Is the media erasing trans history?
This month is LGBTQ+ history month. A month where we both look back through LGBTQ+ history and consider where we are in relation to that.
In December 2025, the BBC aired a documentary on shock treatment for LGB(T)Q+ people. This is known as ‘aversion therapy’ and has strong links to the conversion ‘therapy’ (Davison et al. 2024) that TACTT stands against now.
Aversion therapy is at its core a behaviourist treatment. It would be too easy to disavow ‘aversion therapy’ as in no way linked to conversion therapy, but when we consider that ‘cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)’ is considered a type of talking therapy currently available, and that aversion therapy is a type of behavioural treatment, it becomes easier to see the links between the two. This is not in any way to suggest that CBT is aversion or conversion therapy by default; merely to show how aversion and conversion ‘therapies’ are linked and why we are talking about them as part of our history.
At TACTT we stand against all types of conversion practices, and we also stand for the inclusion of trans people in any policy against conversion practices. Inevitably this has meant showing that trans people have always been a part of the narrative – one of the arguments for excluding trans people from any policy on conversion practices has been that there is ‘no evidence’ to suggest that this has ever happened, and therefore we don’t need to include trans people (thus leaving the way clear for this to be accepted). Our history matters for our future. The media representation of both our history and our imagined futures, shape the landscape that we are all situated in, whatever our relationship to sex and gender. This must be accurate where we have the information, and clear that we do not, where we do not. Anything else risks harm.
TACTT’s guest post from Hel Spandler, professor at the University of Lancashire, for LGBTQ+ history month, shows us that trans people have always been included in this horrific practice, and that erasure of trans people’s narratives continues to exist in the present day media conversations.
Shocking Treatment!
Is the media erasing trans history?
Hel Spandler, Professor of Mental Health Studies, University of Lancashire
The mainstream media seems to be fascinated with contemporary stories relating to trans people, especially trans women, and debating trans rights. Yet, at the same time, the media appears to erase trans people’s existence, potentially reinforcing the idea that being trans is a recent phenomenon or a fad. Moreover, it downplays the historical relationship between trans oppression and lesbian and gay oppression.
For example, following a BBC investigation and subsequent documentary (‘Shock Treatment’), aired on 5th December 2025, the UK Government has apologised for the practice of subjecting LGBT+ people to a particularly crude and unpleasant example of conversion practice, known as Aversion Therapy in NHS hospitals in the early 1960’s to the early 1970’s. This involved subjecting LGBT people to electric shocks (and emetics) to try and change their sexuality or gender. Whilst the existence of this ‘therapy’ is nothing new to historians and activists, the documentary did an excellent job of bringing its attention to a wider audience and highlighting LGBT survivors’ calls for acknowledgment and justice.
However, subsequent BBC coverage of the investigation primarily referred to the treatment of sexuality, rather than sexuality and gender. Unfortunately, this confusion resulted in critics on social media complaining that the BBC was merely “pandering to the trans lobby” by erroneously using the acronym ‘LGBT’ when the treatment was “overwhelming inflicted on gay men and lesbians”. Yet the documentary was historically correct in referring to LGB&T people suffering from this practice.
Research and personal testimonies clearly indicate that many trans (as well as bisexual) people were treated with aversion therapy as well as gay men and lesbians. Indeed, a recent summary of the available evidence concluded that:
“It is reasonable to assert that while men with sexual desire towards other men were most likely to undergo this ‘treatment’, the next largest LGBTQ+ target group included people who ‘cross-dressed’ and those who may now be understood as trans” (Davison et al. 2024).
The oppression of people with non-normative sexualities and genders is deeply intertwined, and behavioural psychologists who practiced Aversion Therapy attempted to change people’s behaviour by associating their ‘undesirable’ behaviour with pain (whether through giving the person electric shocks or making them vomit by giving them emetics). If the undesirable presentation was ‘homosexuality’, then the stimuli used were homoerotic (sexualised images of the same sex). However, if it was ‘transvestite’ or ‘transsexual’ presentation, then the stimuli centred on images of the sex or gender which aligned with the person’s identity. In other words, trans women would be given electric shocks (or emetics) when shown images of women.
My study of lesbian and bisexual women’s experience of aversion therapy was only able to identify ten individuals who were ‘treated’ for female same sex desire by this method (Spandler and Carr 2022). It is possible that more were affected, but there has been no dedicated study of trans people’s experience of this treatment in the UK. Yet we know that there were more cases of trans feminine people subjected to this practice, including people who were then referred to as ‘transexuals’, ‘male transvestites’ and ‘cross dressers’ (note: I am not aware of any examples of ‘crossing dressing’ women or trans men treated with this method, although they might have been).
Therefore, rather than pandering to ‘gender ideology’, it could be argued that the media coverage is contributing to the erasure of trans people, especially trans women, and undermining public knowledge about trans history and oppression.
Whilst this might seem like an insignificant and innocent mistake, it is set within a broader context of a trans moral panic, especially about trans women – who, as we’ve seen, were one of the main targets of aversion therapy. Moreover, it has important implications for discussions about a trans inclusive ban on conversion therapy.
I hope any inquiry will lead to a great awareness of extent of this practice, and restorative justice for all victims and survivors. This is not about blame and punishment – that would simply apply the flawed logic of Aversion Therapy. Rather it is about acknowledging, understanding – and hopefully preventing – the harm that all forms of conversion therapy can do.
Meanwhile, although aversion therapy is no longer used to treat people’s gender or sexuality, some autistic people, people with learning difficulties and mental health conditions are still subject to crude behavioural ‘reward and punishment’ techniques in mental health services (such as exclusion, segregation and restraint). Moreover, LGBT+ conversion therapy is a spectrum and, whilst Aversion Therapy was a particularly crude and sadistic method, subtle and not-so-subtle techniques are still used to suppress or change LGBT+ people’s sexuality and gender.
References
Davison, K., Hubbard, K., Marks, S., Spandler, H., & Wynter, R. (2025). An inclusive history of LGBTQ+ aversion therapy: past harms and future address in a UK context. Review of General Psychology, 29(1), 33-48.
Spandler H., & Carr S. (2022). Lesbian and bisexual women’s experiences of aversion therapy in England. History of the Human Sciences, 35(3-4), 218–236.
Therapists Against Conversion Therapy and Transphobia 