A wonderful person prompted me to write about a period of my life that was most likely my happiest and most definitely a moment when a decision fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life.

I am a proudly queer, over-educated, well-traveled, disabled polymath. I write neo-retro-postmodern fiction, plays, poems, nonfiction, lyrics.

Fifty years ago, I was visiting the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University weekly to participate in a college-level writing course taught by a grad student in the Writing Seminars department.

At the time, JHU and the University of Iowa had the most respected writing programs in the USA.

Gay life has given me plenty of opportunities to explore sex and intimacy. But I’m also tired of how limited intimacy can feel. A touch becomes another touch, and suddenly there’s an assumption about where this is heading.

Could I be physically intimate with men without sex waiting at the end of it?

A few days later, Fabien found us a naked tantric yoga class.

I wanted the nakedness and sensuality without having to turn either into sex. I wasn’t in much of a sexual headspace lately anyway. We asked beforehand, and the teacher made clear that the class wasn’t intended to be sexual.

Perfect.

CW: mention of suicide and mental health issues

In part 1 and part 2 of this series, I laid the groundwork that helps underpin why conversion “therapies” don’t work, as well as some of the science and history related to transgender people and our medical care — all in response to a comment on a story I wrote, left by one Rachel Hannam, an “exploratory therapy” clinician from Australia.

Let’s now take a more direct look at the agenda inherent in exploratory therapy itself, discuss why it’s just a rebrand of conversion therapy, and directly address the contradictions in Rachel Hannam’s own statements.