Recently I interviewed a person whose experience with gender-change surgeries was so extreme, it gained him entry in the Guinness World Records book for the most gender-reassignment surgeries for an individual person.
Blair Logsdon’s story is a cautionary tale for anyone today who is considering the use of cross-gender hormones and gender-change surgery to feel better about themselves.
Logsdon underwent 167 surgeries from 1987 to 2005 in his quest to resolve gender dysphoria with surgery. On a cold, snowy December morning in a Maryland coffee shop, he shared with me his story.
In 1987, at the age of 26, he underwent the first of many cosmetic surgeries to change his gender/sex appearance from male to trans-female. Within a few months, he said he deeply regretted becoming a trans-woman.
For the next five years, he struggled in his life as a woman before undergoing a genital surgical change to restore his original male self.
But peace with his gender eluded him.
With gender dysphoria still present and feeling unsettled, Logsdon underwent yet another gender change and returned to self-identifying as trans-female.
Doctors, apparently with total and reckless disregard for Logsdon’s emotional, psychological and sexual well-being, ignored his obvious distress about previous cosmetic surgeries and indulged his requests for more.
Logsdon said he continued to have regrets about the feminizing surgeries, even as he strongly felt the need for more, caught in a cycle of hope followed by disappointment.
By 2005, seven cosmetic surgeons had performed 167 gender-affirming surgeries on his body, filling their bank accounts to the tune of more than $220,000 and leaving him, in his words, “disfigured.”
Logsdon says he regrets all 167 surgeries. No longer turning to the surgeons to discover his “true self,” he has found his true male self in following Jesus Christ.
I do not blame Logsdon one bit in his case. The doctors and surgeons failed him in their responsibility to “first, do no harm”—as the Hippocratic Oath says—and wrongfully profited from the 167 disfiguring surgeries. Yet, they will not be held accountable or responsible for gross medical misconduct or malpractice against this good man.
At some point, these surgeons should have refused requests for more surgery and protected Logsdon from harming himself further. Instead, they chose to take advantage of his emotionally, psychological or sexually unhealthy and unstable psyche.
Transgender People Could Benefit From Hearing the Truth
As a society we, too, fail transgender people by withholding the truth from them in the belief that telling the truth is somehow offensive and hateful. No—following the evidence is not hate speech, it is the foundation of the scientific research.
Several core truths have been relegated to the category of hate speech. For example:
- There is no objective evidence to show that transgender people even exist, beyond the person’s own feelings and gender-dysphoric imagination.
- Strong persistent feelings of being the opposite sex are not based in biology (“born this way”), but stem from emotional, psychological or sexual factors.
- Ignoring the protocols of effective psychological diagnosis harms trans-people because it guarantees they will not get effective treatment for coexisting disorders.
The Truth: Psychotherapy Is Important
For the last 50 years, the transgender ideology has grown progressively more deadly and destructive as it takes lives via suicide, destroys marriages, rips family relationships apart (including my own), and now expects the whole of society to reject the physical truth about sex and gender in public places and in social interactions, under the threat of ostracization and legal prosecution.
Transgender people are provided only one remedy: to wholeheartedly embrace an alternative gender/sex ideology that attempts to redefine their gender/sex and promises healing.
When the cross-gender hormonal and surgical protocols and lifestyle changes fail to bring relief to those experiencing gender dysphoria, as Logsdon found, often what remains is depression, despair and regret, leading some to attempt suicide.
Doctors should focus on uncovering the parallel disorders that often lie at the root of the trans-person’s distorted self-identity. These often include alcohol abuse, drug usage, chronic depression and personality disorders.
Uncovering these disorders results from engaging in effective psychotherapy, not surgery.
Providing psychotherapy first in the treatment of gender dysphoria could be a key factor in reversing the staggering 41 percent rate of suicide attempts among transgender individuals.
It could also reduce the number of people who seek out self-mutilation in an attempt to find inner peace and thus prevent these people from digging deep wells of regret.
I’m sure I will catch some heat for publicly sharing the truth here. But saving one life is worth the heat.
If you’ve seen the 1992 film A Few Good Men, you’ll remember the pivotal courtroom scene where Col. Nathan Jessup (played by Jack Nicholson) shouts at the cross-examination lawyer (played by Tom Cruise) the now-famous line, “You can’t handle the truth!”
The same can be said today to those who declare that the only treatment for gender dysphoria is to affirm it, to give patients cross-gender hormones and to perform gender-change surgeries: “You can’t handle the truth!” {eoa}
Walt Heyer is a former transgender with a passion to help others who regret gender change. Walt travels extensively to share his story of redemption at conferences, churches and universities. Walt has appeared on numerous radio and television shows in the U.S. and Canada. Walt’s articles have been published online, and his many books are a welcome resource in understanding the issue.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Signal.
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