"The newly released DSM-V is more descriptive regarding gender than previous editions. It defines PTSD as the experience of events involving "actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violation" and acknowledges that women have a "greater likelihood of exposure to traumatic events such as rape and other forms of interpersonal violence." While this is certainly a step toward greater empathy and understanding, the manual could go even further. It could, for example, acknowledge and describe various and specific states of helplessness, heightened affect, and hyper-vigilance into which people are rendered when they are targeted for being less than manly, or less than desirable to men. The little girl who is constantly ignored may seem as anxiously alert as the girl who is touched inappropriately or the girl who is told she is "ugly" and "fat" every day of her life. Or the boy who internalizes his parents' palpable disappointment when he can't catch a ball may seem as panicky as the boy who is called "faggot" every day of his life, or as the boy who is beaten unconscious for seeming effeminate, or as any of the aforementioned girls. Without making such scenarios explicit, we run the risk of dismissing signs of trauma for being mere flights of drama...."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-oconnell%20lcsw/shes-so-trauma_b_3389698.html
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