Who knew that being dressed up as a little girl by my grandmother when I was a four-year-old boy would lead to undergoing “sex change surgery” in my forties, and who knew that, now in my eighties, I would be writing to testify to the insanity of thinking anyone can “transition” from a man to a woman or vice versa?

Only someone who was subjected to repeated cross-dressing at a young age can appreciate the heavy emotional and psychological damage it inflicts. For two years, my grandmother planted the seed that something was wrong with me as a boy. She made me a purple chiffon evening dress, placed it on my little body, and affirmed how cute I was as a girl. The emotional and psychological child abuse she inflicted upon me resulted in devastating consequences. My father eventually discovered what his mother-in-law had been doing to his little boy and decided to enlist heavy discipline in order to make a man out of me. When my uncle, a teenager at the time, heard about the dress my grandmother had encouraged me to wear, he taunted me, and his bullying escalated to sexual abuse.

In high school, I projected the cool swagger of the “Happy Days” generation with loads of friends and an eye-catching hot rod. In my twenties, I married, became the proud father of two children, and established myself in a successful career, first in aerospace and then in the automobile industry. However, the only options I saw to relieve the emotional and mental distress occupying my troubled psyche as a young adult were cross-dressing and alcohol. Indulging in these constant companions of mine only allowed their stranglehold on me to grow.

For some reason, no one considers the consequences and harm that may impact a child’s entire lifetime after an adult introduces and promotes trans identities to their impressionable mind. When schools suggest to children that they might identify as the other sex — rather than with the sex they were born with — there may be destructive aftermaths in relation the core of these children’s identities, similar to the ways in which my grandmother’s messaging negatively affected me. Transgenderism is rooted in lies, and people who are already troubled and made vulnerable by childhood events — as I was — are easy prey.

The first huge lie asserts that gender is different from the biological sex that is “assigned” at birth. The belief that gender is “assigned at birth” and is different from sex would be laughable if it weren’t so insidiously dangerous. Using the word “assigned” leads to the mistaken belief that one’s gender can be “reassigned.” Believing that a doctor assigns a baby’s gender/sex dismisses science, biology, and the ability to think rationally.

The truth is that biological sex is fixed and unchangeable, determined in the womb months before a mother delivers her baby into the world. The claim of “transitioning” flies in the face of the biological reality of sperm meets egg. No doctor, surgeon, cross-sex hormone, surgery, or wishful thought will ever be effective in changing anyone’s gender/sex — it’s physically fixed in the womb.

The next lie insists that the proper treatment for a “misassigned” gender is to reshape the body’s appearance through cross-sex hormones and genital surgery. The so-called “gender-affirming” surgery is a medical fraud of epic proportions.

I fell for this lie and underwent surgery in 1983. I erased my identity as Walt and assumed the identity of Laura Jensen, a female. It seems incredulous to think that a doctor can effectively unwind a male and recreate him into the biological equal of a real women or vice versa. I, however, naively believed the doctors when they assured me that surgery would fix what ailed me. Unfortunately, it was only a temporary reprieve. The little boy who had been abused was still inside and needed psychological healing. Living in my adopted female persona for eight years didn’t solve my troubles, rather it made them worse. I became suicidal.

“Gender-affirming” therapy almost caused me to end my life. I thank God it didn’t. Years of heart-wrenching counseling under multiple therapists, faithfully pursuing sobriety, and having an encounter with Jesus Christ restored my sanity. I detransitioned and married a (real) woman, and now I tell my story as a cautionary tale to others. I live with the scars and effects of unnecessary surgery and its long-lasting consequences.

There is nothing a doctor or surgeon can do that will cause a biological change of innate sex. The doctor who diagnosed me with gender dysphoria and approved my surgical procedure, Dr. Paul Walker Ph.D., and the renowned sex change surgeon who performed my surgery, Dr. Stanley Biber, prove my point. In a document prepared for San Mateo Superior Court of California to reinstate my birth certificate to Walt, both testified that hormones and surgery failed to change my sex.

Everyone keeps asking: “Why the sudden increase in transgender identities?”

I believe the explosion is the direct result of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) changing the diagnosis in 2013 from “gender identity disorder” to “gender dysphoria” in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used when diagnosing mental disorders. The APA stated that the change was necessary for eliminating stigma, inherent in the word disorder, but the change maintains a diagnosis code that is usable for insurance coverage.

As a result, therapists stopped diagnosing and treating coexisting disorders that are common to people with gender issues. These coexisting disorders include schizophrenia, dissociative disorder, bipolar disorder, and body dysmorphic disorder. Sexual fetish and arousal disorders, prevalent in heterosexual men who are stirred by wearing women’s clothing, are also ignored. Essentially, only one diagnosis now inhabits the gender therapist’s toolbox: gender dysphoria.

Treatment for gender dysphoria is barbaric — cutting off women’s breasts, filling patients with cross-sex hormones, cutting off or refashioning male genitalia, installing pseudo penises on females—and it’s pushed indiscriminately on adults and youth alike. The practice makes Dr. Frankenstein look sane.

In a world pushing body mutilation as a treatment for a psychiatric condition, I’ve made it my mission to offer hope to those like me who don’t want to live life in an alternate reality. None of us had gender dysphoria, and none of us benefited from transitioning. 100% of the people who have reached out to me for help over the years have been able to identify what caused them to not like who they are. In my case, the cause was abuse at the hands of my grandmother, father, and uncle.

Researchers call these events Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), described broadly and simply as “a range of negative situations a child may face or witness while growing up.” The effects are deeply traumatic. ACEs “interfere with the normal maturation of a child’s brain and alter the brain at a deep level where the most basic needs original and a person’s identity is formed.” For impressionable adolescents, ACEs include social indoctrination: gender fluid and sexualized school curriculum and activities, entertainment, peers, pornography, trans-affirming social media groups, or trans fantasy video games.

Children being indoctrinated into a trans identity need to be removed from the grooming influences and counseled back to wholeness.Afflicted adults need to seek out a trauma therapist in order to heal from the adverse experiences of childhood.

To do otherwise, as my story illustrates, is malpractice.

Walt Heyer is a public speaker and author of several books including “Trans Life Survivors.” Walt’s articles are published in TheFederalist.com, DailySignal.com, ThePublicDiscourse.com. Through his websites, SexChangeRegret.com and WaltHeyer.com, Heyer raises public awareness about the incidence of regret and the tragic consequences suffered because of unnecessary sex change surgery.

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I Underwent Gender Transition Surgery. Here’s Why I Regret It