Channel 4 News last night - one sided report on excluding Trans from Conversion Therapy bill

[ScrollingLeaves]

I was shocked to see they never attempted to explain why there was a pause in including Trans in the Conversion therapy bill. The dry government statement they read out neither explained the reason adequately or mitigated the alarmist opening sequence of a middle aged trans woman describing harrowing electric conversion therapy at the advice of her vicar many years ago.

No one who could have explained the reason was brought on to speak - only Nancy Kelly of Stonewall.

Did anyone else see this?

Mental health support in this country is dire

a few years a go one of my children was struggling and the dr suggested talking therapy as a first step (didn’t do it mainly cos it was going to take 12+ weeks just to get the first phone call…went private)

if a child/person is having mental health issues with ANY aspect of their life they should be able to have, as far as possible, instant access to this sort of help

but help, signposting to relevant organisations and the tools needed to get to grips with what the real issues may be won’t be given to a child saying they are trans as it will be seen, by some, as conversion therapy

Some people think that people are born with a ‘gendered brain’ which may not match the sex of their body. There is therefore nothing to be explored or questioned should a young person say they are in the wrong body. This just means they have this mismatch. They are trans. Online forums and peers pressure teens to believe this. Parents who are repulsed by the idea their gender non conforming child may possibly be gay, may believe this.

There is no recognition that there may well be factors other than the ‘gendered brain’ affecting a trans presenting child/young person. It can be seen as an outrage to question them.

Any idea that psychological therapy should be sought might be seen to imply that their presentation as trans has not been accepted at face value. Hence there is room to call any such intervention or cautious non- affirming ‘wait and see’ approach as being Conversion Therapy.

We do need our therapists to be better trained in trauma and Autism as well as trans. you can also be trans and autistic, of course. so exploring other things does not mean you are trying to convert.

Unless a therapist said/implied, 'let's not think of you as trans, until we have tested you for autism'.

Affirmation is what we do with teens and adults if they share their feelings/thoughts
about themselves with you. you reflect it back to them. no judgement, they are accepted.

if a teacher shows bias, this is not good practice. Actually it goes against their duty of care. and they usually don't want to hurt children, being teachers.
of course, if a teacher does not change pronouns as asked for they are subtly letting the pupil know that they see them as converted back to their old gender. so whatever bias they have making them do that, needs looking at. Because that is what the child will experience.

we all make mistakes, but if we try to learn that's all we can do.

listen and learn.

and fewer mistakes will happen. we will get better at this, as we have with gay people.

very few straight people meet a gay man and start acting camp nowadays for instance. ; ) not necessary. we are used to seeing gay people.

The alternative to us refusing to learn is keeping trans human beings invisible.

Thank you for confirming this.

Conversion therapies are specific. Neither exploration during therapy or 'just talking' could be classed as conversion therapy.

Thanks for this assurance, but it’s extremely vague. Since you’ve read this bill and have a professional interest in it, could you explain how the bill would have distinguished between “conversion therapy” for a trans identifying child and, say, exploring the possibility that the trans identity stems from trauma? Could you explain how a therapist could be sure they stay on the legal side of this line? You have made it sound very simple, but a lot of people seem to think it’s complicated.

As far as I can discover, this is what the bill says:

In this Act, "conversion therapy" is any practice aimed at a person or group
of people which demonstrates an assumption that any sexual orientation or
gender identity is inherently preferable and which has the predetermined
purpose of attempting to—
(a) change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, or
(b) suppress a person’s expression of sexual orientation or gender identity.

This is a world where there is no coherent and commonly agreed understanding of what "gender identity" actually is. I mean, how many gender identity flags are there currently? IANAL, but it strikes me that this is a recipe for disaster and endless bickering.

Of course people make mistakes (if that is what these are) but are you agreeing that the "mistakes" you mention should be criminalised? What if someone made more than one "mistake" or did not learn? Should someone who acts camp when they meet someone who is gay be criminalised? If a therapist said/implied, 'let's not think of you as trans, until we have tested you for autism'.it may be poor therapy or poorly worded, but are you really saying that it should be a criminal act?

Re:Carolyn’s story which appeared on Channel 4 as a means of showing what the horrors of Conversion therapy are. This was to prove to the audience what a wrong thing it is that Trans was not included in the bill ( pending further enquiry and trans specific legislation. This pause for Trans arising as a result of consultation)

From
www.transgendertrend.com/gender-identity-conversion-therapy-uk/

My bold
Individual and anecdotal evidence of conversion therapy

The Conservative MP for Carshalton and Wallington, Elliot Colburn, proposed the motion “Make LGBT conversion therapy illegal in the UK” for the e-petition debate in the House of Commons on March 8th. He began with stories of conversion therapy, one about a young gay Jewish man, the second a journalist’s undercover account of church based therapy and thirdly the story of Carolyn, a transwoman.

“At 17, Carolyn confided in her local vicar her feelings of self-hatred and depression, and her suicidal thoughts, because she did not feel like a boy. Her vicar took her to a doctor and a psychiatric hospital, where Carolyn was strapped to a wooden chair in a dark room. As images of women’s clothing were projected on to the wall in front of her, doctors would deliver painful electric shocks, hoping to associate the feelings of being a woman with memories of intense pain.”

Carolyn’s experience is distressing to read. But what Elliot Colburn omitted to mention was that it took place in 1964. Over the last few years, Carolyn’s story has appeared in national and local newspapers, news websites, the BBC, and Channel 5.

Recently Carolyn took part in a webinar on conversion therapy introducing her story of GICT in a 3-minute video. Carolyn’s story also features as one of the nine first person accounts on the Ban Conversion Therapy website. (Only one other account relates to gender identity. It recounts the experience of a young lesbian who told her pastor 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 Carolyn’s terrible ordeal happened in 1964. Nearly sixty years ago.

Channel 4 said this does not happen anymore if I remember correctly.

No NHS services would do this.

So why was this the story featured? We needed to know from Channel 4 what exactly Conversion therapy for Trans is, in 2022, in the U.K., before creating legislation around it. That would have been something to start with.

1964. When rape in marriage was legal, lesbians had their children removed for being lesbians and so much else was wrong. Very disingenuous to imply that this is happening now. But as we know, emotional manipulation of others appears to be at the core of so much that's happening.

Nobody has said it should be criminalised. The bill doesn't say it should be criminalised. Each different professional body has improved their services for gay people over the past decades, (for instance UKCP has talked through what is good practice for their therapists and they work together to improve their services. My mum was part of this I"m proud to say ). It is just starting to happen for trans people. Therapists re-look at their practice regularly anyway.
They are the experts at this (along with their clients as experts of their own lived experience) practice will improve. Therapists themselves don't want conversion therapy to be allowed. My mum is a psychotherapist and has a client who has been through it. I can't imagine any therapist wanting that for their clients. it just makes any other issues put on a back burner. it is a trauma itself.

ocelot1
Therapists themselves don't want conversion therapy to be allowed

Please would you outline what Conversion therapy for young people who think they are in the wrong body is being practiced at the moment in the U.K.?

This thread was really about the Channel 4 programme not being impartial and failing to put across the reasons why there is to be a pause to the trans part of the bill.

Because the media and the Government are institutionally transphobic.

I find the terminology around this with regard to the trans issue very confusing. Conversion and transition have the same meaning. To ban conversion therapy is to ban therapy for transitioning.

However in this context transitioning is the status quo and what the bill seeks to ban is therapy aimed at stopping someone from transitioning. So converting is good but converting someone from converting is bad.

Makes perfect sense if someone is lesbian or gay, don't try to convert them. Someone who is trans wants to convert, you must let them convert, otherwise your trying to convert them from converting and that is bad.

Because banning 'conversion therapy' for trans would be wrong. As spotted (remarkably) by the government. Being gay is a perfectly valid way to be. No one ever even comes close to defining what 'trans' means, but as it often encompasses definite physical harm to the body (and gets the nhs sued), yep I'm happy for medics to present the other side of the argument. Strongly.

@Hearach15 · Yesterday 22:39
MargaritaPie
A lot of other countries who have recently banned conversion therapy have included trans and done it without any fuss. Why is it so difficult here in Britain?

Because the media and the Government are institutionally transphobic.

In this case, as the thread title explains, contrary to what you are suggesting, the media (Channel 4 news) was so absorbed by the false rhetoric that conversion therapy is being commonly practised against would be trans people, that it failed to give a balanced news report.

Ch4 is but one media organisation. Overwhelmingly, trans people are portrayed as predators or problems by the British media - much like gay people were in the 80s.

"Overwhelmingly, trans people are portrayed as predators or problems by the British media - much like gay people were in the 80s."

That's absolutely not true, as I'm sure you know. Trans people are being celebrated as these brave and stunning, colourful wonderful people. Unfortunately the reality is that some trans-identified people are determined to bully their way into women's spaces, whether women like it or not, and this has to be addressed. Do you think it is ok for males to be in women's prisons or women's sports? Do you think we should not be 'allowed' to raise our objections to that? Media reporting about males in women's prisons has been shockingly non-existent, the reporting on males in women's sport has been biased towards males, and the language used has obscured the actual issue, and framed as a 'trans rights' issue when actually it is women's rights which are at stake.

A violent male, who bragged about enjoying injuring a women very badly in their sport, has been allowed to talk, unchallenged, as if they are female, by our national broadcaster. Women pay our taxes, pay our BBC licence fee, and we are being completely fucked over. You know that though don't you?

I do not find the reporting unbalanced. As you have said, Carolyns story was there because she articulately describes the effect of being a victim of conversion therapy.
the TV audience need to hear what conversion therapy does to a particular person to explain why we have finally banned it for gay people, and why trans people also should not be put through this. The method can change/evolve so not particular.

Young people, gay and trans people could be watching the news. Being able to reassure that this particular therapy is not going on now, is helpful. if they have shown one that is going on now, it would have been hugely triggering for young people or children who are going through it now. If they are living in a family where it is being done now, and they are all watching this report together, it could actually be dangerous.

It would not be helpful to outline particular methods in a bill as if someone wants to change someone else they can create whatever new or old or culturally specific thing they like to avoid what has been listed.

It just has to fit the definition of Conversion Therapy.

Conversion therapy does not have to only be electric shock therapy, it could also be isolation from the LGBT community along with any kind of ‘therapy’ or practiced designed or enacted to ‘persuade’ the person into believing they are what someone else thinks they are. Often these are vulnerable people in the first place.
I know someone personally who has been through this for being a lesbian and she knows others who went through the same thing over the last two decades.

Can you believe conversion therapy has only just been banned for gay people?!

As a lesbian and member of the LGBT community I lived my twenties with the chilling possibility that conversion therapy COULD be used against me.
We have had to pick up the pieces (badly) of peers who had had it,
We have all lived in the LGBT community, all this time, knowing that should there be a shift in politics or the culture of the country this will happen more.
It was legal after all.

You won't know about it. It just goes on behind closed doors.

Unless it is banned, we live with the threat/possibility all the time.
It affects our relationships, our ability to be ourselves in all areas of life.

LGBTQI folk in their twenties/thirties now, went through school under clause 28.
These Anti LGBT laws are recent. Silencing and using institutions to threaten or force us to deny our existence are only just now being revealed (such as the army).

imagine
A 17 year old who has gone to their mum to say they are feeling weird things, wish they could just be . . . (the other gender), it could be their family inviting their religious friends over to repeatedly lay hands and pray over the young person to stop their ‘disgusting and bad feelings’.
Whether the young person becomes trans in future or not, this is damaging. no electricity. It has the same effect on a person as described by Carolyn.

It is not covered by abuse as they could argue, "it is perfectly fine in our culture to pray over our child. You are going against our religion to question this"
But it is the active pursuit of changing their identity with that prayer that is the conversion part of it, that is SO damaging.

Any culture or family can find their own ways that make sense to them. Trying to convert someone else identity is wrong.

BTW my friend has fostered trans teens. There were always other things going on in the family that led to the separation.

Offering other laws to take someone to court after the damage has been done, is not good enough. It won’t be taken up. Because people who go through this their mental health is shattered. They can't go through court. Same reason why so many rapists don't get charged. The conversion therapy will continue.

I didn’t feel it was necessary in this report to bring up normal therapy, because normal therapy is not conversion therapy. Plus it is not part of the bill.

If a TV report brought it up in connection with the bill it suggests that conversion therapy not only happens in private groups or families but is also institutionalised here.

Until you ban conversion therapy for Trans people, too, I think they won't feel safe enough to even let us know what they have been through behind closed doors.
you don't talk about it.you try to find dignity. you try to find safe community.

not open yourself up to being judged/denied further.

I went round in circles like that, too!!! with the terminology. So I looked it up and thought through my own experience.

Conversion is what someone does to someone else.

Transition is something you go through - it is led by yourself.

For instance in my case, I transitioned into an openly gay person at age 18. My identity in the world changed at that point. I went through a process.

I, personally have never experienced someone actively doing something to convert me to being straight so it might be hard to understand how that feels unless I listen carefully to others. But I kind of understood it after I had had lots of homophobic experiences. I understood how my mental health and my sense of self was hurt by those experiences. Others words and actions do make you question yourself and your own identity and self worth. Conversion therapy is like that on steroids. Often given to you by people you want/need to trust. It is done to change you because they believe you to be wrong about yourself.

Well ocelot1, I am also part of the LGB community and am old enough to remember when lesbians had their children removed for being "unfit mothers".
However, I would only cite that in a contemporary discussion giving the historical context.
Women and lesbians can cite all sorts of appalling things that happened in the 1960s / 70s like rape in marriage, but failing to point out the decade, even century that something happened in is disingenuous and manipulative.