BOOK SHELF - Tragic Reality of Transgenderism
Reviewed by John Morrissey
Gender, Lies and Suicide: A Whistleblower Speaks Out, by Walt Heyer (USA: CreateSpace, 2013). Paperback: 152 pages. ISBN: 978-1492100737.
More than any other work which I have read on the subject of so-called gender reassignment, Walt Heyer's Gender, Lies and Suicide: A Whistleblower Speaks Out, shows the reader the cynical fraud which is being perpetrated on society in the name of compassion.
The Canadian writer tells of his own journey as an adult to address a psychological morbidity through chemical and surgical intervention, only to suffer worse depression before he eventually reclaimed his masculine identity.
He begins with the shocking statistics of suicides following gender reassignment surgery: a rate seven times higher than the national average. These figures are based on a long-term study conducted in 13 countries and involving 2,000 persons. Furthermore, an estimate that as many as half of transgender persons have attempted suicide suggests a cover-up of a scandal rarely hinted at in the media, which invariably depicts transgender people as happy and fulfilled. Even the U.S. Transgender Task Force concedes that 41 per cent of transgenders report having attempted suicide.
Heyer labels transgenderism as an industry and a con promoted by the "physicians, psychologists and surgeons who make their living from the transgender population and the activists who have a political agenda". We learn that in 1952 the American Psychological Association, in its manual of mental disorders, referred to "gender identity disorder", now replaced with the softer term, "gender dysphoria", the latter word in fact alluding to depression, anxiety or unease.
Heyer explains that as far as the causes of depression are concerned, the family is "ground zero", and that this particular mood disorder begins with lost or unhealthy relationships, often involving physical and sexual abuse or family breakups. The resulting stress and discomfort may then be attributed to a discrepancy with one's assigned gender at birth. Hence, collaboration by the medical community, in administering hormone-blockers and cross-gender hormones to pre-pubescent children, is madness.
The author recounts his own experience at the hands of a Dr Stanley Biber, who by 1983 had performed over 1,000 of these procedures. Heyer emerged from surgery as Laura Jensen. A female friend tells of Heyer's gratitude to social psychologist Paul Walker, PhD, who briskly certified his "stable mental health" in order to undergo surgery. This friend also tells of the excitement of gaining a new girlfriend in Laura, but that the latter confessed one day, "I should never have had the surgery. It was a mistake."
No true psychiatric evaluation had ever been made. Heyer's depression remained for the eight years he lived as a woman, and this is the pattern identified in a long-term Swedish study.
In the late 1970s, psychologist Dr John Money, a devoted disciple of controversial sexologist Dr Alfred Kinsey, and the aforementioned Dr Walker were promoting gender surgery, but faced a follow-up study at the prestigious Johns Hopkins University hospital, where the procedures had been pioneered. The study showed negative outcomes and led to the conclusion that surgery was unhelpful for a psychological condition.
Drs Money and Walker, with a group of like-minded activists, thereupon formed the International Gender Dysphoria Association, which produced its own standards of care, with the word "disorder" banished. Those guidelines were a sham, with no provision for enforcing the standards: witness the letter provided to Heyer by Dr Walker, who was not a clinical psychologist and had actually drafted the very rules which he himself ignored.
No questions were asked to unearth the co-morbid factors
suffered by the writer as a child. It is
disappointing to note the surrender of the
American Psychological Association in
adopting the term "dysphoria" in the latest
manual of mental disorders.
Failure to diagnose mental disorders in favour of gender disorder is rife today, in spite of the high rate of suicide from subsequent regret and depression. A number of case studies are advanced. The writer cites a college student, with a family history containing two suicides and bipolar disorder in a number of members, diagnosed as transgender on the basis of increased eye contact when the psychologist affirmed the idea.
An Englishman, Gary Norton, is still pleading for the National Health Scheme to reassign him as a man once more, after 23 more years of depression: "I went along because I trusted them [the psychiatrists]... Looking back I think that all the female hormones had fuddled my mind." And all this from having lost his job, then seeking treatment for depression and admitting to cross-dressing!
Even when the standards of care are observed, it is all too easy for mental disorders to be overlooked. No tracking of outcomes is required, the standards are all too flexible (in order to meet diverse healthcare needs?), and the practitioners profess to be unaware of any adverse outcomes of their very lucrative industry.
As early as 1979 a colleague of these activists reported that 80 per cent of subjects did not need surgery. The fact that the great majority of those diagnosed with gender identity eventually accept their birth gender disorder if not treated still seems to be taboo in media today. The suicide connection was apparent and Johns Hopkins had closed its clinic; but it made no difference.
Apart from the narcissism of Dr Money and his cohort, why were the psychological disorders leading to suicide left undiagnosed? Walt Heyer's answer is simple: the LGBT agenda rules the social and political climate; individual transgenders deny any disorder; the medical community rush to hormonal treatment; and suicide is hushed up, unless it can be blamed on bullying or discrimination.
At several stages in his book, Heyer shares details of his own treatment as a child: he was cross-dressed by a grandma in girl's dresses and beaten severely by his father. His Uncle Fred fondled his genitals and teased him. He wanted to escape into a girl gender where he did not see any examples of hurting, teasing or name-calling. Actually, he suffered from an undiagnosed dissociative disorder which no surgery could cure.
Heyer cites a study of patients with gender identity disorder,
showing that 42 per cent had one or more personality disorders.
However, depression is the number one factor leading to suicide,
and the writer cites another study, listing 21 triggers, such as a
serious loss, abuse as a child, substance abuse and inability to
cope with humiliation or failure.
Heyer considers a number of other factors such as narcissism - expressed as obsession with personal appearance - as underlying resistance to appropriate psychiatric treatment. Transgenders tend to claim a right to special treatment; but their cause has been hijacked by the LGBT movement, in its quest for legislation to normalise a range of predatory practices: pornography, paedophilia and sodomy.
Any opposition of course is branded as discrimination, and every affliction, from HIV to poverty and suicide, is laid at the door of intolerance. Advocates are quite unabashed at their inconsistency in painting the wonderful success of sex change, while bewailing the victimhood of transgenders.
One chapter contains six heart-rending stories of regret on the part of a number of transgenders, including that of an Australian, who had surgery at 21 to become a woman, married a man, divorced and returned to his birth gender at 30. All of these cases confirm that the brain has not matured sufficiently for such a decision until one's late 20s; yet we in Victoria today have around 300 children receiving puberty-blockers and hormone treatment at the Royal Children's Hospital, prior to undergoing surgery at 18. Even prominent transgender, Cate McGregor, RAAF officer and cricket writer, has declared that the operation should be undergone only by mature adults.
Returning to suicide rates, Heyer advances several reasons why the medical community feels it can ignore the connection. One is the financial rewards; another narcissism, which he detects in the Money-Walker-Benjamin cabal; and a third is sheer megalomania. Changing little boys into little girls!
Writes Heyer: "For the pre-teen the gender change looks like a fun ride at Disney World." Kids are vulnerable, parents are compliant, and doctors don't have to face the consequences when things go wrong. He accuses the megalomaniac doctor who plays God of making fools of us all.
Walt Heyer explains his motivation: "I had the gender surgery and want you to know what I have learned. I want to show the evidence and expose as much as possible the false and misleading information propagandised by the LGBT to advance their agenda." And regarding why this scandal remains unchecked, he adds: "I have learned that the activists with their agenda for political power and social change often suppress the truth" - an understatement for us on the home scene in Australia.
Gender, Lies and Suicide is a striking work, with many apt analogies for the insane practices which it describes; but the best analogy was uttered at a recent public gathering by Dr John Whitehall, paediatrics professor at Western Sydney University. He said it's like agreeing with an emaciated sufferer from anorexia that she is indeed fat, and offering her lap-band surgery.
John Morrissey is a retired secondary school teacher who has
taught in government, independent and Catholic schools. He
lives in Hawthorn, Victoria, with his dog "Wreck". 