Who’s converting whom?
Wait a second. The Telegraph says Conversion therapy ban to be delayed but…
Rishi Sunak is expected to delay a promised ban on conversion therapy following disagreements over how the legislation should be worded.
Ministers said in the summer that a draft Bill banning people from trying to change a child’s gender identity or sexuality would be published by the end of the parliamentary session in November.
Wait. They’re calling it “conversion therapy” to try to change a child’s “gender identity”? But what do they think gender identity itself is???
Let’s be real. Gender idenniny is itself conversion. Why is it wicked and suspect to try to undo the original conversion of a child from its natal sex to a fictional “gender identity”? Why isn’t it the original conversion that’s the problem? If you don’t like conversion, why not start with the ur-conversion?
Serious question. Why is conversion from factual, born sex to imagined, artificial new “gender” a good thing while deconversion is a bad thing? Why is it better to be trans than not trans? Why is the first change glorious while a return to square one is wicked and to be forbidden by law? What is the thinking here?
The assumption seems to be that transing isn’t any kind of conversion or change, but that’s just nonsensical. If there is no change then the word “trans” doesn’t mean anything. They can’t have it both ways, or at least they shouldn’t be allowed to.
This is the clever bit, isn’t it? By co-opting the concept that lesbians and gays are stereotyped as gender non-conforming in order to bring trans under the LGBTQ umbrella, they were able to co-opt the term “conversion therapy.” The argument that one knows they are lesbian or gay at an early age was adapted to claim that we all know our “gender idenniny” at an early age and that refusal to affirm is a heinous crime and that talk therapy to determine the roots of a belief that one is trans is conversion therapy.
The t-shirts with the knife and feather that say “Protect Trans Kids” no longer have to include any LGB kids, but since actual conversion therapy on gays or lesbians has become rare (as far as I know,) no one feels the need to wear shirts about protecting lesbian, gay, or bisexual kids. Or else, no one thinks abou them anymore.
Which makes me wonder what would happen if I were to order custom shirts that read “Protect LGB Kids” from a custom site, would the order be canceled as “hate?”
Except that transgender doctrine IS conversion (though perhaps not conversion “therapy”) deployed against gay and lesbian kids. If they left the non-conforming kids alone, I think some studies have found, the kids would grow up to be lesbians or gay men. T is antithetical to LG. It’s the new brand of anti-gay “conversion therapy.”
The problem with gender identity is how it leads kids to think they’re the sex they’re actually not and allows trans-identifying males to intrude into female-only spaces and services. It’s not conversion therapy to tell someone that their sex isn’t in the head, rather it’s conversion therapy to tell them that it is. That TRAs will trot out so-called intersex as a counter-argument when in fact 99.9% of those claiming to be trans are unambiguously one sex or the other is bogus.
Here’s where all the dualism comes into play. The “trans” kid is already who they’re supposed to be in their “soul.” The body is a mistake, a malformed husk that causes distress because it doesn’t match the soul’s “identity,” which is primary and foundational. This incorrect body is expendable, the faulty packaging on the Pop Tart that can be cut and sculpted to (somehow) “better” conform to the soul’s “gender identity.” In this scenario, talk therapy is an attempt to talk the soul out of its true identity, push it off its true path. By hijacking the “conversion therapy” language from LGB activism, talk therapy is supposed to be seen as being as horrendous as trying to convince a homosexual that they’re actually straight, gaslighting them and forcing that straightness on them.
The problem is, there are no reliable diagnostic tools to determine who is trans and who isn’t. How do they test for this primal, immaterial [essence?]? How can they tell who would desist and who wouldn’t? That’s just it; they can’t. If they could, there would be no (or at least fewer) detransitioners. And what of all the comorbidities, and the social contagion? These “false postives”* are going to be missed. Criminalizing talking to people is not going to improve those numbers; it will make them worse. This will result in poorer outcomes for more people. Welcome to anti-Utilitarianism.
That’s a good way of looking at it Ophelia. And it’s astonishing when you think about it. What is all this “gender education” after all, if not “grooming” in broad daylight? If a child was getting along well enough as their “observed at birth” sex, then why introduce this garbage into their classrooms if not to confuse and disorient them?
The way this ideology continues to present one new stink-hole after another never ceases to amaze me.
The collision of what trans groomers are actually doing with the rhetorical category of “conversion therapy” is so abrupt that when they write laws purporting to stop conversion therapy they have to write in an exception for transing kids:
“except that sexual orientation change efforts shall not include counseling for a person seeking to transition from one gender to another…”
Because of course in trans-world, a middle-aged straight man dressed like a teen prostitute has magically become a lesbian, which is changing his sexual orientation. And, more to the point, a young tomboy whose breasts they cut off and health they destroy with testosterone stops being a lesbian.
I hope Mr. Sunak does some reading to understand what absolute fuckery they’re up to with this “conversion therapy” ban. Here’s a good place to start:
https://pitt.substack.com/p/why-i-cant-tell-you-my-sons-therapists?utm_source=%2Fsearch%2Fconversion&utm_medium=reader2
Wow. That article is horrifying.
I am glad you appreciate the article. The press is doing a poor job elucidating what “ban on conversion therapy” means, in a practical sense. The author of this article, like many parents, saw what it looks like where the rubber meets the road.
The organizers of the group blog (PITT) recently collated a book including this and other pieces:
https://www.amazon.com/Parents-Inconvenient-Truths-about-Trans/dp/1634312465
The press is doing a poor job elucidating what “ban on conversion therapy” means, in a practical sense.
When I comment on the local paper’s site clarifying that the conversion therapy bans are actually dangerous for LGB the comments are removed as hate.
And by “poor” you mean teeth-grindingly incompetent and reckless and devoid of thought.