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Trauma treatment can alter sexual attractions.
Big tech won't let us talk about it
By Joseph Nicolosi, Jr.,
Op-ed contributor|
Monday, February 07, 2022
A landmark new study details how treating traumatic childhood memories can lead some adults with LGBT attractions toward heterosexuality.
Too bad most people won’t learn about it.
Recently published in the Journal of Human Sexuality, the study examined 75 adult males who reported same-sex attractions and wished to explore their sexual attraction fluidity. Participants worked with professional therapists using Reintegrative Therapy, a treatment method that seeks to identify and resolve past traumatic memories.
Despite a dishonest campaign to associate this approach with the widely misrepresented “conversion therapy,” evidence is accumulating that trauma resolution therapy provides another option to many for whom change seemed impossible.
So, why are so many people unaware of these compelling findings?
Because Big Tech, in alliance with leftwing activists, is actively suppressing scientific data and client testimonials.
On January 15, Google-owned YouTube blocked all videos on my YouTube channel that referenced the research, along with testimonials from participants. They did so after a Forbes columnist, using cut-and-paste material from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE), declared the Reintegrative Therapy work performed by me and others to be “hateful’ and “harmful.” GPAHE is pressuring social media companies to remove all content about unwanted same-sex attraction.
The Montgomery, Alabama-based group is run, not surprisingly, by people who used to work for the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center, which was riven by race and sex scandals and which to this day falsely characterizes mainstream Christian groups like Alliance Defending Freedom as “hate groups.”
In response to my inquiry about being blocked, YouTube permanently banned my account. In doing so, YouTube cut off many sexual-abuse victims from scientific information they need to make healthy decisions about themselves and their sexuality.
As a clinical psychologist who conducts this therapy daily, I often work with victims of past sexual trauma. Many of these clients report emotional distress, depression, and suicidal thoughts that are, on occasion, tied to unwanted same-sex attractions. Through evidence-based, patient-led therapy, some (though not all) of these individuals can make shifts along the sexual-fluidity spectrum, as their traumatic memories are resolved.
Unlike so-called “conversion therapy,” a catch-all term that can include discredited approaches that attempt to change sexuality, Reintegrative Therapy resolves memories that clients identify as being traumatic. Changes in sexuality that may occur are a byproduct. In fact, actively attempting to change one’s sexuality without resolving the trauma might interfere with this process.
Independent researchers assessed the participants’ sexual thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and identity — all of which demonstrated changes away from same-sex attractions and toward heterosexual attractions. On average, participants demonstrated significant decreases in psychological distress, such as anxiety, depression, and suicidality. They also showed significant overall increases in measures of well-being.
Suppression of this kind of research and therapy is part of a larger problem: Big Tech is becoming even more aggressive in censoring any content that doesn’t fit its narratives.
In July 2020, for example, Facebook and Instagram announced that they would ban all content that promotes “conversion therapy.” By misrepresenting any and all sexuality counseling as “conversion therapy,” this casts an absurdly wide net. Politicians who are rushing to criminalize what they mistakenly believe to be “conversion therapy” are being misled.
YouTube is a private company, and they have the right to ban whatever they want. But when a mega-corporation systematically suppresses one side of a scientific debate, it effectively shapes public opinion to its will and thereby contributes to spreading health misinformation — a practice YouTube preaches loudly against.
In the meantime, I’ve moved my videos over to Odysee — a decentralized video platform running on block-chain technology (like Bitcoin). That means it’s outside the meddling grasp of ideologically driven Big Tech corporations. I suspect platforms like it are where we’ll find the most compelling video content in the future.
It’s not just Big Tech taking orders from “woke” activists. Some medical journals are also being corrupted by ideologues. Scientists have a responsibility to protect the integrity of the record from political activists. Pushback is long overdue.
Last July, I filed a defamation lawsuit in federal court against the authors of a journal article who falsely conflated Reintegrative Therapy with their own definition of “conversion therapy.”
In order to counter political activists who are attempting to corrupt the record, we must now fight to preserve truth — or risk further damage to scientific research and its credibility with the public.
Because our access to objective research is being stymied by both Big Tech and political activists, most psychotherapists will not offer clients sexual-attraction fluidity exploration because they’ve been told there’s not enough research into its safety and efficacy, or worse — that it is harmful to engage in it. Because of this, it is the clients who are the greatest victims — they are effectively denied access to information about alternatives for their sexuality and their lives.
And that is why I fight.
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UK’s ‘wokest’ university sued over trans hate campaign
A Bristol University student claims the school failed to protect her from trans activists
when she said only biological women can give birth
Raquel Rosario-Sanchez, a PhD student, is suing Bristol University for allegedly failing to address a three-year “hate campaign” against her by trans activists, which she said was triggered by her declaring that only biological women can give birth.
Rosario-Sanchez claims her statement was made during a disagreement about the school deeming the word ‘maternity’ to be “exclusionary.” After she made her declaration, she was reported to the human resources department for allegedly being transphobic. She goes on to say in her complaint that the school investigated her and she was later told to apologize.
The student also claims she was targeted by activists over her involvement with a feminist group called Women’s Place UK, which has been deemed a hate group by some activists for its views on transgender issues.
“I have been bullied and harassed by students at the University of Bristol for my feminist principles for over three years,” Rosario-Sanchez wrote about the suit, according to The Daily Mail, adding that her legal action is “about how an elite university treats its students, particularly international students, when nobody is watching.”
Rosario-Sanchez claimed during her hearing that activists had spread “malicious rumors” about her and attempted to intimidate her. She was accused of “spreading hate” and protested when she spoke at a Women’s Place UK event.
“I just felt very sad because I just want to live my life, go to campus and go to my center and not have to face intimidation,” she said.
Rosario-Sanchez is from the Dominican Republic and has attended Bristol University since January of 2018. She says a disciplinary hearing was launched after she filed a bullying complaint, but the proceedings were soon abandoned, leading her to legal recourse.
Bristol University has been branded the UK’s “wokest” university by numerous activists, including the group Fair Play for Women. The school recently outlined “catgender” for their staff, providing instructions on how to deal with students who may identify as felines. The pronoun guide also highlights “emojiself,” which applies to people who use emojis to express whatever their preferred gender is.
What spectacular madness! Why are they called 'woke' when their eyes are closed to the truth?
How is it ‘problematic’ for Adele to be proud of being a woman?
The singer's speech while accepting the Brit Awards newly-minted gender-neutral
'Artist of the Year' award has enraged online LGBTQ activists
Lauren Chen is a political and social commentator. She began as a YouTuber, and has since gained millions of views on the platform and hundreds of thousands of followers. She has also appeared on Fox News, BlazeTV, RT, OANN, Newsmax, The Daily Wire, Rebel Media, PragerU and The Rubin Report. Follow her on Twitter @thelaurenchen and Telegram
Adele attends The BRIT Awards 2022 at The O2 Arena on February 08, 2022 in London, England.
© Karwai Tang / WireImage / Getty Images
In a cultural landscape where merely using the wrong pronouns can garner you the ire of outrage mobs, singer and songwriter Adele has angered activists by proclaiming that she is proud to be a woman and female. Now, allegations of transphobia are swirling online, notably from intersectional feminist activists.
Trans philosophy - If you aren't with us, you're against us!
And, although one of the more ridiculous examples, this latest ‘controversy’ is yet another reminder of how, ironically, some of the most prominent examples of fourth-wave feminism’s personae non grata are women who are merely proud to be female.
On Tuesday, Adele received the Brit Award for Artist of the Year, a new category which combines the previous Best Female and Best Male awards. However, while accepting the honor, despite the accolade’s gender-neutral title, the singer remarked that “I understand why the name of this award has changed but I really love being a woman and being a female artist. I do! I’m really proud of us, I really, really am.”
At this statement of female empowerment, the ceremony’s audience erupted with applause. But predictably, on social media, Adele’s words were picked up by some LGBTQ activists as “transphobic” or “trans-exclusionary.”
The leap from Adele’s words of affirmation to any type of anti-trans bigotry may seem questionable to those lucky enough to be uninitiated into the current realm of progressive politics, but the “problematic” aspect seems to be the singer’s implication that being a woman is somehow tied to the female sex. And while such a concept may have been taken for granted by previous generations, current gender theory posits that gender identity is completely and utterly divorced from biological sex. In this way, a ‘woman’ is now ambiguously and ill-defined as anyone who identifies as a woman. Attempting to tie being biologically female to womanhood, therefore, is seen as implying that trans women are less ‘women’ than cisgender women (i.e. those who are both female and identify as women).
As strange as these attacks on Adele are, they are nothing new to the modern discourse surrounding gender and identity. J.K. Rowling, for example, has infamously lost all media goodwill she once had as a successful female writer by asserting that being biologically female does relate to the experience of being a woman, and by defending women’s rights to female-only spaces, such as prisons.
Adele’s Brit Award statements may have been nothing compared to the explicitly political and pointed posts that Rowling has shared but, nevertheless, this ‘controversy’ highlights how the idea of womanhood being connected to femaleness in any way is increasingly seen as inherently transphobic by LGBTQ activists.
It does not have to be this way, however.
The attempt to separate biology from gender entirely seems to be motivated by the belief that doing so will better protect trans individuals by erasing what distinguishes them from others: that their biological sex and gender identity do not coincide. Hypothetically, if there is no difference whatsoever between a trans woman and a cisgender woman, there would be no grounds to target or marginalize the trans woman. Right?
It may be true that trans individuals face different challenges, both socially and legally, than others, but treating people fairly and with respect should not and does not require us to abandon the notion of biology. Asserting otherwise is akin to saying that in order to stop sexism, we must get rid of the differences between men and women, or that to put a halt to racism, we must pretend that we physically cannot see the difference in skin color between someone of African versus European descent.
It’s also worth noting that trans commentators such as Blaire White and Sarah Higdon openly acknowledge that there is a connection between biology and gender. After all, if there were no link between these two identities, what exactly would make a trans person ‘trans’? What would they be transitioning to or from without the reality of biological sex grounding gender in at least some way?
And despite what progressive activists may say, White and Higdon are certainly not the only ones within the trans community to think like this, and it would be difficult to argue that these individuals are guilty of spreading ‘anti-trans’ beliefs about themselves.
Embracing something about yourself is very different from criticizing an aspect about someone else. Just because Adele may have said that she is proud to be both a woman and female, is that necessarily a slight against those who are women but not female? Or how about individuals who are perhaps neither? Coming from progressives and feminists, who constantly preach self-acceptance and self-love, the idea that someone like Adele should not be proud to be a woman and female is ideologically inconsistent at best.
Finally, what is unusual about the attack on biology coming from the intersectional progressive camp is the fact that, historically, many of the rights that both feminist and LGBTQ activists have fought for were squarely based on biological sex, not gender.
Feminists famously fought for the right to have an abortion, for access to menstrual products, and for policies such as paid maternity leave and universal childcare. Clearly, such issues pertain to the female sex (or menstruators, birthing people and individuals with a cervix, as they are now known in the right-on press). Should feminists continue to support such movements, it will be a tacit admission that yes, the women they claim to be fighting for are, by and large, also female. It’s a similar case for LGBTQ activists, who have focused on same-sex, not same-gender relations.
Separating gender from sex may now be common in progressive circles, but should activists continue to attack well-loved figures like Adele for seemingly innocuous statements, it’s unlikely that they’ll be winning new supporters for their cause.
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