Julie Bindel Julie Bindel

The EHRC is right about the trans conversion therapy ban

Before I saw the statement, ‘It is with sadness and deep regret that LGBT Foundation is severing all ties with the EHRC [Equality and Human Rights Commission],’ I had never heard of the charity, the LGBT Foundation. How I wish it had remained so. The reason why the Foundation had taken such umbrage with the EHRC is because it had released two statements this week that, according to trans-activists, are ‘extremely damaging [to trans-people] and cannot be supported in any circumstances.’

One statement was about the proposed conversion therapy legislation in England and Wales. The EHRC rightly point out that bullying and coercing lesbians or gay men to become heterosexual, in the name of therapy, is a human rights violation and unacceptable on every level. I should know, in 2014 I went to a small Christian town in Colorado to undergo conversion therapy. I was doing undercover research, and my cover story was that I was deeply unhappy being a lesbian because my church and my family had rejected me. I made it very clear that my unhappiness was caused by external forces, i.e. anti-lesbian bigotry, but despite this, the so-called therapist tried every trick in the book (such as, ‘did your mother really love you?’ ‘Were you sexually abused as a child which led to you hating men?’) to get me to denounce lesbianism.

These people don’t really care if we become actively heterosexual or not, they just want to stop us acting on same-sex attraction.

But the proposals for the new conversion therapy law in the UK include gender identity. Ultimately, if this is passed, it would mean that any talking therapy offered to young people presenting to medical professionals with gender dysphoria would become illegal. As the EHRC pointed out in its report, gender identity is not the same as sexual orientation.

If that were today and I presented at a gender identity clinic, I would now possibly be on hormones

It is known

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