We may soon be adding the letter a “D” to the seemingly endless initialisms that accompany “LGBTQ….”
But this time it’s for “de-transitioner.”
Ritchie Herron, 35, a civil servant living in Newcastle, England, is one of the growing number of individuals who mistook a struggle with mental health for gender dysphoria, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. Four years ago, Herron underwent an irreversible vaginoplasty operation, which he claims to have regretted the moment he woke up from surgery.
During an interview published by the Daily Mail on Saturday, Herron said, “My first thought as I came round was ‘Oh God! What have I done?'”
In addition to his emotional anguish, he told the newspaper that the simple act of emptying his bladder continues to be a painful, 10-minute process and his sex drive is nonexistent. He added that his crotch area is numb and “shell-shocked.”
Herron is currently in the process of suing the U.K.’s National Health Service for being fast-tracked by an NHS “gender clinic” into “making the biggest mistake of his life.” The Daily Mail reports that, in the last decade, referrals to gender clinics has surged by an alarming 1,700 percent and most of these patients are children or young adults.
Herron said he had “suppressed his homosexuality” for decades and now realizes that his “confusion” was caused by his inability to accept he was gay.
According to the Daily Mail, Herron “says he buried his sexuality, which left him with depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
“[I]n his 20s, he stumbled across the idea of gender dysphoria in an internet chatroom. Older men on the forum convinced the vulnerable young man he ‘must be trans,’” the Daily Mail reported.
“At that time for Ritchie, it felt like a lightbulb moment. After a series of breakdowns, in 2012 he decided to seek professional help.”
Still on the NHS’s long waiting list in March 2014, he took out a payday loan to pay for a psychiatrist at a private gender clinic where “he was diagnosed with ‘transsexualism’ after just two 30-minute appointments,” the Daily Mail reported.
He assumed the name of Abby, started wearing women’s clothes, and began taking testosterone blockers.
In March 2015, Herron was referred to the Northern Region Gender Dysphoria Service and began seeing a psychiatrist at the NHS gender clinic in Newcastle.
Herron told the Daily Mail: “The first question you get asked there is, ‘Do you want genital surgery?’ I wasn’t sure. But I’d heard you could get therapy if you were on the waiting list for surgery, so I said yes.”
Concerned he was making a mistake, a close family member attended one of his appointments and, according to Herron, “She told the doctor I was on a high dose of antidepressants and had lots of complex issues, and yet they were referring me for gender treatment.”
Still, in July 2015, he received a referral for the surgery. He said he wasn’t ready yet but kept receiving therapy, according to the Daily Mail.
Two years later, he received a second referral. When he indicated he still wasn’t ready, he was informed he would be discharged from treatment at the clinic.
His therapy, he said, had been a “lifeline.” The thought of ending therapy threw him into turmoil. He said he’d been feeling suicidal at the time.
In May 2018, Herron had the surgery. He’s discovered since that surgeons have left him with a radically altered body that is no closer to being that of a woman than it was before.
Attorney Peter Harthan is representing Herron in his lawsuit against NHS. Harthan told the Daily Mail that his client and others like him face “a lifetime of medical care and consequences” and “cannot be put back together again.”
“My concern is clinicians failed to identify red flags and change direction,” Harthan said, according to the newspaper. “Proper consideration needs to be given to issues such as [obsessive-compulsive disorder], internalized homophobia, depression, drug use, sexual abuse and childhood trauma as potential reasons for patients’ rejecting their sexed body.”
Herron told the Daily Mail, “I’m proof the whole system has to become far more robust. How many more people are there out there like me?”
“This is an avalanche waiting to happen. Transition is now being sold to people on a mass scale … In a few years, I’m sure we’ll have law firms asking people if they transitioned and would like to claim compensation.”
Herron is now in the process of de-transitioning. according to the Daily Mail. And he’s not alone. A number of transgenders have revealed public regrets about their decisions.
Here is Herron discussing his situation in a YouTube interview in May:
WARNING: The video contains language some viewers will find offensive.
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Young people, believing that changing their sex is the answer to their problems, might sign up for the surgery too quickly, only to become deeply disillusioned afterward.
Herron, who posts on Twitter under the handle TullipR, explains:
Perhaps Gender Clinics are overwhelmed because we explained away puberty, social awkwardness, trauma, OCD, Same sex attraction, gender non conformity and autism in a neat all-inclusive package that comes with its own community, available online 24/7.
— TullipR ??
(@TullipR) May 19, 2022
Imagine telling someone going through puberty that discomfort with your body is a sign of gender dysphoria.
— TullipR ??
From his story, it looks like he was a vulnerable young man who was quickly pressured into this diagnosis and, eventually, to undergo surgery.
Many young people, particularly adolescents, are mixed up and like Herron, think transitioning will solve their problems. Unfortunately, health professionals, school counselors and hip parents are often too quick to agree with them.
Cases like Herron’s are a wakeup call. Rather than glamorizing this dangerous trend and worrying about offending transgenders, society needs to take a closer look at the irreversible damage it’s already inflicted on so many people.
Responsible parties (and indeed the whole rotten system) should face a reckoning. These people are destroying the futures of vulnerable young people to the applause of Western liberals everywhere.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
