Queer Woman Who Recounted Tale Of Anti-Gay Abduction, Brainwashing To Speak In SF Tonight
Remember when bootcamps and worse were all the rage with parents?
When an account of a queer teen kidnapped and sent to a Utah reprogramming (to make her straight! Because that’s how it works) “camp” was posted to social news site Reddit a few weeks ago, sites like Queerty and tiny nibbles* reacted in anger, as did Appeal readers who discovered that story in yesterday’s newsletter. Though some online commentary expressed skepticism that the teen’s story was true, she’s responded with both an interview elaborating on her experience and will be speaking tonight, in SF.
“I almost wish you hadn’t included those links to the gay teen reprogramming camp,” one newsletter reader who requested anonymity wrote to me. “It brought back a lot of memories on how this was done to me nearly 16 years ago.”
The reader went on to say that after returning home from camp, they ran away to San Francisco, where they lived on the streets “which was better then the hell I experienced when being brainwashed in an effort to change who I am.”