by Walt Heyer, November 17, 2019, Daily Signal.

Nathaniel, not pictured above, received sex change surgery at age 18. Less than a year later, Nathaniel now says, “This whole thing was a bad idea. I am 19 years old, and I feel as though I have ruined my life.”

Read Nathaniel’s story at Daily Signal.

I soon came to the realization that what I have is an open wound, not a vagina. I was blinded by the amount of harmful support that I got.

In June 2019, I received this email from a 27-year-old man. He gave permission to share his story here so that it can help others. His name and location are withheld for privacy.

Warning – some of the bad outcomes of surgery are described in graphic detail.

Dear Walt,

Thanks for setting up a website that caters to the needs of sex change regretters.

I’m (name withheld) and I’m originally from Europe. I’m 27 years old and I’m what they call a sex change regretter.

Let me tell you my story.

I was effeminate from young age and was picked on for my femininity throughout elementary school, middle school and high school. When I was 14 years old we emigrated to the US, because my father was offered a job over there with good advantages.

In the US I came in contact with a transgender woman who had transitioned in her 30s. She encouraged me to explore my femininity more. She took me to a support group for LGBT people to talk about my feelings of gender confusion. In this group I was told that I was transsexual and that the dysphoria would only get worse as I would get older. Transitioning young and as soon as possible was the way to go according to the members there.

The earlier mentioned trans woman who at that time was in her mid 40s, took me, a teenager exploring his identity, shopping for women’s clothes and took me to an electrologist to have my facial hair electrolyzed. She provided me with hormones from an online pharmacy. I couldn’t tell my parents, that was the deal. She paid for my electrolysis sessions and she helped me with my hormone regimen. I started taking Spironolactone and Progynova.

The first year my parents didn’t find out. The second year however they found my stash of hormones and I was put for an ultimatum: going to see a therapist to help me deal with my identity crisis or moving out. My parents wanted to bring me to a therapist that had a neutral stance on LGBT issues because they believed that bringing me to a too affirmative therapist would bias the diagnosis.

The trans woman friend of middle age convinced me that my parents were transphobic and that they wanted to harm me. She encouraged me to move out and become a run-away. She offered to stay at her place.

She soon took me to a very gender affirmative therapist that would rubber stamp me so that I could start hormones officially under the care of an endocrinologist. I was 16 by that time, it was 2008. After only 1 session of therapy I was approved for hormones. I was told that I was definitely transsexual and that the only cure would be hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery. I was prescribed a much higher hormone dose than I initially took on my own. This therapist sent me to an endocrinologist that started me on 300 mg of Spironolactone and 8 mg of Estrofem. These high doses were necessary according to him to give me the best results and to completely nuke my puberty.

On the Spironolactone I developed health problems with my bladder and at one point it stopped working as an anti androgen. That was when my trans friend encouraged me to see a therapist again to approve me for an orchiectomy. That way I wouldn’t have to take anti androgens anymore. I saw a therapist who specialized in gender dysphoria and after 1 session I was provided with a referral letter for an orchiectomy. In 2010 at the age of 18 I underwent a radical orchiectomy in a private clinic and the costs were paid out of pocket by my trans friend.

This is when all problems become worse.

My trans friend who was depressed herself committed suicide and left me behind with a bunch of problems. I had to move out and I became homeless. I lost my access to hormones and had to enter the prostitution scene to make enough money for rent of a small 1 bedroom apartment and to be able to buy food.

In 2014, after 3 years without hormones, I started to have back problems and after a fall I was diagnosed with osteoporosis. My bones had become extremely brittle due to the lack of sex hormones. My perfectly healthy body that I once had, was now permanently medicalized.

I was prescribed Bonefos, a bone-strengthener that is also prescribed to people with bone cancer. I was put on estrogen again.

Unfortunately my new care provider was too affirmative and was married to a trans woman himself so he was biased in his views. He encouraged me to see a therapist to approve me for full gender reassignment surgery. A vaginoplasty was the last step that I would need, he told me.

I was recommended a therapist that would approve me for bottom surgery. I found a job at Starbucks and the insurance plan covered SRS as a medically necessary procedure.

After I got my therapist approval letters for SRS, I scheduled bottom surgery with Dr Bowers who is a trans woman herself. The wait list would take 3 years. I would undergo gender reassignment surgery in November 2017.

Because another patient cancelled her surgery, my surgery was rescheduled to September 2017. Two months earlier than foreseen.

I underwent SRS in September 2017 and I soon had to start an intense regimen of dilation. Dilating is still painful to this day, almost 2 years post op.

I have almost no sex drive. I lost a lot of feeling in my genitalia after the procedure.

I soon came to the realization that what I have is an open wound, not a vagina. I was blinded by the amount of harmful support that I got.

I tried to have sex with a man 8 months after my bottom surgery and I felt disgusted with myself for having him penetrate a pool of bacteria. Blood came out of the cavity during penetration and I could see he was uncomfortable with the looks of the vulva and with the feeling of the vagina on his penis.

He knew I was trans, I told him, but he had never dated a trans woman before.

I was diagnosed with bacterial vaginosis around 1 year post op. The vaginal cavity was full of unhealthy bacteria, despite me douching with isobetadine regularly.

At this point it became very clear to me that what I have between my legs is nothing more than a surgically created wound.

I honestly don’t understand how this surgery is even legal. It butchers a healthy body and comes with life threatening side effects.

I have just finished a course of penicillin antibiotics. The infection is gone now and the cavity is clean. Still, I wish I never underwent this surgery. It is just a gaping wound that was supposed to validate my identity.

I hope I can heal one day. Transitioning doesn’t solve anything. SRS just makes matters even worse.

One thing I learned is that everyone feels uncomfortable around trans people and everyone is just walking on eggshells to avoid saying something offensive.

Dating someone is also quite impossible as a trans person, unless they fetishize you. No one truly wants to be with a transgender person forever. There is just too much problems that come with it.

Had I known all this before committing to irreversible procedures, I would never have done it.

I think we are going to see a wave of regretters in the next coming 10 years.

Kind regards,

(name withheld)

Excerpt from Trans Life Survivors by Walt Heyer, pgs. 109-111

Recently an email arrived in my inbox with the subject “I wish I had listened to you” that shows the human casualties from the “grand experiment” on children. Max [not his real name], now in his mid-twenties, transitioned in his teens and now realizes he was too young to make the decision to take cross-sex hormones and undergo surgery.

Max’s young body is permanently damaged because doctors have no definitive idea as to who will persist in a condition of gender dysphoria and yet propose irreversible treatments for young people who feel conflicted about gender. As Max found out, even strongly held feelings change.

Subject: I wish I had listened to you

I’m only in my mid [twenties]. I transitioned in my teens and had surgery. I was [too] young to make such a decision.

I’ve sunken into such a deep regret. I don’t even feel transgender anymore. I feel like my old self. I am happy with a female appearance but that is all I really needed.

I feel like I was brainwashed by the transgender agenda and by gender norm expectations. I would do anything to [have] my penis back.

My feelings were confusing, and I thought they would never go away. I’m just a guy who’s really in touch with my feminine side.

I can’t believe what I’ve done to my life. And now I have no choice but to take hormones forever. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m losing my mind. All I would have had to do was discontinue my hormones and everything would have been alright. I honestly feel 100% normal and okay . . . if only I had never had that surgery.

Max

This story merits further thought: this young man’s doctors would no doubt say that Max gave fully informed consent to have his perfectly healthy male anatomy sliced away. But how can that be so, when you see him awakening to what he has lost, and recognizing the surgery as a mistake? How could a teenager truly understand what he was giving up by eliminating his normal sexual development; the opportunity to become a husband and father; the blessing of living with the normal body chemistry of a man rather than force-feeding his system female hormones—for life—and with that a host of life-long medical risks?

Doctors have no scientific basis for their recommendation to prescribe hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones or transition surgeries for children with gender dysphoria. The truth is that no one can predict whether a gender dysphoric child will feel the same way years later.

Kristina Olson, a child transgender research psychologist at the University of Washington, puts it this way: “We just don’t have definitive data one way or another.” That’s why Olson is leading a study of 300 trans children that will track outcomes over 20 years, “to be able to, hopefully, answer which children should or should not transition,” she said.^[1]

In other words, doctors simply don’t know right now. Someday, perhaps, but in the meantime the damage to this generation of trans kids is underway. Parents are at a loss,  and early adopters of teenage transition are contacting me with regret.

 

[1] Shaban, B., Campos, R., Villarreal, M., Horn, M. and Carroll, J., “Transgender Kids Could Get Hormone Therapy at Earlier Ages” , The Investigative Unit of NBC Bay Area, May 18, 2017, accessed on July 10, 2017 at https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/Transgender-Kids-Eligible-for-Earlier-Medical-Intervention-Under-New-Guidelines-423082734.html

Fourteen years ago, school teacher Herb McCaffrey made the local news by deciding to live as a female with the name Kerri. After much soul-searching, however, this teacher says, “Since then I have come to the realization that I made a mistake. I am living my life as honestly as I can.

Read McCaffrey’s story.

Jamie Shupe retired from the Army with the rank of sergeant first class. He previously identified as transgender and was the first American to obtain nonbinary status under law.

Four years ago, I wrote about my decision to live as a woman in The New York Times, writing that I had wanted to live “authentically as the woman that I have always been,” and had “effectively traded my white male privilege to become one of America’s most hated minorities.”

Three years ago, I decided that I was neither male nor female, but nonbinary—and made headlines after an Oregon judge agreed to let me identify as a third sex, not male or female.

Now, I want to live again as the man that I am.

Read the article

by Katie Herzog

Jackie came out to friends and family first and then posted a note on Facebook. She was adopting new pronouns, the note said, and she would like her community to respect that. It looked, at first, like a typical coming out circa 2017, one of many posted online every day as more and more people come out as transgender, nonbinary, or genderqueer. But Jackie’s post was different. She wasn’t coming out as trans, she was coming out as de-trans.

Jackie is among an emerging population of people who have transitioned to a different gender and then later transitioned back. This has ignited a contentious debate both in and outside the trans community, with various sides accusing each other of bigotry, harassment, censorship, and damaging the fight for trans rights.

Read the rest of the article…