My therapist seems politically opposed to my feminist views

Gotcha

My advice whether you decide to end therapy or not would definitely be to discuss and explain how you feel and why. As ending is a really important part of the therapeutic process.

Firstly it's very normal to google therapists and others so I get that, I don't think you've done anything "wrong" but equally discuss this too and explain you feel a bit guilty about it as you appreciate they have boundaries and a private life as we all do.

A decent therapist should be able to help you explore and understand these feelings without taking any anger personally. They might even be (secretly) pleased you are able to get angry with them!

I definitely wouldn't not not mention it to him as this is still going to influence the therapy in that "elephant in the room" type way and the progress you are making. Something comes up in the relationship, I would hope they would be able to notice that and may ask you why.

Please let us know how it goes and what you decide.

Oh for heaven's sake, no, this isn't the case. If he's any good he'll want to talk to you about it, OP.

Trouble is that everything will be different. You can't pretend this hasn't happened. You either take it into therapy with him or you leave.

Btw I wanted to recommend the TV series In Treatment, with Gabriel Byrne. It's pretty old now, but they also did a reboot a few years ago with a female lead.

Anyway it's a fascinating insight into the therapeutic process. Each series features four different clients and we see them progress (or not) and his relationship with his supervisor. I found it very useful when I was having therapy.

I was just using Trump as an example, hopefully a funny one. I have no idea how you feel about him, I was just using him to make a point.

He's clearly a good therapist in many ways to have been able to hold you this far without you realising his drastically opposing views.

Apparently I was the first person to broach the problems with trans with both my partner and separately with my therapist. There was a period of intense and difficult discussion with both and in retrospect I know it would have been a deal breaker for me with both relationships. Thankfully both "educated themselves" (as I had).

Experiencing male sexual violence has had a huge impact on my life and obviously my therapist and my partner know all about what happened. It is just too personal for me. I have friends who believe in gender identity but I couldn't have a sexual or therapeutic relationship with someone who thinks it possible to identify into opression.

There are other topics - eg Gaza, assisted dying, drugs, tax - where I might feel quite strongly but wouldn't need to end the relationship over differences in opinion. But sex / gender inequality, sexual violence, feminism, etc too close to home.

If you do have it out with your therapist he will have no choice but to drop you as a client. He will know he's now a cause of issues in your life and that puts him in an unethical place. He's proven to behave ethically. If you want to have it out with him that's your choice, but understand you will be leaving him with no choice.

another therapist here, trained a long time ago, thankfully before the gender woo took hold. Am a bit of a dinosaur re sharing my views or anything private as we were taught to be a neutral and safe space, clients shouldn't really know your views on anything vaguely political and shouldn't really know much about you at all (I've a couple of lines on Linkedin!) so this whole directive social activism piece that has infiltrated training courses is anathema to me.
I really think you don't have to justify your feelings of disappointment, you trusted this person and now you've found out that he's proud to support this awful misogynistic and homophobic movement. I would love for you to be honest with him and let him get some good old feedback on what it's like for you. But it's not your job to educate him so feel no pressure. Get a new therapist and if it were me I'd be looking for someone who trained before this craziness took hold.

That’s a tough issue @idontknowhowtodreamyourdreamsI can only say that, if it were me, I would have to find a new therapist. I cannot imagine trusting a man who doesn’t support women on these issues to the extent of having them as my therapist (caveat here, I’ve had therapy and specifically requested a woman because I’m a victim of DV so this may actively colour my judgement on this issue).

Good luck whatever way you decide

He ought to be up to that, though, OP. I think it is likely that he hasn't mentioned it because the space is for your thoughts and feelings, not his, and because he isn't aware that you're aware of his views. I am willing to bet he's wondered about what you would think or feel if you did. And now you do, and it's relevant to how you feel about the work you're doing together and your relationship, and you are entitled to raise it with him and he should be trained sufficiently to be able to navigate that with you.

I don't think this is fair on OP at all even if she is "staying in an intellectual mindset and pontificating" (and I don't see that she's said anything to suggest that). I've used the counselling space to explore social and political developments, my views and feelings about them and what might be going on behind all of that, and I don't know how you would do that without expressing them.

@idontknowhowtodreamyourdreams
I made a very neutral observation on page one without telling you my opinion on how I think you should deal with this, because I didn't know what I thought you should do. I've thought about this overnight and now have a firmer view.
I don't think you should lose trust in your therapist. He clearly has strong views on this matter if he's protested this, and yet his way of dealing with it was to steer you away from the topic. If I was his therapist it would have smacked him around the head for his views while saying "whatchu talking about Willis?" ( a Different Strokes meme ), and every time that I could see he was getting over the shock of being head smacked by his therapist, I would have done it again to try and keep him in that shocked state.
The people on this board, myself very much included, have very strong views about gender. The idea women should have to share their private spaces or sports with fetishitic predatory men is a view I find utterly abhorrent and morally absurd to the point of letting myself get very worked up about it. I have other views e.g. I quite like Trump that you'd probably visibly strongly disagree with, but if you met me in real life I would physically stand in front of you, and figuratively stand behind you at every opportunity to protect you from predatory boundary non respecting men I despise with a passion. Women's rights to say "no", and "fuck off you creepy cunt" to seriously damaged men who insist on trying to invade their spaces is a really big deal in my world. I'm a single issue voter on this front. My like of Trump would reverse if he reversed his position on this issue.
That your therapist is what I consider the other side of the issue, and he cares about it enough to protest it, and yet when you bring it up his action is not to react like I would, or to tell you you're wrong, or to try and convice you into believing his point of view, but to steer away from the topic says to me he respects your boundaries as a client. He takes his job and his responsibilites seriously. He is well aware of the ethical boundaries, and he observes them. You say you've built up trust over a year of seeing him. My argument after thinking about this is that your trust in him is well founded. He's proven why you you placed that trust in him.
Don't look him up any more. Give him the respect he gives you. Stay off this one topic. Explore other topics that will help him help you. He's a better more ethical therapist than I would be if you brought up Trump to me. You be in a daze with you ears ringing wondering who the fuck Willis is and why I kept smacking you around the head calling you by that name. He's allowed to have different beliefs to you, in fact it benefits you, if he was exactly the same as you he would be no use to you as a therapist. He actually sounds like a good therapist to me.

I'm thinking you're responding to the other poster with lavender in their username.

I did agree with you in my post that his profile should have been locked down to avoid this as an issue even if you had snooped. Although I guess at times there's limitations to this such as if you've been tagged by someone with a public profile etc. At times Facebook etc have changed settings without informing users.

"And would those clients be told off by you for ‘snooping’ ?"

@rantznotbantz

Yes. Why would that be any different for any other client?

I suspect he'd quite cheerfully say he believes in protecting the rights of women and girls because like most people he hasn't really thought it through. Maybe he's accepted the sort of intersectional feminism which claims trans identified men are a sort of vulnerable woman. I wonder what he would do if you challenged him on it? I'd be tempted to have a session on how you feel about those who have abandoned women and girls on this issue. Let rip about men in women's prisons, rape crisis centres, changing rooms, about the gaslighting of women who protest, about how it makes you feel as an abuse survivor when you hear about people abandoning safeguarding. How telling children they might be born in the wrong body is abuse. You don't even have to tell him you saw his facebook page. Then you can walk away if you want to.