Webinar 7 December 2023
The United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy recently issued a position statement. In it they recognised that therapists with ‘gender critical’ views are likely to want to help clients resolve their gender related distress psychologically rather than through invasive medical treatment.
The statement acknowledges that gender critical views are protected in law, that the exploratory therapy associated with them is in line with the recommendations of the interim Cass Review, and that such therapy should not be conflated with concepts of conversion therapy.
Two weeks later, a private members bill seeking to ban gender identity conversion therapy topped a ballot in the house of Lords. It contains no exemption for exploratory therapy and simply repeats the inadequate, trans affirmative definition of conversion therapy contained in the Memorandum of Understanding. So, gender critical therapists could risk prosecution if the bill succeeds, leaving the field open for affirmative therapy and its associated medical treatments. A cynic might wonder about the link between the generous donations made to the Liberal Democrats by Ferring pharmaceuticals– suppliers of the NHS’s puberty blockers- and the fact that a liberal peer sponsored this bill.
David Pilgrim’s paper on the history of conversion therapy clarifies the differences between the cruel conversion practices of the past and contemporary exploratory therapy. Sex Matters have gone further. They claim that conversion therapy is being practised in plain sight as affirmative therapy. Left untreated, childhood gender dysphoria resolves in the majority of cases. Affirmation, on the other hand, fixes people in their trans identity potentially converting them into life-long transgender medical patients.
CAN-SG does not believe that a court of law is the right place to adjudicate on these complex clinical and ethical issues. But if this, or a future labour, government is intent on criminalising ‘conversion therapy’ we wonder which definition it will choose; that of the trans activists and their affirmative allies, or that of the gender exploratory therapists seeking to ‘first do no harm’.
Dr Az Hakeem is one of the top gender experts in the UK. He is a Consultant Psychiatrist, Group Analyst and Honorary Clinical Associate Professor at UCL Medical School. He previously ran a specialist gender dysphoria psychotherapy service within the NHS. His latest book DeTrans when transition is not the answer was published this autumn.
Dr Louise Irvine is a GP and Co-chair of Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender. She will be talking about the background to the worldwide push for legislation to ban so called gender identity conversion therapy, and some of the risks and unintended harms from such legislation.
Bob Withers is a Jungian Psychoanalyst and former senior lecturer in the history and philosophy of medicine, with many years’ experience working with, researching and writing about gender issues.
Chair Sinead Helyar Clinical Research Nurse