Rob Jessel and Hassan Mamdani have a go at explaining what is so wrong about the government's proposed conversion therapy plans:
We are a group of gay men and their supporters who have submitted a detailed response to the government consultation on the proposed conversion therapy bill. We oppose these proposals not in spite of being gay; we do so because we are gay.
Our concern arises from the way the bill has changed since its inception. As originally drafted, the bill would have outlawed the outmoded and futile practice of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation. While nowadays gay CT is largely a marginal problem, a ban is a laudable aim which sends an important message. However, after pressure from Stonewall and other trans charities, the bill was extended to include “gender identity”. Why then should gay men, including some who have endured CT themselves, applaud one ban but oppose the other?
To understand, we need to consider the concepts at the heart of the proposal. While homosexuality is easily defined, gender identity is nebulous and lacks any stable definition that is not either self-referential or predicated on regressive stereotypes. Its nature can only be determined by people claiming to have it and, according to the dogma, it can change many times throughout the course of a person’s life. Most fundamentally, it is totally disconnected from one’s physical sex.
Despite its resistance to definition, the disastrous effects of gender identity ideology are well documented. In 2010/11, 138 children and adolescents were referred to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS); this had risen to 2,748 by 2020/21. Numbers, which had been climbing relatively slowly, took a sudden and dramatic spike around 2015 particularly among females, with the number of girls presenting at GIDS rising by 5,337 per cent between 2009-2019. Many of these young people will embark upon a pathway of experimental medicalisation, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and, for some, invasive and irreversible surgery.
These “treatments” are still in their infancy, but they all result in profound, irreversible and often deeply-regretted physical changes — a sad reality underscored by the growing number of people who detransition but are left with the scars of their earlier decisions. Beware anyone who claims to have a definitive answer on the effectiveness or otherwise of transition; this phenomenon is so recent that there are no large cohort studies that give anything approaching a definitive answer. (This situation is not helped by GIDS’ failure to keep accurate records on patients’ competency, capacity and consent, or to follow up with young people who left the treatment pathway.)
Nevertheless, what data there is suggests that the evidence base for transition is sketchy-to-nonexistent: the biggest study to-date, for example, “demonstrated no advantage of surgery in relation to subsequent mood or anxiety”. In fact the available evidence, replicated in numerous studies, has found that most children desist and grow up to be gay and lesbian adults.
As gay men, we feel that society is sleepwalking into a scandal of historic proportion, one where thousands of young gay and lesbian people are taking steps that will leave them mutilated and sterilised. We know that by saying this we will be dismissed by trans activists as greying Gen X-ers, blinded by bigotry, traitors to the LGBTQ+ cause. But we are not lone voices: in 2019 clinicians at GIDS (as well as governor Marcus Evans) resigned en masse in protest at issues including over-diagnosis, fast-tracked treatment and failures to challenge homophobic parents seeking to change gay sons into trans daughters.
If you genuinely abhor conversion therapy, take a minute to reflect on the concerns of GIDS whistleblowers who said that the pressure by parents and trans charities to medicate physically healthy, likely homosexual young people “felt like gay conversion therapy”. Or consider the dark joke circulating around the clinic, that soon “there would be no gay people left”.
In spite of these concerns, trans charities such as Mermaids, Gendered Intelligence and Stonewall have lobbied hard — and so far, largely successfully — for the “affirmation-only” approach, where any young person expressing discomfort with their gender identity must be affirmed in their delusion that they are the opposite sex, or “born in the wrong body”. These groups are determined to outlaw any therapy that might explore and explain a person’s dysphoria — for example, internalised homophobia, histories of sexual abuse, mental illness or autistic spectrum disorders.
How did we get here? As gay men we have watched, horrified, as former LGB charities have pursued a regressive and homophobic ideology, fought largely on the battleground of children’s bodies.
Stonewall, notably, have become leading lights in the gender identity business, having re-positioned themselves away from the LGB, focusing exclusively on the T. The LGB battles were effectively won, and they needed a new crusade. They've done very well out of it too, with their lucrative Diversity Champions scheme.
Stonewall, which is now dedicated to protecting fantasy over sexuality, will surely block any attempt to investigate a phenomenon that does such horrific and permanent damage to lesbian and gay youth. Many gay men who can remember rampant homophobia feared it would raise its ugly head again. None of us thought it would return draped in the rainbow flag, championed by the charities that once worked to protect us.
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