Page 5 | Public consultation on conversion therapy

everythingthelighttouches · 2021-05-11T08:44:09+00:00

The government have announced a new consultation before implementing a ban on conversion therapy that attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Does anyone know: a) what is considered conversion therapy? Are there good and clear definitions? Would it include a safe space for professionals to apply a watch and wait approach, rather than no questions asked affirmation in children? b) who is being consulted? If it is the public will a gender critical group provide us with a standard form we can all use? [[https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57059459.amp]]

Letsgetreadytocrumble · 12/05/2021 17:47

One thing I have really noticed about the gender ideology thing is that so many things are obfuscated, there are a lot of deliberately vague things, things which desperately need clarification, but that clarification is nowhere to be seen.

The talk of 'transwomen' in women's spaces - its clear that the general public is still thinking about old school 'transsexual' people, and there is no effort to clarify that actually, that it means any male who identifies as a woman. There are no efforts ever to clarify what is actually meant by 'trans people' or give any kind of definition to that.

Talking about GRA reform - its sold as 'simply making it easier for trans people to be who there are'. What it means is that people are allowed to legally falsify their birth certificate with no gatekeeping whatsoever, which no other group of people are allowed to do anyway.

The talk of 'trans health care for kids' - it sounds so reasonable, who would want to deny children healthcare? What it actually means is putting children on a medical pathway that will several stunt their bone and brain development and probably make them infertile and sexually dysfunctional, and that's without the removal of healthy body parts.

Sports - 'trans kids are being denied the chance to play sports' again it sounds terrible doesn't it? Except, no they are not, people are just saying that sport should be segregated by biological sex, as it was before males decided that they wanted to encroach on female sport.

This whole 'conversion therapy' thing is just exactly the same. Giving a young person counselling to see if they actually really do want to spend the rest of their life as a medical patient, to lose sexual function and fertility, to have healthy body parts removed is clearly not fucking 'conversion therapy' - but it is being sneaked in alongside discussions of gay conversion therapy, in order to try and set up a society where anything other than total affirmation is illegal.

As soon as you scratch the surface of this stuff even a tiny bit, it all falls apart, which is why it needs to be all smoke and mirrors to keep it going.

SayersScripts · 13/05/2021 10:45

The petition "Safeguard evidence-based therapy for children struggling with gender dysphoria" is NEARLY at 10000 signatures! I've shared with everyone I can think of and hopefully it can reach 10000 in the next few days.

yeahbutnaw · 13/05/2021 11:41

@JediGnot

Sounds like a great idea so long as anything to encourage people that they are transgender is as severely punished as anyone doing the reverse.

Sounds like Section 28 all over again. No surprises that Mumsnet support oppressive measures like that.

NecessaryScene1 · 13/05/2021 12:03

Sounds like Section 28 all over again.

Not as much as the original proposal, which was attempting to legislate against "promotion of heterosexuality" or "promotion of not being trans".

The suggestion is to get rid of the section-28-style value judgement which sees one way of being as better than the other, making it balanced.

Although it would be better, of course, to withdraw the legislation altogether.

HeadIsFucked · 13/05/2021 13:00

Its ridiculous how they lump 'trans conversion therapy' in with LGB. They are totally different things, yet stuck tgether which in a way contradicts itself to start with given transideology IS gay conversion therapy in many instances.

One is a barbaric practise that seeks to change who you are.
The other is therapy, with hopes of making you feel more comfortable in your own skin..

HeadIsFucked · 13/05/2021 13:03

The talk of 'transwomen' in women's spaces - its clear that the general public is still thinking about old school 'transsexual' people, and there is no effort to clarify that actually, that it means any male who identifies as a woman.

Not only that..it seems the general public think a 'transwoman' is a woman, who is trans. I have found this a LOT with those I know. Of course it looks horrendous if you are saying that female people who have a 'masculine' dress sense should use the mens changing rooms or whatever Speak clearly and define terms, and I have yet to come across anyone IRL over the age of 16 who is TWAW. Once they realise transwoman means male person who is trans. And vice versa

UppityPuppity · 13/05/2021 13:10

If they tried to smuggle in a ban on being gender critical in the presence of others in by talking about gay conversion therapy in the 60s and trying to make sure people didn't look too hard at the wording...and accidentally banned Stonewall in the process: trying to coerce lesbians into considering sleeping with penis people on threat of excommunication, it's pretty clear cut isn't it.

This is exactly what I am going to say. Remember Stonewall have redefined homosexual to someone who’s has a romantic and /or sexual orientation towards the same ‘ gender’.

Didn’t they also employ someone who delivered a class which promoted the ‘cotton ceiling’ - carousing lesbians to have sex with male ‘lesbians’.

Gender identity in schools - Stonewall / Mermaids etc is gay conversion.

Let’s do this!!!

OldCrone · 13/05/2021 13:13

@HeadIsFucked

The talk of 'transwomen' in women's spaces - its clear that the general public is still thinking about old school 'transsexual' people, and there is no effort to clarify that actually, that it means any male who identifies as a woman.

Not only that..it seems the general public think a 'transwoman' is a woman, who is trans. I have found this a LOT with those I know. Of course it looks horrendous if you are saying that female people who have a 'masculine' dress sense should use the mens changing rooms or whatever Speak clearly and define terms, and I have yet to come across anyone IRL over the age of 16 who is TWAW. Once they realise transwoman means male person who is trans. And vice versa

This confusion is getting even worse now with the tendency to talk about males who identify as women as 'transgender women' or even 'transgender females'.

Artichokeleaves · 13/05/2021 18:05

Of course it looks horrendous if you are saying that female people who have a 'masculine' dress sense should use the mens changing rooms or whatever

A pinch of salt needed with this I feel. A close friend is a now elderly and extremely masculine presenting lesbian, and has been all her adult life, shaved head and all. People do look twice to see what sex she is. She worked in a public facing career, so lots of experience of people, places, travel, tough and severely deprived areas. She says this has never happened to her, or to any lesbian friends of her acquaintance. She also points me to the famous woman academics and teachers post WW1 with shaved haircuts and men's tweed suits. Women have been very used to a diverse range of appearance and expression within their sex class for over a century.

NonnyMouse1337 · 13/05/2021 22:02

Woohoo! Just passed 10k signatures! 🎉

Notagain20 · 14/05/2021 07:06

Brilliant! 💪💪💪

nauticant · 14/05/2021 19:21

This came up in passing on tonight's News Quiz on Radio 4. If you want a demonstration of how this works as a Trojan Horse listen to the host and panel* dash to denounce the terrible Conversion Therapy and to declare that anyone opposing the new proposals must be a bigot. The Human Shield aspect of hiding behind the gays is very much in evidence. The relevant part is at 12:40:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000vz9b

It's interesting how the panel are able to have very firm views on this without having interrogated what it is they have such firm views about.

Daniel Finkelstein kept his own counsel

FindTheTruth · 15/05/2021 06:34

Jo Bartosch article on it here
lesbianandgaynews.com/2021/05/liz-truss-confirms-conversion-therapy-ban-and-consultation-to-address-the-practice-while-protecting-the-medical-profession-defending-freedom-of-speech-and-upholding-religious-freedom/

"Liz Truss confirms conversion therapy ban and consultation on “protecting the medical profession and defending freedom of speech”"

“Around 80% of children with gender dysphoria settle into their biological sex and explorative therapy must remain an option, rather than a sole pathway towards medication and surgery. Therapists must not be criminalised for exercising caution.”

FindTheTruth · 15/05/2021 07:37

Women have been very used to a diverse range of appearance and expression within their sex class for over a century.

women, in our diverse range of expressions and roles have always existed including prehistoric female hunters from 9000 years ago ...of the 27 burials with individuals of known sex who are were buried with hunting tools, 11 are female—including the newly identified remains—while 16 are male.

we, have always existed. we, have always been diverse, .... or to put it another way, simply ourselves. human beings. as Stephanie Davies Arai said, everyone has masculine and feminine traits.

OhHolyJesus · 27/09/2021 09:08

Bumping as the public consultation is apparently delayed until possibly the end of October.

www.bbc.com/news/health-58683038

OhHolyJesus · 29/10/2021 08:39

Here it is. Deadline 10th December.

www.gov.uk/government/news/government-progresses-ban-on-lgbt-conversion-therapy

SelfPortraitWithPterodactyl · 29/10/2021 14:31

Just responded to this.

Incidentally, I saw this in the govt consultation document: "Instead, they [therapists] may liken feelings of same-sex attraction or being transgender to a defect, deficiency or addiction and may conduct conversion therapy in an attempt to remedy or control this. We think this is wrong." But surely that is an argument to withdraw all and any treatment from trans kids?! If being trans is not dysphoria, not a defect or a deficiency, does not in fact make a child unhappy - then on what basis could any medical professional possibly treat them, ethically, in any way at all? Gay children should be left alone to thrive as nature intended - by including trans children in the same legislation the government would seem to be making the same argument for them. That strikes me as weirdly antithetical to what they (presumably) intend. Is it just me or is it a logical mess?

NiceGerbil · 30/10/2021 02:38

My ??? about this have not changed.

I ploughed through the research doc linked on the gov site www.gov.uk/government/publications/conversion-therapy-an-evidence-assessment-and-qualitative-study/conversion-therapy-an-evidence-assessment-and-qualitative-study

Well most of it! Well worth a look.

My questions were and are:

How prevalent is this in UK? (I would strongly guess not very)

Where happening, is it predominantly in certain religious/ cultural etc groups? (I will would strongly guess yes)

Is a change to the law the approach that will deliver the best results (I think no)

Mixing the T in is an issue. Yet again issues for other groups being hijacked. In this case, the report says no idea of prevalence

And an interesting one (for me).

What about the fact that our society media etc pushes enforces adherence to gender role, and pushes towards het sexuality so eg someone bisexual might never explore/ may ignore same sex partners etc???

Can society be prosecuted for all this massive pressure?

More of a point I find interesting than something I expect to be widely discussed!

OhHolyJesus · 30/10/2021 08:22

And interesting interview with Bev Jackson.

FloralBunting · 30/10/2021 09:26

My view has always been that the only helpful way to legislate against the gay conversion therapy practices that actually occur in the UK is to require quack 'christian counselling' to adhere to a licensed code of practice. Not sure how I would word it, but there are 'ministries' that present a vaguely authoritative 'psychology' front, and essentially mix cod amateur psychology with mild exorcism prayers.

I don't believe you can ban prayer or the religious belief that being lesbian or gay is wrong, and that is what means many LGB people seek this stuff out. But increasing acceptance of LGB people, which is certainly not in evidence in the trans activist movement, is the only way to effectively counter that.

The 'prayer ministries', however, do operate under that authoritative air, and that can, and should be stopped. Funnily enough,my experience of conversion therapy involved being told I had a 'male demon' and it was the demon that desired women sexually. Obviously, they wanted to cast it out. Genderists would encourage me to honour its pronouns as my true self. Bloody hypocrites.

OhHolyJesus · 30/10/2021 09:56

Oh sorry something is up with that link.

Here is a link to the relevant clip.

EmbarrassingHadrosaurus · 30/10/2021 10:06

Sex Matters response to the launch:

The government has launched a consultation on its plan to criminalise “LGBT Conversion Therapy”.

Sex matters has published an initial response outlining our concerns. We don't think gay conversion therapy and the treatment of children with gender dysphoria should be considered together.

While the government says the proposed legislation will stop under 18 year olds making irreversible decisions (and there were suggestions in the Times that it might lead to Mermaids being "banned") we think the threat of criminal penalties will more likely be used to pressurise parents and therapists who don’t take an affirmation approach to gender identity, and will put children and families at risk.
It will:
–Create a legal concept of “transgender children” based on self identification.
–Threaten parents and therapists who resist affirming their child’s declared trans identity with criminal sanctions.
–Allow Stonewall and other charities to apply for “Conversion Therapy Protection Order”, removing a child’s passport.
–Make charities that work with children afraid to employ gender-critical staff.

The consultation runs for just 6 weeks. We will be working to raise awareness of it and to provide analysis. We are calling on the government to withdraw the flawed consultation and proposal, and to wait for the outcome of the Cass review of gender identity services for children and young people.

Fuller version here: sex-matters.org/posts/updates/conversion-therapy/

ChateauMargaux · 30/10/2021 11:56

How can long term hormone therapy and surgery be anything other than conversion therapy?? Maybe that is the line that should be taken... converting males to females or females to males because they don't conform to gender norms.. we should change society to accept people however they present rather than require people to start on a path of lifelong medical intervention with long term side effects so they can feel that they fit in.

OhHolyJesus · 30/10/2021 16:19