10 Comments
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Nomi's avatar

This is such an abhorrent way of offering “help” to youth that are in need of understanding and legitimate medical care.

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Janelle's avatar

This is so fucked up…. They actually found a way to make conversion therapy worse. At least conversion therapy is honest about what it’s trying to achieve. And “enlightened” centrists will see this as some sort of sensible compromise on the “transgender question”. Any therapist who practices this has no business being in their field.

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Reid Pope's avatar

Thank you for writing about this and doing all that you do! It really means the world!

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Danksy's avatar

I'm not surprised that this is taking off. from reading this, it seems like GET has the same basic structure as conversion therapy, with the difference being that it is not explained as a punishment, but as a neutral third party. the enlightened centrism of trans healthcare.

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micah yaps's avatar

Therapists have been doing this for so long. I initially thought it was some misguided second-wave feminism but this brought me back to where i was 14 years ago, with a therapist who insisted my issues were specifically about my "confusion" about my mixed-race heritage (i am not confused, nor do i have issues with it), and that "girls can do everything boys can, so why don't you just stay a girl?" After reading this, it is so clear this was all an effort to keep me from starting hormones. The last thing she said to me is "I feel less confident about your trans identity than I do any of my other trans clients" All these "therapists" need to have their licenses revoked!

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Barbara Saunders's avatar

Sounds like "pregnancy crisis centers" designed to divert people by trickery from the care they are seeking.

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Kelley Winters's avatar

This is an excellent introduction to deceptive and harmful “Active”/“Therapeutic Gender Exploration” psychotherapies. Thank you.

>Gender Exploratory Therapy was first coined in a paper by London psychologist Anastassis Spiladias in 2018<

However, the tactic of relabeling gender identity conversion as “Active”/“Therapeutic Gender Exploration," as a loophole to legal and ethical prohibitions, predates Spiladias in 2018. It was proposed by Zucker and Green in their infamous workshop at the 2016 WPATH Symposium. Details and cites for this history can be found at---

https://transpolicyreform.wordpress.com/2022/01/11/from-the-jurassic-clarke-to-the-soc8-repsychopathologization-of-trans-youth/

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Sparkette's avatar

I don't understand; I understand if they (mistakenly) think they know people better than they know themselves, but do they *want* to force people to live with gender dysphoria? If so...well, why? What do the people pushing this crap possibly stand to gain from it?

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Dec 26, 2022
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Alteff For's avatar

no u

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Dec 23, 2022
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caffeinecrow's avatar

So the surgeons are "money grubbing [and] greedy", but at the same time "too petrified NOT to do gender affirming cosmetic surgeries"? So what is it CatCactus, are the surgeons corrupt Big Pharma agents who'll do anything for a couple grand, or are they morally upstanding doctors being pressured by trans people on the internet? If you're going to leave a negative comment on something you should at least make the first sentence of it internally consistent.

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