Eyebrow Sloth

This is extremely important to establish, that up until relatively recent history, people in the medical profession were doing experiments with attempts to change the sexual orientation of children. This was not some backwoods shack in the Bible Belt, it was mainstream.

Conversion therapy isn't just some preacher operating out of said shack, it was legitimate medical science; doctors, psychologists, and clinicians. One such government funded study was run out of UCLA in the 70's. Not the Bible Belt, but California.

It was refered to as the Sissy Boy Experiment, ran by George A. Rekers, who became known as the father of conversion therapy. He proposed that if you took boys who acted feminine, and discouraged them from playing with dolls, etc, you could prevent them from being gay adults.

Rekers'"therapy was that boys who exhibited feminine traits were to be reprimanded for feminine play in their home life, yet encouraged to identify with a more traditional masculine gender role. Parents were to ignore the child for any feminine behaviour, and praise the opposite.

The experiment was considered a success, and a boy given the name "Kraig" in the study was supposedly indistinguishable from any other boy his age; he was "cured" of his feminine behaviour. At least that's what the therapists claimed.

In reality, it was a failure. "Kraig" was Kirk and he still grew up to be gay, but later took his own life. His family say they believe the therapy destroyed his life. Have a read of this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/family-of-kirk-murphy-says-sissy-boy-experiment-led-to-his-suicide/2011/06/10/AGYfgvOH_blog.html …

We need to understand what conversion therapy is, and what it started as. It wasn't yelling about fire and brimstone, it was about enforcing gender roles in children, "encouraging" feminine boys to identify with a more masculine role, and "discouraging" them from femininity.

Here's the thing with Singal's apologia for academic transphobia, he draws his audience to make the connection between conversion therapy and this "backwoods shack" so that they view it as far as humanly possible from a clinical, academic standpoint as possible.

He's trying to make folks think "Hey, professionals don't practice conversion therapy, that's what those folks in the Bible Belt do with their pray away the gay stuff" and distance doctors from it rhetorically. It's a trick.

How utterly barbaric is it for a doctor to insist a child no longer be allowed to spend time with girls whatsoever, that this is "dangerous"? What Zucker believes here, and what he practiced, was unequivocally conversion therapy almost exactly as pioneered by Rekers.

Zucker appeared on a BBC documentary and said; “A four-year-old might say that he’s a dog – do you go out and buy dog food?” That is utterly transphobic rhetoric, the likes of which you'd hear from the most vile internet trolls, coming from a doctor who treated trans youth.

Nobody who spews hateful garbage like that should be allowed anywhere near children, but certified "Not a transphobe" Jesse Singal claims he was the subject of a witchhunt, and of course doesn't practice conversion therapy, if you could believe that.

So, with that in mind, do not let Jesse Singal gaslight you about what conversion therapy is, nor whitewash people like Ken Zucker. Singal is an advocate for conversion therapy for trans youth.

Previous threads dragging Singal. He follows a lot of extreme anti-trans accounts:https://twitter.com/CaseyExplosion/status/926272235941265408 …

How he repurposes old homophobic rhetoric to attack trans people:https://twitter.com/CaseyExplosion/status/926115275396866048 …

How he defends similar repurposed homophobic tropes, and normalizes anti-trans bigotry in an academic setting:https://twitter.com/CaseyExplosion/status/927510972415250432 …

In short, FUCK YOU JESSE SINGAL YOU TRANSPHOBIC PIECE OF SHIT! FUCK RIGHT THE FUCK OFF ALREADY!