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What is Conversion Therapy?
Conversion therapy is any physical form of therapy used to “cure” or “repair” a person’s attraction to the same sex, or their gender identity. Providers claim these therapies can make someone heterosexual or “straight.” But there’s no evidence to support this. This practice has been denounced by the medical community as unethical because it is done assuming homosexuality as a mental illness.
Faith groups or healthcare professionals conduct these therapies. These treatments aim at changing a person’s sexual orientation. The treatment varies from counselling, medication, giving hormonal injections, aversion therapy to institutionalising the person to perform hormonal castration or electrocution.
These practices combined with abuse and pressure from the family can result in severe physical and psychological trauma.
Where It All Began
The history of curing homosexuality is as old as psychiatry itself. In the early years of the twentieth century, contemporaries of Sigmund Freud engaged in practices for ‘gay cures’.
In the west, the history of psychiatric understandings of homosexuality hinged on the notion that deviant sexuality was something which could, and should, be changed. The idea of homosexuality as a disorder that could be “treated” was then imported to various European colonies via medical, legal and sociological institutions from the 19th century onwards.
Conversion therapy essentially grew out of aversion techniques adopted by psychiatrists to cure alcoholism and other addictions considered harmful. These techniques push people to associate a particular form of behaviour with discomfort or pain. The mental health fraternity globally started deploying these techniques on people with same-sex attractions.
In India, conversion therapy is an umbrella term encompassing pseudo-scientific treatments and treatments offered by self-proclaimed spiritual men who propose prayer, physical violence, or psychic techniques to cure homosexuality.
In 1983, the Indian Journal of Psychiatry published a report on using aversion techniques to cure homosexuality. Patients attended sessions with a range of same-sex pornographic pictures and received electric shocks while viewing them to associate their arousal for the same-sex with pain. Subsequently, the photographs got replaced with heterosexual images, and the electric shocks would stop, thereby associating them with pleasure.
Male patients underwent therapy for “passivity”, while female patients were encouraged to become more feminine through clothing choice. This practice reflected binary ideas of sex and gender which arose via colonial intervention, as pre-colonial India had long accepted the existence of the hijra or a “third gender”.
The law which criminalised homosexuality in India was a colonial imposition. Homophobic narratives and those which try to medicalise same-sex attraction can also be traced back to colonial ideology.
These practices are discredited and claimed to be unethical by many medical practitioners, but they continue to persist due to continuous discrimination and biases towards the LGBTQIA+ community.
In 2015, an investigation conducted in Delhi by Mail Today revealed the use of hormone therapy, seizure-inducing drugs, and even electric shocks to cure homosexuality.
Effects of Conversion Therapy
Victor Madrigal-Borloz, an independent expert on gender and sexuality, submitted a report on conversion therapy to the United Nations Human Rights Council. The report concluded that 98 per cent of the people interviewed experienced severe psychological and physical damage after undergoing conversion therapy.
Multiple religious groups claim that these reparative practices can help individuals lead a ‘normal’ life by changing their sexual identity. However, research on such practices has disproven their efficacy and affirmed their harmful effects.
Furthermore, minors are highly vulnerable to get rolled into undergoing conversion therapy. Such practices can result in severe consequences, including depression, anxiety, drug use, homelessness, and even suicide. In addition, the therapist’s alignment with the societal bias may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the concerned individual.
Does Conversion Therapy Still Persist in India?
The spread of Covid-19 has sent more people back to their family homes. This has led to a stark rise in the cases of individuals from the LGBTQIA+ community forced to undergo conversion therapy to become ‘normal’.
In May 2020, Anjana Harish, a 21-year old bisexual woman, committed suicide in Goa after posting a video online. The video described how her family subjected her to conversion therapy for months, which eventually became one reason to commit suicide. Her suicide sparked protests throughout India against a complete ban on the practice of conversion therapy.
In another case, Pavithra, a 23-year old girl from Tamil Nadu, enunciates her trauma in a video after coming out to her family. Her family took her to multiple doctors, including a general physician, gynaecologist and psychologist, forcing her to undergo treatment to cure her.
These are just a handful of cases that have surfaced, highlighting the plight of individuals undergoing conversion therapy in India. The Judiciary has played an active role in opposing the practice of conversion therapy in India. In addition, the Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India judgment discourages ‘conversion therapy’.
Furthermore, on June 7, 2021, Justice N Anand Venkatesh took a positive step in this direction by prohibiting conversion therapy in his verdict on S. Sushma v. Commissioner of Police.
Tamil Nadu is the first state in India to ban conversion therapy.
Conclusion
Conversion therapy is widespread in India and practised by doctors and cosmic healers alike, underlining the interplay between science and religion. Thus, there is a need for the legislature to play an active role in declaring all forms of conversion therapy unethical and harmful.
Sensitisation and spreading awareness are equally important as the primary issue lies in treating homosexuality as an abnormality. It’s high time we accept that homosexuality or ‘queerness’ is anything but abnormal. It is a choice to choose one’s sexual orientation or gender. And anything that tells us otherwise is just uninformed and archaic.
These treatments facilitate an environment for prejudices. People need to understand that homosexuality is not a mental disorder and therefore it does not need a ‘cure.’
Works Cited
Daigavane, Winy, et al. “An analysis of conversion therapy in India: The need to outlaw and the allied socio-cultural concerns.” LSE Blogs, 15 June 2020, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2020/06/15/an-analysis-of-conversion-therapy-in-india-the-need-to-outlaw-and-the-allied-socio-cultural-concerns/. Accessed 29 June 2022.
“Mail Today Exclusive: Delhi doctors use electric shock to treat homosexuality.” India Today, 27 May 2015, https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/story/homosexuality-cure-delhi-doctors-exposed-conversion-therapy-254849-2015-05-27. Accessed 29 June 2022.
Mehrotra, Deepanshi. “Barbaric Reality of Conversion Therapy in India: Why Is It Vicious? - Academike.” Lawctopus, 13 June 2021, https://www.lawctopus.com/academike/conversion-therapy-india/. Accessed 29 June 2022.
Sengar, Shweta. “Why Ban & Criminalisation Of Conversion Therapy For Homosexuals Is Need Of The Hour In India.” Indiatimes.com, 23 February 2022, https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/ban-and-criminalisation-of-conversion-therapy-for-homosexuals-562743.html. Accessed 29 June 2022.
“What is conversion therapy and when will it be banned?” BBC, 11 May 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-56496423. Accessed 29 June 2022.
Sneha Kini
AU190059
Semester VI
Representation of Gender and Sexuality in Literature
sne002@chowgules.ac.in
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