Gender affirming care is conversion therapy for the body
Robby Starbuck said:
“If you have somebody who is a biological female and they say they want to be a male and you change them, you are describing a conversion. That's conversion therapy.”
The word "conversion" is doing real rhetorical work here: it sounds like a logical definition rather than a political reframing, and it inverts the established meaning of a term most listeners already know is harmful.
Conversion therapy is defined by its direction: it takes who somebody is and tries to change it to fit an external norm, through pressure, coercion, or the steady message that their identity is wrong. Gender-affirming care moves in exactly the opposite direction, it listens to who a person already knows themselves to be and helps them live accordingly. The practice that actually meets the clinical and legal definition is the one that sits a trans young person down and tells them they need to become someone else, which is precisely why it is banned or restricted in a growing number of countries. Calling affirmation conversion is not a logical definition: it is a deliberate inversion of the term, and the people who pay for that inversion are trans young people who are left with no pathway to support, while the therapies that genuinely coerce them continue unchallenged.
What I said at the time:
“Do you remember, we used to do it at gay children and say, Dad, dad. You don't understand.”
Trans people seeking care, and policymakers who may be persuaded to ban affirming care on the basis that it is itself a form of conversion, leaving trans young people with no support at all.