Underlying issues often drive the desire to escape one’s life into another, and they need to be addressed before taking the radical step of transition. Had I not been misled by media stories of sex change “success” and by medical practitioners who said transitioning was the answer to my problems, I wouldn’t have suffered as I have. Now we help others whose lives have been derailed by sex change. Measured by the human benefit to a hurting population, it’s a priceless way to spend our time. Regret is realĮventually, I met a wonderful woman who didn’t care about the changes to my body, and we’ve been married for 21 years. I am on a hormone regimen to try to regulate a system that is permanently altered. I still have scars on my chest, reminders of the gender detour that cost me 13 years of my life.
GENDER TRANSFORMATION GAME SHOW FREE
In 1996, at the age of 55, I was finally free from the desire to live as a woman and changed my legal documents back to Walt, my biologically correct male sex. I was 50 when I had the breast implants removed, but the next few years were spent in confusion and counseling. I was living my dream, but still I was deeply suicidal. I was once again experiencing gender dysphoria, but this time I felt like a male inside a body refashioned to look like a woman. Hidden underneath the makeup and female clothing was the little boy hurt by childhood trauma. The reprieve I experienced through surgery was only temporary.
GENDER TRANSFORMATION GAME SHOW CRACK
There, a crack in my carefully crafted female persona opened, and I began to question my transition. When I told my employer, my career was over.Īs Laura, I decided to pursue being a counselor and started courses at the University of California-Santa Cruz in the late 1980s. My children and former wife were devastated. I could sever ties with my former life as Walt and my painful past. A fresh start, then a harder fallĪt first, I was giddy with excitement. My childhood dream was realized, and my life as a woman began. In addition to genital reconfiguration, I had breast implants and other feminizing procedures and changed my birth certificate to Laura Jensen, female. My marriage ended shortly before surgery. I started taking female hormones and scheduled the surgery for April 1983 in Trinidad, Colorado. He told me that the childhood events were not related to my current gender distress, and that sex change was the only solution. He diagnosed me with gender identity disorder (now gender dysphoria) and recommended cross-sex hormones and sex change genital surgery. Paul Walker, who had co-authored the 1979 standards of care for transgender health. I sought out the top gender specialist at the time, Dr. I felt torn apart, wanting to be a good husband and father, but in severe torment about needing to be a woman. With weekly travel away from home, I easily indulged in cross-dressing, fueling the desire to be a woman.īy the time I was 40, I couldn’t take the pressure of living two separate lives. In my work life I was successful, but the girl persona still occupied my thoughts. In my early 20s and engaged to be married, I confided to my fiancée about my cross-dressing. I was never homosexual I was interested in dating girls. Gender dysphoria is about identity, not sexual orientation. Trump's anti-transgender memo would hurt teens like me. If not for the purple dress, I believe I would not have been abused by my uncle. I thought my secret was safe, but my teenage uncle heard about it and felt I was fair game for taunting and sexual abuse. In my case, I was diagnosed at age 40 with gender dysphoria and at age 50 with psychological issues due to childhood trauma.Įventually, my parents found out, and my unsupervised visits to Grandma’s house ended. Studies show that most people who want to live as the opposite sex have other psychological issues, such as depression or anxiety. I lived as “Laura” for eight years, but, as I now know, transitioning doesn’t fix the underlying ailments. This planted the seed of gender confusion and led to my transitioning at age 42 to transgender female.
I started my transgender journey as a 4-year-old boy when my grandmother repeatedly, over several years, cross-dressed me in a full-length purple dress she made especially for me and told me how pretty I was as a girl.