Conversion Therapy Bill (Scotland): “Expert” Panel Report to ScotGov

[rogdmum]

This quietly came out yesterday.

The “expert” panel appointed by ScotGov to look into recommendations for the conversion therapy bill have effectively come out and said only affirmation does not count as conversion therapy. They have said that parents who do not take their approved approach will be at risk of having their parental rights removed. Ie string hints that if a parent does not support a social transition, they will be at risk.

The Herald picked up the story yesterday:

www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23019958.scottish-government-conversion-therapy-ban-report-published/

And the report is here:

www.gov.scot/publications/expert-advisory-group-ending-conversion-practices-report-recommendations/

It makes for frightening reading given what we know about the Scottish Government’s beliefs.

I think the phrase “providing support and understanding in helping with self acceptance is particularly chilling when considering gender distressed children and adolescents- reeks of pushing children into a gender identity instead of working holistically to look at potential underlying issues.

I’ll attach a couple of screenshots

Looks like I need to start emailing my msp (she will ignore them again) and ask about watchful waiting again ffs

Jesus, this is fucking terrifying. This is state interference in the family. Scotland is a shit show

Is Joanna Cherry 🍒 around?

It’s dystopian.

I’m just glad my daughter is older now. If this were happening back when she was 13/14 I’d be leaving the country. We had a flavour of what is to come if this is adopted via our former school referring us to social services for not affirming, so I have first hand experience of the impact. It’s not something I would wish on any family. Am still quite shell shocked by it all- I am the most boring, ordinary person imaginable!

it is NEVER ENDING up here and it is exhausting.

Times article about it here:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7bff20a4-4428-11ed-abc9-d0d53e948d21?shareToken=17bd613cad32a2ef5096de2242c0e3b7

Well that's confused as it ( the times ) talks about it being wrong to suggest you can change unchangable aspects of you - so suggesting a sex change would be illegal ? ???

Scotland appear to be going the same way as Canada. I wonder if this is also what we can expect from Labour in a couple of years time when the Tories get booted out. Very scary times indeed for parents.

Presumably they’ll have to legislate that sex is socially constructed whereas gender identity is innate. Otherwise it wouldn’t work. Or they’ll just leave it so fuzzy that nobody has a clue what it means and they just all do as they’re told through fear of having their children removed.

Letter in progress. I think Mermaids will be mentioned. Especially in regard to "safe spaces".

@rogdmum Alwyas more to do, but more and more of us to do it, too.

'the group define "conversion practices" as “ any treatment, practice or effort that aims to change, suppress and/or eliminate a person's sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression.”'

'any treatment, practice or effort that aims to change, suppress and/or eliminate a person's ... gender expression.”'

Well, that's an end to any rules on uniforms in any job, I'd say. I suppose this is how the Canadian woodworking teacher got away with not tying hair back when using cutting machinery. 'gender expression' trumps health and safety.

True. And for that I am ever so grateful. It could have easily remained a niche issue and/or too many people too scared to speak out. That so many women have taken this on is awe inspiring.

Slightly off-topic, but I wandered over to Ben Hunte's twitter. He was the erstwhile and seemingly far from impartial BBC LGBT+++ correspondent who had me swearing never to watch any of their channels again.

He is now with Vice Magazine and continues to have solid TRA sources.

Anyway this:

www.vice.com/en/article/3adva3/liz-truss-scotland-gender-identity

As we expected, it appears that Scotland adopting gender and RUK relying on sex will give rise to legal problems. It may be that Nicola sees a widening divide between Scotland and the UK as a good thing and disagreeing with an increasingly unpopular Government in Westminster as a way of bolstering her own popularity. I think she is wrong. Increasingly, and especially now with all the Mermaids stuff coming out, people are waking up to the fact that the Queer agenda threatens to deliver all sorts of complications which will affect people's boundaries and lives.

The Times article is all about religion and sexuality. The nasty side effects of the proposal will be all about gender identity and they will also damage kids from atheist familes and kids who grow up to be same-sex attracted.

"who is in his early twenties, grew up in a Christian household in North Lanarkshire. He claims to have been subjected to conversion therapy and said that he later suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder."

Looking on the bright side, if they'd convinced him he was transgender instead of gay by now he could have PTSD and infertility and no sexual function and health problems too. There's always someone worse off than yourself, and this proposal will create young adults who are even worse off than he is.

Sorry. I probably deserve to be deleted for that. But I'm pissed off. For reasons.

This is the expert panel if anyone wants to look at any of these people in more depth:

•	Blair Anderson, lived experience
•	Dr Paul Behrens, University of Edinburgh
•	Pritpal Bhullar, Sarbat LGBT+ Sikhs
•	Very Reverend Dr Susan Brown, Church of Scotland
•	Dr Mhairi Crawford, LGBT Youth Scotland
•	Dr Rebecca Crowther, Equality Network
•	Richy Edwards, lived experience 
•	Dr Amber Keenan, NHS Grampian
•	Reverend Jide Macaulay, House of Rainbow
•	Colin Macfarlane, Stonewall Scotland
•	Reverend Elder Maxwell Reay, Metropolitan Community Church
•	Dr Igi Moon, MoU Coalition Against Conversion Therapy
•	Florence Oulds, Scottish Trans
•	Hannah Winter, lived experience
•	Luis Felipe Yanes, Scottish Human Rights Commission

The Group is chaired by Nick Bland, Deputy Director of the Equality and Inclusion Division at the Scottish Government. Secretariat is provided by the Equality and Inclusion Division, Scottish Government.

www.gov.scot/groups/ending-conversion-practices-expert-advisory-group/

"Sexual orientation': refers to a person's emotional, affectional and sexual attraction to persons of a different gender, the same gender or more than one gender and includes the lack of such attraction or relations"

Homophobia strikes again.

Looking at the reactions to, likes and quote tweets/retweets of Benjamin Cohen's Pink News denial of the Mermaids Investigations by the CC, some of these same experts/their organisations are there.

The Head of Amnesty Scotland's quote tweet claiming the BBC were appalling for 'lying' was liked by the Chair of the Scots Human Rights Commission (Ian Duddy) and the Director of Stonewall Scotland (MacFarlane) too. Amnesty Scotland, Scottish Human Rights Commission, Stonewall Scotland.

All against even the suggestion that the safeguarding concerns re Mermaids should be looked into. And now some of the same are experts recommending this...

The report looks as if it's not based on any data or study in Scotland. It's based on "lived experience" (aka anecdote) and it is wide ranging and poorly defined. It deals with anecdotal and hypothetical dangers not widespread and evidenced ones.

I like this from the minutes of the second meeting:

"The importance of ensuring that people knew what Conversion Practices were. Many victims and survivors were unaware that they were being subjected to Conversion Practices until much later, impeding them from seeking help sooner or at all."

True enough for all those kids getting advice from Mermaids. Who knows what they're being converted from or to? Is it Conversion Therapy if you're a young girl who gets sent a boob binder by a gender-proseletysing organisation? And you don't realise you were being messed with until years later?

What is really important - and what this panel have not done at all - is to be very clear about what they think Conversion Practices are, and that this is agreed on by larger society. It looks as if they want to define them as widely and vaguely as possible and too bad if anyone disagrees.

Well that looks like a balanced panel, including the experiences of de-transitioners and parents…. 🙄

House of Rainbow? I do think Nicola getting booed at Dunfermline is a good sign

I do hope you can't just define "Conversion Practices" retroactively and accuse people of these practices retroactively, long after the fact. That would be a bit ike recovered memories of child abuse - anyone remember those?

But what I quoted was committee minutes, not the report as such. I will need to read the report carefully before doing my final letter.

It’s an exhausting fight

my kids seems largely on board with the bollocks of it all but if they weren’t, we would seriously consider a move south

Section 28 is quite interesting. It goes on about people being pushed and pulled towards conversion practices due to cultural and environmental pressures. It talks about the need to "fit in to the norm" and not be "isolated from the community". That people may voluntarily suppress their own identity or "consent" to conversion practices. That "community" is an integral part of life and identity for many people. That ideas can become "cemented in the psyche, meaning that many people self monitor and self-police without an explicit force being present".

All of these ideas could equally be applied to young people trying to fit into the LGBTQ "community" wanting to belong, suppressing their same sex attraction through fear of being called TERF and being ousted from the community. Is it possible that these people are at risk of criminalising themselves in this process.

28

People are both ‘pushed’ and ‘pulled’ towards conversion practices (Ogunmuyiwa).22 The ‘push’ often refers to an overarching culture and environment of anti-LGBT+ sentiment, derogatory language, messages, and sometimes accompanied by threats of abuse, force, violence, and coercion. The ‘pull’ refers to factors that make people more likely to want to undergo conversion practices - the desire to be accepted, fit into the norm, to not bring ‘dishonour’ and ‘shame’, and to not feel ‘wrong’ or be isolated from their community.

"It is vital to understand the relationship between these factors as it explains why people voluntarily suppress their own identity or ‘consent’ to conversion practices.

"Family, faith, and community are an integral part of life and identity for many people of colour and of minority faiths and indeed in all cultures, often being inseparable from their sense of self. According to Sarbat Sikhs, there is a cultural fear of rejection amongst Sikh and South Asian LGBT+ people – this fear of rejection encompasses a fear of losing both one’s faith and one’s family.

"Religious and cultural obligations play a huge part in why people may suppress being LGBT+. These norms are enforced and embedded from early childhood, often in subtle ways which impact significantly. The importance of marriage is one such obligation, and forced marriage is often used as a form of conversion practice.

These ideas become cemented in the psyche, meaning that many people ‘self-monitor’ and ‘self-police’ without an explicit force being present, for example by abstaining from any relationship if they are LGBT+, attempting to ‘be straight’, or entering into a forced marriage."

Also could detransitioners who say they were just gay or lesbian and pressured into transition be able to use this law to sue? If it goes through I hope it massively backfires.

That ... there is a Section 28?! Is this a joke?