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My "Ex-Gay" Body

Recently writer and speaker Jay Sennett interviewed me for his blog. A female to male trans man, he asked me original questions about my body and how being in the "ex-gay" movement affected my physical identity.
While in the LIA program, we were taught and expected to stand erect with our arms to the side whenever we stood to receive "feedback" from staff or other participants. Our shoulders had to be squared back with our head up. We were required to maintain direct eye contact. One of my acts of rebellion while in the program was to squint my eyes whenever I received feedback. That or I would give the most piercing eye contact possible.
Read Straight Acting

In other news, GayLife, Maryland's LGBT Community Newspaper, just published an interview with me. I stood in a wet and smelly phone booth in Oxford, England while I spoke with the reporter, Beth Barnes. She must have felt prety chummy with; she refers to me the article as Peter. What cheek!

Comments

Willie Hewes said…
Small measures of resistence, huh. It's always worried me that LIA list "rebellion and submission" as one of the "themes" that is addressed in the Refuge program.

Obey, obey, do everything we say...

Compare and contrast: from the American Association on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry:

"Parents can prevent of lessen the chance of sexual abuse by: [...] Teaching children that respect does not mean blind obedience to adults and to authority, for example, don't tell children to, Always do everything the teacher or baby-sitter tells you to do."

Maybe I'm being unfair. Maybe LIA teaches that obedience does not mean blind obedience, maybe they discuss the validity of the "Befehl ist Befehl" defense, maybe they explain that parents are human too and can sometimes be wrong.

Maybe. I agree with the psychologist in 'Fish can't Fly', that what LIA does amounts to sexual abuse because their basic message is "my sexual feelings matter, yours do not."

Anyway, I'm going off on a limb here. Thanks for the link to "straight acting". And Go Chad! Sissies of the world unite!
4:05 AM
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