“One of the biggest issues I experienced was inaccessible and or prejudiced mental and medical healthcare… who refused to treat me or who treated me incorrectly… I didn’t even know that what I went through could be considered conversion therapy.”
Although progress has been made in Canada towards protecting rights for queer, trans, and Two-Spirit people, there remain systemic, organized, and sustained efforts to change, deny, or suppress their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
Conversion practices enforce the assumption that being straight/ heterosexual is the only normal way to express sexuality, and the assumption that a person’s gender identity and expression should and must match their assigned sex at birth. These efforts are known as “conversion therapy”.
On Stop Conversion Practices, we will refer to these harmful efforts as conversion practices—recognizing that they are not considered a reputable form of therapy—and will use the term “conversion therapy” when referring to the federal law.
The following sections dive deeper into understanding conversion practices, the harm caused, how to identify conversion practices, where queer and trans people experience conversion practices and why, and include statements from survivors themselves. There are also a variety of downloadable supports and resources for you to choose from, depending on your needs.
For a list of terms and definitions used on this site, see the Glossary of Terms.