Trans Surgeries Like Mine Were Wrong Then And Are Wrong Now

In 1981 at 40 years of age, I was diagnosed as suffering from “gender dysphoria” by a world-leading gender therapist, Dr. Paul Walker.

Sitting across from Dr. Walker in his San Francisco Union St. office, I explained that when I was only 4 years old, I started cross-dressing in my grandma’s clothes at her house. To encourage me, she used her dress-making skills to fashion a made-to-fit full-length purple chiffon evening dress for my 4-year-old body.

The imagery of that purple chiffon dress was more like a hot branding iron on the hindquarters of ranch livestock than a loving gift to a 4-year-old grandson. I have not been able to totally erase the memories of the purple dress, but the harm it did in my life motivates me to help prevent another child, or even an adult, from being put on the path to cross-sex hormones and surgeries.

While I can forgive Dr. Walker for recommending that I start immediately on female hormone therapy in 1981, I cannot forgive the gender therapists today for rushing to a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and provide cross-sex hormones without evaluating the underlying contributing factors.

I can forgive surgeon Dr. Stanley Biber for surgically altering me in 1983, a time when few people were talking about gender dysphoria, opposite-sex hormones, or cosmetic surgeries on breasts or genitals. What is unimaginable to me is that surgeons today perform “gender surgeries” as treatment given what we now know.

Dysphoria Points to Other Factors

What we’ve learned from more recent studies like the Cass Report, which was commissioned by the British National Health Service to do an exhaustive review of pediatric gender medicine, is that the issues driving dysphoria run deeper than simply gender.

Dysphoria, the opposite of euphoria, is a symptom associated with a variety of unresolved issues and mental illnesses, such as:

1. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including loss, abuse, neglect, family conflict, divorce, and addiction.
2. Mental health conditions, such as depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia disorder, bipolar disorder, and autism.

The two categories are interlinked. The CDC notes, “Toxic stress from ACEs can change brain development and affect how the body responds to stress. ACEs are linked to chronic health problems, mental illness, and substance misuse in adulthood.”

Trauma therapists treat ACEs with talk therapy and look to rework troubling memories and emotions from the past. Mental health conditions may respond to proven medications and talk therapy. None of these issues are treated with cross-sex hormones or surgery.

But the treatment plan gets flipped on its head when dealing with patients with “gender” dysphoria. Gender therapists follow “gender-affirming care,” a protocol that affirms a person in their gender discomfort and has one recommendation: “transition” with cross-sex hormones and surgery.

Jennifer Bauwens, Ph.D., and I have written about the need for therapists to investigate adverse childhood experiences and mental health conditions that contribute to the patient’s dysphoria in devising treatment plans, rather than reflexively prescribing cross-sex hormones and surgery. Anyone enlisting the services of a gender therapist needs to aggressively challenge them on this point or find a trauma therapist instead. Parents need to know that the search for a therapist is complicated by the fact that 23 states ban talk therapy for minors who espouse a transgender identity. More advice for parents from Dr. Bauwens and myself is available here.

Replacing Subjective Language

We’ve learned that the language used in the transgender domain is itself problematic, being subjectively based on beliefs and feelings, and designed to distort the truth and enhance the myth of “being transgender.”

Having dealt with the ins and outs of the transgender journey for over 80 years — undergoing so-called “sex change surgery” 42 years ago and coming back to my innate male identity at age 50 (more on my story here) — I have earned the right to question the use of words and phrases that deny biological reality, such as transgender, transitioned, detransitioned, and gender assigned at birth.

The truth is that no one has ever biologically changed genders. People can say they are “transgender” and that they have “transitioned,” but the most they can accomplish is to identify as transgender, not become transgender. The change in appearance can be convincing, but truly “transitioning” is not achievable.

Likewise, the term “detransition” subtly distorts reality because it implies that “transition” happened. But because people can’t “transition” they cannot “detransition.” Instead, we can say they no longer identify as transgender.

No one assigns our gender at birth. The Bible says God created man in His image, male and female He created them (Genesis 1:27). At conception, we are unalterably male or female, with corresponding characteristics intricately woven into every cell in our body.

Keep Telling the Truth

We know much more now than when I first started this journey more than 40 years ago. Even longtime transgender individuals like the first transgender president of USPATH are sounding the alarm about the harm medical professionals commit when transitioning minors. And yet, all that has come to light, especially over the last 10 years, confirms my initial assessment. Effective treatment does not require cross-sex hormones and surgeries but non-medical therapy protocols, such as trauma therapy, addiction therapy, and interventions to counteract internet indoctrination and social contagion.

Walt Heyer is an accomplished author and public speaker with a passion for mentoring individuals whose lives have been torn apart by unnecessary gender-change surgery.