Stopping Conversion “Therapy” More Effectively

Transfeminine bioethicist law professor Florence Ashley discusses the support for and issues in bans that bans transgender conversion therapy in their book Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis. In the book, Ashley explains how and why we must understand policies against trans conversion therapy, or its varying names, to distance the original term's negative reputation. In each chapter they successfully “guide jurists, policy-maker[s], healthcare professionals, scholars, advocates in their thinking about how to ban conversion therapy more effectively” (17). In the first chapter, Ashley defines trans conversion practices and explains to readers how to identify them. Ontario was the first Canadian province to ban trans conversion therapy, which led the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) to close its gender identity clinic for youth a few months after Bill 77, the Affirming Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Act, passed in 2015 (33–34). Clarke Institute has prominent figures that played significant roles in transgender conversion therapy, particularly Canadian sexologists Drs. Kenneth Zucker and Susan Bradley, and other figures that gave Clarke Institute the nickname “Jurassic Clarke” due to their policies that promote harmful and misinformative beliefs or practices against transgender individuals, such as the widespread belief that Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) exists (3–7, 27). The ban helped Canada stop some forms of conversion therapy, but this was not enough to completely banish the practice.The benefits of the ban includes the changes in professional practices and symbolic changes in laws in culture and mental health. However, Ashley explain the limitations of conversion therapy ban in Canada: age and consent restrictions, insufficiently detailed wording, criminal laws, unregulated practitioners, professional resentment and adjudicator reluctance, lack of compensation for survivors, continued funding of conversion practices, and unwillingness to legislate. Policies must have careful wording to ensure stopping and preventing conversion therapy, notes Ashley. In the second and fourth chapters, they explain how the interpretation of the ban leads to loopholes for trans conversion practitioners to still practice or not face several consequences through what the ban does or does not include. An example is Bill 77 and the removal of “or direct” and whether the list is exhaustive or illustrative, “pets include dogs and cats” or “pets are dogs and cats” as they note that the list depends on if it is ejusdem generis (39–40, 45). Ashley clarifies how two solutions, a chapter dedicated to each, can terminate conversion practices as starting points: by developing an affirmative professional culture and an annotated model law prohibiting conversion practices that addresses the limitations of banning conversion therapy. The two approaches aim to prevent loopholes for practitioners from continuing pseudoscientific practices. Ashley describes the clear professional guidelines, education, and accountability structures for affirmative professional culture.Another critical element in Ashley's book is the research on trans conversion therapy laws in different countries: one can learn how a country could have a much more or less protective law for the community. Ashley chose countries with “official languages” (French, English, and Spanish), which here includes Canada, the United States, Spain, Latin America, and Malta (54–55). The noteworthy point is that they note the common belief that Canada and the United States are forerunners in human rights, while other countries like Argentina and Pakistan have more progressive laws for transgender rights. The unfortunate aspect is that Ashley does not include examples of other countries’ approaches to banning conversion therapy, such as how German law prohibits adults and youth from being coerced, pressured, or tricked into conversion therapy, and violators can include relatives who force victims to attend such conversion therapy sessions (DW 2020). Despite the linguistic and geographic limitations, Ashley thoroughly notes the limitations of other countries’ bans, especially the differences between Canada's freedom of expression laws and the United States’ freedom of speech, as the United States is more limited and category based in this respect. Ashley explains how Canada's freedom of expression law could allow an action like parking a car to protest and convoy (72). However, in the case of conversion therapy, freedom of speech does not apply, as there is a lack of any absolute truths or definitive definitions for intentional use of hate speech. Ashley notes how people can be emotionally and psychologically harmed by words spoken to them. Verbal abuse is a form of violence by manipulation and traumatization, such as gaslighting, threats, or humiliation, hence why hate speech is a form of violence. Ashley also mentions how silence is compliance and why we must speak out against harmful speech. In freedom of religion, the author also notes that conversion therapy can have religious motives behind it, but since the motives are discriminatory and harmful then these practices cannot be protected under the law (95).Though a well-researched text, Ashley could have included more discussion of leading figures in transgender conversion practices and the history of Clarke Institute. They could have mentioned sexologist Ray Blanchard who coined the term “autogynephilia” and proven to be pseudoscientific by biologist Julie Serano in her article “The Case against Autogynephilia” (2010) as she notes the vague definitions and stigmatizing terminology (177–186). Blanchard affiliates with the Human Biodiversity Institute, a far-right think tank that promotes pseudoscientific racism, eugenics, and conspiracy theories, especially as Steve Sailer, the founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, expressed approval of gay conversion therapy, as he believed it to be a “disease” (Hatewatch Staff 2018a, 2018b; Moser and Beirich 2003). Ashley could have even explained how the prominent figures in conversion therapy are connected to hate groups and how transphobia relates to other oppression on both the micro and macro levels.Ashley proves how transgender conversion therapy can be a political force in the biopolitics of cissexism and heterosexism through emotionality and misinformation. Through emotionality, people support conversion therapy out of disgust. The disgust with transgenderism is manifested through socialized unquestioned beliefs about the Other through ignorance and fear. The sense of disgust toward the transgender community relates to feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva's idea of abjection: the fear that the object (transgender) is blurring boundaries with the subject (cisgender), resulting in a sense of repulsion toward an entity reflecting this fear (Stryker 2015: 251–53). The abjection toward the transgender community leads people with repressed emotions to support conversion practices in hopes of eliminating anyone who is not cisgender or heteronormative, as they want to believe there is hope that they would be “cured” to avoid becoming the entity they loathe, which is anything outside of heterosexuality and cisnormativity.Ashley's Banning Transgender Conversion Therapy is revolutionary because the book covers topics not previously dealt with in the literature on transgender conversion therapy. Ashley connects previous studies regarding transgender conversion therapy, such as the high rate of suicide in the transgender community, in a way that helps us to understand the flaws in supporting conversion therapy. The book is highly informative and recommended for laypersons, activists, and experts in law, medicine, or social science interested in terminating conversion practices. Furthermore, the book brings an awareness of the scope of the detrimental effects of the ban if it is conducted without considerable precaution. Ashley works from a thorough definition of what are considered conversion practices and how these pseudoscientific methods have specific consequences therein.

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