Last week, the Board of Supervisors in Fairfax County, Virginia, voted unanimously to observe the annual Transgender Day of Visibility — dedicated to celebrating transgender-identifying people — on March 31, which this year coincides with Easter Sunday.
The county politicians set aside a day for transgender visibility, even though the objective of “transitioning” from one sex to the other is impossible to achieve.
After identifying as a woman for eight years, I had to accept that the magical transformation doctors had promised had not occurred. Even after years of ingesting female hormones and undergoing sex change surgery, I was still a man. No doctor using hormones and surgery has ever successfully achieved a change in a patient’s biological sex, not even for the residents of Fairfax County, Virginia.
Like every human being, my sex was determined at conception in my mother’s womb, nine months before birth, and remains fixed to this day. Yes, people can identify as trans; they just can’t succeed in transitioning. So, it would be better to observe “Identifying as Trans” Visibility Day. Such a declaration would be more accurate, biologically speaking.
Identifying as trans is a placeholder, a state of limbo or a detour, that seems fine until you realize you did not become a biological equivalent to your mother if you’re a man identifying as a “trans female” or, similarly, a biological equivalent to your father if you’re a woman identifying as a “trans man.”
I vividly remember the remarkable “aha” moment when the first glimmer of sanity entered my thinking, when I started to realize “sex change” surgery was a monstrous medical scam. I was identifying as Laura Jensen, working for a carpet company in Pacific Grove, California, and attending UC Santa Cruz in a two-year alcohol and drug study certificate program. Providentially, this program was the catalyst for my change in thinking, showing me that identifying as trans could be a symptom of some other distress.
The terms “transgender woman” or “transgender man” are inherently inaccurate and unachievable. It follows that the word “transition” is a misnomer when applied to changing sexual identity. No one has ever “transitioned” biologically to the other sex.
Even the diagnosis of gender dysphoria is misappropriated and misapplied, as demonstrated by the knee-jerk reaction of gender specialists to slap the verdict on every patient and then turn them over to medical intervention rather than looking for root causes.
People indeed suffer from dysphoria, just not gender dysphoria. The extreme unease is real; no argument there. But a further analysis will find the dysphoria is not specific to gender but originates from something else: social contagion, peer pressure, or traumatic events, such as a broken family, death of a loved one, or abuse. The proper care should be trauma therapy, not hormones and surgery.
The men who make the headlines by identifying as women — Caitlyn Jenner, once a world-class athlete; Admiral Rachel Levine, formerly a married man, now touted as the first female admiral; and Lia Thomas, a college swimmer who could not compete on a national level with men but won a national championship identifying as a woman — are men, albeit surgically and/or hormonally modified just like I was.
In my work with men who identify as women, I find that 70 to 80% are suffering from a sexual arousal disorder. No one talks much about sexual arousal disorders such as autogynephilia or transvestic fetish disorder, because the thought of men being sexually aroused by dressing in women’s clothing is distasteful and repugnant. To be socially acceptable, these men identify as transgender instead. Some of these men go as far as identifying as lesbian to their wives — the height of insanity, a man saying he is lesbian.
The definition of insanity is a severely disordered state of mind, usually occurring as a specific disorder such as dissociative identity disorder, delusional disorder, autogynephilia, transvestic fetish disorder, clinical depression, and more.
My entire work is focused on what causes people to harm themselves and erase themselves with hormones and surgery.
What happened to me years ago is even more rampant today. I entrusted my future to Dr. Paul Walker, a world-leading gender therapist in San Francisco, who diagnosed me with gender dysphoria and recommended hormones and surgery during the second visit. That diagnosis allowed me to join the waiting list at Dr. Stanley Biber’s surgical clinic for sex change surgery. Dr. Biber, cashing in on the demand for the surgery, had performed some 3,000 modifications on men, all of them paid in cash, by the time I arrived for mine in 1983. He went on to perform thousands more.
Walker’s diagnosis of gender dysphoria devalued me as a man. The female hormones dehumanized my function as a man, and the subsequent sex change surgery at the hands of Dr. Biber destroyed my body, my life, and my family.
For me, having surgery was the biggest mistake of my life. When I walked into Walker’s office, I was in extreme psychological distress; I was drinking excessively, and I fell for the scam.
For me, the trans thing is akin to overdrinking. I’d go out and slam down drinks until reaching full inebriation. The euphoria of intoxication made me feel like I was on top of the world, at least until I blacked out. Reality set in when I woke up the next morning. The sun would be shining in the bedroom, but I would have a monster headache, struggle to get up, and then vomit my guts out as I run to the toilet. Reality stared back at me. The previous night of imbibing was a huge mistake, and the headache wouldn’t go away anytime soon.
The problem with gender therapists is that they have a diagnostic toolbox overflowing with available disorders and diagnoses, yet they choose only ONE diagnosis for everyone whose shadow crosses their doorstep — that is, gender dysphoria — and only ONE treatment protocol — transition through hormones and surgery.
This approach is particularly disturbing when applied to youth. Jamie Reed, the whistleblower from The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, has written about alarm bells going off in her head while working as a case manager there: “Yet no matter how much suffering or pain a child had endured, or how little treatment and love they had received, our doctors viewed gender transition — even with all the expense and hardship it entailed — as the solution.”
So, please join with me as we move beyond “trans.”
We move beyond “trans” by calling it by its true designation — folklore — and declaring there are no transgender men or women, only people who identify as trans.
We move beyond “trans” when we acknowledge no one “transitions,” even when they say they have.
We move beyond “trans” when we stop saying “gender is assigned at birth” and can be reassigned later.
We move beyond “trans” when we grasp the reality that it is improbable that every patient presenting at a gender clinic needs hormones and surgery. (Listen to the podcast with Joseph Backholm on The Washington Stand, where we explore more about the causes and treatments of dysphoria.)
We move beyond “trans” when the stories of those who have gotten their lives back are told with compassion.
To that end, Shawn Sourgose of Ascend Pictures Productions and I have scripted a full-length feature film based on my story titled, “Who Am I.” We are starting to crowdfund to bring the script to life, and we need your help. Visit TheMovieWhoAmI.com to add your name to the interest list and engage in the crowdfunding effort.
With God’s grace, we will move beyond “trans.”
Walt Heyer serves as Senior Fellow in the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council.
