OOC: Obviously this is a very personal issue for me (
I'm transgender, male pronouns please, for those who didn't know), but I think people are confusing "psychotherapy" with "conversion therapy". Psychotherapy is often recommended - at least over here, based on myself and about a dozen or so trans people I have talked with - for reasons
not to do with the gender identity, but more commonly the anxiety and depression that go with residing in the wrong body and/or being viewed by the society as being the wrong (
wrong in the sense of "not what I feel I am") gender. It is to
help you feel comfortable with your self, while the way society sees you is changing.
Also, it is part of the whole evaluation process. I could, right now, without any hormone therapies or surgeries walk into the registry office and change my legal identity (
name, official sex, getting all the official paperwork and driver's licence and all that changed to mark me as a man with a man's name and social security number) into male one. I actually have the papers, the diagnose, the official proof of it that it's not just in my head. They suggested further psychotherapy to deal with the anxiety issues, but I looked into it and realized the type (
because, surprise surprise, there's no just one single kind of psychotherapy that exists) they were suggesting can be done basically with the support of friends and family and learning the right kind of thinking. With this I have managed to reduce my general anxiety levels (
I still get easily stressed, but that's unrelated to any gender issues) by incredible amounts.
Does that mean that because I have not started hormone therapy yet or done something surgical to my body that I was not transgender? I have started calling myself Joel, asked that my friends and family call me Joel (
they apologize getting the name wrong a lot, but, well, I still tend to answer the phone with my currently still legal name, so them just making the effort counts for a lot!). I've shifted to using male pronouns online - in RL that doesn't matter as Finnish doesn't have gendered pronouns - and I have started to introduce myself as Joel even in RL, even in situations where there is a real possibility that it will subject me to ridicule. None of this would have been possible before the evaluation process and the therapy that was inherently a part of it.
Auralia, if you were put through a conversion therapy to turn you into a woman who's into men, do you honestly think that could be done? If not, why do you think the "opposite" would work on other people?
Tinfect, have courage, girl, things will get better. I hope they will get better to all transgender persons in USA and that someone will eventually force a law through there, too, that makes transitioning a part of the basic medical care, so that everyone can afford it and the therapy that goes with it.
Everyone else, regardless of tech or species, it is not and never will be okay to force someone to try and change a large part of their identity, whether it's gender or sexual orientation. Even if it
did work (and science suggests it does not), forcing an identity change of any kind is not okay. Whether that forcing is done with violence, threatened violence, physical, sexual, emotional intimidation, threatening with legal consequences (like getting disowned or fired)... it is not okay.
tl;dr: Golden rule, people, "don't do to others what you don't want to have done to you".And let's be honest, if conversion therapy really was a thing that works, it should be used to turn everyone female (
to reduce aggression) and gay (
to stop population growth). There's actually a
book that uses that as part of the plot. I suggest reading it to find out how well it works with future tech "conversion therapy"...