Kemi "to write to all Tory MPs to insist that a ban on trans conversion therapy must not criminalise parents"

[ResisterRex]

In the Telegraph. Front page lead story:

twitter.com/tmorrowspapers/status/1615481738884517890?s=46&t=0TXFOsdaPO7ObIDrJNgGgw

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/01/17/trans-conversion-therapy-ban-could-turn-parents-criminals/

"The equalities minister is to write to all Tory MPs to insist that a ban on trans conversion therapyy_ must not criminalise parents, as a backlash against the plans grew.

In a highly unusual move, it is understood that Kemi Badenochh_ intends to set out her concerns over the proposed legislation, announced in the Commons on Tuesday.
She will warn that legitimate conversations between parents and trans children must not be outlawedd_ and that freedom of religion must be protected.
The letter reflects concern in Downing Street that Tory MPs will rebell_ over the introduction of the conversion therapy ban"

And

"She is set to acknowledge that the draft version of the legislation will be imperfect, with issues around what constitutes conversion therapy, and how to protect faith leaders, counsellors and parents, not fully resolved.

A source close to Mrs Badenoch said: “The area of gender identity is much more complex than sexual orientation. We have said we will not inadvertently criminalise parents who are trying to support children.”"

A different world only because, I suspect, women have kicked up such a stink. Ministers must know that will not be able to get away with lazily allowing their tame trans advisors to lead them by nose this time.

I totally agree with this. And thank you for the links @Bosky

I know I'm being stupid on this but it seems to me that social transition, especially of children, IS conversion therapy. 🤷‍♀️

I agree with this too!! It cannot be a coincidence that this ideology has coincided with a rise in a totally unregulated internet which is designed by and for men, AND this current revolting attitude towards women. We are treated much, much worse than 20 or so years ago. Yet supposedly we're better off because equality.

What about concerned friends? What about normal, everyday concerned women? We are not therapists, we are not professionals. But we have a lot of knowledge.

We must not be gagged by this legislation. We witches must be allowed to keep speaking out, and to whom we choose, without fear.

We will get that point across, I am sure!

I'd be grateful if you could point out where the insults were in my post.

I remain baffled as to what a converter is converting someone from/to? I genuinely don't understand?
Are they considered to be trying to stop someone thinking of themselves a certain way or expressing themselves in a certain way? All over every land, parents/families are dealing with tensions in relation to this as teens explore 'who they are'.

How is pointing out what the MP in question is doing in anyway shaming to them, unless it is shameful for the MP to be campaigning to be leader of their party?

Article in the Mail with Bayswater Support Group quotes about a mother whose daughter was socially transitioned behind her back:

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11646881/I-asked-daughters-teachers-not-call-boy-reported-social-services.html

As the journalist points out, schools can't even give paracetamol without permission so how does any of this make sense?

twitter.com/journalistjill/status/1615599052057640962?s=46&t=0TXFOsdaPO7ObIDrJNgGgw

Ah! Someone who chooses to identify themselves as totally irrelevant to this discussion.

Well done you!

I remain baffled as to what a converter is converting someone from/to? I genuinely don't understand?

Within the ideology, "gender" is a real thing, so pointing out someone's actual sex can be interpreted as trying to change their "gender", eg from "transwoman" to "cisman".

I guess theoretically that could be thing - you could have a genderologist "therapist" trying to "change" someone's "gender".

But no, in reality, it will be mostly people pointing out someone's sex, and saying nothing about their "gender" or trying to change it, because they don't believe in "gender".

I suppose you can have the thing the reformed trans parents talk about of how they used to keep punishing their boy for wanting to wear dresses? They weren't really just pointing out sex, they were trying to make them conform to a "gender" role, hence trying to change "gender".

This was the top recommended comment under an article in The Times yesterday about a ban on conversion therapy-today its been deleted for breaking community guidelines-what is going on?

Telling a potentially gay child they are a transexual IS conversion therapy. Telling a potentially gay child they need cross sex hormones & surgery IS conversion therapy.
Let children go through puberty & reach maturity. Stop telling children there is something wrong with them when there isn’t!

Because you are the one who is attributing her efforts to campaigning in an attempt to minimise what she is doing.

You are attempting to diminish the importance of having very clear laws and guidance that Kemi is trying raise awareness of.

You doing it by framing her supporting the need for this clarity as ‘campaigning’ . And in doing so attempting to align her actions as self promotion rather than making sure this potential mess is averted through ensuring each MP has additional information about it.

Are you denying that this is your intention of your post?

Professionals will be in such a difficult place.

Did anyone watch that gripping real life American Couples Therapy series? The therapist gently probed the life stories of all the participants except one, a post op transwoman. Despite the suggestions that the genital surgery hadn't been as successful as hoped, that they perhaps preferred sleeping with men to with their wife.

Often, adult trans people describe having experienced horrific homophobia and sexism in early life. If this was the case here, the couples therapist couldn't/ wouldn't go there. Fwiw I liked the transwoman a lot. I am sad that their experience of the therapy had to be more superficial, simply because of trans activism's hold on mental health professions.

The thing is concerned people are already being gagged. It's almost daily that posts like this appear on social media, this one was one i saw yesterday (I also have an autistic child) :

Hello there 🙂

I’m looking for advice from parents that have a young child who is transgender, 9 years old around that mark please 🙂 (our now boy was born with female parts)
This is very new to us in the sense of not having dealt / helped with this before however it is not new to us that he is clearly a boy! That has been obvious since he was born!

He’s also autistic, PDA, confidant!

incredibly smart and exceptionally funny! Imo he’s the funniest kid I’ve ever met! God I love him but I just need some help helping him navigate his way around the fact he does have female body parts 🙂 if that makes sense at all!

Look forward to chatting to some families that have experience or any insight 🙂 thanks

(Just to add his PDA is not what I need help with I have 4/5 kiddy’s that are pda individuals so feel quiet well knowledged about that area esp as I’m PDA myself 🙂

This kind of post is then met with adoring responses of how accepting this parent is, and how many other children with autism also are the wrong sex. Comments like it is so common for autistic children to be trans, isn't it wonderful.

Any parent or onlooker, group member who gives anything other than an accepting response is barred from the support group for 'hate'.

I think the issue is that if a concerned onlooker posts in their own name if laws are changed to criminalise dissent then a poster posting in their own name won't only be banned from groups but could also be committing an offence.

These posts breaks my heart. i just scroll by. You can't change a persons mind.

What I hope is the result of pre-legislative scrutiny is that there is no need for a conversion therapy ban. This could happen in a few ways.
I hope they separate out the lgb and the T elements and realise that conversion therapy is not a significant problem for either group, except insofar as LGB people are encouraged to transition to take away the gay. That issue can be dealt with by safeguarding measures, without creating new criminal offences for violent or coercive practices. Conversion therapy for the T cohort doesn't happen in this country unless you count watchful waiting and questioning/challenging the person. Violence, coercion etc is already illegal. New laws bring unintended consequences. No new laws are needed anyway.
If they do decide that conversion therapy is a problem, I hope they will also attempt to define it and gender and gender identity and trans and realise that there is no stable meaning for any of those terms and therefore decline to legislate on those grounds.
The drive for this law is to get gender identity recognised in law. However bad the statute is, however weak the protection it confers. Even the passing of a law which protects therapists, parents, doctors etc and sets a very high bar for illegality will be a pyhrric victory for our side, because it will have achieved the primary aim of the TRAs.

Self promotion and campaigning is exactly what Kemi is doing. Why are some on here so scared of that idea?

How is commenting the motivations of the MP whose name is in the title of this thread, irrelevant to the discussion?

No one is 'scared' of that idea. Why are you so determined though to force that as the reason why she is doing so? That she isn't actually motivated by the reasons of making any leglislation passed better and clearer.

Isn't that part of her portfolio? To make sure that all the UK population get proper consideration when laws are made. And that trans people need to have the very best health care that this country can provide?

Why are you so scared of her doing this that you cannot stop attempting to shame her by making out that her actions are all about getting her elected and not actually about ensuring that clarity and precision is given to this legislation?

I am glad though, that you are not denying that that was the intention of your initial post. That your first post on this thread was about framing her actions in the worst possible light for whatever reasons you have.

It seems Kemi Badenoch does understand the complexities of squaring this circle but may be putting this through including T so as to prevent trans ideologists using ‘exclusion’ from the ban to prove their martyrdom.

Last year, for example, in an extraordinary piece of propagandised reporting on Trans martyrdom, Channel 4 dragged in a poor transwoman who was badly abused by conversion therapy in the early 1960s though the date was not made clear in the report. They added sensationalist language, and left viewers in no doubt that, due to being excluded from the ban, the future for trans people would be torture and suicide.

BellaAmorosa· Today 12:39
What I hope is the result of pre-legislative scrutiny is that there is no need for a conversion therapy ban. This could happen in a few ways.

They already found out last year that there is no need for a ban on conversion therapy.
There are already protections under the law.

The LGB was always just the Trojan Horse for the T I’m the Ban Conversion Therapy bill, but no one could say that officially. And when T was excluded last year, it possibly made it look as though trans were being cynically abandoned through transphobia - trans activists could certainly exploit it to make it seem that way.

The public who aren’t affected by their children saying they are transgender most likely have no idea of the complexities either.

The public who aren’t affected by their children saying they are transgender most likely have no idea of the complexities either.

This is very true Scrolling

And which, realistically, would end with a polite brush off that boils down to 'if that word is involved, my diary will be permanently too full and I will avoid taking you as a client because I'm not willing to engage with the risk of being punished with losing my job, license, being prosecuted and pilloried, because I managed to say something you perceived as unacceptable'.

Particularly when you consider that successful therapy is not mindless indulging and enabling and sympathy, it involves challenge. It involves pushing buttons and teaching the client to deal with it. Therapy is rarely a nice, fluffy, sweet experience all about affirming a client's perceptions, it's about helping people to change them. It's often painful.

Providing a person who is not in a stable position (if they were they would not need therapy) with such a massive stick to beat you with? Who is going to willingly sign up for that?

I think it's a shit state of affairs BUT given the dogged determination of this shadowy movement, to latch "gender identity" onto anything at all in order to get it onto the statute books, I think on balance, I'd rather we had to go through this shameless and total and utter waste of time, money and effort process now, with switched on politicians and some very good advocacy groups (Bayswater etc), than on the other side of a general election with potentially a very captured Labour party at the helm.

Labour could of course put this in their manifesto and crack on if they win. But I'd think the testimony and evidence that will surely come before a pre-legislative scrutiny committee will make that much much less likely. They will have to come out against detransitioners and pro-transing kids aged 8 (the batshit Green Party argument).

If Kemi was interested in protecting all of our rights then she would not be part of a government that has consistently for the past 12 years eroded those rights, particularly those whom you say she is trying to protect.
Did she resign in protest when legislation was introduced this week to further curtail the very limited occassions when UK workers are legally permitted to go on strike? Of course not, because appearing to be tough on strikers plays to exactly the same audience as she is playing to with these letters.

You can ascribe whatever motive you like to my posts, that is your choice.