What does ‘sexual orientation conversion therapy’ signify? Examining the political abuse of medicine in the context of heterosexism under threat

LGBT+ rights organisations’ call to end ‘conversion therapy’ has yielded success in countries such as Malta and France, where the practice has been entirely banned, and in Greece and Germany, where it is prohibited for minors. These developments, on one hand, represent the logical culmination of a shift in scientific understanding that began in the 1970s, recognising homosexuality and bisexuality as normal variations of human sexuality. On the other hand, guardians of heterosexism persistently pressure the medical field to re-pathologise homosexuality. This chapter focuses on the pseudo-scientific ‘sexual orientation conversion therapy’ masquerading as talk therapy, contending that it exemplifies the political manipulation of medicine. The argument is that it serves as a means to uphold heterosexism at a time when its legitimacy is increasingly being challenged. Adopting a power-conscious approach to the dynamic interplay between medicine and politics, this chapter concludes that the social functions and impact of ‘conversion therapy’ vary across contexts and depend on the prevailing strength of heterosexism in those contexts. Additionally, the chapter calls for a context-sensitive approach to medicine in sexuality studies as an alternative to the Foucauldian approaches that assume medicine to be the primary or exclusive agent of heterosexism.