The Two-Year Anniversary of the Conversion Ban

Today is the two-year anniversary of the criminalization of conversion “therapy” in Canada. I use the word “therapy” in quotation marks because it is NOT therapy, although therapists and others may try to use that term. Calling it “therapy” actually makes the profoundly dangerous practice even more potentially lethal. It is part of a broader set of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression change efforts (SOGIECE) that reflects some of the systemic and historic violence against 2SLGBTQIA+ individuals. It is responsible for profound harm, including the suicidal ideation and deaths of far too many.

SOGIECE and Colonization

SOGIECE are a strategy of colonization, and reflect the ways in which religion has been weaponized against 2SLGBTQIA+ people. Many people who are born queer experience adverse religious experiences. These impact their ability to make meaning and cope with the adversities of life, which in turn, amplifies the harm done in the name of religion.

Sometimes SOGIECE practices are overt (queerphobic sermons or bible study groups that try to “pray away the gay”) and sometimes they are implicit (no all-gender bathrooms in the building or clubs/activities that are gendered and exclusionary, like “brotherhoods” and “sisterhoods”). Either way, these function to maintain the status quo and to make gender-diverse people feel like we don’t belong by reinforcing binaries that leave no room for us. These lead many of us to believe that we would be better off dead, or force us to try to hide or conform, often at a lethal price.

Conversion practices are not unique to the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. They include a variety of other forms of colonial violence toward other groups, as Jews and other religious minorities know only too well. The Crusades and contemporary efforts to evangelize Jews and others are other examples of the harmful impact of conversionary zeal. The belief that what feels true for one person must therefore be true for others, and the impulse to force or convince someone else to change who they know themselves to be is a dangerous and slippery slope. No less than the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, Judaism has also been profoundly damaged by the conversionary practices of a colonial mindset.  

Speaking out today

Today’s two year anniversary is personally meaningful to me because I am a survivor of both conversion “therapy” and the larger SOGIECE and societal practices that amplify its impact. I have only begun to talk about and heal from these. Today, I was given the opportunity to speak on the topic, as part of an interview with the CBC about a new website: https://stopconversionpractices.ca/.

Here is the interview: click here to listen to it.

Talking about my experiences is still new for me. Truthfully, I am not ready to talk about what happened to me in all of its details. I am still working toward restorative justice to try to find healing for myself and to ensure that others do not experience what I did. I would prefer that the fullness of my story have a happy ending, and that, when I do tell it, it can be the story of how one should take accountability and make amends (do teshuvah).

That said, on this second anniversary, I still wanted to share an overview of the dynamics, from a didactic perspective, because I believe that, unless people like me begin to talk about what happened to them, no one will understand what it is, nor how dangerous it is. As I have found strength and courage to come out and to choose to live a happier and healthier life, so I pray that others will as a result of my doing so. Therefore, here is a description of some of my conversionary closet, as part of my honoring this historic moment in time, and as part of my life’s quest to help others.

I believe in restorative justice as the catalyst to tikkun (healing). I watch the growing violence and hate rhetoric against the  2SLGBTQIA+ community, recognizing that these will likely only increase as the world careens toward yet another election. We are, and always have been, exploited as wedge issues, to distract from the stuff that matters (housing, poverty, injustice, climate change). Knowing this, I feel compelled to speak.

Pikuach nefesh: saving lives

I speak out because I have come to understand the danger of silence. Fundamentally, every time queerphobic hate is allowed to be spoken out loud, everyone is harmed. Hate speech desensitizes and amplifies conversionary wounds… those of us who are listening are permanently damaged. It is not “free” speech if it causes someone to want to kill themselves or to hurt someone else: it is dangerous and lethal. It is akin to shouting “fire” in a movie theatre only a million times worse. For so many, it is the key that keeps closet doors locked.

I speak to let those who believe that they are the only ones know that they are not alone and there is hope. I speak to make amends to everyone who was harmed because I did not have the courage to come out earlier. I speak to do what I can to make this world safer. I speak because I feel called to do so. I speak because I was silenced and muzzled for too long.

To me, this issue is an issue of “pikuach nefesh” (saving lives) which in Judaism is the most important principle. I therefore am committed to talking about things that I have been led to believe I should keep silent. Shame is a strong dynamic that maintains every closet. It is reinforced by secrecy, and amplified by intersectionality and lateral violence, so that one is taught early not to “air dirty laundry in public”. This contributes to a lack of visibility and perpetuates shame, which I can assert from personal experience is lethal and toxic.

Speaking out is “pikuach nefesh”: it is how we save lives. It is not meant as an accusation. I understand that our planet is in the midst of a seismic change in our collective consciousness, and that what happened to me is a relic of a time that I pray will soon be in the past. I have faith that if I keep speaking and advocating, alongside a growing number of others, the future will be better than the past.

Responding to the request for restorative justice

Not everyone is ready to acknowledge that what they did is wrong. This is perhaps the most frustrating part, because it is not personal, but when people react as if it is, that hurts everyone. I understand that what the world knows now, it did not know 25 years ago. But, if we keep trying to cover up what happened, then we can never move forward. We have all inherited systems that were designed with intersectional bias and oppression at their core and foundation, and they continue to inform us, through systemic factors such as laws and policies, and through internalized factors, such as beliefs and habits.

Rather than react defensively, restorative justice processes teach that we can transcend the past by accepting what was and committing to do better for the future. It is in this spirit that I share my story, as I now understand it. I share it as a form of making amends to all those who I unintentionally harmed by staying trapped in my closet for as long as I did, and to encourage more people to begin to join me in advocating for a world where more people are free to become who they were created to be.

Emerging from my conversionary closet: Becoming Me

I was honored to be featured in a guide “Let Me Be Me” published by the Legal Information Society of Nova Scotia (2022). It was created to help organizations comply with the new legal requirements of Canada’s Bill C-4, which prohibits a continuum of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression change efforts (SOGIECE). This prohibition includes any practice or effort, explicit or implicit, that pressures a person to change their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to heterosexual and/or cisgender. SOGIECE includes conversion (therapy) practices but also encompasses other ways and situations in which 2SLGBTQIA+ people experience harmful pressure to suppress their authentic selves.

I was deeply moved by this project. I will forever be grateful for its unmasking of the ubiquitous influence of conversionary practices in our world and in my life. This is an example of the life-saving power of structural change, because it shines a bright light on this oft-hidden dynamic. Truly, the doubt caused by these practices is one of the most destructive and effective components of a successful conversionary experience. Doubt that is sown lingers and grows, taking on a destructive life of its own. Knowledge is the most powerful antidote to conversionary practices: this is why so much of the battleground right now is focused upon what information is taught in schools.

I have come to understand how conversionary practices rob us of our understanding and consciousness. Repressing core aspects of self impacts everything. Early lessons on how to dress and behave according to my assigned gender led to a deep inner splitting that continues to haunt me. Gender dysphoria led me to bodily dissociation which has had far-reaching implications. The healing is complex because the wounding is multi-faceted.

The role of trauma

Growing up as a second-generation Holocaust survivor, I was born into the shadows of intergenerational trauma. My father was a hidden child, sort of like Anne Frank, dependent upon the courageous acts of non-Jews to risk their lives. Learning to hide was a core survival strategy that I inherited in the same unexamined way that I learned to breathe.

Trauma begets trauma: it attaches to other traumas like a magnet that seeks out its own kind to build a metaphorical moat around the castle of self. The conversionary experiences that taught me to doubt myself did not exist in a vacuum: they were reinforced by countless traumas. Larger social dynamics and colonizing values further reinforce these. This is why it is so important to discuss the role of conversionary practices as an adjunct to the larger social and systemic forces that perpetuate the lie that “conversion therapy” works.

I shudder to realize how easily my story could have become a cautionary tale to one considering coming out as transgender or nonbinary: on the outside, it looked like I had adjusted well to my decision to suffocate my truest self. It looked like a “fad” that I “outgrew”. I seemed successful and well-adjusted. But on the inside of the closet into which I had wedged myself, the anxiety, doubt, self-recrimination, depression and other psychological symptoms were spreading like mold until my foundation crumbled. “Conversion therapy” was really “conversion death”.

Closets and conversion death

“Conversion death” (=the illusion that conversion practices were successful) looks different for each of us: it could be self-harming behaviors, suicidal ideation or activities, addiction, violence or any other way of trying to deny our truth under the delusion that the closet is “safer”. My decades of hiding became deeply toxic and led me to self-harm, but most people did not see it and did not know what they were looking at if they did see it. Increasingly, I am understanding that my story is far more common than I understood while I was trapped in my closet.

How many of us look at those struggling with the “challenges of life” and discern the deeper truths that they are repressing? Society teaches us to judge others rather than empathize or recognize our role in their suffering. Indeed, psychodynamic theory would suggest that some of the political violence and hate-filled rhetoric that fuels conversionary efforts are actually examples of reaction formation: those who are fighting to lock closet doors are afraid of what is inside their own closet. Queerphobia is the fear that one might be queer too.

To me, the closet represents society’s structural conversionary policies and practices that serve to imprison so many of us. The criminalization of conversion “therapy” practices, the removal or reduction of SOGIECE, along with the increased funding of gender-affirming care is akin to the opening of a closet door so that more of us can emerge to be true to ourselves.. We are choosing to come out rather than choosing death/drowning in the floods of (often introjected) conversionary hatred, and choosing unhealthy coping strategies that are pathologized.

My story

For as long as I can remember, my gender identity has been a source of pain… As early as the age of three, I began praying to not become a woman when I grew up. But without words or representations of what was possible, I instead learned to dissociate from my body that began to betray me by my early teen years. In many ways, coming out as me has felt like a process of excavation. It began by my mid-teen years, but then I stopped as a result of conversionary practices.

As I reflect upon the events that led to my decision to “go back into the gender closet” in early 2002, and to allow society to erroneously define me as “lesbian”, I want to highlight that they were effective, in large part because of the deeper structural and intergenerational trauma that taught me to hide to stay safe. I think it is especially important for me to reflect upon the role that religion played in this.  

My dysphoria led me to not understand myself and to distrust my body. As I sought to detach myself from my body, I found myself gravitating to the spiritual realm. Many of those drawn to religious leadership roles have similar paths. This is one reason amongst many that religion is often weaponized in service of blessing and locking closet doors. Some of us are called to communities of faith that are more affirming than others: this structural difference impacts the trajectory of our ministry and the degree to which our closets can be opened.

Personally, I felt called to become a rabbi. I spent close to three years living in Jerusalem, studying, praying and learning to become who I felt created to be. It was there that I first met others who identified as gender-diverse or transgender. This awakening planted hope. I do not know if I would even be alive without this gift, although it took me so much longer to find the courage to follow my heart.

Conversionary experiences

Unfortunately, while I did begin to come out as me in the 1990s, “conversionary experiences” led me to choose to return to the gender closet. It has taken me a long time to process what happened and work toward healing from these. As noted above, I do not wish to share the specific details of what happened to me yet, because I am hoping for a happy ending as I work toward restorative justice and healing. But I think that it is important to note that these “official” conversionary experiences, were amplified by a variety of other incidents.

Amongst these, I experienced two physical transphobic attacks and countless micro-aggressions that slowly but surely wore me down to dust. I was also assaulted by a US immigration agent because he wanted to make sure that I was really the female that my passport documents stated. My experiences with the US immigration system are worthy of their own book, but in brief, they were horrifically traumatizing and unjust, as they are, not only for me but for so many.

Such incidents contributed to my belief that justice was impossible. They were reinforced by additional harassment and the many systemic injustices that almost all gender-diverse folk have to endure on a regular basis and that are barely acknowledged by the rest of the world. These fuel conversionary experiences: like the pebble in one’s shoe, eventually we want to give up walking.  

The opening of the closet door

It took the pandemic (being able to work virtually and not feel forced to wear the “female drag” uniform that I felt forced to wear) and returning to Canada for things to change for me. While there is still a long journey toward full equity, I was astounded by the dramatic structural differences I encountered north of the colonial border. Both dramatically reduced the conversionary pressures that had been suffocating me for so long.

Little by little, I found myself starting to breathe a little more freely. Slowly, I began the process of transitioning, changing my name and pronouns, and trying to figure out how to excavate myself from the closet into which I had been trapped. With each step forward, I began to see more clearly and feel more alive. I began to meet others whose journey paralleled my own.

For me, everything shifted back into focus, December 16^th, 2022, when I learned that my former congregant, Henry Berg-Brousseau, (z’l) ended his life. Henry was my congregant and had been assigned female at birth. Early in my rabbinate, I came to know him and his family, and bore witness to his journey, as a small child and throughout his schooling, as he and his parents unsuccessfully fought for him to be able to use the bathroom at his school. I recall watching this struggle, as if through a veil, muffled, from the other side of my closet door that was sealed shut by my shame at my own complicity with a system that I knew was wrong and causing harm.

Upon learning of his death, I became flooded with memories and remorse over my silence while he struggled. I had chosen silence and hiding to stay safe, but now I was realizing that this choice had led, not only to my own suicidal ideation, but had potentially and unintentionally contributed to his. I reflected upon how my choices had denied to him (and others), the blessing of seeing someone be out and knowing that it is possible.

The power of coming out and speaking out

Visible role models are rare embodiments of hope in a world that feels like our very existence is dangerous and reprehensible. What if I had decided to come out as transgender while I was his rabbi, when he was young? What if I had intervened in his family’s fight for the basic human right to safely use a bathroom while attending school? What if I had advocated for all-gender bathrooms in his synagogue, or protested the gendered programming, rather than reluctantly agreeing to lead it?

Regret, shame, grief and rage at the system all combined synergistically with the hope that had been planted in me since moving to Canada. This is the power of structural justice and this is why it matters to have visible signs of inclusion in a world that is unsafe. Everywhere I looked, I realized that I might actually and finally be safe: people defaulting to they/them pronouns if they did not know someone’s pronouns… gender-inclusive facilities everywhere… and visible intersex, transgender, nonbinary, agender and gender-expansive advocates. These are the Lights that ignite hope when one is trapped in a closet. They give strength and courage and a vision for what is possible.

Teshuvah: making amends

I grieve for the ways in which my choices denied this to others, and potentially contributed to their harm or even death. And I grieve for the ways in which I prioritized, over my own,  the voices of other people who I now understand did not value me or my life by their refusal to allow me to be true to myself. While I understand that we all do the best we can with what we know, now that we do know better, we also have a responsibility to do better.

Part of my healing is to now do everything I can to make amends for my silence and complicity with a system that teaches a false binary and contributes to the negation and erasure of those who identify as gender-diverse. I am learning how to withstand the onslaught of transphobia and bias, even from those closest to me, by leaning into a community of people who have bravely come out of their own gender closets. And I am doing what I can to do tikkun (restorative justice and healing) for others, by advocating for a world where no one else has to undergo what I did or what Henry (z’l) did. I think of him every day and dedicate everything I do to him.

I give thanks to the bright and shining role models that I have met along the way- those brave, courageous and triumphant souls who have cleared the path for me. I am especially grateful for the courageous advocates who enabled this law (the criminalization of conversion “therapy” practices) to become a reality here, north of the colonial border. My admiration and gratitude overflows.

I commit to doing everything I can to join them in clearing the path for others. I now understand that visibility is the most powerful antidote to conversionary practices. While sharing my story is terrifying, I do so as an expression of my undying appreciation to those whose stories inspired me. May the day come soon when we tear down all closet doors, and all are finally free to become who we were created to be.