Trans-Gender Regrets

A Life Poem Becomes A Death Chant

The Federalist recently carried a piece which is one of the saddest we have read for some time.  It concerns the bitterness and regret of people who have "transgendered".


Secularist human rights are morphing in an entirely predictable direction.  Since there is no ultimate standard, sanctioned by an ultimate Person, to which we must answer and by which we must be bound, all talk amongst secularists of human rights eventually disintegrates into letting people be whatever they want to be.  The ultimate right is self-will-worship.  Sexual ethics and sexual identity rapidly devolve to will-worship or the worship of self.

With the assistance of modern surgical techniques and chemical interventions, women can become men; men can become women; and gender types can vary across a menu of more than fifty shades of grey.  But the human cost of this folly is now emerging, and it is acutely sad.  Firstly, the post-op regrets:

Trouble In Transtopia: Murmurs Of Sex Change Regret

Transgender people who regret their sex changes typically get buried in venom rather than love.

By Stella Morabito  
The Federalist

Everyone has regrets. Some of us have big regrets. Most everyone has some place to go to get help dealing with them. Except for, say, a guy who had sex-change surgery and now would like to have his penis back. (The one God gave him.)

Our culture seems pretty much “to each his own” when it comes to elective bodily mutilation and the regret thereof. And there’s a lot of regret out there. According to a British poll, a whopping 65 percent of those who’ve had various cosmetic surgeries regret it. People who regret their tattoos, plastic surgery, or more extreme body modifications (here’s a sad Buzzfeed pictorial on the effects of ear gauges) can read up on the Internet and find an open array of remedies. Plastic surgeons make money both puttin’ it in and takin’ it out. Hollywood stars can speak openly about misgivings over their boob jobs and whatnot. Regarding her lip enhancement surgery, Courtney Love said: “I just want the mouth God gave me back.

Then, secondly, comes the ostracism, often with a tirade of abuse, inflicted upon those who subsequently regret their folly.
  They are regarded as traitors to the noble cause becoming an ultimate narcissistic libertine--the freedom to make yourself into whatever you desire to be.

To reverse the folly would approach an act of blasphemy. Those who regret their decision, who learn too late, after the deed, are left to suffer as modern lepers.

But the difference between Love and the guy with phantom penis syndrome is that the guy isn’t allowed to talk about his regret. Not openly. The transgender lobby actively polices and suppresses discussion of sex-change regret, and claims it’s rare (no more than “5 percent.”) However, if you do decide to “de-transition” to once again identify with the sex in your DNA, talking about it will get you targeted by trans activists. So it’s a challenge to understand the scope of regret for sex change surgery. It’s out there, but…

Let’s start with Alan Finch, a resident of Australia who decided when he was 19 to transition from male to female, and in his 20s had genital surgery. But then, at age 36, Finch told the Guardian newspaper in 2004:

. . . transsexualism was invented by psychiatrists. . . .You fundamentally can’t change sex … the surgery doesn’t alter you genetically. It’s genital mutilation. My ‘vagina’ was just the bag of my scrotum. It’s like a pouch, like a kangaroo. What’s scary is you still feel like you have a penis when you’re sexually aroused. It’s like phantom limb syndrome. It’s all been a terrible misadventure. I’ve never been a woman, just Alan . . . the analogy I use about giving surgery to someone desperate to change sex is it’s a bit like offering liposuction to an anorexic.

Finch went on to sue the Australian gender identity clinic at Melbourne’s Monash Medical Center for misdiagnosis. He also was involved in starting an outreach to others called “Gender Menders.” The reaction from the transgender community was fast, furious, and abusive, particularly in the Susans.org discussion forum as described in Sheila Jeffrey’s book, “Gender Hurts.”

Since then, Finch’s outreach website has been archived and there is no further information online. In fact, Finch’s subsequent silence is the norm for those who change their minds. This is perhaps not surprising, given the vigor and vindictiveness of the transgender community in persecuting those who have the temerity to suggest that all is not well in sexual La-La Land. But if you look you can find rogue headlines every now and then that even Hollywood’s fawning over “all things trans” can’t quite control. There’s much evidence that the carefully crafted pictures of transgender “authenticity” and “happiness” are more fiction than fact.

The post-modern paradigm insists that truth and authenticity is what you make it to be and that all truth is ultimately relative and personal (including the foregoing assertion), yet there are limits.  If someone celebrates his or her freedom by "trans-gendering", then experiences profound regret and a whole cluster of unexpected, unwanted results, there can be no going back.  To reverse the folly would approach an act of  blasphemy.  Those who regret their decision, who learn too late, after the deed, are left to suffer as modern lepers.

Rene Richards and Mike Penner remain fairly well known as male-to-female transgenders, the former from the 1970s and the latter recently. Both have stories of misgivings and sorrows that cannot be explained away through the old standard “it’s-society’s-fault” routinely trotted out by the transgender lobby.

Tennis champion Rene Richards was one of the first to go through sex-change surgery and was something of a sensation in the 1970s. As such, you might expect Richards to be a tower of strength, offering encouragement to those in similar circumstances today. Well, not so much. This is what Richards had to say in an excerpt from a March 1999 interview attributed to Tennis Magazine (unavailable in full online):

If there was a drug that I could have taken that would have reduced the pressure, I would have been better off staying the way I was—a totally intact person. I know deep down that I’m a second-class woman. I get a lot of inquiries from would-be transsexuals, but I don’t want anyone to hold me out as an example to follow. Today there are better choices, including medication, for dealing with the compulsion to cross dress and the depression that comes from gender confusion. As far as being fulfilled as a woman, I’m not as fulfilled as I dreamed of being. I get a lot of letters from people who are considering having this operation…and I discourage them all.’ —Rene Richards, “The Liaison Legacy,” Tennis Magazine, March 1999.

A 2007 New York Times interview, “The Lady Regrets,” describes Richards’ temperament this way: “… as she wearies of the interview, her body language seems to become more traditionally male, suggesting an athlete who is wearying of the game.”

Penner’s story is even more tragic. In April 2007, Penner, a Los Angeles Times sportswriter for 24 years, announced in a stunning column that he would come back from vacation as “Christine Daniels.” He then wrote a blog, “Woman in Progress,” as he lived as a woman and served as a spokesperson for transgender activism.

But then, with no explanation, Penner decided in 2008 to de-transition. He readopted his byline, Mike Penner, and lived again as a man. All blog posts and bylines by Christine Daniels were mysteriously scrubbed from the LA Times website. Penner discussed none of it. But according to one report, he was devastated over not being able to save his marriage. Then tragically, in November 2009, Penner killed himself. The funeral for Penner was strictly private to keep out media. The LGBT community had their own memorial service, but only for “Christine Daniels,” not Mike Penner.

Another heart-wrenching story, of a female-to-male transgender, is that of Nancy Verhelst in Belgium. She was aghast after her surgery, saying she felt more like a “monster” than a man. She also spoke of her sad childhood, in which her mother rejected her in favor of her brothers, and isolated little Nancy in a room over the garage. Nancy was so distraught that she asked doctors to put her to death under Belgium’s lax euthanasia laws. They coldly complied.

Let no Christian deny the reality of the suffering involved.  Let not the equally cold dismissal, "Serves you right!" come to mind or be found on the tongue.  Rather, let the picture of a wasted starving man, an exile, sitting amongst pigs, eating their slops take shape in the mind.  Whilst it is true that those who feed the flesh reap corruption from the flesh, it also true that the door remains open if a penitent seeks the Father's house.

He cites, for example, a national survey of more than 6,500 transgenders that asked the question, “Have you tried to commit suicide?” Forty-one percent answered, “Yes.” One need look no further for compelling evidence of widespread transgender and sex change regret.

Sadly, often the only option once folk can think of, once they go down that devastating one-way-street, is death.

Walt Heyer is perhaps the most active among the survivors out there, and possibly the most vilified by transgender activists. He is a clear-eyed and gentle man, now in his 70s, who had sex reassignment surgery and lived as a woman for many years. Because of the devastation sown by the gender confusion, Heyer offers information and support in blogs called sexchangeregret.com and transdetransition.

Heyer has also authored three relevant books: “Paper Genders,” “Gender, Lies and Suicide,” and “Trading My Sorrows” that provide resources to understand the destructive effects of gender confusion. He cites, for example, a national survey of more than 6,500 transgenders that asked the question, “Have you tried to commit suicide?” Forty-one percent answered, “Yes.” One need look no further for compelling evidence of widespread transgender and sex change regret.

A Swedish study from 2003 found that post-operative mortality and suicide rates for transsexuals are many times higher than the general population. And that’s in Sweden, probably the friendliest environment on the planet for transgender individuals. He explains how he cried and would have likely changed his mind if the doctor simply asked him just before the surgery if he was certain about it.

Also out of Sweden is a 2010 documentary entitled “Regretters” in which two older Swedish men who each lived as a woman for many years decided to go back to their male identities. (The film has made the rounds at various LGBT events, interesting given its controversial nature.) I recently watched Regretters on YouTube with English subtitles, but that option is no longer available. I hope you can still watch a subtitled trailer here. A few more subtitled excerpts are available in this three-minute discussion with the director.

In “Regretters,” one of the men, Mikael, describes how he felt immediately upon seeing the results of the surgery and his penis gone. He rues aloud: “I was devastated. What have I done? What on earth have I done?” In the full version he explains how he cried and would have likely changed his mind if the doctor simply asked him just before the surgery if he was certain about it. Mikael also explained that he was always painfully shy towards women and never felt he could find someone who would date him or marry him. So—starved for a woman and fearful of rejection—he concluded that he needed to be a woman.

The other man, Orlando, who still looks and dresses androgynously, stated he was “shocked” to see his penis gone after the surgery. Absolutely shocked. Orlando passed very nicely as a woman and managed to trick a man who wanted children into marrying him. Orlando describes his many machinations in covering up, but after a decade the truth came out and the “marriage” ended.

The risk of denying biological reality is a lifetime of bitter regret.  The certainty of  denying the creation order and the divine law is eternal regret.  But it need not be, for God's arms are yet wide open: 

Say to them, As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 33:11)