Queer Story Time The Podcast · Stevie Inghram

Shame Sex Attraction

·1 hr 14 min·4 clips

Lucas says the violence of conversion therapy came from being told over and over that he was the problem.

Queer Storytime frames the episode as a space for queer and trans stories of radical affirmation, acceptance, empowerment, and healing. Stevie Ingram opens with a grounding practice so listeners can settle before the conversation turns toward pain. The guest is a Canadian postdoctoral fellow whose work examines conversion therapy and conservative evangelicalism. He also centers the voices of conversion therapy survivors, and the show treats that testimony as the point, not a side note. The conversation stays close to how change is promised, delayed, and used as leverage. In the story he tells, the message is that if he keeps trying, attraction will shift and a normal life will return. That promise is part of the trap. Over time, the lack of change is not read as proof that the method is failing. It is read as proof that he is failing. That is where guilt changes shape. Shame is no longer about discrete actions. It becomes a judgment on the self. Inside the evangelical frame, that lands hard because sin is treated as identity-level failure and homosexuality is cast as one of the worst sins. The result is self-hatred, along with weeks and months of harsh self-estimation piled on top of the pressure to conform. The episode gives that process room to breathe without softening it. It lets the listener hear how conversion therapy works as violence not only because of what it asks someone to do, but because of what it teaches them to believe about themselves. The conversation holds the survivor's experience as evidence of harm and as a reason to keep listening. It also extends that personal story into a wider queer and trans frame of recognition and care. The episode will matter most to listeners who want an intimate, survivor-centered conversation about religious harm, shame, and healing.

As heard by us

A survivor-centered look at how conversion therapy turns unmet change into shame and self-hatred.

It centers conversion therapy as a harm that keeps working inward long after the outside pressure has eased, with Stevie Ingram guiding a conversation with a Canadian postdoctoral fellow who pushes back against conservative evangelicalism while giving survivors room to be heard.

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Why you'd press play

For a direct look at conversion therapy, shame, and the lie of promised change.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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