Today's rhaps is on ... Conversion Therapy

Lyubov Kononova, "No Name"

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I was listening to a story about a mean teacher forcing a left-handed boy to use his right hand instead. I thought: this is like conversion therapy.

Conversion therapy means "converting" a gay person into being straight. Which works just like forcing a straight person to be gay—in other words, it doesn't. It's been outlawed or at least discontinued for the most part.

Or has it?

It occurred to me that any time people are forced into being what they are not is a kind of conversion therapy. The goal is to root out what the person does or feels naturally and substitute another behavior. This new behavior generally conforms to a social norm, and is therefore more convenient to those in authority over that individual. Locked into new and obedient behaviors, we are less troublesome to our leaders. They can keep up the myths of political and religious hierarchy that grant top rank to themselves.

Even a constant daily bombardment of what we are not—smart, competent, free, strong—can be seen as conversion therapy. This will keep us compliant in the kitchen, in the harem, in the cotton fields, in the factories, keep us so busy sweating and serving and working that we don't have time or energy to rebel and revolt.

Right?

Training us methodically to see ourselves as lesser, inferior, born to be a slave, a servant, a handmaid—all of this is conversion therapy!

It doesn't work, of course.

Unless we start believing the myths, too.

1 MAY 2025