Conversion Therapy and a Survey of 25,896 LGBTQ youth

In the absence of a scientific (experimentally falsifiable) set of criteria for the presence or absence of 'gender identity', belief in gender identity remains at best metaphysical. But everything OP wishes to convince herself and her readers of depends on the real existence of gender identity

Yes @9toenails - we keep asking for scientifically verifiable (falsifiable, observable, replicable) data on gender identity.

And answer cam there none.

I don't see people advocating for conversion therapy for young trans identified people. I do see people advocating for therapeutic support to explore underlying issues and co-morbid mental health problems. This is not equivalent to being strapped into a chair and being zapped with electrodes. However it is presented here as being the same thing.
The move to outlaw conversion therapy in the UK is being hampered by this dishonest conflation of therapy and torture and only serves to muddy the waters with untruths.

I think it is no surprise to see an influx of people with a particular agenda to push recently with the court cases, parliamentary debates and briefings and bills, and the twatter effect.

At least this OP is trying to present studies and work with statistics across different threads. I am unsure they have read thoroughly what they post rather than someone else’s ‘debunk’ or explanatory interpretation though. I am unsure as to whether they have even really thought deeply about the accuracy or sense of the resources they link in their posts.

And frankly, should stop posting those debunking articles that have the first two paragraphs calling women ‘t*rfs’ as completely undermines what they are trying to achieve.

And if they honestly think ‘scientists’ worth listening to call women derogatory slurs, as one of the explanatory links they posted did, they probably need to think about their own biases. And motivations.

I am not sure (but I would very much like to be corrected) that according to detransitioners accounts, anyone really explores with people receiving hormones and surgery is encouraged to really explore what it will be like post-transition.
For instance, if they feel they don't fit as the sex they currently present as, do they really think hard about the possibility that they will end up 'not fitting' as their new sex either - and will end up in a perpetual half-way house of being neither one thing nor another? Or do they go through it all in the belief that the will easily 'pass' and be fully accepted and recognised as their transitioned sex?
Is saying to someone 'this might make things worse and you may never be perceived as male/female' conversion therapy or an attempt to dissuade them?

OP,

Of course the example of torture inflicted in the name of conversion 60 years ago is horrendous - and everyone bar none would say that should be outlawed. I believe it probably already is, though, under torture and assault laws. Quite rightly.

There is no evidence that that sort of 'therapy' is still going on today.

I fear that the scandal that will be shared on Mumsnet of the future will be 'There were children with gender dysphoria and they did what to them?! Gave them irreversible hormone treatments and allowed them to have healthy body parts removed?! Where was the therapy?! What were they thinking?!'

OP seems really intent on garnering scientific support for her beliefs. (And thereby convincing others? Her further motivation is unclear.) Sadly her quest is in vain from the start because the basis for the whole set of beliefs she wishes to promulgate itself has no scientific support.

In the absence of a scientific (experimentally falsifiable) set of criteria for the presence or absence of 'gender identity', belief in gender identity remains at best metaphysical. But everything OP wishes to convince herself and her readers of depends on the real existence of gender identity.

So, Shizuku, you may as well post links to studies assessing how many trans angels can dance on the head of a heavenly cross-dressed pin for all the scientific validity of the studies you have so assiduously collected and offered in this thread.

Please pay attention to the stories of homosexual people. Many young lesbians were affirmed in the idea that they might be a straight boy not a lesbian girl. Their bodies were irreversibly damaged by the doctors' failed attempts to convert the lesbian's bodies to look like straight boy's bodies. Many of these girls report being suicidal at the time they wanted sex reassignment. Lobby groups told the children's parents that the alternative to conversion to the opposite sex would be death. Listen to their stories today.

Thank you 30percent. This bears repeating.

In this light ‘conversion’ takes on a different meaning doesn’t it.

I wonder if people who push the affirming only treatment route will take any notice of the Detransitioner’s Day.

And start wondering about the numbers of them telling their stories and how many more there is than the number being pushed (the anywhere from 0.3-3.8% stat that gets wheeled out disparagingly).

A study was posted recently on this or another thread that tracked people’s mental health and found 8.3-8.8% were not living as their reassigned sex. A stat that was not comfortably received or acknowledged by the poster who posted the study.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/a4182708-Trans-rights-are-a-part-of-womens-rights?msgid=105430712#105430712

I personally will be reading the stories that they post today. Because each one is a lesson in why affirming only is harmful.

I can certainly see why activists would be very angry that they have not been able to convince the government to ban what they consider conversion therapy before any count of the detransitioner community can be done. And before the court cases of malpractice start. Because they won’t get any bite of the cherry so to speak.

Of course, after the HoLs turned around the Maternity Bill, I also doubt that a flimsy definition of conversion therapy would get voted through either.

OP you didn't answer my question. Please do.

I have other questions now too.

1. Should it have been a criminal act for an adult to try to talk Keira Bell out of her gender identity belief when she was a teenager?

2. Should it have been a criminal act for doctors to damage lesbian Keira Bell's body with drugs and surgery when she was a teenager?

3. Should doctors promoting, prescribing or performing "sex reassignment" through drugs or surgery on homosexuals to make them into straight people be banned from the practice?

4. Should the government recognise the historic abuse of lesbian girls like Keira Bell by the NHS and ban such barbaric treatment of homosexuals like Keira in future?

Today is the the day of awareness for detransitioners. Please pay attention to the stories of homosexual people. Many young lesbians were affirmed in the idea that they might be a straight boy not a lesbian girl. Their bodies were irreversibly damaged by the doctors' failed attempts to convert the lesbian's bodies to look like straight boy's bodies. Many of these girls report being suicidal at the time they wanted sex reassignment. Lobby groups told the children's parents that the alternative to conversion to the opposite sex would be death. Listen to their stories today.

I’m still waiting for the OP to actually read and respond to what is being put to them by posters rather than putting words in our mouths that make us straw-women.

Yep.

I don't think anyone's arguing taht conversion therapy is harmless or beneficial. But we need more detail about what this 'conversion therapy' is which is currently taking place in the UK

I'm still waiting for the OP to actually read and respond to what is being put to them by posters rather than putting words in our mouths that make us straw-women.

The bottom line is this:

People who have been heavily invested in the affirmative medical pathway for children are terrified that the world is waking up to what has happened and is continuing to happen, namely children are being medically and physically harmed by puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for no psychological improvement in the name of something that can only be defined using stereotypes. As a result there is a significant push to corral anything that is not the affirmative medical pathway under the umbrella of “conversion therapy”. Because the two words “conversion therapy” evoke such repulsion, due to its use in relation to barbaric practices, it benefits those who have pushed for the affirmative medical pathway by negatively associating anything that is not that pathway as “conversion therapy” in relation to care of gender non-conforming children.

They want people to think pointing out reality to children is conversion therapy. They want people to think refusal to inflict physical harm on children with puberty blockers and cross sex hormones as conversion therapy. They want suggestions that the massive increase in girls presenting to gender clinics might have reasons other than “innate gender identity” as conversion therapy. They want people to think that attempts to study this phenomenon is a form of conversion therapy. They want people to think therapy that helps children deal with trauma, abuse, autism, anxiety or depression as conversion therapy.

They want people to think this because if they don’t, the automatic response of anyone is to pause and appreciate that the unquestioning progression down the affirmative medical pathway may not actually be right for many children. Such realisations will challenge the whole existence of people and organisations and their previous advocacy of this pathway.

This is my personal view. I think this because it benefits no child whatsoever to lead a child unquestioning down the medical affirmative pathway, and surely all adults involved with the care of children would want the best possible healthcare for them. To object to this would suggest that there is an agenda other than having children’s best interests at heart, because we now know the affirmative medical pathway does not benefit children and is itself a form of conversion therapy. So why else would people object to exploration of gender issues in children, other than for selfish reasons?

It should be quite simple. Whatever a child’s gender “identity” is, whatever their gender expression is, they can hold that view if they so wish. A child can hold the view they feel like they’re the opposite sex, even if they can’t really explain what that actually means. A child can express themselves however they like, regardless of the norms of society at any given time or point in history. What that should not mean is they are fulfilling a criteria that means their bodies should be altered with medication. What that should not mean is that any distress causing such expression or a result of such expression cannot be discussed out of fear of prosecution. What that should not mean is that children should be lied to and told they are the opposite sex or can be the opposite sex with hormone treatments and surgery.

I would seriously question the motives of anyone who wants to prevent the appropriate treatment of children presenting to gender clinics by tying up that treatment with historical awful practices and threats of prosecution for medical professionals who actually understand the realities of what is required for these children.

C) your statistics have been thoroughly pulled apart and shown not to represent your conclusion."

They haven't, but if you think they have, you can always contact the scientists involved - I'm sure they'll welcome your input.

No need to contact the authors of the AJPH study you linked to earlier - the lengthy "Limitations" section in the Discussion shows that they are quite aware of the problematic aspects of the study.

For example, the authors make the following points (cited directly from the paper):

"Although noteworthy, our findings involve limitations that should be considered. For example, our data were cross sectional; thus, temporality cannot be determined."

In other words, the authors acknowledge that they couldn't tell which came first, conversion therapy or suicide attempts.

"Our study is also limited by the language of the [survey] item used to measure SOGICE [sexual orientation or gender identity conversion efforts]. Many young people may have undergone experiences that would be considered SOGICE but would not endorse the words “conversion or reparative therapy...Using questions that more comprehensively explain and address SOGICE will likely expand the rate at which young people report such experiences.”

So the authors and the survey participants also had trouble defining exactly what constituted conversion therapy.

"There is also a need to separately examine the associations of sexual orientation change efforts and gender identity change efforts with suicidality among young LGBTQ individuals...[a]lthough our question did not allow us to examine these differences"

"future studies should attempt to refine how SOGICE is measured, including how experiences differ between sexual orientation change attempts and gender identity change attempts, how age at exposure relates to outcomes, and how experiences differ according to the type of individual (e.g., licensed therapist or religious leader) conducting the efforts."

"Finally, our data did not allow us to attend to the impact of parental acceptance on the relationship between conversion therapy and suicidality...although parental acceptance was significantly associated with reduced suicidality"

Accepting parents are presumably less likely to try conversion therapy, so it's possible that lack of parental acceptance, rather than conversion therapy per se, may be driving higher suicide attempt rates.

I wonder what effect a ban on conversion therapy would have on detrans people.

I've already heard stories of detrans having difficulties reverting back to their birth sex legally, and have even more trouble getting access to hormones and surgery.

Well, I'm still waiting for some, any evidence that conversion therapy for trans people is either harmless or beneficial. Shouldn't be that difficult if it's so obviously not a thing that needs to be banned.

Mimmy seems to think that not giving a gender questioning child puberty blockers is a type of conversion therapy - not in so many words but she calls it ‘not a neutral act’. This is a concern.

The definition of conversion therapy is extremely important. It could result in a therapist being accused of ‘conversion therapy’ for refusing to give a child puberty blockers.

I honestly don't understand what trans gender conversion therapy is. Telling a man they're not a woman?

Shizuku

You can't define what transgender is. So don't have a hope in hell of defining what conversion therapy is

Its a mystery to you, but not to trans people or the doctors and scientists who work with trans people or millions and millions of cis people. Not your fault, I appreciate, but kind of irrelevant - there are always some people who don't understand something in medicine or biology^

You can't explain it because you don't know. You can't define 'female gender identity ' without recourse to gender stereotypes or circular definitions. Because 'feeling like a woman' is nonsensical - what is this universal woman feeling? How would you know your woman feeling was the same as mine, or the several billion females on earth? And as many women don't have a woman feeling, your logic is that they aren't women.

"They feel like a boy."

That's a different matter - now you are getting into gender identity.

What does this mean? How can a girl 'feel like a boy'? Obviously she can say this, but what does it mean? How would a girl know what it feels like to be a boy (or vice versa)? She has never been one, she can only imagine what it must feel like, but it's no more real than if she said she felt like a cat.

If you want to know how wrong male people get it when they think they know what it feels like to be a woman, have a look at this:
twitter.com/AugustaAndarta/status/1369807644089851906?s=19

What have women's clothes and 'feminine things' got to do with this person's 'gender identity' if it's not about stereotypes?

I find this very unclear too. I have mostly unisex clothes in my cupboard with maybe 2 dresses rarely worn. And I don’t have many ‘feminine things’.

Does this mean I am not a woman? Ffs.

It's an example of what conversion therapy is. That's a constant - it was conversion therapy 60 years ago, it's conversion therapy now.

Well, it would be if it was still happening. Thankfully it isn't.

But again, it's a bit odd what they did considering that gender identity is nothing to do with stereotypes.

She said: ‘I can still smell it. They soaked the electrodes in salt water, in brine, and attached them to my arm. ‘And then from time to time while showing pictures [of women’s clothes or typically feminine things] on the wall, they’d pull the switch and send a pain through my body. ‘The idea was to make me associate the pain with what I wanted to do, and therefore that would stop me wanting to do it.

What have women's clothes and 'feminine things' got to do with this person's 'gender identity' if it's not about stereotypes?

I ask again:
What is gender identity?

In scientific, observable, measurable terms

Without resorting to sex stereotypes or gender roles.

And without resorting to a circular definition.

It's a mystery to you, but not to trans people or the doctors and scientists who work with trans

According to Ray Blanchard, who worked with trans people for the best part of 30 years, the typology is some transwomen have AGP, and some are homosexual transsexuals.

He also concluded that both types are motivated by a romantic/sexual agenda.

You haven't said what other reason there is for being transgender. Do you have any ideas?

A) you can't define what transgender is. So don't have a hope in hell of defining what conversion therapy is."

It's a mystery to you, but not to trans people or the doctors and scientists who work with trans people or millions and millions of cis people. Not your fault, I appreciate, but kind of irrelevant - there are always some people who don't understand something in medicine or biology.

But not a mystery to babies, apparently. They know all about being transgender. Ask Diane Ehrensaft.

It's a mystery to you, but not to trans people or the doctors and scientists who work with trans

You just said, it's not a lifestyle choice, it's not gender dysphoria, it's not AGP.

So now you're saying it is? I'm so confused.