News
Transgender woman who grew up in Charedi community welcomes plan to ban conversion therapy
She underwent controversial therapy and says it should be viewed as a 'crime'
October 3, 2018 09:27
She underwent controversial therapy and says it should be viewed as a 'crime'
October 3, 2018 09:27A transgender woman, who grew up in the Charedi community, has welcomed the government’s proposal to outlaw conversion therapy.
The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, herself underwent the controversial therapy which attempted to suppress her sense of female identity and convince her she was a man.
But she worries that the government’s policy may be hard to implement because supporters of conversion therapy may seek to recommend it under another label.
Equalities Minister Penny Mordaunt, introducing the government’s LGBT Action Plan in the summer, said such practices were “wrong and we are not willing to let them continue”.
The government would consider both legal and other options to “prohibit promoting, offering or conducting conversion therapy”.
But it did not want to prevent LGBT people seeking legitimate medical or spiritual support in “the exploration of their sexual orientation or gender identity”, Ms Mordaunt said.
Conversion therapy claims to be able to counter a person’s same-sex or transgender feelings.
But the woman says her experience of it, when she was still part of the strictly Orthodox community and struggling with her gender identity, was painful and traumatic.
Conversion therapy should be viewed as “a crime”, she said. “It’s appropriate for us to get to grips with the fact that LGBT people do not choose to be LGBT.”
Within the Charedi society in which she was raised, she said: “You are not allowed to say the word LGBT, you are not allowed to say the word transgender, you are not allowed to say the word gay”.
She was driven to conversion therapy in the belief that “I had to fix myself”.
One therapist told her any time she felt she was a woman: “I should just close my eyes and think ‘Weaker sex, weaker sex, weaker sex”.
She says she was even given pills that were supposed to make her feel more sexually attracted to women.
One rabbi she consulted even offered to send her abroad for treatment that “was not called conversion therapy” but that “would make me manly again”.
Defying the pressure to conform, she eventually transitioned and now openly lives as a woman. “It was life-saving,” she said. “I struggled with suicide before transition”.
But even if conversion therapy is banned, she fears that some will continue to advocate it – “they’ll rebrand it as spiritual therapy”.
