Parliamentary debate on Monday to ban gay conversion therapy

Whrn you read accounts by adult transwomen of conversion therapies they underwent, they do sound abhorrent.

They concentrated on behaviours and preferences though - removing prefered toys and clothes; aversion techniques for men who wanted to wear make-up and dresses.

Lumping this in with counselling to explore why someone rejects their sexed body while accepting that there's nothing wrong with gender non-conforming presentation and preferences is wrong (bit exactly what they will try).

I have known a couple of young women to suddenly start identifying as lesbian. Turns out they were abused/raped and 'being lesbian' was a reaction to this. Counsellors need the ability to gently probe and this is not the same as conversion.

Exactly everything! I’m sure the one of the big worries from the therapists at GIDS that quit was homophobic parental influence- insisting their son couldn’t possibly be gay, he must be a girl

Thank you OP. I also saw this and thought “I wonder....”

A couple of points to add to the discussion.

Why has it taken so long to have a discussion about outlawing such abhorrent practices such as gay conversion therapy ? And why is it happening now?

Secondly, surely there are cases where pushing children down the trans pathway is in fact a type of gay conversion therapy in itself??

Some people might be so homophobic that they would rather their children were the opposite sex than simply gay.

So how would such a law deal with the potential conflict between these two?

If a young person is considering both the possibility they are gay and the possibility they are trans.?

But many professionals see puberty blockers and cross sex hormones as an insidious form of gay conversion therapy.

I may be imagining it but this formed part of the judgement which restricted puberty blockers in the Kiera Bell case.

Would that mean that puberty blockers could be banned if gay conversion tactics are outlawed?

There is a MoU around counselling services that identifies ‘talking therapies’ as conversion therapy and it is banned with regards to transgender treatment. That’s why there is so little mental health help for that particular population. James Caspian is one of the therapists that denounced this bad practice as the founding stone of trans affirmation model.
This should be kept in mind. Talking therapies for comorbidities are at the moment banned from the tools box for these professionals, despite a large proportion of trans people presumably suffering from MH.

However it is clear in my mind that the affirmation model washes away the homosexual. In deed, I’ve read a couple of times that homosexuality was the second best when there was no access to sex change.

I know, I know sex change is impossible but for some people wishing to be women surgery for presentation (mostly face and throat) together with performance is as good as. The people wishing to be males have a much tougher ride regarding their body hitting menopause almost immediately if there are no good endocrinologist on their case.

It’s so dark out there, despite the glitter and the rainbows.

I think no government would ever legislate to prevent a person who wanted to seek out help, for what that individual sees as issues.

I see this differently. I think the government would pass a law with such breadth that it does in fact legislate to prevent a person who wanted to seek out help but would say in the debate that of course the law wasn't to prevent a person who wanted to seek out help. Once the law was in place it would operate according to its stated purpose until applying the much broader scope became useful and then things would change.

We've see this kind of approach before, for example in the GRA and hate speech legislations.

Yes - but how do you define 'spiritual intervention'? Is praying for someone on this matter going to be illegal, even if that person has requested it?

Spiritual intervention can mean praying over (laying on of hands). It can also mean full-on exorcism. It can mean 'counselling'. No matter whether it is violent (and exorcisms can be - the devil is beaten away) the underlying psychic torment for the person (usually young) is debilitating. They are told they are wrong, will go to hell and need fixing. This is the underlying issue - so yes even praying is conversion therapy and should be banned and the 'consent' of the person concerned is highly manufactured. Of course they want to be 'cured'. The alternative is ostracisation and burning in hell.

The survey that generated this data asked a question about conversion therapy but didn’t define what they meant. Is that normal in this sort of exercise?

They say that 2% (of 108,000) of gay people had undergone something they would consider conversion therapy but mentioned that 4% of the trans respondents (4% of the 13% trans identified of 108,000), specifically transmen. They are not presenting the figures across the categories in a consistent way.

“Is this deliberate”

Yes it is. It’s straight out of the Dentons manual. Self ID in Ireland was Trojan horsed through on the back of gay marriage. All the focus was on that and no one noticed what else went through.

If those goes through, I can’t see how any therapist would be able to question any teenager presenting as trans and explore the issues around it

And I’m long past ascribing any good faith to the likes of Mermaids

"Oh, you had all night 'deliverance', accountability partners who you had to tell every time you fancied another woman, and you were eventually raped?
I'm sure we could reference it in a dry consultation document, but would you mind standing to the side so we can have a chat to the Mermaids people with their big eyed children and all those people with the lovely flags?"

Agree it is a Trojan horse. Conversion therapy though abhorrent isn't widespread. It's about protecting people from quacks and religious zealots. Where trans is concerned it's about doing the opposite.

This is a really good paper exploring a lot of the issues, and noting where there could a problem with false equivalence: www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-bulletin/article/sex-gender-and-gender-identity-a-reevaluation-of-the-evidence/76A3DC54F3BD91E8D631B93397698B1A

It’s like everything else. Who you are sexually attracted to do is nothing to do with how you choose to present to the outside world. The T does not belong in a debate about banning conversion therapy for LGB but I bet it dominates the entire discussion.

Mermaids are urging people to write to their MP to ban conversion therapy. Apparently 10% of Asexual people and 13% of trans people have been offered or undergone some form of ‘conversion therapy’.

This is worrying in two ways a) the obvious issue of lumping of perfectly legitimate psychological treatment for gender dysphoria in with gay conversion therapy and b) why have only 13% of people with gender dysphoria been offered any kind of therapy?

Tbf I don’t trust those figures at all. Looking at the survey they are supposed to be from. There is no overall figure for trans people being offered conversion therapy. The only relevant reference to 13% is that out of self selected survey response of 108,000, 13% identified as trans. They mention that 9% of transmen have been offered ‘conversion therapy’ but only 4% took up the offer.

Very bizarre.

www.banconversiontherapy.com/

But surely saying there is something wrong with you that can be fixed is exactly what conversion therapy is?

What bunting said with big shiny knobs on! It’s absolutely a Trojan horse to ensure the affirmation only for ‘Trans’ children & teenagers

Conversion therapy is utterly abhorrent & lesbian, gay & bisexual people have suffered appallingly from being told they’re ‘wrong’, need ‘fixing’ and can be ‘fixed’

The affirmation approach with trans is the exact opposite. It says ‘yes your body is ‘wrong’, yes you need ‘fixing’ and yes you can be ‘fixed’

It's interesting to see Elliot Colburn's announcement on twitter and people already making this all about trans:

twitter.com/ElliotColburn/status/1367525873478488066

With this being in the evening it might attract a group of zealots to the debate and not so many reasonable voices.