For anyone who would like to be appalled and depressed:
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/06/07/sissy.boy.experiment/index.htmlhttp://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/what-are-little-boys-made-of-mainRekers’s co-author on the paper about “Kraig”, Ivar Lovaas, was simultaneously running very similar treatment programs aimed at “curing” autistic children via behaviour modification. Though with the addition of electric shocks as punishment.
The thinking in psychology at the time was that being gay and being trans were gradations of the same thing, and it was all about gender identity— if you had a boy who was feminine (which was thought to be about identifying with his mother), he was destined to grow up to be gay, and if he was extra feminine, he might become a "transsexual".
Then as being gay became much more socially acceptable (and it became overwhelmingly clear that therapy didn't "cure" anyone from being gay), some of the conversion therapists shifted ground to "well, okay, maybe we can't prevent your gender non-conforming kid from growing up to be gay, but we can at least stop them from being trans!"
So if you run into anyone nowadays who tries to tell you that therapy aimed at "curing" trans kids is
totally different and has no connection to conversion therapy for gay kids -- historically, it began as the same thing, and some of the big names in conversion therapy for trans kids were previously doing it to treat gay and "pre-homosexual" kids too (or, like Kenneth Zucker, dangling the possibility that conversion therapy
might make them heterosexual as well as cis).
