Shelley Charlesworth is a former BBC journalist. She writes for the website www.transgendertrend.com and campaigns against the promotion of 'gender identity' ideas in schools and healthcare. Published on 4 August 2021.

The government plans to bring in a legal ban on conversion therapy next year and while Liz Truss and her ministers at the Government Equalities Office have been careful to avoid spelling out exactly what they mean by conversion therapy, the ban’s proponents have been vocal.

Some MPs and LGBT lobby groups want to see a ban on conversion therapy for both sexual orientation and gender identity, in all settings, religious, medical, community and cultural. Labour’s Angela Eagle said during July’s commons debate on Pride Month that she wants to see a bill that “bans conversion therapy without loopholes and without religious exemptions, because religious exemptions and loopholes about trans kids merely create the capacity for a coach and horses to be driven through the ban”. 

Such talk of ‘trans kids’ is dangerous nonsense, but it’s used constantly by those arguing for a ban. They conflate being gay with being trans. No treatment or medical intervention is needed to be gay or lesbian and it’s well-known that you can’t change someone’s sexual orientation. But being ‘trans,’ believing you have a ‘gender identity’ that is different to your sex, requires hormonal and surgical treatments that can cause irreversible effects on the body, and put young people onto a lifelong medical path. Gender identity, unlike sexual orientation, is fluid and changeable. The growing numbers of detransitioners like Keira Bell are proof of that.

In addition, there is no standard definition of conversion therapy. The GEO’s own National LGBT survey, the largest and most comprehensive to date, didn’t come up with a definition. And gender identity is even harder to define, relying as it does on unevidenced inner feelings or sex stereotypes.

We know there is no evidence that gender identity conversion therapy, or GICT, is taking place now in the UK in healthcare settings. Even those arguing for a ban on GICT have failed to uncover any examples.

This is why it is so important that if a ban is enacted it protects therapeutic and clinical practitioners. They must be free to treat their trans identifying patients as they would any other patient, with no predetermined diagnosis or outcome in mind. This is crucially important when treating children. We know that the vast majority of cross-sex identifying prepubescent children will grow up to be gay or straight if they are not socially transitioned. The least likely outcome is that they will be trans adults. We also know that teenagers who express a trans identity are likely to be on the autistic spectrum or have experienced trauma or have other mental health conditions. They need to be treated in a holistic way, without gender overshadowing their other issues.

Therapists are already facing obstacles in offering treatment to children with gender issues. James Esses, a trainee psychotherapist, and experienced Childline volunteer was thrown off his Masters degree course recently and dismissed from his Childline role for expressing the view that children are being rushed into changing their gender.  This is a chilling reminder of what could be in store if a ban on GICT is made law.

Therapists now are facing constraints after activists and lobby groups added ‘gender identity’ to the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in 2017. This professional practice guide, signed by all the major therapeutic bodies tells therapists they can only affirm, not question, a cross-sex identity.

Prior to draft legislation on a legal ban on conversion therapy, the GEO is holding a public consultation, scheduled for a late September launch. It’s important that any medical or therapeutic bodies or practitioners with knowledge of this area get in touch with the GEO now, so they can become stakeholders in the process and help in the design of the consultation. When the consultation opens as many people as possible, non-professionals, parents, and teachers must respond and let the government know that a law that bans a practice for which there is no evidence would be a bad law. 

The real scandal is that a form of conversion therapy is already taking place in UK gender clinics, promoted and amplified by LGBT lobby groups like Stonewall. Groups such as Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence claim that any approach other than complete affirmation of a cross sex identity is harmful. Clinicians fearful of being called transphobic have been silenced. As a result, young people, possibly confused about their emerging same sex attraction find it easier to say they are non-binary or trans. Gender non-conforming girls, the quiet boys who don’t fit the mould, are being told that their likes and interests, how they dress and their hair length determine their gender and that this is more important than biological sex.

Transing the gay away; this is the real conversion therapy.