Conversion Therapy With An Evil Twist

The right-wing conservatives are looking at the ban of conversion therapy as applying to therapists who are helping children to transition.

Supporting transitioning trans people is not conversion therapy. It is the right thing to do.
The Article
By Florence Ashley
November 26, 2018

In a recent article for this site, philosopher Dr. Kathleen Stock expressed concern over the definition of conversion therapy put forward by Stonewall and major UK mental health organisations because it includes both sexual orientation and gender identity.

Her article raises two primary arguments against the inclusion of gender identity within the definition of conversion therapy. Firstly, she implies that gender identity isn’t unchangeable or harmless, unlike sexual orientation. Secondly, she argues that affirming gender identity would be tantamount to conversion therapy by omission with regards to sexual orientation.

Both arguments are unfounded. Her first argument is empirically mistaken, as available evidence doesn’t support the claim that gender identity is patently more malleable than sexual orientation. Even if it were that would not make conversion therapy ethical, as no evidence supports the claim that being transgender is harmful. Her second argument is theoretically mistaken, as it relies on a confusion between sexual attraction and sexual orientation labels. Although those who transition may change the label they use for their sexual orientation, it doesn’t make their sexual attraction vary: their sexual attraction remains the same.
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Even if gender identity was malleable, altering it wouldn’t be ethical. It is morally objectionable to seek to change harmless traits which faced historical and ongoing stigma. Trying to make people straight would still be wrong if it was possible. Why would trying to make people cisgender be any different?

Can you believe this? Helping a child to transition in not conversion therapy, first therapist are not forcing children to transition it is to guide them to find their own way and second they are not using “aversion therapy” to force them to be trans trans, they are trans when they seek out therapy and the therapist helps them to explore their true gender.

At the end of the day, affirming gender identity and affirming sexual orientation are not only compatible practices, but mutually reinforcing ones. Anti-trans and anti-gay conversion therapy aren’t two different practices that independently threaten trans and queer people, but two fruits of the same tree. Conversion therapy by licensed professionals has historically targetedgender expression to discourage both trans and queer adulthood. When the Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood was added to the DSM-III in 1980, the same version of the DSM which removed homosexuality as a diagnosis, it was heavily criticized by feminist and critical scholars for indirectly pathologizing homosexuality by pathologizing of non-conforming gender expression. By treating non-conforming gender expressions as evidence of mental illness, both trans and gay youth could be subjected to conversion practices.

Leave it to the right-wing extremists to twist things around make what is good evil.

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This afternoon I'm teaching two classes at two universities as a guest lecturer for a professor and I will be doing it again on Thursday.