Conversion therapy policy treats trans people like second-class citizens

with 345 supporting clicks

I think we need another name for so called conversion therapy as it applies to transperson. We're playing by Stonewall's rules, it makes it easier to conflait with gay conversion therapy. Like, 'you're not trans, and, even if you are, you won't be by the time I've finished with you'. But, as I understand it, this is not the therapy being proposed for transpeople.

How about 'confirmation therapy'. As in let's confirm this is really what you want/need. It's close enough to 'affirmation' but different enough to keep everyone on board

Conversation on some things? Mandatory, it's what good parents do from clothing purchases to homework to savings advice and finishing a course of abx.

Conversation that exchanges different perspectives or might actually dissent from a child's prompted course of choices and action plan? Possibility of not only a fractured family but charges or a police interview.

Surely most people are very aware this is so much smoke and mirrors? I note absolutely no mention of this from any of my LGB friends on social media, and not even my right-on tra friends seem to be talking about it.

Can we take the general public shrugging as tacit agreement with the government's decision?

Not to mention risking criminalising parents who commit the crime of saying 'hang on a minute, let's talk about this'.

Yes. They want to make it illegal to say you think it’s unhealthy, or you don’t share the person’s belief in gender identity

YY. They are back-pedalling on this, at the moment, because they want to get it back into the bill without much redrafting.

Because it could look, if one was very cynical, like historic events that affected LGB people being leveraged for the current purposes of TQ+ agendas.

CCTV, videos and many witnesses aren't enough for some people (hospital WiSpa etc.) and yet we have stories without dates.

The phrase conversion therapy and the conflation with religious interventions is helping to confuse discussion here and that's what some people want.

‘So the part of that that is presumably conversion therapy is a counsellor telling a patient not to have surgery? That's it? Maybe questionable for a therapist to offer advice but seems a bit extreme to bring in a law to make it illegal.’

Yes. They want to make it illegal to say you think it’s unhealthy, or you don’t share the person’s belief in gender identity.

Because it could look, if one was very cynical, like historic events that affected LGB people being leveraged for the current purposes of TQ+ agendas.

Then it's fine.

GLAAD are bloody hypocrites.

I think as men in the 50s/60s were given this kind of "treatment" which they believed could make them stop being gay, that it's not a stretch that was suggested for the few male people who presented as transsexual, especially if they sought help from psychiatrists for this.

This is an appalling story. Are people being given electric shock aversion therapy in the UK? And it's legal?

It's horrific, but this was in the 60s, not now.

Why does being trans mean you need to change your body though ?

The vast majority of people without any gender or who have a gender identity that doesn't fit with their body just live ordinary lives . We have lived like this for centuries and no harm came - whereas surgery is changing people and does cause harm

Very similar accounts were described/related during my degree studies on the 80s, referring to attempts to change male homosexuals sexual orientations. Even then, it was quite clear that these ' treatments' were both ineffective and cruel. There was some disagreement whether it was cruel if the man wanted his sexual orientation to be changed and treated them. Disagreement, because even then people were asking whether social pressures were forcing him to want to change himself, was it internalised homophobia? (Though we didn't use that word at the time.)

This strikes me as similar to the photos of 'Ukrainian war atrocities' that turn out to be photos taken during the Serbo-Croat war in the 90s.

So the part of that that is presumably conversion therapy is a counsellor telling a patient not to have surgery? That's it? Maybe questionable for a therapist to offer advice but seems a bit extreme to bring in a law to make it illegal.

I do agree that nobody should be getting electric shock aversion therapy though, that sounds unbelievably awful.

All the other accounts are from lesbian and gay people apart from one. The person describes how their pastor tried to talk them out if being trans. The only bit that related to therapy is this:

'When I met the counsellor and talked to her about my dysphoria, I explained that I’d been secretly binding my chest for years and desperately wanted surgery to remove them. She told me not to have surgery and to leave my body alone. '

Found an account here:

www.banconversiontherapy.com/carolyn-story

'During the appointments, I was taken to a dark room and strapped to a wooden chair. Doctors gave me painful electric shocks while images of women were projected on the wall in the front of me. I still remember clearly the pain of those shocks and the tears that ran down my face. The doctors were convinced that, if I learnt to associate my gender with physical pain, I’d stop having those feelings'

This is an appalling story. Are people being given electric shock aversion therapy in the UK? And it's legal?

www.glaad.org/conversiontherapy

GLAAD:

'Conversion therapy is any attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.'

Any attempt.

Was a clear definition given as to what form this conversion therapy took? Otherwise, given the routine hyperbole demonstrated by many transactivists, it seems quite possible that the “conversion therapy” offered was any treatment that wasn’t instant affirmation.

Afaik there was no definition at all given. Which leaves the field very wide open to interpretation. Is someone refusing to use a new name 'conversion therapy'? Does this apply to therapists or do they include friends and family members, people in the street?

Glad you liked it! And it’s 299 now. (Ok, it’s outing, but I was v chuffed with the response to my Times post!)

@ChopinBoard

Best rated with 270-odd likes:

"This is the fault of trans activists themselves. They have denounced everything except instant and total affirmation of a child’s claim to be transgender, as “conversion therapy”.
Banning conversion therapy means that therapists would be unable to explore a child’s gender confusion, to pick up the 80% of them who are actually just gay or autistic, or have previous trauma such as sexual abuse, and are not trans at all.
Such patients would be shunted straight onto the pathway of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and/or surgery, leading to the distress and court cases of detransitioners such as Keira Bell.
This is why trans children were excluded from the ban. Nobody is trying to subject them to 1960s style shock aversion therapy, which gay people suffered.
The article is completely disingenuous."

Reply to that ^^ with 100-ish likes:

"This is well argued - unlike the article itself, which is full of conceptual misunderstandings and deliberate obfuscation. I find it quite shocking that someone who is presumably medically trained and in such a prominent and influential position nationally cannot see the fundamental difference between the reality of sexual orientation on the one hand and the fantasy of ‘gender identity’ (which is nothing more than a person’s sense of whether or not they identify with the cultural stereotypes associated with male or female) on the other"

Excluding trans from the ban does not allow 'perpetrators' (of this undefined conversion therapy) to act with impunity, as Dr Greaves alleges. Beating, withdrawal of food & drink, the hideously named 'corrective rape' etc are all currently illegal and so can be prosecuted.

Hyperbole.