@blameitonthecaffeine
wasibat people are wrong about their sexuality all the time, surely? Especially when growing up. Lots of people change their minds about their sexuality at all times of life. Not saying there's anything wrong with that and certainly not that conversion therapy has any place in society but I don't think it's as simple as a decision on sexuality is correct and a decision on gender identity may or may not be.
I don't think there should be legislation on talking and advice on any issue. Sometimes adults give young people bad advice. But I don't think it's fair to make that a prosecutable or sackable offence. Conversion therapy is a whole lot more than advice though, it's sinister, proactive and abusive. I didn't know it was still legal tbh.
Thanks,
blameitonthecaffeine . You may be right, in a way. But 'being wrong about one's sexuality' is very different from being wrong about whether one is trans, I think.
Yes, a child may think she is gay because she is sexually attracted to another girl, then later find she is sexually attracted to boys. That happens, sure. But the point I wanted to make was that the attraction felt is self-validating in the sense that if I feel I am attracted to someone then I am attracted to that person. So, in this sense, one cannot be mistaken about who one is attracted to.
One can, by contrast, be mistaken about being trans. The distinction, then, blends into what we might describe as overall self-description. Based on this self-validatory aspect of attraction, If someone (child or adult) tells us "I am gay", and they are sincere, it makes no sense to tell them they are just wrong. By contrast, if someone (a daughter, say) tells us "I am a boy", then their sincerity will not validate their claim, especially in the light of contemporary discourse around 'trans'. What they say might be true, but it need not be, no matter the sincerity of its utterance.
I can be mistaken about whether I am trans in a whole other sense, in other words, from any way in which I could be mistaken about being gay.
This is especially important, it seems to me, with children. We should treat a child claiming to be gay differently from a child claiming to be trans with regard to their self-description. Thus, in other words, T should be separated from LGB with regard to possible so-called 'conversion'. You might agree with this conclusion even while allowing for confusion in a child's mind about who she is attracted to as her sexuality develops.
[In a sense, of course, this point applies a fortiori to adults whose adolescent confusion about developing sexuality has settled down. It would make no sense to call a mature person's sincere avowal of her own sexuality into question: the self-description "I am gay" cannot be false if sincerely avowed, whereas many other sincere self-descriptions could accurately be described as delusive ("I am smart", "I am Elvis reincarnated" ...).
It does seem, prima facie , that sincere avowals such as "I am a man" or "I am a woman" are likely to fall into the latter category of non-self-validating self-descriptions in our contemporary discourse. That is a slightly different argument, perhaps. The very fact of this being arguable, however, bolsters the case for splitting T from LGB, given the unarguable fact that, although I may lie about my sexuality, I cannot be mistaken about it in any ordinary sense of the word.]