If you’re under the impression that conversion therapy has sharply declined in Canada after the federal government banned it two years ago, you’re likely not alone.
When the ban took effect in January 2022, for example, one of the largest organizations in the world to offer such therapy — Exodus Global Alliance — closed its doors in Canada.
Since then, not a single charge is known to have been laid against any company or person offering conversion practices, which attempt to change someone’s sexual orientation to heterosexual, or their gender identity to match their sex assigned at birth.
Far from pointing to a decline, that prosecutorial silence may simply mean conversion practitioners have gone underground, using coded or more broad language to promote their agenda, says University of Alberta law professor Florence Ashley. Many of those who once worked for firms like Exodus Global are now practising more quietly in private.
“Especially for trans people … the ban is not actually doing a terrible lot,” says Ashley, who drafted some of the language for the federal ban and wrote a book called Banning Transgender Conversion Practices.
As Ashley tells the Canadian Press, organizations are now pitching conversion practices with vague, evasive language such as, “We’re not actually changing sexual orientation. We’re kind of healing and repairing the underlying trauma that makes people gay, or we’re just letting them truly explore who they are.”
In a study recently published in the journal PLOS ONE, Ashley and their co-authors found conversion practices remain prevalent in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. This despite denouncements from health-care professional bodies including the American Psychological Association, which first issued a resolution opposing such practices in 1997.
Prevalence estimates were higher in the U.S. than in Canada, the authors found, likely due to higher homophobia and transphobia in many states.
“You’re increasingly seeing jurisdictions that are straight-up criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors, talking about gender or sexuality, or any public display of cross-dressing, drag or trans people,” says Ashley.
“It sends a message to those who offer conversion practices — and also to parents — that it’s wrong for your kids to be this way.”
Especially in Canada, parents may be unaware that their child is receiving conversion practices when they seek out gender care, Ashley adds. “They just seek out a health-care professional they think is reputable.”
The study showed the prevalence of conversion practices targeting transgender clients to be “substantially greater” than for cisgender clients, and greater among those assigned male identity at birth compared with those assigned as female.
“Masculinity among children assigned female gender identity at birth is often tolerated as a form of ‘tomboyish’ behaviour prior to puberty,” write the authors, “whereas femininity among children assigned male identity is stigmatized as ‘sissy’ behaviour.”
Penalties for violating gender norms and expectations of masculinity, they add, may be greater than those for violating gender norms and expectations of femininity.
Prevalence of conversion was also higher among Indigenous and other racial minorities than among white groups, prompting the authors of the study to conclude that “social inequities in conversion practice prevalence signal the need for targeted efforts to protect transgender, Indigenous and racial minorities, and assigned-male-at-birth subgroups.”
Ashley says the prevalence study is the first phase of a larger examination of conversion practices in North America. The second will focus on describing the nature of such practices.
The results will be aimed at informing federal policy to protect transgender and other 2SLGBTQ+ groups, and to reform what many regard as a ban that was “rushed, not adequately informed by experts and really only included survivors much later in the process,” Ashley notes.
“That was, I think, a mistake.”