"Conversion therapies" a point of convergence between the "heterosexual matrix" and the "ideology of cure"

Abstract

This paper addresses conversion therapies as practices that are exercised on those people who disagree with the gender norms and ontology of the heterosexual matrix, using two axes of analysis: the pathologization and the demonization of sex-generic dissidences. To analyze the concepts of heterosexual matrix and gender ontology, Judith Butler (2007) is used in "Gender Trouble". Likewise, this problem is deepened with the category of cisnormativity of Blas Radi (2020). In this sense, as in the cisheterosexual matrix sex-generic dissidents are classifid as suffering from diseases or sins, it is proposed that the therapy operates as an "antidote" for those "abnormal" bodies. Thus, the category ideology of the cure of Eli Clare (2021) is recovered to realize that the idea of the "deficiency" of some bodies implies only two options: to be discarded, for not fiting into the norm; or be healed, to force them to fi in.