Trying to live your life in a body that is not right for you can be difficult. You know what changes need to be made, but gaining the courage and strength to make them can be even harder than realizing what is wrong.
So imagine how it must have felt for Walt Heyer when, after undergoing a sex change and living as a woman for eight years, he realized that he was, in fact, a man and not a woman.
Gender dysphoria is when a person feels that there is no match between who he is and the body in which he was born. For a long time, little could be done to help them, other than to say that they were born as one gender and should live as that gender.
With the scientific advances of the last decades, this is no longer the case. If you were born a man and you know deep in your heart that you are a woman, you can easily undergo surgery and treatment to change it and make your body feel comfortable.
There are still many prejudices around transgender, transsexual or transvestite, but slowly things are progressing.
However, the decision to change your body is not one that should be taken easily, according to 74-year-old Walt Heyer, who believes that psychological screening of potential transgender patients is not enough to ensure that it is definitely what they want.
30 years ago ...
For Heyer, more than thirty years ago, when he was a 42-year-old married man with two children, he decided to undergo a sex reassignment operation. He felt that he would be happier as a woman when he felt "caught in the wrong body at the age of five."
The procedure continued after talking to professionals about this process and why he wanted to go through and was happy at first.
"Immediately after the procedure, you are in a state of euphoria because you have been fighting it for so long. You think this is wonderful and fabulous and you think your life will be good. "
However, for Heyer it seems that things were not so simple and he stated that “as time goes on, there is this funny little thing that happens in life. It's called reality. "
Discrimination
One of the biggest challenges facing transgender people is discrimination. Many people do not understand what it is like to feel trapped in your body and many are simply scared of this change. After all, changes can be bad. The changes mean that things will be different.
Some people mistakenly believe that being around transgender people will make you transgender, as if it's a cold, you can just catch it like that!
The reason most people think this is due to lack of education. I simply do not know enough about gender dystopia, and Heyer believes that there is still not enough information available to both the general public and those undergoing gender transformation.
Heyer faced great discrimination, both from the public and in his professional life. "I got a job," 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 her, so it took a long time."
Shifting back
In the mid-1980s, Heyer realized that the decision with which he had felt so happy eight years earlier was wrong for him. She wasn't really a woman who had been caught in a man's body - she was a man who had suffered childhood trauma, which led him to believe that he needed to change his sex.
It cost a total of $ 40,000 to change Laura Jensen back to Walt Heyer, and he thinks he should never have been allowed to change sex and continue the procedure in the first place.
Heyer now offers informal counseling to those considering gender reassignment surgery, but is seen as a rather controversial figure because of his views on transgender.
"Gender dysphoria is a psychological condition in which you are dissatisfied with your sex. No one was ever born transgender. They are manufactured as a result of something, a problem of childhood development, which has not yet been established for many people. In retrospect, I see that gender change, frankly, is just stupid. "
Woman having a conversation with her therapist on the couch in the office
I've heard enough things in my life to know that this argument is extremely similar to the one that gay, lesbian and bisexual people hear. It is believed that everything has to do with their growth. Parents are blamed and it is suggested that they did something wrong to make their child so.
"You can't be born gay" now becomes "you can't be born transgender". Anyone who has met transgender people will know that you can be born in the wrong body. For me, it's annoying to have to read and hear things like that. I'm not trans and I don't have gender dystopia, so I don't quite understand what it's like. However, this does not mean that we can begin to decide what is and what is not right for others.
Sex is not a choice, just as our sexuality is not a choice. We can make the choice to change to make ourselves happier, but we cannot simply stop being who we are. You don't wake up one day and decide to change your sex or become gay.
Should Heyer have been allowed surgery? I don't think it should have. I think that, in his case, the psychological check that took place beforehand was not thorough enough. If he had, maybe he wouldn't have gone through everything he did and would have said such shocking things now. What are your thoughts? You can share them by leaving a comment in the box below on Barby Escorts and let us know what you think.