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A Board to Slide With

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision, DSM-5-TR

How to relate to this board?

The most recent update to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision, DSM-5-TR included a cast of characters on the board that makes me want to slide off my chair as I write this description for you, dear reader. Kenneth J. Zucker and Ray Blanchard are each well known for different kinds of anti-trans violence. Zucker is credited for inventing a kind of violently anti-trans conversion therapy aimed at children to which claims to prevent children from finding out that they are transgender. Blanchard is well known for another kind of violent anti-trans femme theory that conflates trans women with male cross dressers known as autogynephilia.

Named both as the chairs of the DSM Paraphilias Subworkgroup, as Julia Serrano saliently and poignantly remarks in her text, Trans People Still Disordered in DSM, from October 2013, here. To have a relationship to this board, this subgroup and this manual is to only have a partial, sliding and sliding off again relationship to this context. When the DSM-5 was updated, the trans community had largely been focused on repealing the categorization and frameworks within the moniker: Gender Identity Disorder (GID). This GID categorization was changed to "Gender Dysphoria" meaning that some trans* people with some insurances can use this designation to access gender affirming care. Some trans*organizations celebrated this shift from GID to Gender Dysphoria as a win because they understood it to be a de-pathologizing move. However with the DSM-5-TR the expansion of the definition of 'Transvestic Disorder' furthers stigma at the intersection of saneism and sexual deviance, specifically targeting and expanding pathologisation and stigma of trans feminities.

Sliding in and out of these regulations for strategic access is the only possibility I find in relating to the DSM as a queer trans*crip. In the development of these categories by the board of the DSM no lived experience experts were credited or asked what we think (at least not in the research I have been able to find so far).

1. Shown is an infographic that reads “DSM-5 Task Force and Work Group Members” with three colored blocks. The biggest one coming in at 100 is “Psychiatrists”. The second one coming in at about 45 is “Psychologists”. And the third coming in at around 10 is “Other Health Professionals”. These are the “experts” who have developed the codification and established the board of deciding about medical frameworks within the current DSM-5 determining the access to health care and services for many people. According to this framework no lived experience experts were asked. Conspicuously absent. 
2. This is an image of the DSM-5-TR (TM) book itself. The cover reads “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition Text Revision, American Psychiatric Association”. Across the pages are many small tabs peaking out of the book in many colors for easy finding access. On the tabs read things like “AD/HD Learng”, “Grief Other”, “Somatic…”, “Prsstnt Premens Sub Ind”…. and many more.  

Adolf Ratzka

Tutorials: English: How to transfer from wheelchair to car with sliding board and lifting sling 

On Aldof Ratzka's website he shows us how his care assistant helps him to slide from his wheelchair into a seat of a car alongside this board. These are self-published tutorials, a self-documentation of how to care for his body and how to support his movement in and out of cars (in this case).

We can see on his website there is a black board is a board with two handle holes in it. He suggests ones that are better than others, and also speaks about a specific kind of ROHO cushion that he had made for himself. In the stills we see Adolf seated in a lifting sling under his legs, as he is seated in his wheelchair. In the video a care assistant slides a board beneath Adolf's legs and pulls him from the wheelchair into the front passenger seat of the car. These videos are published on his website in English & Swedish reflecting where Adolf lived throughout his life in Germany, the US and Sweden until his passing away in 2024. Further description by Ratzka - and step-by-step tutorials are available

on his website and YouTube .

1. Shown is a screenshot from Adolf Ratzka’s website, it is a video embedded on the site. Above the video is the header “How to transfer from wheelchair to car with sliding board and lifting sling”. Below it is a YouTube link and some writing from Ratzka about how to. The video is paused at a moment where the board is between a wheelchair outside the car and the seat inside of the car. Some arms and legs are in view.
2. Shown is a screenshot from Adolf Ratzka’s website, it is a video embedded on the site. Above the video is the header “How to transfer from wheelchair to car with sliding board and lifting sling”. Below it is a YouTube link and some writing from Ratzka about how to. The video is paused at a moment where the board is between a wheelchair outside the car and the seat inside of the car. There are some hands adjusting the board.
3. Shown is a screenshot from Adolf Ratzka’s website, it is a video embedded on the site. Above the video is the header “How to transfer from wheelchair to car with sliding board and lifting sling”. Below it is a YouTube link and some writing from Ratzka about how to. The video is paused at a moment where there is a black screen and in Swedish it reads “6 Placera glidbrädet under bärselen”. (6 Place the sliding board underneath the carrier).

‘Box Truck Lifting Board’ in Behinderte Zukunft / Disabled Future: Zur Situation der Körperbehinderten Kinder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland / The situation of physically disabled children in the Federal Republic of Germany 

Werner Herzog Productions

This entry centers the agency of Adolf Ratzka and the technology class that retrofitted a box truck to make this car accessible for him to drive. In the film, Werner Herzog disappears the name of Ratzka's university, the technology class's name and does not thank Ratzka nor any of his accomplices in the credits of the film.

What we see in these stills is Aldof Ratzka getting into his vehicle with a lifting board at the back. This vehicle is a box truck that a technology class made with him as their semester project. This truck, especially designed for and with Ratzka, made it so that he could drive. Included is full handheld power steering, a radio connecting to other tech hackers incase he breaks down while on the road and a board sliding up and down at the back of the truck so that Ratzka and his wheelchair can be seamlessly lifted into the truck - sliding in and on his way.

Werner Herzog, Hans-Peter Meier: Director, Producer

Rolf Illig: Narrator

Jörg Schimidt-Reitwein: Cinematographer

Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus: Editor

1. Shown is a screenshot from the film Behinderte Zukunft / Disabled Future which is of Adolf Ratzka on a lifting board moving into a box truck with himself & his wheelchair. Its a sunny day in the film and Ratzka appears as a white German physically disabled man sitting in a wheelchair - wearing a button down shirt and gray slacks. 
2. Shown is a screenshot from the film Behinderte Zukunft / Disabled Future which is of Adolf Ratzka on a lifting board moving into a box truck with himself & his wheelchair. Its a sunny day in the film and Ratzka appears as a white German physically disabled man sitting in a wheelchair - wearing a button down shirt and gray slacks. In this image Ratzka is looking down at the pavement as the board moves up. 
3. Shown is a screenshot from the film Behinderte Zukunft / Disabled Future which is of Adolf Ratzka on a lifting board moving into a box truck with himself & his wheelchair. Its a sunny day in the film and Ratzka appears as a white German physically disabled man sitting in a wheelchair - wearing a button down shirt and gray slacks. In this image Ratzka and his wheelchair has been lifted by the mechanized board nearly into the box truck.