The Importance of Being Honest

What little I knew about conversion therapy came from films like But I’m a Cheerleader and The Miseducation of Cameron Post. It feels like a farce, and certainly not a serious issue that is taking place behind the scenes. 

The debate crops up in headlines every now and again: activists demanding that a ban should be introduced, or faith groups insisting that a ban will put a curb on their religious freedoms. Over the first few weeks of researching an investigative article, the time is full up with researching every bit of information that is already out there to find a gap that needs filling. Not a single one of the articles I found prioritised the trans community. When we think of conversion therapy, we always think of somebody trying to change the sexual orientation of a gay or bisexual person. 

Even during my first interviews for The Trans Cure?, it all keeps coming back to that separation between trans people and the rest of the LGBTQ+ community. I wanted to tell this story from the trans perspective, not that the struggles of gay and bisexual people who have experienced conversion therapy should ever be undermined. 

Adam Jowett led the government commissioned research on conversion therapy back in 2018 when a bill was first proposed. He told me that practitioners of these therapies will grasp at anything they can to get in the heads of the people they try to convert. Adam explained how trans people are often linked to higher rates of autism, despite all LGBT people being adversely diagnosed with neurodivergence. All LGBT people experience prejudice and bigotry, but trans people have the added disadvantage of being excluded from policy. In 2020, Boris Johnson announced that any proposed ban on conversion therapy would exclude trans people. 

Speaking to members of the trans community hammers this inequality in further. Steph Richards, CEO at a charity called Transluscent, reminded me that there are sixty or seventy gay MPs but not a single trans representative in Parliament. “We don’t have that representation with trans people,” she said. “And by consequence, we’re being othered.” Steph experienced people trying to change her gender identity, and she seemed shocked and humiliated about her community not being taken seriously in this debate. 

I want to meet trans people who have been through conversion therapy, to give them a space from a story they have somehow been excluded from. Why? Even after those first few interviews, my understanding is a little clearer. In what is supposed to be an incredibly progressive society, trans people are viewed with the same otherness as gay and bisexual people were in the 1980s. Eight years after the conversion therapy ban was first proposed, all parties seem to consider it impracticable to include trans people within that equation. There is so much I still want to understand about all sides of the debate, and I look forward to taking you with me on this journey over the coming weeks and months.