Trying to live your life in a body that just isn’t right for you can be hard. You know what changes need to be made, but getting the courage and the strength to make them can be even harder than realising what is wrong.
So imagine how it must have felt for Walt Heyer when, after undergoing a sex changing and living as a woman for eight years, he realised that he actually was a man, and not a woman, after all.
Gender dysphoria
Gender dysphoria is when a person feels there is no match between who they are and the body they were born into. For a long time, little could be done to help them, other than saying that they were born as one gender and so should live as that gender.
With scientific breakthroughs in the last few decades, that is no longer the case. If you were born a man and know deep in your heart that you are a woman, you can easily undergo surgery and treatment to change it and make your body one you are comfortable with.
There is still a lot of prejudice surrounding those who are transgender, transsexual, or transvestite, but slowly things are progressing.
However, the decision to change your body is not one that should be taken lightly, according to 74 year old Walt Heyer, who feels that the psychological vetting of potential transgender patients isn’t enough to ensure it is definitely what they want.
Thirty years ago…
For Heyer, it was over thirty years ago, when he was a 42 year old married man with two children, that he decided to undergo gender reassignment surgery. He felt he would be happier as a woman when he had felt “trapped in the wrong body since he was five years old”.
The procedure went ahead after speaking to professionals about the process and why he wanted to go through with it, and he was happy at first.
“Immediately after the procedure, you’re in a state of euphoria because you battle it for so long. You think this is wonderful and fabulous and you think you life’s going to be good.”
However, for Heyer it seems things were not that simple, and he stated that “as time goes on, there’s this funny little thing that happens in life. It’s called reality.”
Discrimination
One of the biggest challenges that faces transgender people is discrimination. A lot of people don’t understand what it is like to feel trapped in your body, and many are simply scared of this change. Changes, after all, can be bad. Changes mean that things will be different.
Some people wrongly think that being around transgender people will make you transgender, as though it is a cold you can simply catch just like that!
The reason most people think this is because of a lack of education. They simply don’t know enough about gender dystopia, and Heyer feels there still is not enough information available to both the general public and those undergoing gender transformation.
Heyer faced a great deal of discrimination, both from the public and in his professional life. “I ended up in long time employment,” he said in an interview, explaining what happened to him. “I went to over 200 interviews before I got a job, because people don’t really want a transgender person – they don’t want to hire them, so it took a long time.”
Changing back
In the middle of the 1980s, Heyer realised that the decision he had felt so happy with eight years before was wrong for him. He wasn’t really a woman who had been trapped in a man’s body – he was a man who had experienced childhood trauma that led him to think he needed to change gender.
It cost a total of £20,000 to change Laura Jensen back to Walt Heyer, and he believes that he should never have been allowed to change gender and go through with the procedure in the first place.
Heyer now offers informal counselling to those considering gender reassignment surgery, but is viewed as quite a controversial figure because of his views on transgender.
“Gender dysphoria is a psychological condition where you are dissatisfied with your gender. Nobody’s ever born a transgender. They’re manufactured as a result of something, a developmental childhood issue that has yet to be determined for many people. In retrospect, I can see that changing genders, quite frankly is just poor foolishness.”
Nurture to blame?
I have heard enough things during my life to know that this argument is extremely similar to that which gay, lesbian, and bisexual people hear. It is all thought to be something to do with their upbringing. The parents are blamed and it is suggested that they did something wrong to make their child like this.
“You can’t be born gay” is now becoming “you can’t be born transgender”. Anyone who has met transgendered people will know that you can be born into the wrong body. For me, it is infuriating to have to read and hear things like this. I am not transgender and don’t have gender dystopia, so I don’t properly understand what it is like. However, that doesn’t mean we can start deciding what is and isn’t right for others.
Gender isn’t a choice, just like our sexuality isn’t a choice. We can make the choice to change ourselves to make us more happy, but we cannot simply stop being who we are. You don’t wake up one day and decide to change your gender or become gay just like that. It is something that is a part of you.
Should Heyer have been allowed the surgery in the first place? I don’t think he should have. I do think that, in his case, the psychological vetting that happened beforehand wasn’t thorough enough. If it had been, maybe he would not have gone through everything he did and now be saying such shocking things. What are your thoughts? You can share them by leaving a comment in the box below, or you can sign up to the Escort Scotland forum and let us know what you think there.
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