Discount Fred And The Conversion Therapists

Those who oppose what some call “Conversion Therapy”, including me, view it as being a coercive, disempowering treatment, often backed by religious and religious affiliated organisations, which is used to attempt to ‘convert’ a person’s sexuality or gender.

There have been historically, and still are in some places, a number of different techniques used in Conversion Therapy, including some incredibly inhumane, abusive methods. I think the more common one now though, at least in some places, is using psychoanalysis. My understanding is that this is a process which uses the idea that sexuality, and gender (and crucially, only sexualities other than being heterosexual and only genders other than being cis gender), are like a kind of mental illness (they are not), which are ‘caused’ by developmental issues. The theory is that by working through trauma and other events in a person’s life, it will stop them being gay, make them straight, or with trans people, it’ll ‘cure’ their Gender Dysphoria by having us believe we’re no longer trans. Rather than focus on the more complex debate around why people are who we are though, I think my main point here is being Queer or Trans, is not actually a problem in itself. For me, I’m both Queer and Trans, certainly some of my mental health problems are around being those things, certainly I have trauma, but really the struggles I have in relation to my sexuality and gender, are related to the damage caused by living in a society and culture that doesn’t truly see and hear me, that doesn’t accept me, and in the worst cases, actively oppresses me.

I think Conversion Therapy is unethical and should not be allowed.

Ideologically I don’t like banning things, I’d prefer it if we had a society that rejects unhealthy and unethical practices and behaviour, through empowering people. We don’t have that. Then since we’re talking about the health and risks to some of the most vulnerable people in society, I feel the best option available, is for the state to step in and mitigate the risks, in this case, by banning the unhealthy and unethical practices.

Additionally, I feel that legitimising Conversion Therapy, carries the risk of detracting from resources being put into ethical and healthy forms of therapy and could put people off from seeking that form of help.

I have trauma. I needed help, so I sought out therapy for my trauma. I have Problematic, Persistent and Pervasive mental health issues as a result of trauma, but being Queer and Trans are not mental health issues and so I do not need therapy that targets my sexuality and gender as if they are mental health issues. Certainly it’s worth working on my Gender Dysphoria, as I have worked on, for example, my Borderline Personality Disorder traits, but it’s perfectly possible, and totally valid for me to be Trans, and not suffer from Gender Dysphoria.

If you feel you need to work through your identity, then please, ask for help, ethical, healthy help. Importantly, getting healthy care, requires a person to feel safe. In order to feel safe, people need safe spaces. Safe spaces are not places, safe spaces are relationships, connections between people. The relationship between a therapist and a person needing therapy, has very specific boundaries in order for it to be a safe space, it requires trust, it requires an environment in which the person having the therapy, can feel valid and powerful in themselves. It requires structuring and nurturing. I do not see how this can be achieved, if the therapist, and the therapy itself, is based on the idea of almost or literally prescribed change to someone’s identity.

Aside from my point about Conversion Therapy being unethical, I think statistics show that it’s also ineffective. In most cases, it doesn’t even work. I think if a form of therapy is so ineffective, it can actually be damaging to the person having the therapy. What can happen, does happen, is that a person can spend years not seeking help, suppressing their feelings, take the very important step of seeking help, then get sidetracked onto a path that actually isn’t suited to them. They go through the therapy, may even come out of it having convinced themselves they are ‘better’, or as often can be the case, walk out of the door feeling even more frustrated, unseen and unheard, feeling worse than they did before, exhausted and unmotivated. They may then never attempt to seek help again, yet they may need it more than ever.

It’s possible I may have created more questions as a result of writing the above, which is ok, and maybe I’ll address the issues around therapy some more elsewhere.

I have been feeling increasingly unsafe, everywhere. I am vulnerable. I have severe mental health problems, to the point I’ve stopped working and been a recluse, partly aggravated by a pandemic and lockdowns, but actually, largely because I’ve been too afraid to go out of the house. There have been numerous incidents I’ve been subjected to outside of my home as a result of some people’s awful behaviour towards me being Transgender, also I can experience both transphobia and misogyny, sometimes at the same time. One of the first times I went out at night, after coming out as Trans, I stepped outside my front door, started walking across the road, then got followed up the road by someone cat calling me then hanging around. I get a whole range of abuse. Sadly, it’s not just a problem for me outside of my home, I have to be careful who I let into my house, including doing things that others may take for granted, such as booking someone to come and fix a leaky toilet or fix my gas boiler, because although I’m relatively safe from physical threat, I can be treated badly and feel unsafe, just as a result of the way people look at me, or talk to me.

This is why I feel unsafe, this is why I start panicking and actually wondering if it’d be better if I hid my Gender expression, this is why I need therapy. Actually though, it’s not really me who needs therapy, what I need is for people to stop being arseholes to people like me.

I increasingly started taking taxis everywhere because I felt so unsafe. Before I came out I used to walk everywhere, because people were less likely to abuse me, because I felt safer, but I was really feeling safer for appearing to be someone I am not.

On Tuesday 19th April 2022, I decided I’d get myself ready and go out to a planned protest in Oxford’s Bonn Square. The protest was called to make a stand against the practice of Conversion Therapy and more specifically, to protest against the way the government (and I think the entire UK parliament itself) had passed a bill to ban Conversion Therapy, on the grounds of sexuality, but not for trans and non-binary people. This means that those who practise Conversion Therapy, cannot use it for Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people but can for people who are transgender.

On the day of the protest it was reasonably nice and sunny. Although I was very anxious about doing so, I decided to walk to the protest, about 3.5 miles from my home. I felt I could do with the exercise, the time to walk and think away from the distraction of being in front of a computer screen, I could save money on expensive taxi journeys, and I could avoid getting on a bus full of strangers and potentially viruses.

I went out of the house and I started walking, which is something of a big achievement in itself. I quickly found I was out of shape, doing something I used to take for granted (even walking twice the distance in a day), but this was ok, good for me even.

As I was walking, I felt my sadness and grief. I have so much of it, for many reasons, including the death of my mum a year earlier, and still grieving for the loss of my 22 year long relationship. I walked, I thought, and I felt my emotions and I cried, for about a mile. As normal I noticed a few people looking at me in various ways as they went past. I am sure the looks I get are related to my Gender expression, since I wasn’t looked at in that way before I came out. This isn’t a nice feeling, it shouldn’t happen, but it’s manageable enough to get through.

Then I got onto Oxford’s Cowley Road, one of the busiest areas of Oxford, with lots of traffic, shops and people. So my anxiety started rising but I tried to walk confidently, I tried to feel ok about myself and the way I look, while at the same time fearing being seen just for who I am.

Half way down Cowley Road I noticed someone from one of the shops, Fred’s Discount, with a large rack of goods, about to take them back into the shop after they had been on display outside during working hours. I glanced at him very briefly, simply because I like to pay attention to what’s going on around me.

Then it happened. The shop worker, or possibly owner, started to make some noise to attract attention to him. My first thought was something like “Oh God, I hope he’s calling to someone else, not me”. Sadly he was indeed trying to get my attention. Now, perhaps for most people, this would not cause much alarm, but I am transgender, with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I’m hypervigilant, and normally not paranoid though, I can quickly spot when someone is about to try to break my boundaries.

I was now within a few metres of the shop owner, outside Fred’s Discount but still trying to just walk on by.

I then heard the shop owner say some words, he said what he did in a way which I think was deliberately slightly obscured, it wasn’t shouting, but I think he was trying to make sure only I heard him. At first I had doubt about what he was saying to me, but actually I knew this was wishful thinking on my part.

The shop owner called over to me, first “Are you a lady?”, then “because you look like a man”.

I felt violated, my boundaries and privacy had been invaded. My anxiety and adrenalin shot up.

Very quickly after he’d said what he had to me, he started to move into the shop. What a coward. I don’t think I stopped, I think I continued to walk past. I was aware of my emotional state, and that my fight or flight reaction was close to being triggered. So I maintained control of myself, however, I decided I wouldn’t completely let the incident go. So I turned around and walked back to Fred’s Discount, the shop owner had already gone inside. As I was walking back to the shop, another person was walking up to it as well, and said to me something like “leave it, just relax”, which annoyed me. I stood in the shop doorway next to the person who had just come in and I said calmly “I am relaxed” and told him “Maybe it’d be better if you kept out of it?”, to which he started going on about how “this is my mate and… blah blah”, so I ignored him and called over to the shop owner and said “Sorry, what did you just say?” (referring to his comments to me outside the shop). The shop owner started again asking if I was a lady, I think then he probably decided to try to get rid of me and came toward me saying things like “I’m all for LGBTQ+ rights…” with a smug look on his face. “Sure”, I replied.

I think I started to leave but then turned around and said “Right, I’m off to a protest, a trans rights protest”. I wasn’t being assertive really, I read the name of the shop out “Fred’s Discount”, my point there was to infer that I was just about to spend time with hundreds of people who are actually defending LGBTQ+ rights, and there’s a good chance I’m going to tell a few people about the incident. Which wouldn’t necessarily be good for business.

Then, what happened next was that the shop owner pulled out his phone, stood in the shop doorway of Fred’s Discount on Cowley Road, Oxford, and started videoing me. I turned to the side, it was another invasion of my privacy, although I was in a public space, and probably not criminal, he was targeting me for no good reason, and I thought he’d probably pass it round to his friends later, for a laugh. So, I stood sideways, and stuck two fingers up at the camera then walked off.

As I left, I heard one of them say “we don’t care”.

I walked on down Cowley Road, feeling very tense, scared and angry, on edge, then I started to cry again. I felt even more unsafe. As is often the case, I started to wonder if I’m cursed, or even to blame, and I wanted to retreat back into my house again, but I carried on, past people looking at me, the rest of the way into town.

Fortunately, on the way into Oxford, I met a friendly face, my friend Elise, a former Green Party councillor and former Lord Mayor of Oxford. She spotted immediately that I was in distress and gave me a much appreciated hug. I told her what had happened and as usual, she was very caring, validating, affirming, and very clear that what had happened to me was wrong. She was also clearly and understandably angry but more concerned for me. I think I cried even more then, because I do that when someone shows me genuine care, when someone actually sees me and hears me. We walked to the protest together (as she was going there anyway to join the protest for trans rights).

When we got to the protest in Bonn Square, there was already maybe a couple of hundred people there. Speeches hadn’t started, but there was some chanting. Elise stood with me. For a short while I stood with the bulk of people as they chanted. Then I broke down in tears, it was too much for me and so I had to move and go and stand by the side.

I’ve been to a lot of protests, even led marches and chants with a drum, including starting and leading an entire march through the centre of Oxford (that time it was a “Refugees Welcome” march). I had lost my voice though. Partly it was my Gender Dysphoria, because this is the thing, I am afraid to actually use my voice, for it to be heard, for myself to hear it, for fear of being considered “fake”. I also just felt so utterly demotivated, like any fight I had in me, and I can be fierce, any power I had, had vanished. I then felt even worse, because I was aware of feeling helpless, powerless, and I felt ashamed of myself, and I felt like I was letting everyone down, just giving up.

Then I looked around, and I listened. What I witnessed was a good, fairly large group of mostly young people, standing up for themselves, for each other, for people like me, in a positive, decisive, focused, intelligent, caring way.

I heard some excellent speeches, largely or probably entirely from people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community.

I think one point I’d like to pick up on, was that one of the speakers said something like, in relation to trans rights, “we’re going backwards”. I later sat down on a bench and I had a really good, meaningful conversation with a friend. I felt some real authentic connection, we talked about being trans, and about mental health struggles, difficult subjects, but I felt positive, optimistic. During our conversation I mentioned the speaker saying that we’d gone backwards, and I said that I disagreed, and I do.

I think often it can feel like we are going backwards, but I don’t think we are. I think what’s happening is that we’re at an unprecedented point in time and social understanding of the rights of trans and non-binary people. Over the past few years, we’ve been so much more visible, we’re being talked about, we’re coming out. We’re coming out of hiding, we’re overcoming the intense fear and anxiety we have, we’re standing up for who we are. To me, it feels like a revolution, and every revolution has its Reactionaries. Revolutions can seem polarising, but mostly I don’t think Revolutionaries polarise, I think we just bring what is already there, out into the open, and I think once enough of us are seen, there’s no going back, we’re not going away.

I think the reason it sometimes feels like we’re going backwards, is because the more we push for our rights, the more we are visible, the more the Reactionaries fight back.

There are different types of Reactionaries. There are lots of those who some call “Gender Critical”, and sadly, many of them are women who I think are understandably angry, traumatised even, by the same Patriarchal society that has not only oppressed women’s rights, that uses misogyny against us, but is also one of the causes of Gender Dysphoria in trans people. Sadly, instead of connecting with people like me, even just having a disagreement, I feel largely that those who are Gender Critical, are in some ways, helping the Patriarchy, to divide and rule. Gender Critical people are often some of the most aggressive toward people like me, I don’t necessarily mean physically aggressive, I mean the switching off of empathy, the invalidating of people like me, the aggressive communication they tend to employ in places like social media. It makes me feel so sad, and scared for us all, because actually I think we could otherwise be allies. Many Gender Critical people, especially women, feel they are under attack from people like me. They aren’t, but I am certainly under attack from them. Certainly there is a fight back from the Trans Rights side, and sometimes it can be unhealthy, it’s an unfortunate result of the divide and rule, with each side feeling attacked by the other.

I don’t mean to excuse any bad behaviour on the part of anyone, from any ‘side’. It’s all just hideous. What I’m trying to do is understand it, and find a way to connect better and resolve conflict. I don’t think conflict can really be solved by one side actively oppressing the other though, and sadly, I think the Gender Critical ‘movement’, for want of a better word, is largely trying to oppress people like me. It’s a kind of trauma response though.

On the other hand, there are Reactionaries and there are Reactionaries. I think our real problem, for both GCs and Trans people (and society as a whole), is the Patriarchy. Looking at this from a wider perspective, there is also the very serious problem of racism, as well as misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, genderism, and sexism. It does seem like there’s a hierarchy going on here, which ultimately serves men (and white men being the ones with the most privilege and power). I say “men”, but actually, being more specific, I mean “cis men”, because as much as GCs like to do the same thing as racists, in using exceptions to brand all people in a group as being bad, it seems clear, that trans and non-binary people, are not the problem here.

Maybe there are some Gender Critical women that would like to join me in condemning Reactionaries like the transphobe in the shop. Because I’m willing to bet, he’s a misogynist as well. He’s the tip of the iceberg though, sadly.

I see this thing called “Conversion Therapy”, as yet another tool of Patriarchal institutions. It’s unethical, ineffective, unhealthy, Reactionary, and serves to divide us further. If Conversion Therapy is to be banned, it must be banned for all, no exceptions.

Copyright © 2026 Siobhán Sarelle