Gay Conversion Therapy

Gay Conversion Therapy
Gay conversion therapy is a "therapy" designed by society to attempt to make gay or people of sexual minorities straight, often through abuse.

Such defined abusive methods include ice pick lobotomies (brain surgery), chemical castration with hormonal treatment, electric shock, and non-consensual drugging. There is little to no evidence that any of these methods work, and because of their physically abusive traits, they are not allowed anymore in most places.

Ice Pick Lobotomies
This is a form of neurosurgery, also known as psycho-surgery. It was created as a method to treat severe mental illnesses through severing the prefrontal cortex of the brain from the rest of it. Doctors supposed it would “calm patients' emotions and stabilize their personalities without doing away with their intelligence and motor functions.” The prefrontal cortex is a central part of the brain that is responsible for many executive actions, including decision-making, planning, emotional expression, and more. The name was given because Dr. Freedman, a neurosurgeon in the US and one of the first in America to pioneer the idea, used an ice pick to practice on cadavers.

The results were often tragic. Some died from the procedure, while others committed suicide shortly after. Many were left with even more severe mental complications. Due to these results, lobotomy was soon outlawed in the 1950's.

There are also slightly less harmful methods, such as counseling, visualization, social skills training, psychoanalytic therapy, and spiritual/religious interventions, often putting peer pressure on the individual or scaring them with threats of things like not being able to live happily in the afterlife. These methods may not be physical but can be very psychologically damaging for the individual they are used on, especially if used successively. The idea that a person being themselves is wrong, shameful, or a sin, can be extremely harmful to someone, especially as a child. Sadly, these methods are still allowed and prevalent in many religious communities and even non-religious ones.