At 4zzz, we acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we broadcast. We pay our respects to the elders.

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We acknowledge that their sovereignty over this.

Land was never ceded and we stand in solidarity with them.

You're listening to transm on 4zzz, amplifying the trans and gender non conforming voices of Brisbane and Beyond. Good morning, Mean Jin. Happy 2025. You're listening to Transmission on 4zzz. My name is EZ, I use HE, him, pronouns.

Hi, I'm, Bet, I use she, they, pronouns.

And I'd like to begin the show by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land in which four ZZZ and Transmission broadcast every single week, which is a land of the Turrbal and Yagera people. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land and sovereignty was never ceded. We'll send our love and acknowledgments to our brother, boy and sister girl community as well as part of our trans family. We stand in solidarity with you always and forever. Yeah, we're, we're kin, brothers, sisters and siblings Transmission Today, bet, we've got a lot. We've got some heavy things.

Yes, heavy things. As usual. When I come in, that's my speciality.

You hear BET's voice and everyone's like.

The older pipeline, the violinist starter.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah. And we're going to be chatting a little bit, catching you up on some developments in terms of the Queensland Children's Gender Service with the change of government with the lnp. We're also going to have a little bit of chat, a little bit of discussion around Jillian Spencer and some things that are happening locally.

I promise I'll keep that brief.

Well, we will try to try.

Yeah. Because I really want to get to the main meat of the conversation.

Yes, yes. And the main theme of today is.

Well, I guess conversion therapy, that's the term that everyone's gonna understand the best. So let's, let's call it conversion therapy. Okay, I'll, I'll explain why that's a contentious term as we go along.

Fantastic.

But it's, it's a fair term.

All right, so that means language, content and theme trigger warnings for listeners. Today will be a heavy episode. Also. Welcome back to the podcast. It's nice to. That you're listening. It's the first one back after a three month hiatus as our team had a rest. And obviously we're back with a bang. This will be a big, a big theme for this show. Chatting Conversion therapies, as well as updates on what's going on in Queensland with the change of government and what's the future hold for us at the moment, as in the community, what's it look like? So, yeah, we're going to be looking out for each other. But, yeah, first of all, let's dive straight into what's going on with the local government and the gender service.

So, in a nutshell, as I said last time, there was an external review of the Children's Queensland Children's Gender Service last year, and it recommended an increase in funding, a doubling in funding to the qcgs and an expansion of the service statewide via a number of regional clinics. So the LNP got into power, as we all know, a couple months ago. They've just done a backflip on this topic. It happened overnight. One day they were saying they would follow the report's recommendations and then the very next day they came out saying they wouldn't. They've also expressed, quote, unquote, concern over puberty blockers in light of evidence that's coming in from around the world, by which they mean the CAS review. Luckily, I heard from a friend who works at the Queensland Children's Gender Service. The service already secured the 2.6 million in extra funding for this year that happened just before Labour left.

Oh, fantastic. That's some good news.

Yeah. So they have funding for one year, but I don't know that they're going to be expanding to and creating regional clinics when that funding is not secured for the following years. And they're obviously not going to have the blessings of the LNP government if they try to do that. So I guess all this signals that the future is uncertain. There's a petition that folks can sign. If you go to Trans au, click the link for campaigns and go to Protect Trans Youth Health in Queensland, you'll find the petition. I'll put that in the show notes too, for the podcast listeners.

Fantastic.

Moving on. Gillian Spencer, the psychiatrist who was fired from the Queensland children's hospital in 2023 for her anti trans rhetoric. I spoke about her last time I was here as well, and who then issued a complaint that children were supposedly being rushed into transition by the Queensland Children's Gender Service, is now running for president of the ranzcp, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. So I mentioned all that last time, but what's changed is a number of trans advocacy organisations have complained about this to the RNZCP and demanded that Spencer be disqualified from running. And this has prompted an open letter signed by just over 100 physicians, international physicians mostly, saying that they share Spencer's concerns and that the RNZ CP must not let itself be influenced by quote unquote, trans activists. So what concerns me here is that in a way this might be a win win situation for Spencer because from what I can gather from folks I've talked to about this who maybe know a little bit more than me about the rnzcp, she may not be likely to get elected this time, but it'll be great publicity because if there's a lot of so called trans activists trying to stop her from getting elected, then that just helps her narrative, which she already was spreading around, that health care is being infiltrated by trans activists and that decisions are not being made near doctors are not making responsible decisions because they're being pressured by trans folks. And perhaps that narrative helps her get elected next time. I'm not sure about that. I hope not, obviously. So I'm going to move on from Gillian Spencer.

Yeah.

Because I've had enough of her for now. My head's spinning with her.

It's okay. We'll play a song in dedication of TERFs.

So what I thought I would do, and I'm sorry about this folks, but I thought we could just have a quick worst case scenario about what might happen if things go very badly with the LNP and with Gillian Spencer and the rnz.

So we're moving into a speculation, a speculation.

And this is not what I think is going to happen, just to be clear. I just think it's possible and sometimes it's best to prepare for the worst. So firstly, puberty blockers could be banned. That's happened in the UK and that is clearly what the LNP wants to see happen here. And it's definitely what Gillian Spencer and some of her colleagues want to see happen. Secondly, HRT has made it unavailable to anyone under 18. Or if it is available, it's only after extensive psychological assessment and counselling. And thirdly, and in my mind this is the worst, the completely beyond the pale thing that might happen is that that assessment and that psychological care could be conducted by physicians practising so called gender exploratory therapy, which appears to be a euphemism for conversion therapy, and I can go into why in a minute why it is a euphemism for that. What all the evidence suggests about gender exploratory therapy. But what I thought I would briefly say, just as an old trans person who grew up during the 80s, is that I had no access to beauty blockers as a kid, obviously I didn't even know they existed. And I don't think anyone I knew knew they existed, at least for trans kids, as a treatment for trans kids. I didn't have any access to hrt. Obviously none of this was even an option. But what I think I could have survived. I mean, look, I did survive, but I think I could have survived in a bit more style until the end of my teens without both of those, if only I hadn't had the 1980s to contend with, which basically was like conversion therapy for all of us. You didn't need to go to convention conversion therapy back then. Everything you did as a trans person was conversion therapy. Your family was conversion therapy, the kids at school and the teachers, all of it was teaching you to be ashamed of yourself, to hide your true identity, to claim assist identity. And that's what I did by the age of 12 and that put me in the closet for over 20 years and I didn't transition for over 30 years. So my point is, any trans kids who are listening, any parents who are listening, I think if worst comes to worst, you can survive your teens without. I mean, I'm not going to say everyone can because we know that this can be life changing treatment, but statistically I think it's far more important. Sorry, not more important, but far more likely that what's going to happen if you are denied puberty blockers and HRT and you're forced to go through some sort of conversion therapy is not that you will commit suicide, it's that you will have a terrible life for a while after that. Because the numbers of kids who have terrible lives after that compared to the numbers of kids who actually commit suicide, it's a lot higher.

Yes.

So I'm not saying to downplay the risk of suicide, I'm just saying there are two risks here. Okay. And we often emphasise the risk of suicide, but the other risk, and this is mainly for the parents out there, is yeah, look, your kids might survive it, but without your support. And if they're being fed a whole lot of brainwashing from their therapists, they are going to struggle for years afterwards and they might struggle for decades. It depends. Depends how extreme the brainwashing is.

Yeah, it's sort of like you can survive suicide, but at what cost as well, you know, because there's also the cost of continuing to. To live in an environment that doesn't accept your existence.

Yeah. And. And it's not only does it not accept you, but it's kind of got its hooks into you and started to make you believe stuff that years later you're going to realise just isn't real at all, which is what happened to me.

Yeah.

So I guess what I want to emphasise is gender affirming. Medical care is not just life saving, it's life changing. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Do you want to play some music before I go on to a little bit of history? Just a brief history of conversion therapy.

All right. When we come back, we'll chat more about the history of conversion therapy, how we get to where we are now. Also want us give a yell out. Thank you, Steve, for Kuramundi for subscribing to four Triple Z just now. Your support means everything. It keeps us on air. If you'd like to subscribe to Four Triple Z, you can head to four triple z.orgau forward slash support. That's how we keep running. Amplifying the voices of the trans and gender non conforming community of Meanjin, Brisbane and beyond.

Transmission on 4ZZZ brings you the latest.

In trans community news, music and events. Every Tuesday from 9am till 10am Join our team of hosts for an hour of celebrating the unique perspectives of the trans community transmission. Tuesday mornings from 9am till 10am on 4zzz. We're chatting about conversion therapy. So we're going to go through now a bit of the history of conversion therapy.

And it's not so much a history, but I just wanted to give two little tastes of what conversion therapy could be like in the past. And I think it's very rarely like this now, but I think it's probably worth looking at where we've come from. So in the 1960s, a guy called Carl Bryant, who went on to become a sociologist and wrote some peer reviewed papers about about this history and about his experience and wrote about his experience in general. He went through something. I think it was the sissy boy programme they called it. I think that's the one he went through. I didn't get a chance to cheque last night, but he went through one of them. Now here he's talking about a research programme that was out of UCLA in the United States and he says that in this pro they, they did this research, by the way, only on young kids. Kids assigned male at birth. At that time, kids assigned female were not included in these research projects because they were all about extinguishing feminine behaviours and replacing them with masculine ones in young AMAB kids.

Oh, that sounds terrible.

So they used various reward and Punishment systems, including a token system in which the boy being treated was given blue tokens for positive reinforcement. So for instance, if he did so called masculine play with his brother or red token tokens for negative reinforcement, for example, for feminine play with his sister at the end of the day, rewards or punishments were given depending on the number of each coloured tokens that the kid had amassed. And at the end of that particular treatment, the researchers reported that the subject's playtime with his sister was at zero or near zero, which I find so sad. These treatments targeted play activities, play partners, gestures, speech, so called feminine inflection to speech or feminine content in speech. The treatment typically extended over many months. Researchers, what Carl Bryant calls a small army of researchers and research assistants would descend upon the boy and his family in their home and at school, where they observed the boy and trained others to take over in their absence. So what would happen is that parents and teachers would end up monitoring the boy's behaviour and providing rewards or punishments based on how he performed, whether he was masculine enough. So Bryant ends by saying that the therapy that he received, which I haven't heard described in detail, I haven't heard him describe that actual therapy in detail, he just focuses on the studies in general. But he says the therapy that he received made me feel that I was wrong, that something about me at my core was bad and it instilled in me a sense of shame that stayed with me for a long time afterwards.

Wow, that's terrible.

Yeah, it's pretty terrible. So on to Erica Muse, who is a young trans woman who went through the Centre for Medical Addiction and the Centre for Addiction and Mental health in Toronto. CAMH. Now this is where the infamous Dr. Kenneth Zucker practised. I've mentioned him before and one day I'll do a deep dive into him. It was shut down when the conversion, the anti conversion therapy laws came through in Canada. I think in the early 2000s. It wasn't shut down because, because it was litigated against, but they just got cold feet, they got scared in light of the, the conversion therapy laws and they shut themselves down and they fired Kenneth Zucker. So Erica Muse says I was denied the medication I asked for that was appropriate for my age, but I had to return for more therapy. In each appointment that I came to, he, that is Kenneth Zucker would comment on newly masculinized parts of, of my body that had been changing due to puberty, parts that he could have stopped from developing had he given me care. And then he'd ask me how I could possibly pass as a woman in my future life. He would berate me for not meeting feminine expectations and excoriated my life. At that point sessions were not therapeutic but abusive. Eventually he relented and allowed me some care. But I think the only reason he did is that I proved to him that I couldn't be quote unquote fixed. I've been suicidal and depressed due to his treatment of me. My self identity is ruined and only in the past year have I gained any self esteem. I live in a body I hate thanks to him.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, sorry about that.

Yeah. No, but these are the, these are some of the realities.

Yeah. Now as I said, I don't think that anything quite that intense happens these days. I hope not. I mean, look, I shouldn't say that, obviously it does. It would be happening in Russia, it would be happening in parts of the world. I hope that it's not happening in Australia. If it is, I suspect it's probably religious conversion therapy. Now I know someone who went through a so called exorcism that that can happen but I hope that. No, no physicians are practising stuff like that. But what they are practising is this, this new form, form of conversion therapy that they call so called gender exploratory therapy. I just want to point out that anti trans campaigners often claim that there is no such thing as conversion therapy for trans people. They treat it as a thing of the past and they say that it was only ever applied to gay people to begin with. But that is totally disingenuous. Conversion therapy of the kind that Carl Bryant describes was applied indiscriminately to gender non conforming AMAB kids, some of whom were obviously trans. So when Dr. Roberto DiAngelo of Segum and Therapy first says that so called transsexuals as they were known at the time were never routinely offered aversion therapy. What he means is that at the time no one would have thought of a child as a transsexual or a trans person.

Right. That this was something that developed as you aged. Yeah, right.

So what they thought, thought they were doing, these people that were giving these therapies is that they were stopping kids from growing up to be trans. They didn't think of them as already trans. That wasn't a thing then.

Right, right.

And so that provides a little loophole where anti trans campaigners can claim that trans people never received conversion therapy in the classic sense.

But that's because it wasn't being. They weren't Being viewed as such.

Exactly. They were just being viewed as a risk that they were at risk of being trans.

They were preventing, quote, unquote.

Yeah, exactly. And briefly, what little research there is on this topic suggests what we all know intuitively. Trans people who experience conversion practises are more likely to have attempted suicide, to have experienced homelessness and to suffer severe psychological distress. One study found that experiencing conversion practises had a greater negative impact on suicidality than experiencing physical violence. I can easily believe that.

Wow.

Okay, so I'll make this as quick as I can. A few aspects of contemporary conversion practises that is so called gender exploratory therapy. Well, firstly, and most importantly, they refuse to affirm a kid's gender. So when the child comes in to see the psychiatrist, the psychiatrist will refuse to use their pronouns and will often refuse to use their preferred name. And what they'll do is they'll choose a nickname instead. They'll create a nickname with the child because at all costs they just don't want to accept that this, this child is, is trans.

They don't want to affirm that person's identity.

Yeah. What they claim is that if they affirm the identity that it will get quote, unquote locked in and then they won't be able to explore it, which I think is absolute nonsense. And in fact, one of their own studies or sorry papers quotes Kira Bell, a famous D transitioner, so called detransitioner from the uk. And Kira Bell told the court, in her court case against the Tavistock Gender Clinic that the psychiatrist attempted to talk to her about the gender spectrum as a way of persuading her not to pursue medical transition. Transition. But she took it as a challenge to how serious she was about her feelings and it made her want to transition more. And I actually think that's the most likely outcome. If you refuse to affirm a child, they will dig in their heels and they will want to transition more.

They will resist.

Yeah. So. Or else they'll tell you a bunch of lies, right? Like you'll ask them questions about the gender and they'll tell you what you, they think you want to hear.

They'll mask up and they'll. And they'll. Yeah, they'll tell you what you want to hear.

So anyway, other aspects of contemporary conversion practises, so we know what we're looking out for. Transness is approached with suspicion and associated with unprocessed trauma, childhood abuse, internalised homophobia or misogyny, co occurring mental illness, social contagion, Autism and fetishism. So those are all seen as potential causes of a trans identity. Secondly, until gender exploration is completed, young people are not offered any transition related medical services and social transition is typically discouraged while they're undergoing therapy. There is a belief by practitioners that gender affirming medical care should be avoided if possible. That's a direct quote from the Gender Exploratory Therapy association who have now rebranded themselves as Therapy First. So when you remember that name, everyone Therapy First. If ever you see a logo on a, on a psychiatrist desk or on the wall or in a pamphlet they give you, or anywhere that says Therapy first just run a mile.

Yeah, Red flag.

Nothing to do with that.

Yeah.

Also the mandatory nature. Okay, so it's forced. The mandatory nature of gender exploration is what distinguishes so called gender exploratory therapy from the affirmative approach. Because the affirmative approach already holds space for exploration. It's in the Australian Standards of Care, it just doesn't force it. So Michelle Telfer, the famous physician from the Gender Clinic in Victoria who wrote the Australian Standards of Care, wrote that when a child's medical, psychological and or social circumstances are complicated by coexisting mental health difficulties, trauma, abuse, etc. A more intensive approach with input from a mental health clinician will be required. So this is the gender affirming model of care. It does recommend that therapy be a part of this if the child has mental health problems. But she also goes on to say that some children are happy and they don't require mental health intervention and they should just be affirmed in their gender with no conditions established. Right, so the main difference here is that so called exploratory therapy wants to force all children whether they're happy or not, through a minimum of 40 hours. Holy 40 hours.

Oh my gosh.

Of so called exploratory therapy to prove that their gender is legitimate.

What? Go do something else with your life. You've got better things to do. Come on.

So to sum up this little section, Therapy first, they're the main proponents of gender exploratory therapy. Them and Segum, who I've mentioned before. Now those two organisations are not really even distinct organisations. They share the same members. They're just two different brands of the same organisation.

Yeah, like Coke and Pepsi. Same thing.

Therapy first claim that all they want to do is explore that they are offering a neutral, patient centred service designed just to uncover truths about the kid's gender. But the gender affirmative model already makes space for exploration and it already recommends it. The only difference is that it doesn't force it. I think also the thing here is there's not enough funding in the gender clinics for kids to get extensive therapy. And what Therapy first are trying to do is redirect the funding to their clinicians into these 40 hours of counselling instead of into gender affirming medical care and whatever counselling is possible through the gender service.

And where does therapy first operate from? Like whereabouts? Where are their tentacles reaching to?

Well, they're a world, I don't know if I should say worldwide. They, they have, I don't even know if they have like an office, like I, I should look into that. But I've mentioned before Dr. Roberto D'Angelo, he is the director, or I forget what they call him, the president of segum, the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine. And he is clearly a key player in Therapy first as well. He's written a lot of their, their studies and, and their whole clinical guide. And he is based out of Northern Rivers, New South Wales, if you can believe that.

Right. Yes.

So I think this is a decentralised organisation. Now, when I mentioned earlier that Gillian Spencer got that open letter in support of her, with over 100 clinicians worldwide signing on, that's not as, as impressive as it sounds. All it was was a hundred, roughly, physicians who were connected to Therapy first and Segum and Gen Spect and, and this whole astroturfed anti trans movement. And every time something like this happens, they write an open letter or they team up and they, and they support whichever of their members in whichever country needs support.

Right.

So I, I think it's just a. Probably an online network.

Yeah. Right. All supported and backed by their leader, J.K. rowling.

Well, and by the religious far right in the United States. Yeah, that's the other thing that we need to do eventually is track where the funding comes from. The Southern Poverty Law Centre, who designates Sagan as an anti trans hate group, has done some research into where the funding is coming from and I'm going to have a closer look at that. But it does appear to be coming from places like the Heartland Institute, the same place that spread disinformation about climate change, for example, and try to outlaw abortion. It's, it's just the same people with the money who are funding this and they're, they're mostly American.

Interesting. When we come back, we'll chat a bit more about what you can prepare for yourself as a trans person or a parent. We can look for some red flags and what to look for when it comes to finding a good therapist. And staying away from therapy first, by all means necessary. Paradigm Shift's podcast is available online and via your favourite podcasting app. Challenging the assumptions of our current society to investigate alternative ways of living for a world based on justice, solidarity and sustainability. Tune in to the Paradigm Shift podcast. Just search the Paradigm Shift for Triple Z We're now going to dive back into.

So, yeah, I'm going to talk as fast as I can. Content warning, trigger, warning.

All that jazz.

All that jazz. We're talking about conversion therapy. So one point I want to make is that even Segam and therapy first admit that there are no studies which provide direct evidence that psychotherapy is an effective treatment for gender dysphoria. And nor could the CAS review find any evidence. It's it. They did a systematic review on the topic and it came back with no direct evidence whatsoever about that claim. But they still recommend psychotherapy as the first line treatment for gender dysphoria. At best it can treat comorbid conditions, things that might be related to the gender dysphoria, depression, whatnot, but it is not going to treat gender dysphoria. And I kind of think that perhaps a good way to challenge this therapy is under consumer law to say, look, this doesn't actually work. What you're claiming it can do, it can't do.

This is false advertising.

Yeah, yeah. Because it's in the fine print that they admit that there are no studies, whereas the whole thing that they're trying to say is, or trying to infer strongly to parents is that we can quote unquote, cure your kid, but it.

Is in fact effective. But there's no evidence for this.

Yeah. So also briefly, I just want to make the point that all this going on about how it's just explorative, it's just an exploration of gender. They've been saying that since the 70s about gay conversion therapy. There was one type of therapy called reparative therapy, which they said was about exploring, isolating and resolving childhood emotional wounds which will often result in reducing unwanted same sex attractions.

What?

So it's basically the same thing. Okay. Therapy first is saying, look, we just want to explore your kids gender and that that might result in kind of curing them of gender dysphoria. Well, no, it won't. It won't. Okay, so onto the red flags to.

Look out for red flags to look.

Out for red flags for parents and children and teenagers. If you're at the therapist and they start talking about detransition as a concept with no qualification whatsoever, that word should always be in scare quotes. Detransition, desistance. That's even worse. If they use that term, it's disrespectful. It's not a word that trans people generally use. If, I mean, it's definitely not something that trans advocacy organisations use.

No.

The biggest red flag of all, rapid onset gender dysphoria or rogd. If they talk about that without any scepticism whatsoever, as if it. If it's a legitimate medical condition, then they are complete charlatans. If they talk about trans identification, if they say, if they talk about a child being trans identified rather than just trans, big red flag. If they talk about an exponential increase in referrals to youth gender clinics, that just shows a complete misunderstanding of maths. There's been a steep increase in referrals of youth to youth gender clinics. It's not exponential. If they talk about natal males or natal females instead of cisgender folks, big red flag.

I also find male and female, those two words can sometimes be a red flag with the context of gender. Sometimes.

Yeah, yeah, that's a contentious one. And the last one here, putting either the word transgender or the word cisgender in scare quotes, that's a huge red flag.

Yes.

Contrasting psychotherapy with the affirmative approach. If they do that. As if gender affirming care never includes psychotherapy. Big red flag. Conflating gender dysphoria. The diagnosis with gender identity disorder. The diagnosis now, therapy first does this all the time. They know better. They're psychiatrists. They know these are two separate diagnoses and that one of them is no longer used. But they pretend that they describe the same symptoms because that allows them to quote from studies from back in the 70s when gender identity disorder was a thing. Well, it's not the same as gender dysphoria. And anyone who acts as if those two things are exactly the same is a charlatan. So. And lastly, if they refuse, refuse to use your pronouns or call you by your referred name, that is a massive red flag. One last point. In 2020, the Public Health act of 2005 was amended to. To supposedly prohibit conversion practises in Queensland. But that law includes the following clause investigating or. The following practises are not prohibited. Not prohibited. And one of them is investigating or interrogating a patient's experience of gender identity and expression as part of the clinical process of assessing the patient's symptoms and reaching an accurate diagnosis of their mental health. Interrogating a patient's experience of gender identity. That is not prohibited. Now, it doesn't specify whether or not that patient's been forced to undergo that in order to receive treatment, but I would say that's a given. Really?

Yes.

So it's not banning. I think that Therapy first would have a good case for saying that they weren't actually practising conversion therapy based on that clause in the law.

I mean, anything that's interrogating sounds to me like an extremely invasive process.

Yeah.

Particularly with children and young people.

And one thing I didn't get a chance to mention, a massive red flag is if they start asking the kid. I mean, I read the Therapy first clinical guidelines, most of them, and they recommend the same thing that the cast review recommends, which is interrogating your kid about their sexuality, about their kinks, their fetishes, what porn they watch. These are kids. Like, this is disgusting and they're acting like this is a potential cause of transness. There's no proven link there whatsoever. So I'm going to stop talking now. Yeah, we together.

Thank you so much, Ben. That has been extremely informative. If you'd like to support petition to help with protecting the healthcare for trans youth, you can head to the Transmission Socials, Trans with a Z radio on Instagram. You can even just type in Transmission with a Z onto the socials and you'll find us. I'll put the link up there so you can sign that, so we can look after our youth, our trans youth. And also the podcast will be up this week, so you're welcome to listen back. Thank you so much for tuning in and we'll see you all next week. Bye.

Bye. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to Transmission. See you next Tuesday, 9 to 10aM on 4 triple Z.