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Leaked audio confirms Genspect director as anti-trans conversion therapist targeting youth

Content notes: discussion of conversion practices targeting trans youth, pedophilia, transfemicide, sexual assault/rape, mass infanticide, and forced adoption/human trafficking of children. Included are also specific audio clips with targeted hate speech, comparisons with “autogynephilia” and pedophilia, and confessions of practicing conversion therapy with teenage clients. This is a particularly intense one, so please take all measures to care for yourself and proceed with caution.

If you need supports related to conversion practices, you can find information at Born Perfect (1-800-528-6257 (US)) and Galop (0800 130 3335 (UK)). Additional supports for trans and gender diverse people who are distressed or in crisis can be found at the Trevor Project (youth and young adults up to age 24, (866) 488-7386 (US)), BeLonG To (youth and young adults 14-23, 01 623 5606 (Dublin IE)), Switchboard (0300 330 0630 (UK)), Mindline Trans (by and for trans people, Mon/Wed/Fri 8PM-12AM, 0300 330 5468 (UK)) or Trans LifeLine (adults, available in English and español, (877) 565-8860 (US) or (877) 330-6366 (CA)).

Recorded audio of a Twitter Space from 2021 was released on YouTube last week as part of an ongoing feud between Genspect affiliates and self-proclaimed “gender industry abolitionists” who aim to eliminate all forms of gender affirming care. Within the Space Stella O’Malley, a prominent psychotherapist in Ireland facing allegations of conversion therapy and the director of Genspect (among other groups), reveals that she has made it her life mission to prevent trans youth from accessing any form of gender affirming care. In doing so, she inadvertently confesses to seeking to suppress or change trans youth’s gender identity, the very definition of gender identity change efforts (GICE, i.e. conversion therapy/practices),[1] despite her past denials. The audio proves the legitimacy of the allegations put towards O’Malley by trans people and concerned health professionals and, consequently, the allegations towards Genspect and other organizations or projects she leads or is affiliated with.

Background

Following intra-community criticism surrounding Genspect’s inclusion of “gender critical” trans people on their team, as well as the feature of Debbie Hayton (a “gender critical” trans woman) on Gender: A Wider Lens Podcast and Stella O’Malley’s associations with Arty Morty, a Twitter Space was arranged by Lorelei (hatpinwoman) and O’Malley for December 11, 2021. Other notable attendees include Kate Harris of LGB Alliance, Julia Mason of SEGM, Sinéad Watson of Genspect and Gender Dysphoria Alliance, Carol Freitas of DetransVoices.org and LGB Alliance USA, Tania Marshall of GETA and (previously) PAGDWG, and a number of LGB Alliance members, doctors, teachers, and representatives of non-profit organizations. Around the same time both Genspect and Arty Morty of LGB Alliance Canada were facing criticisms for promotions of James Cantor, who has advocated for the inclusion of pedophilia into LGBTQ+ communities as a sexual orientation. The intra-community criticisms were raised again in responses to O’Malley’s tweets discussing the scheduled Space.

When asked if the Space would be recorded for those who couldn’t attend, Lorelei responded that “[her] and Stella didn’t decide on whether there could be recording”, though she acknowledged that a recording would probably be made by an attendee “[b]ecause there are technological Terven among us!” This indeed turned out to be the case, as the audio was released on March 22nd[2] as part of the ongoing feud between Genspect and anti-trans detractors, some of whom are notorious clinic harassers or protest organizers.

This report will not be going into the allegations pertaining to Arty Morty, his associations or sympathies, or his position in LGB Alliance Canada, nor will we be linking to the audio in full due to its graphic nature and Stella O’Malley’s rather blatant defenses of rape culture. Our focus will be on specific audio confessions made by O’Malley within the leaked Twitter Space, her connections to or founding of international conversion therapy lobby groups, and what implications this has on health care for trans youth.

The recordings: detailing intent and strategy, in her own words

Within the leaked audio, we find two major factors in terms of how O’Malley operates. Firstly, O’Malley makes explicit confessions to enacting conversion therapy/practices on trans youth in her care, with a particular emphasis on trans girls in this context, and connecting it to the transmisogynistic concept of “autogynephilia” (occasionally referred to as AGP) that is supposedly “porn-induced”. Second, she lays out her public outreach strategy using these practices and her other platforms, such as connecting with government bodies and promotion of the pioneer series in Gender: A Wider Lens Podcast.

Confessions of conversion therapy/practices on teenage trans girls and the justifications used

Right at the start of the conversation, O’Malley goes mask-off in exposing her primary motivation behind her campaigns: the full-scale prevention of medical transition for trans youth.

Stella O’Malley: “I suppose, uh, where I’m coming from this more than anything is, uh, to, um, make sure that children are, if- if at all possible, are stopped from medical transition. I think that’s the most important thing for me.”

Later, she reveals that her interest in the debunked concept of “autogynephilia” is because there is supposedly a “very quickly increasing number” of teenage trans girls where this concept is the “root” of their dysphoria either in junction with or in contrast to “ROGD”. O’Malley presents genuine distress from gender dysphoria among trans youth as a kind of “porn induced” compulsion that needs to be controlled by anti-trans parents and clinicians. No room is given for the youth’s experience or how they are interpreting their experiences; if anything, O’Malley is quite explicit in how she believes that teens are incapable of self-reflection or understanding of their own mind and body.

Stella O’Malley: “And so, why am I interested in autogynephilia? It’s primarily because I’m meeting teenage autogynephiles and I need to be able to understand what’s happening with them. And I am more and more- I was very interested when Debbie Hayton was speaking with us in the podcast because I thought ‘Wow, the way she’s talking is it’s a compulsion. This is a compulsion, and it came over her like a compulsion.’ And I know people will be very annoyed with me using pronouns, but then I’m very annoyed with people when they try to compel my speech, so I’m going to do me and I’ll let everybody else do them. And so yeah, I was very, very interested when Debbie was talking about that and I thought ‘this is key to my understanding when I’m talking to somebody who’s maybe 15 years old and is autogynephilic and has no idea what’s going on except ”get out of my way, I need to be a woman.”’ And that child is not able to articulate what the hell is going on. They don’t have the verbal ability to, they don’t have the conceptual maturity, and I have to try and figure out how do we help this fast increasing number? This is not like the Ray Blanchard numbers, this is a very fast, very quickly increasing number of boys. Now, are they ROGD, are they AGP, or frankly are they what I think: a mix between AGP and ROGD, and I think the AGP is porn induced.”

This isn’t the only time compulsions are mentioned. In fact, a few minutes later, O’Malley draws a direct connection between “AGP” and pedophilia while claiming that they’re both “a compulsion that actually seriously, negatively wrecks other people’s lives”. In doing so, she repeats transmisogynistic tropes of trans women being sexual predators while simultaneously making light of childhood sexual abuse. No real consideration is put into the high rates of childhood sexual abuse among trans people,[p. 3] including trans women, or the impact that it would have on the wellbeing of survivors to have their trauma used against members of their own community. Instead, her big question is “how do we stop that [meaning: trans women from existing as themselves]?”

Stella O’Malley: “I’ve no idea whether AGP is innate or not. Why? Because I don’t have autogynephilia, I never had it. So I’m kind of going- if some people are saying it is, and some people are saying it isn’t, my feeling is it’s developmental. I don’t really care whether it’s innate or not because I don’t think that absolves anybody. I don’t think that’s the point. The compulsion is a much more- more um important psychological point because if you look at pedophilia, it’s a compulsion. It gets- it gets them. And how do we get in the way of somebody who has a compulsion that actually seriously negatively wrecks other people’s lives? How do we stop that?”

As it turns out, the answer is quite clear. In response to questioning from the host Lorelei, O’Malley confesses to working with teenage trans girls that she believes are dysphoric due to porn and “autogynephilia”. After her previous confessions of her campaigns to stop medical transition for trans youth, combined with calling gender dysphoria among trans girls and trans women a compulsion that people like her need to “get in the way of”, she inevitably exposes herself as attempting to suppress the gender identity of trans teens – the definition of conversion therapy. In the process, she also tells a room filled with extremists accusing her of not being harsh enough to trans people that she doesn’t think they “should have empathy or sympathy” for adolescent trans girls like those in her care.

Stella O’Malley: “Don’t forget, I’m working with children who are autogynephilic.”
Lorelei: “When you say children-“
Stella O’Malley: “Yeah”
Lorelei: “What sort of ages are you talking?”
Stella O’Malley: “Anything from- from puberty onwards. It’s porn induced.”
Lorelei: “Does that mean that- So in your-“
Stella O’Malley: “Teenage, teenage. 13, 14, 15. And it’s porn- it seems to be porn induced. Is it porn induced? I don’t know. What- would it have arrived anyway? I don’t know. Are the numbers shockingly high in the teenage boy population? It seemed to be to me. But is this actually just something that was always under the covers? I don’t know. But I don’t think you should have any empathy, and I haven’t asked anybody to have any empathy and I don’t think you should have empathy or sympathy.”

By telling a Space full of hardline, often-times exterminationist transphobes that they don’t need to have empathy or sympathy for trans girls, O’Malley enables escalation that makes phenomenon like TAnon a reality. In fact, Jennifer Bilek, one of the main anti-trans critics towards O’Malley and a thought-leader in TAnon, shows up in the comments of the leaked audio and takes O’Malley’s comments about pornography to the next level. Like many of Genspect’s anti-trans detractors, Bilek insists that trans people (particularly trans women in this context) can’t have any public presence in society, as that is akin to platforming serial killers. According to Bilek the mere existence of trans people is a “[f]etish [that] needs to be abolished in the public.” A former member of Deep Green Resistance known best for her accelerationism and antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish billionaires funding the trans movement, she serves as a prime example of the hardline eliminationist approaches taken by those following her lead. Similarly, with the presence of Kate Harris from LGB Alliance and several LGB Alliance members present in the Space, O’Malley’s permissiveness gives room for LGB Alliance to continue infiltrating aspects of the UK political and health care systems.

YouTube comment posted by Jennifer Bilek, noted as 2 days ago (edited) with 13 likes. Link to full image description.

O’Malley contrasts their eliminationist approaches with her efforts to roll back expansion of gender affirming care. She begins to describe the pioneer series on Gender: A Wider Lens (which at the time of recording was still in development, since released) in which she interviewed Ken Zucker and Ray Blanchard. She details how she believes that trans health care has been taken over by activists between the 1990s and 2010s, suggesting that clinicians made “mistakes” that resulted in the “keys” being given to trans people. The podcast, Genspect, and other such programs of hers are simply some efforts to take those keys back, thereby removing trans people’s autonomy and capacity to consent to our own care on our own terms.

Stella O’Malley: “Um no, what we do is we sometimes interview people and we’ve got a- a list of pioneers that we’re going to interview in the next coming uh few weeks. And the idea with that will be, you know talk to the Ken Zuckers, talk to the to the different Ray Blanchard types, that we can kind of go ‘okay what was their theory? What did they think? What did- they been in the world for 30 years, they’ve been in the world for 40 years.’ There’s not many of them and they presumably have their own theories about what’s going on. And I’m not saying I actually buy it because I honestly think between the 1990s and the 2010s, I think all the mistakes were made. And I look at other movements, um just to get myself completely mauled tonight, like the anti-vax movement and things like that, and I think um they didn’t give away the keys but something happened between the 1990s and 2010s with with the- with the gender movement that the keys were given away to the activists.”

Its implementation in Genspect activism, outreach, and government communications

Throughout the recording O’Malley also makes several confessions about her strategy and government communications, whether local or abroad. In one instance, she names being extensively involved in Canadian politics and media outreach.

Stella O’Malley: “Because I’ve been in massive, massive work with- around the Canadian um issue and children being trans. I’ve done a huge amount of work, a huge amount of effort, a massive amount of interaction with the Canadian media and the Canadian government.”

This is because O’Malley has carefully constructed what she calls “public information campaigns” – in other words, disinformation campaigns – to reshape the social narrative surrounding trans women in public spaces and gender affirming care for trans youth. These disinformation campaigns allow her to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of parents with trans kids and connect with media and government officials. She described contrasting gender identity with a “developmental model” where trans youth will grow out of being trans. While exploration and gender fluidity are indeed crucial components of identity development, this supposed contrast is used to justify therapy practices seeking to prompt “desistance” in trans youth. And in the midst of her confessions, she returns to the issue of trans women taking up space in public, again relying on transmisogynistic sexualization and describes their inclusion in women’s refuges and breastfeeding communities as a “huge problem” that needs to be “dealt with”.

Stella O’Malley: “I think the thing that I was kind of um thinking that was really interesting was how should we manage the issue of AGPs in society? Where should they go? How should we manage them? This is the thing that I’d really love to get out of this conversation. How should that be managed in society? How- how should I, how should you, how should anybody? Because there’s different kind of I suppose needs and I suppose my need is not only to understand but also I really truly believe that the only way that we’re going to get out of this whole huge massive identity ideology mess is with uh public information. I- I don’t think that it’s going to work any other way. And so we have to have a public information campaign around, I believe, that if you trans children that it’s- it’s- it goes very badly wrong. I also think that there’s a- we need to get out in the world there’s a concept called gender identity, and there’s also a developmental model, and there are two kind of opposing sides. And um I believe in the developmental model and I think therefore all child transition falls on that model. And I think it’s really important that we uh let the public know about these concepts, because they don’t, because I meet them all the time. And these are parents of kids, they don’t know that there’s two, they don’t know that there’s two beliefs, they don’t know that there’s two different very- and then another thing that I really think we need to know and I- I was only telling the Irish minister a few days ago about this concept that there’s a thing called autogynephilia. and this is, as you all know- you know, the erotic fixation and um to be a woman. And this shapes a huge amount of the issues around, let’s say, trans women in jails and put trans women in- in refuges and trans women in all sorts of places that they shouldn’t be. It shaped the entire breastfeeding, the- kind of the birthing movement, it’s shaping a huge amount of parts of society. So it’s really, really problematic in the world. So we’ve got this huge problem now. How do we deal with this? How do- how do we deal with those people?”

She then brings it back to her preferred solution, the disinformation campaign peddled by Genspect and her podcast. She notes that her reason for having Debbie Hayton, a “gender critical” trans woman who claims to be “autogynephilic”, on the podcast is so she can use those episodes in her outreach with government officials and other representatives. In this instance, the Irish minister she had been in communication with.

Stella O’Malley: “I think you’re right, I think public information is the only way forward. I actually don’t think there is another way, and I wish there was, but I think it has to be a public awareness campaign. But when we put it on a podcast, when we interviewed Debbie, there was an outcry that we shouldn’t be giving a platform. And I thought ‘but we have to let people know that this condition exists.’ That I can point to the Irish minister and say ‘listen to this podcast that’s what I’m talking about.””

Beyond the podcast, another example of this implementation is the seven-part Quillette series written by Angus Fox, another high ranking team member of Genspect, filled with handwringing about teenage trans girls. It should be noted that in the process, he also writes about how some anti-trans parents viewed their teenage trans daughters as being “pre-gay” and that the term was used on Gender: A Wider Lens. “Pre-gay” is a concept from Joseph Nicolosi, a Christian conversion therapist who founded NARTH. The book this concept is detailed in was pulled from Amazon in 2019 following community protests.

Genspect has previously been under fire for promoting the film “Trans Mission” by Jennifer Lahl of the anti-surrogacy organization Center for Bioethics and Culture, in which the only medical “experts” presented were affiliates of American College of Pediatricians and the International Federation for Therapeutic and Counselling Choice (IFTCC). Additionally, O’Malley herself is not registered with the Irish Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (IACP), the regulatory body that has condemned conversion practices. Rather, she instead accredited with the Irish Association of Professional Counsellors and Psychotherapists (APCP), which to date has refused to denounce or regulate conversion practices. With these clips, and thus her own words, it’s easy to see why. Both her professional practice, with vulnerable teens who may not be seeing her of their own volition but rather the volition of their parents, and her international activism would be called into question.

Other projects where O’Malley pushes anti-trans conversion therapy

As shown by our Anti-Trans Conversion Therapy Map of Influence, Stella O’Malley has held key roles in the following groups or projects:

  1. Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Dysphoria Working Group (PAGDWG), the launching point for clinical and academic medical disinformation surrounding trans health, detransition, and social contagion that forms the foundation of “gender exploratory therapy” today
  2. Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM), which serves as a leading source of medical disinformation via publications, citations, affidavits or legal briefs, and submissions to government or health organization consultations
  3. Genspect, predominantly involved in advocacy in legal or school board settings, as well as operating as a primary source of medical disinformation about gender affirming care for trans youth in media. One of the sponsors of Gender: A Wider Lens.
  4. Rethink Identity Medicine Ethics (ReIME), involved in promotion or distribution of medical disinformation surrounding desistance, “rapid onset gender dysphoria”, and medical transition for trans youth. One of the sponsors of Gender: A Wider Lens.
  5. Gender: A Wider Lens Podcast, the podcast referenced throughout this piece and a major source of disinformation surrounding “rapid onset gender dysphoria”, social contagion, detransition, and desistance
  6. Wider Lens Consulting, a for-profit “consulting” business aimed at anti-trans parents of trans or gender diverse youth providing webinars, school consultations, and luxury retreats
  7. Thoughtful Therapists, which O’Malley founded alongside James Esses and James Caspian to challenge the United Kingdom’s Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Conversion Therapy
  8. Gender Exploratory Therapy Association (GETA), a fringe therapy association dedicated to the promotion and practice of “gender exploratory” therapy targeted at transgender, detransitioned, and gender diverse or questioning individuals with a particular emphasis on youth and young adults
  9. International Association of Therapists for Desisters and Detransitioners (IATDD), an early attempt at a therapy association that has since been absorbed into GETA
  10. Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research (ICGDR), involved in the development and promotion of pseudoscience papers pertaining to “rapid onset gender dysphoria”, social contagion, and detransition
Filtered segment of the Anti-Trans Network Map of Influence, highlighting Stella O’Malley’s group and project connections. Genspect, Gender: A Wider Lens, and ReIME are also shown to be connected to each other due to co-sponsorship of the podcast. Link to full image description.

In addition to the aforementioned groups, O’Malley operates the Gender Dysphoria Support Network (GDSN), an international anti-trans support group network launched in 2020. The network runs support groups for anti-trans parents and detransitioners.

Ongoing research by HLN has uncovered that the primary motivation behind these groups, whose membership significantly overlaps, is the production or spread of medical disinformation surrounding gender affirming care (including the gender affirming model in therapy). Some groups – IATDD and now GETA – seek to put this medical disinformation into therapeutic practice despite no evidence of safety or efficacy and overwhelming evidence that conversion practices are harmful. Wider Lens Consulting, a for-profit business registered in Pennsylvania, was exposed for giving trainings with conspiracies about PornHub and OnlyFans to students, “managing” (see: abusing) trans youth in inpatient mental health services, and “luxury retreats” for anti-trans parents with tickets costing anywhere from $1,900 to $4,900. Their retreat is hosted at the United States headquarters of Bon Secours Sisters, an international nunnery previously investigated for the mass death of nearly 800 infants and trafficking of up to 1,000 children from Tuam, Ireland to the U.S. for adoption.

The audio clips released here put into clear perspective the motivation behind several of the groups or projects that O’Malley has produced over the years. The Gender: A Wider Lens podcast allows her to produce easily-digestible and widely-circulating disinformation direct to anti-trans parents, who can then be spurred into action via Genspect. IATDD and now GETA give an air of credibility to “gender exploratory therapy” and allow other anti-trans clinicians to replicate the dangerous practices in other regions. Projects like Thoughtful Therapists can challenge regional campaigns against conversion therapy directly, and Wider Lens Consulting broadens the scope of disinformation campaigns into trainings and webinars that can be offered direct to schools, students, or medical professionals. While some are meant to be close to home, most lean towards a push towards an international shift against trans health care in favor of conversion therapy.

Implications

These combined approaches that Stella O’Malley uses puts trans communities around the world at serious risk. As one of the primary pundits of “gender exploratory therapy” both in media outlets and in organizing, including professional practice, O’Malley is able to reshape the clinical and social narrative for gender affirming care for trans youth in favor of targeted conversion practices. This can only be done in conjunction with misleading information about conversion practices, thereby giving herself and other clinicians she works with (along with the anti-trans families supporting them) plausible deniability.

We see how this plays out in O’Malley’s various media appearances, whether in Ireland, the UK, or Texas. Her anti-trans media career was launched in the UK with the release of “Trans Kids: It’s Time to Talk” in BBC Channel 4 in 2018. From there, she’s written or appeared in numerous columns with disinformation surrounding gender affirming care in Irish papers. In one instance, she balked about challenges to the initial Bell v Tavistock ruling despite clear evidence of its anti-trans roots; in another, she was interviewed about her chapter in the book Inventing Transgender Children and Young People co-authored by Heather Brunskell-Evans of eliminationist group Women’s Declaration International; in still another, she used her life story to defend the spread of disinformation about puberty blockers. Since then she’s expanded her media outreach into the US, where she’s written for the Dallas Morning News in the midst of the ongoing attacks towards trans youth and their families by Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton. As with her other publications, she repeats the same laundered, medically inaccurate soundbites all while promoting her organizations in her byline.

This strategy allows her to use her social capital to push back against survivor movements against conversion practices, both at home and elsewhere. Michelle McGlynn reported in the Irish Examiner on the formation of the Anti Conversion Therapy Coalition (ACTC) in April of 2021, a grassroots group representing Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Upon announcement the ACTC “garnered huge support as it seeks to get a bill passed that would see the harmful practice outlawed”. They sought to spur the Irish government into action after several-year-long delays on the proposed conversion therapy ban. That August O’Malley published a column in the Irish Times alongside clinicians Jacky Grainger and Madeleine Ní Dhailigh.[3] Within they claimed that including talk therapy and the suppression of gender identity in the proposed bill prevented psychotherapists from ethical practice with trans youth, the very demographic that O’Malley works with. They present their side as neutral, unpolitical, and exploratory. It should be said that there is nothing neutral, unpolitical, or exploratory about campaigning against conversion therapy ban legislation, treating teenage trans girls as having porn-induced “autogynephilia”, or actively campaigning to bar social or medical transition for trans youth with the hopes that they will ‘desist’. Regional, trans-led or trans-supportive groups clearly saw through their efforts: recognizing the anti-trans and pro-conversion therapy stances in the column for what they were, the Trinity Student Paper cancelled their partnership with the Irish Times and a boycott was called by Trans Writers Union. Said boycott is still ongoing.

This hasn’t stopped her efforts to gut pending conversion therapy bans in other areas. As mentioned previously, O’Malley is one of the founding members of Thoughtful Therapists in the UK, a group whose only purpose is to challenge the MoU on conversion therapy and the consultation on a national conversion therapy ban. Ongoing investigations reveal that the UK government has since ditched their initial plan to ban conversion practices, as said proposed ban faced sharp criticism from LGB Alliance and faith-based communities leading to secret meetings with Core Issues Trust. Later statements from UK government officials suggests that they will move forward with a ban after all, but with it only covering sexual orientation and not gender identity.[4] This is despite the fact that sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts are inextricably linked and practices targeting trans people are on the rise. Additionally, in a recent report put out by Galop about LGBTQ+ abuse from family members, trans and nonbinary people in the UK reported being over twice as likely to have experienced efforts to change or suppress their identity compared to cis respondents.[p. 6] And in New Zealand, O’Malley joined the campaign against then-pending legislation.[5] Led by Family First New Zealand throughout 2021, who operates the Free to Live project, O’Malley’s testimony stood alongside Laura Haynes of IFTCC and Erin Brewer (then) of Partners for Ethical Care. Ultimately, that campaign failed; siding with regional, trans-led survivor advocates, the New Zealand parliament approved the ban in February of this year.

Beyond targeting legislation banning conversion therapy, O’Malley and her organization Genspect have also been quite active in efforts to reshape social or medical supports for trans youth. In the US, Genspect has contributed to court cases led by Alliance Defending Freedom targeting school boards. Stephen Levine, a Genspect advisor and one of the erroneous “experts” used in the Bell v Tavistock case and Hennessy-Waller v. Snyder in the US, submitted affidavits in the Kettle Moraine School District case. And in the UK, it was recently revealed that O’Malley was expected to present alongside Lisa LittmanSinéad Watson, and Stephanie Davies-Arai – all Genspect advisors – at a NHS training conference for over 100 trainee child and adolescent psychiatrists. Whistleblowers raised concerns about the lobbying of speakers on the list, including efforts to undermine access to gender affirming care or normalize conversion therapy by O’Malley and others, ultimately resulting in its cancellation.

Furthermore, by pushing for “public information campaigns” that, in this instance, are heavily aimed towards trans women, she adds to the prolific media attacks that have been spreading throughout the UK. One article published by the BBC late last year, written by Caroline Lowbridge, was immediately rebuked by researchers of organized transphobia Trans Safety Network and protest organizers for framing trans women as sexually predating on lesbians. The article relied on a Twitter poll put out by Get The L Out, whose rhetoric mirrors or directly quotes Janice Raymond’s claims that “[a]ll transsexuals rape women’s bodies”, and platformed serial rapist Lily Cade. Cade – who is cis – went on to publish a violent manifesto calling for specific prominent trans women in the US to be lynched. The article was also translated and circulated in Brazil, which has the highest rate of transfemicide in the world. The media attacks on trans people in the UK led GAY TIMES to do a survey on people’s impressions, revealing that 86.4% – nearly 9 out of 10 – “believe trans issues are ‘somewhat’ or ‘completely’ inaccurately reported on.” In contrast, only 6.5% reported seeing the media portrayals as “fair”. Much like with anti-trans conversion practices, media disinformation about “autogynephilia” and anti-trans activism go hand in hand – groups or their members regularly work together, all while funneling their narratives into conservative media to fuel attacks on trans rights, access to health care, or efforts to ban conversion therapy. O’Malley, in her framing of her teenage trans clients as “teenage autogynephiles” and promotion of Ray Blanchard in Gender: A Wider Lens, keeps that cycle going in public and in the privacy of her therapy office.

Not only is O’Malley campaigning to have conversion therapy for trans people remain legal, thereby enabling her practices and the practices of groups or other campaigners that she works with regularly, she’s clearly trying to adapt common social rhetoric surrounding trans youth to go beyond the narrative of “rapid onset gender dysphoria” to target trans girls under the guise of “autogynephilia”. In the process, her and her cohorts give others the tools to do the same. Instead of giving trans youth and young adults space to explore and understand their identities on their own terms, the mindset that O’Malley revealed here is an attempt at authoritarian control presented as “compassion”. At this point there can be no further doubt that projects or groups she leads or is affiliated with are avenues for the elimination of trans people in society via social and therapeutic control.

Footnotes

  1. Via the Report on Conversion Therapy from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, which defines conversion therapy/practices as “an umbrella term to describe interventions of a wide-ranging nature, all of which are premised on the belief that a person’s sexual orientation and gender identity, including gender expression, can and should be changed or suppressed when they do not fall under what other actors in a given setting and time perceive as the desirable norm, in particular when the person is lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or gender diverse.” (p. 4)
  2. Can I Get A Witness Voices. (2022, March 22). AGP Discussion [Video]. YouTube.
  3. As we don’t wish to facilitate crossing pickets, we won’t be linking to the article in question due to the ongoing boycott.
  4. Scotland and Wales have since announced their intent to move forward with comprehensive, trans-inclusive conversion therapy bans regardless of the stance of the UK government.
  5. familyfirstnz. (2021, October 13). “Conversion therapy” bill: Stella O’Malley – Psychotherapist. [Video] YouTube.