I knew transphobic detrans activists and therapists who talked about how conversion therapy bans could ban "exploratory therapy" by mistake and guess what, that's bullshit they sprout to win over the liberals and keep anti-trans conversion therapy legal and socially permissible.
Therapists in particular often need to be careful with how they talk about what kind of therapy they want to do on trans people because they could face serious consequences if recognized as a conversion therapist. They're trying to avoid those consequences.
Course a lot of conversion therapists and pro-conversion therapy activists don't see what they're promoting as conversion therapy because they believe their methods really work. That's why you also have to look at what they're really arguing for & compare it to other cases of CT.
Trying to find the "root causes" of being trans so you can "help" a person stop being trans is conversion therapy, as is treating trans identity as a maladaptive coping mechanism developed in response to trauma. There's little to no evidence to back up this kind of "therapy".
"Exploratory therapy" can go on forever because you can always keep linking more traumatic events to being trans, you can keep coming up with more "root causes" if digging into one doesn't work out. "Exploration" never concludes that the patient is actually trans.
There's no reason aside from transphobia to believe that trans people lack the awareness and self-knowledge to know who and what we are and what we need to live well. We need autonomy over our minds and bodies, not "therapy" to fuck our heads up and convince us to deny ourselves.
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