Talk:Sexual orientation change efforts

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2020 and 10 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Princesslavabean.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:06, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Revised "History" section
FYI, I revised the History section of this page and deleted the "needs expansion" flag. Previously, the section was a bit disjointed and included a huge detailed subsection about Krafft-Ebing, which seemed out of place. It seems to me that any history that specifically relates to conversion therapy, rather than sexual orientation change efforts more broadly, belongs on the Conversion Therapy page (which has an extensive history section), not here. I've deleted subheadings in favor of a streamlined history section and added a new opening paragraph that covers pre-19th-century history related to this topic. RadicalCopyeditor (talk) 19:51, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Reconciliation with Conversion Therapy
As noted above in the proposed merge section, it seems like it would be helpful to make sure that this article focuses on sexual orientation change efforts broadly, and that any information solely about conversion therapy should be housed in that article, rather than here. In that vein, I've reduced the Legal Status section of this article to a summary after integrating any unique and currently relevant info into the Legal Status section of the Conversion Therapy article. Everything in the section related solely to conversion therapy, was outdated, and duplicated the better-maintained section in the Conversion Therapy article. RadicalCopyeditor (talk) 01:57, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Is Stonewall a good source here?
I'm wondering if this Stonewall article is an appropriate source for this sentence?
 * As of early 2022, at least fourteen countries have instituted a nationwide ban (including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Fiji, Germany, India, Malta, Nauru, New Zealand, Samoa, Taiwan, and Uruguay), and several more are actively considering legislation that would ban conversion therapy (including France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom).

There seems to be a range of sources on the section for Legal status of conversion therapy. I have not changed the sentence, as it seems as if the claim is justified. I'm just wondering if the Stonewall source can be used when they are actively campaigning for a ban on conversion therapy in the UK. I don't think that we would normally allow a Conservative Party source for the consequences of Brexit or a Green Party source for the impact of climate change, and these seem analogous cases to me. Perhaps each country should be justified separately with a bespoke source? Epa101 (talk) 20:31, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

Proposed merge to Conversion therapy
Attempt to neutrally ping all reasonably-involved editors across both articles. Apologies if this discussion does not concern you.

Based on a prior discussion at, I propose merging Sexual orientation change efforts into Conversion therapy. In spite of its length, this article is ostensibly a duplicate of that article's scope, and there is substantial overlap in what is being covered. Based on Talk:Conversion therapy/Definitions (a list of RS definitions of conversion therapy, compiled for a largely unrelated purpose), it appears that a number of reliable sources define conversion therapy as ostensibly synonymous with SOCE and GICE:
 * "Conversion therapy, also known as sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE), is the scientifically discredited practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity"
 * "So-called 'conversion therapy' refers to any form of intervention, [...] that attempts to change an individual’s sexual orientation or sexual behaviors (sexual orientation change efforts [SOCE]) or an individual’s gender identity (gender identify change efforts [GICE])."
 * "I should note from the outset that in the mental health literature these terms ["conversion therapy" and "reparative therapy"] are being replaced by the less familiar but more accurate acronym sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) because these methods do not constitute a legitimate, accepted form of therapy."

Several past discussions on this talk page have recognized the duplication of scope and content. has done some excellent work to improve it, but I still think there is not sufficient distinction to differentiate this as a separate topic from conversion therapy. The chief argument against doing so has simply been the large amount of outstanding content here which would need to be incorporated. I, a deletionist at heart, see the obvious solution... The only notable differences are this article's inclusion of techniques like castration, lobotomy, and corrective rape (which cannot be called therapy even in the loosest sense), and its exclusion of anti-trans gender identity/expression change efforts (whereas modern sources tend to bundle the three together). I think the more barbaric forms of SOCE/GICE could still fit snugly into the target article's History section.

The status quo is that this article is neglected in favor of its much more recognized and actively edited sibling, which currently 7x as many total edits. I personally only discovered it after considerable discussion at Talk:Conversion therapy. I would also remark (though not as a proper rationale for merger) that it's accrued a mild stink of WP:POVFORK and WP:FALSEBALANCE, and gives too much weight and credence to the views of discredited cranks like Richard A. Cohen and his organization, Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality.

For these reasons above, I think we should resolve to begin the project of WP:MERGEing and WP:REDIRECTing this article into Conversion therapy. I await your thoughts. RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk · contribs) 17:19, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * SUPPORT BUT, I actually think SOCE is probably the better article title. Obviously, not all SOCE are CT. If there's too much content to be covered in a single article, perhaps some of the 'Legal status of CT' stuff could be split off.   Pepper Beast    (talk)  18:03, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Support merge and redirect: Per what we've discovered at Talk:Conversion therapy/Definitions. While the Human Rights Campaign prefers SCOE and GCOE, those specific terms haven't received much traction as of yet. Maybe in the future we will need to fork conversion therapy out to SCOE and GCOE, but we don't at this time. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:11, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Merge or subsume in new parent article: Given bullet #3 which you added above, are you sure you want to merge SOCE ⟶ Conversion therapy? Ultimately, it seems, it likely will be the other way around. As mentioned at the "not therapy" discussion, it's probably premature to use the SOCE name until it gains majority usage, however moving content from SOCE (you mentioned castration, etc.) into "&lt;anything> therapy" just seems to be setting us up for undoing it all later. If that merely meant merging now to "Conversion therapy", and then renaming the article X years from now to "SOCE", I'd have no objection; that would be simple. However, the topics suggested by the two titles are not identical, and a future rename to SOCE won't work, because "Conversion therapy" is only a subset of it, and it will most likely have to be split off again, or at worst, live in its own, long, section at the combined article. As a compromise, I wouldn't object to a merge of the two articles to a new, third article with a different title. This proposed article would be a parent article in WP:Summary style, with "Conversion therapy" and "SOCE" as two child articles (likely with others like GICE and SIT to follow) along with appropriate pruning at the two child articles to remove the current overlap. As for the title, probably it would have to be a WP:NDESC that encompasses both/all subtopics, such as the ones mentioned at the #Terminology paragraph at . Mathglot (talk) 18:32, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Scholar shows considerable support for Sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts as a possible descriptive title for a new parent article encompassing the existing ones. Mathglot (talk) 18:48, 28 June 2022 (UTC)
 * See Draft:Sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts for a possible example of this. Mathglot (talk) 01:07, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't understand what makes your draft a separate article. The topic as defined is essentially identical to what RS define conversion therapy as, and thus the scope of the current conversion therapy article. Some of the text may be useful to insert/replace if the page is eventually moved to that title. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  02:20, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support merge common name standards seem to include SOCE under the generalized "conversion therapy" banner. I don't see much that suggests that they are simply closely related topics, but rather the same topic under two names. "Conversion therapy" carries certain connotations and such, but popular literature on the topic (across multiple opinions) almost always refer to the subject as under that name. ~ Pbritti (talk) 18:34, 28 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Support merge per Talk:Conversion therapy/Definitions; also in my experience the common usage is "conversion therapy" for all efforts to change sexual orientation and gender identity. Both articles however seem too detailed in places so while merging I think content should be split off into dedicated subarticles, perhaps including History of conversion therapy, Medical views of conversion therapy, Legality of conversion therapy, etc. as appropriate per WP:LENGTH and WP:SUMMARYSTYLE. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  03:28, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * After taking another skim through the target article, I was, just about to say that there's definitely enough material to split into History of conversion therapy and Legality of conversion therapy. RoxySaunders 🏳️‍⚧️ (talk · contribs) 03:55, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * SUPPORT Merge Pastelitodepapa (talk) 17:07, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Support merge. I personally prefer the current title, as per reasoning given by (plus, calling this abusive practise "therapy" seems wrong), but I believe that academic consensus and popular usage is against me on this one. —QueenofBithynia (talk) 15:37, 5 July 2022 (UTC)