‖‖ Reviews / Recensions
Edited by Dominique Garingan, Julie Lavigne, and Leanne Notenboom Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis. By Florence Ashley. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022. xiii, 249 p. Includes glossary, bibliographic references, and index. ISBN 9780774866927 (hardcover) $89.95; ISBN 9780774866934 (softcover) $32.95; ISBN 9780774866941 (PDF) $32.95; ISBN 9780774866958 (ePUB) $32.95. <ubcpress.ca>. Conversion therapies encompass a wide range of interventions that aim to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Described as degrading, inhumane, and cruel, these so-called therapies “create a significant risk of torture” by pathologizing and attempting to erase the identities of non-heterosexual and gender-diverse individuals.1 Florence Ashley is a transfeminine jurist, bioethicist, activist, public speaker, and doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis is one of their many contributions to advocating for the elimination of these practices, which target gender-diverse individuals. Ashley defines trans conversion practices as “sustained efforts to promote gender identities that are aligned with one’s sex assigned at birth and/or to discourage behaviours associated with a gender other than the one assigned at birth” (p. 22). Survivors experience increased rates of planned and attempted suicide and severe psychological distress (p. 12). Widely denounced by trans communities as well as
professional organizations listed in the book’s appendix, trans conversion practices are currently banned in Canada by provincial legislation (in Ontario, Nova Scotia, and P.E.I.) and by more recent federal legislation. As legislation had to be in force by July 2020 for inclusion in Ashley’s comparative analysis, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy), SC 2021, c 24 (in force on January 7, 2022) is only briefly mentioned but not evaluated. Other Canadian and international jurisdictions have yet to legislate protections for trans people from these harmful practices. The book begins with the 2015 closure of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health’s (CAMH) Gender Identity Clinic for Children and Youth after Ontario’s Affirming Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Act, 2015, SO 2015, c 18 came into force. The recounting of the controversy surrounding the closure introduces the affected stakeholders: trans communities, health professionals and their organizations, courts, and lawmakers. This story sets the stage for Ashley’s argument that care should be taken to define and eliminate conversion practices, especially interventions masquerading as therapeutic treatments in legislation and clinicians’ professional practice. The story segues into Chapter 1, which provides definitions for gender terminology and trans conversion practices. From these definitions, Ashley explains how the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic’s “corrective approach” is included under those harmful interventions. Additional definitions are included in a glossary at the end of the book.
Victor Madrigal-Borloz, Practices of So-Called “Conversion Therapy”: Report of the Independent Expert on Protection Against Violence and Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, UNGAOR, 44th Sess, UN Doc A/HRC/44/53 (2020) at 4, 21, online: <digitallibrary. un.org/record/3870697>. 1
26
2023 Canadian Law Library Review/Revue canadienne des bibliothèques de droit, Volume/Tome 48, No. 2