Alicia Kearns has been a strong supporter of the ban for ‘transgender conversion therapy’.
No share token but a key quote:
“ As with specific legislation on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), victims no longer have to rely on adjacent but ill-fitting terms; instead the offence is clearly defined, and the criminal severity is consistently established and recognised.”
That being true, Ms Kearns will have no trouble defining the terms ‘transgender’ (in relation to a child) or ‘conversion therapy’.
But she doesn’t define either.
“The ban on so-called conversion therapy is targeted at fraudsters and charlatans — those so divorced from decency and compassion, and so hellbent on the rightness of their world views that their brand of torture frequently drives their victims to depression, severe mental suffering and suicide.”
I read that and I still don’t know exactly what would be banned under the bill. I still don’t know how it would weigh against what NK seems to target in her understanding of “conversion practices”, which seems much broader than a ban on coercive practices in a therapeutic or religious setting.
I re-read the consultation and I still don’t know what would be illegal.
But again, the proposed ban seemed to target existing criminal offences of physical coercion practices (for adults and children) and add an aggravating factor to the law. Fine.
Then, it suggested, ‘While there are adults who may choose to undergo conversion therapy, it is the government’s view that those under 18 years of age are more vulnerable and therefore are at higher risk of being harmed. As such, our approach provides stronger protections for those aged under 18 years.’
So the proposed law on talking therapies with the aim of changing someone from being transgender to not being transgender was aimed at children.
So what is a transgender child? What is the actual legal definition, and how does it not beg the question of ‘exploratory therapy’? Because, if the aim of ‘therapy’ is to change someone’s ‘gender identity’ (a term which according to AK was never going to be in the law) from transgender to not-transgender, doesn’t this imply that they ARE in fact transgender, even though that has no legal definition?
AK also claims: “ It’s about cracking down on those who use therapy as a smokescreen for a homophobic or transphobic agenda which causes lifelong harm — afflicting people with the belief they have a pathology and don’t deserve to be loved.”
I don’t know what she means by “don’t deserve to be loved”, but has it actually been established that young people presenting with gender-related distress DON’T have something else going on, that we might legitimately regard as a ‘pathology’? It hasn’t. In fact, as the interim Cass Review suggests, we know many of the young people who would fall under the non-definition of ‘transgender’ offered by AK might well have other conditions and factors causing their distress: autism, abuse, being bullied, internalised homophobia.
Johnson has made exactly the right decision. There are too many unknowns to create a law against something on the basis of assumptions that might turn out to be completely wrong.