Conversion therapy policy treats trans people like second-class citizens

[Igneococcus]

Says Dr Zoe Greaves chairwoman of the British Medical Association medical ethics committee in the Times. She is of course conflating LGB and T while not telling us what conversion theraby for transpeople actucally is:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/05d0d406-b8df-11ec-94e5-2197dead5942?shareToken=3a846c7a3bee13e23382a1a0373848b0

This is so disingenuous. The legislation only ever proposed to ban ‘conversion talking therapies’ for people under 18. There was never a legislative proposal to prevent trans adults from seeking out talking therapies of any kind.

So this whole controversy is about kids. Kids who can’t legally go through a gender reassignment process anyway.

It is unethical and harmful to individuals and to wider society to perpetuate the idea that being lesbian, gay, bi or trans is a mental illness that must be “cured”.

One of these things requires medical treatment. One of these things is not the same.

one in seven trans people report they have been offered or have had “conversion therapy”, making them the most vulnerable group subjected to the practice.

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.

The government has scrapped plans to ban trans “conversion therapy” on the grounds that it would be harmful for children who have doubts about their gender. However, there is currently scarce evidence to suggest that this is the case.

Clearly defining in the legislation what is and isn’t covered by “conversion therapy” will leave room for actual therapeutic services for trans people, or those who are still exploring their gender identity and in need of psychological support.

Congratulations, Zoe Greaves. The fact that it wasn’t clearly defined, alongside the suspicion that the vagueness was wholly deliberate, was exactly why this has been put on hold. Possibly once the Cass report is complete, it will be possible to make this definition clear. My understanding was that the intent was to delay until the situation was clarified, which seems reasonable, given the current situation.

This decision comes at a time when healthcare services for trans people are inadequate, with many trans people experiencing gruelling long waits to access gender identity development services. Long waits to access services make trans people vulnerable to being forced or persuaded to use so-called corrective therapy that is designed to suppress their identity.

So do the right thing and improve services. Don’t take the lazy path of bringing in a law which is indirectly assumed to help, when there is no evidence it will make a difference and, in the proposed form, was more likely to have caused harm.

If the government leaves out trans people from the legislation banning “conversion therapy”, this will make it an outlier among other jurisdictions that have banned the practice on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity.

Well perhaps, in time, Britain will be seen to have been a leading light in applying common sense and nuance to this debate, rather than following like sheep, when it appears to many that the sheep are heading towards a cliff. There’s a strong possibility that failing to consider the unintended (by politicians, though likely not transactivists) side-effects of bringing in poorly thought out laws with ill-defined terminology will result in harm to many children.

I think the Cass report will be key here and the Government will hopefully wait for the final report before taking further decisions.

I wouldn't go on the record, in the newspaper of record, with this. There are a lot of things wrong with it but the main one is no definition of "trans conversion therapy". And this:

"The government has scrapped plans to ban trans “conversion therapy” on the grounds that it would be harmful for children who have doubts about their gender. However, there is currently scarce evidence to suggest that this is the case."

Is disingenuous. And I imagine, quite upsetting to detransitioners.

That’s such a poorly written sentence.

Is the mildly interested reader to take it as ‘ban, on the grounds that conversion therapy could be harmful’ or ‘scrap, on the grounds that a ban could be harmful’?

But using treatment regimes that have not been tested or properly assessed, that cause irreversible damage to their bodies, to 'treat' children because their sense of self differs from the norm - that is acceptable?

No other treatment regimes are applied to patients, especially not to children, without rigorous assessment of the consequences and effectiveness.

We know that proper psychological assessments and talking therapies are crucial in treating non-physical conditions, as well as in supporting the treatment of many physical conditions. Why are children who profess a trans identity being treated as second-class citizens by being denied these, and instead being given off-licence drugs whose usefulness for this purpose has never been properly assessed?

The comments are heartening, and certainly show very little agreement with their argument. Lots of questions over ‘do no harm’ and whether Zoe’s opinions reflect this.

What a dire article - scary that someone from the BMA shows such levels of ignorance.
The comments are on fire!

Can someone paste a few comments please? I haven't been able to view comments for months and it always sounds like they're the best bit!

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.

@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"

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!)

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?

GLAAD:

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

Any attempt.

www.glaad.org/conversiontherapy

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?

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. '

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.

@DomesticatedZombie

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?

I'm not convinced that is an entirely honest account.

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.

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

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.

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.

@DomesticatedZombie

GLAAD:

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

Any attempt.

Unless of course it's a trans activist attempting to brow beat and bully a lesbian out of her homosexuality because it's shameful and wrong to choose and name a sexuality that refuses sex to males.

Then it's fine.

GLAAD are bloody hypocrites.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

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.

Lots of LGB people have asked during the consultation, where is the evidence that this is happening now?

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.

‘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.