1972, είπε ότι βοήθησε στην αλλαγή: «Η ομιλία του τάραξε την ψυχιατρική. Ήταν ο κατάλληλος άνθρωπος την κατάλληλη στιγμή».
.In 1972, at the first conference that actually featured a panel discussion on homosexuality led by LGBTQ+ people, a gay practitioner, John Fryer, testified on behalf of the declassification campaign. Given the risk involved with openly identifying as a gay psychiatrist, Fryer presented himself as “Dr. Henry Anonymous” and disguised his identity by wearing a mask and using a microphone with a voice distorter.
“Pull your courage up by your bootstraps and discover ways in which you as homosexual psychiatrists can be appropriately involved in movements which attempt to change the attitudes of both homosexuals and heterosexuals toward homosexually,” Fryer pleaded. “For all of us have something to lose.” The testimony did not convince voting members of the APA to remove the classification that year, but would signal a major turning point in the declassification effort.
1972 speech
Fryer was the first gay American psychiatrist to speak publicly about his sexuality at a time when homosexuality was still listed as a mental illness, a sociopathic personality disturbance according to the second edition of the APA Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-II), that was published in 1968.[10] In 1970, a protest at an APA event in San Francisco on aversion therapy, the message of which, according to lesbian activist Barbara Gittings, was "Stop talking about us and starting talking with us",[10] earned gay and lesbian activists a voice in the association. The next year at the 1971 convention in Washington, Gittings organized a panel discussion on "Lifestyles of Non-patient Homosexuals",[11] which was chaired by gay Harvard Universityastronomer Dr. Franklin E. Kameny, who previously had lost a job with the federal government due to his homosexuality.
In a planned protest, members of the APA Gay Liberation and the Radical Caucus seized the microphone. Kameny denounced the APA "oppression" of homosexuals by psychiatry, calling it "the enemy incarnate".[10]This was part of Kameny's long-standing protest about the diagnosis of homosexuality, a fight that he had been waging since at least 1964, when he appeared on television to declare that being gay was "not a disease, a pathology, a sickness, a malfunction, or a disorder of any sort". Kameny wrote in Psychiatric News: "[W]e object to the sickness theory of homosexuality tenaciously held with utter disregard for the disastrous consequences of this theory to the homosexual, based as it is on poor science."[12][13]
This protest led to a session the next year, at the association's 1972 annual meeting, on homosexuality and mental illness. Entitled "Psychiatry: Friend or Foe to the Homosexual?; A Dialogue", it included Kameny and Gittings on the panel. Gittings' partner, Kay Lahusen, had noted that the panel had on it homosexuals who were not psychiatrists, and psychiatrists who were not homosexuals, but no homosexual psychiatrists, so Gittings set out to find one who would be willing to be a panel member. After numerous contacts, she was unable to find a gay psychiatrist who would speak, so she had decided that she would read letters from gay psychiatrists without revealing their names.[3] She then contacted Fryer and convinced him to appear.[14][3] Later, Fryer said that the recent death of his father was one factor in his decision to accept the invitation, but his experiences at losing positions because of his homosexuality were the reasons that he did so, only after Gittings suggested that he could be disguised.[3]
Listed only as "Dr. H. Anonymous", later expanded to "Dr. Henry Anonymous", Fryer appeared on stage wearing a rubber joke-shop face mask – that sometimes was described as a mask of Richard M. Nixon, but which probably was altered from its original state,[6] – a wig, and a baggy tuxedo, and he spoke through a microphone that distorted his voice.[Notes 1] In 2002, Dr. Jack Drescher, then the head of the APA Committee on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Issues pointed out "[t]he irony ... that an openly homosexual psychiatrist had to wear a mask to protect his career. So the fact that someone would get up on stage, even in disguise, at the risk of professional denunciation or loss of job, it was not a small thing. Even in disguise, it was a very, very brave thing to do."[11]
At the time of his speaking, Fryer was on the faculty of Temple University, but did not have the security of tenure, so he was in real danger of losing his position if he had been identified – he had already lost a residency at the University of Pennsylvania,[14][13] and was later forced to leave a position on the staff of Friends Hospitalbecause of his flamboyance. According to Fryer, he found it to be ironic that the Friends administrator who had told him, "If you were gay and not flamboyant, we would keep you. If you were flamboyant and not gay we would keep you. But since you are both gay and flamboyant, we cannot keep you" was in the front row at his 1972 appearance as Dr. Anonymous and never realized that "Anonymous" was Fryer.[3][5][10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Fryer
https://daily.jstor.org/how-lgbtq-activists-got-homosexuality-out-of-the-dsm/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1125557/