About the Message:
Conversion practices—commonly referred to as conversion therapy—constitute the damaging efforts to change queer individuals’ sexual orientations and/or gender identities and expressions. Despite the common misapprehension—in North America, at least—that conversion practices are a thing of the past, such anti-LGBTQ+ efforts persist and continue to wreak havoc on countless queer and trans individuals, particularly those in high-control religious contexts. As a survivor of conversion therapy himself, Wilson will present a broadened definition of conversion practices before discussing the prevalence of conversion practices in North America. Wilson will flesh out the ways by which conversion practitioners seek the eradication of LGBTQ+ communities in North America and beyond.
About the Speaker:
Lucas Wilson is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto Mississauga and was formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Calgary. He is the author of At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives, as well as the editor of Shame-Sex Attraction: Survivors’ Stories of Conversion Therapy. His public-facing work has appeared in The Advocate, LGBTQ Nation, Queerty, and Religion Dispatches, among other venues. He is currently working on two new anthologies: Don’t Ask, Tell All: Stories of Christian Colleges’ Anti-Queer Regimes and Queer and Trembling: Stories of LGBTQ+ Religious Trauma.
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Topics: Equity, Human Rights, Justice, LGTBQIA+, Pluralism, Pride