Euphoria - The real story: OTN Co-Chair reflects on trans conversion therapy experience
Alex Clare-Young, Co-Chair of Open Table Network Trustees (they/them).
Alex is a theologian, writer, campaigner, and Pioneer Minister in Cambridge. As a trans-masculine non-binary person, Alex is passionate about advocating for the inclusion of, and social justice for, trans people. Their first book, Transgender. Christian. Human. was published in 2019.
WATCH Alex’s intro video [1.5 mins]
LAST MONTH amid widespread condemnation, the UK Government decided not to include trans people in its conversion therapy ban.
In an interview with the Evening Standard this week, OTN Co-Chair Alex Clare-Young shares experiences of conversion therapy, and concern that being trans is not something to be cured, but to be accepted and joyfully celebrated.
‘I was vomiting and fainting after religious conversion therapy’
Alex is is a theologian, writer, campaigner, and pioneer minister in Cambridge. As a trans-masculine non-binary person who uses ‘they/them’ pronouns. Alex is passionate about advocating for the inclusion of, and social justice for, trans people. Their first book, Transgender. Christian. Human. was published in 2019.
As a child, Alex describes feeling ‘completely alienated’, until they came out as gay as a teenager:
For me, coming out as gay felt like the only way to express what I was feeling. I didn’t know that trans people existed, so I didn’t know that I could be trans.
Alex grew up in a Christian family and attended an all-girls primary school in Scotland, where they were bullied.
At age 15, while on a church youth trip to North Africa, Alex finally began to open up about hating skirts, and feeling attracted to a girl. At first, the youth leaders and other young people responded by encouraging Alex to embrace feminine clothing, hair and make-up. Then the youth leaders leaders began attempts to change Alex, through practices they now understand to be attempts at conversion therapy.
“There were late night prayer sessions in my bedroom, while my roommates pretended to sleep, and prayer circles where I had to sit on the ground while people stood around me and prayed for me. I was in a foreign country and under the care of these leaders, so I felt very, very vulnerable and unsafe. I withdrew into myself and began to become physically unwell, vomiting and fainting.”
After Alex came home, the church asked them to leave when they became more open about their identity, cutting their hair short and presenting in a more masculine way.
At university, Alex met a trans person for the first time, who invited them to an LGBT+ youth group. There, they met other trans and non-binary people, and felt an immediate sense of ease.
“It was like looking in a mirror, and gave me an immense feeling of freedom. I began to explore what it might look like to transition…. Over time, as I transitioned and became very obviously happier and healthier, my family became some of my biggest allies.”
Now 30 years old, although Alex is living authentically as a pioneer minister, academic and writer in Cambridge, the affects of conversion therapy have never left them. It took Alex years of therapy to address these effects, and they still struggle with low self esteem, anxiety and panic attacks.
In the last year, transphobic hate crimes have risen by 16 per cent in the UK. The issue of trans rights has become a hot button ‘culture war’ issue, and Alex fears that the atmosphere in the UK for trans people is becoming increasingly hostile. Alex says:
“I have real fears that the safeguarding of trans people is going downhill in the UK, and I am scared that one day it won’t be possible to be me any more. This can make me very pessimistic sometimes.”
Alex concludes on a more hopeful note:
“I don’t dwell on, or talk a lot about, the horrible things that I have experienced, because actually that isn’t the story. The real story, for trans people, is how much we can give to the world and the euphoria we experience when we are able to become more fully ourselves.”
