Being Trans Isn’t a Mental Illness & What You Need To Know About Conversion Therapy
I’ve covered this issue in previous posts, but it doesn’t hurt to go over it again here.
Being transgender is scientifically proven to be innate, just like how being gay isn’t a choice, neither is being trans.
Being trans might be more complex than sexuality because it involves medical and legal transitions, but both also involve a level of social transition, too.
Neither of these identities are mental health issues that need to be ‘cured’ or gotten rid of.
Conversion Therapy
Conversion therapy is a dangerous practise that’s been going on for decades, in an attempt to ‘cure’ LGBT+ people of our ‘illnesses.’
People have tried to ‘cure’ others of their gender identity or sexuality, and normally the people trying to do the curing identify as ‘ex-gay.’ As in, they’re gay people who have been forced to think they’re straight through conversion therapy. And so the cycle continues.
Sometimes it’s just people who claim to be specialists in sexuality, gender, and human behaviour, when really they’re bigots who have decided that there’s something wrong with being different and are trying their hardest to stamp us out of existence.
A lot of the time it’s routed in religion. Christians who have been brought up to think that anything that isn’t white, male, or straight shouldn’t be allowed to exist. Not always, but it seems to be a recurring theme.
They’re wrong, obviously, but it’s easier to legally dismantle these practices than try to convince homophobes or transphobes that they need to take a step back and see that what they’re doing is wrong.
So, people have tried to ‘cure’ LGBT+ people, but it doesn’t work.
It causes suicide and self-harm because people are prevented from being who they are, as well as making worse any pre-existing mental health conditions.
Theoretically, you’d have better odds just living as your authentic self and dealing with the different types of phobia people might throw at you than trying to survive conversion therapy. The damage it does lasts for decades and creates more problems than solutions in the world, in the form of passing down homophobia and transphobia and creating more of it.
As well as just losing more and more LGBT+ people to suicides that are completely avoidable and preventable – just make conversion therapy illegal. Everywhere.
The UK is half-heartedly working on that at the minute, for now, here’s what you can do:
Fill in this form on banconversiontherapy.com.
Educate yourself about conversion therapy so that you know what to look out for.
I say ‘half-heartedly’ because Liz Truss is the one with most of the power over what happens here, which is not very reassuring. It’s ironic that Truss is the Equalities minister, considering she doesn’t actually support trans rights.
There’s a loophole in the proposed plan to ban conversion therapy, where ‘consenting adults’ can still have conversion therapy on religious grounds, and Truss says that what’s important is ‘protecting free speech.’
It’s arguable that nobody can or should consent to conversion therapy, and it’s widely accepted that nobody can consent to serious harm, for one.
This also just makes things a lot worse for religious LGBT+ people, as it paints a bigger target on their backs if conversion therapy isn’t allowed to happen to any other adults, except for, like I said, in religious spaces.
This doesn’t feel like it’s about protecting free speech for Truss at all. It never has been, considering her history with LGBT+ rights.
And not to state the obvious, but conversion therapy is not free speech. It’s hate, in every sense of the word.
What You Need To Know About Conversion Therapy
The point of this post is that conversion therapy is one of the worst things you can do for your mental health. Try to learn as much as you can about it to continue to challenge it and to help educate others as much as possible.
Which I know is a big ask, not done lightly, and not for everyone. Share some posts around about it instead, even, if talking about it isn’t an option for you, which is completely understandable given the state of LGBT+ rights, especially trans rights, in the UK at the minute.
Being LGBT+ is not a mental illness – there’s nothing wrong with you for being who you are, but the way that society reacts to our existence can hurt our mental health.
That shouldn’t prevent you from doing everything you can to live as your authentic self, unless you feel like you could be in danger, in which case there are UK charities and organizations that can help.
I’ll leave this post on the point that I’ve been saying over and over in different ways – your identity is not something that needs to be cured, you deserve a happy, full life as who you’re supposed to be, and there is always a chance to make things better for yourself if they aren’t going okay right now.
