Sex Change Info

Sex Change -- 51% attempt suicide, have deep regret, or will not adjust

When you include the 41% who end up so deeply depressed they attempt suicide with the 10% who cannot adjust to the gender change or simply regret it, you can make the argument that it looks like a 51% failure rate for the gender changers and that is not so good.

This is a common response for the regretters, “I am a non-person, an 'it'. I have let them mutilate me. Far from solving my problems, the operation has made things worse.”

An article I read recently says,

Sandra, formerly Peter, had a sex-change operation in 1987 when she was 40. At the time of the operation she was having panic attacks and was heavily dependent on tranquillizers. Now that she is finally coming off them, an alarming certainty is dawning on her: the surgery should never have taken place.

More true stories like this one can be seen at www.sexchangeregret.com.

This story is repeated over and over again for decades now and is a relevant story today. In fact it sounds like some of the many troubling letters that come to me. They have a common ring, that is, the early fun is replaced with understanding that their body is mutilated and gender change is not possible. Suicide starts to look like the only way out. I was at that point myself.

Studies in America and Holland report one in 20 post-operative transsexuals changes his or her mind after surgery, and one in ten never adjusts and often becomes deeply depressed. The Transgender Task Force reports 41% attempt suicide. In the Transgender Task Force transgenders survey, they admit they selectively eliminated from the survey all regretters who reverted back to their birth gender. The people whose suicide was a success or the transgenders who go back to their birth gender do not have a voice.

It is amazing how poor the surgical results are when you collect the documented studies where 61% of transgenders report suffering from psychological problems, 41% attempt suicide and 10% who never adjust to the gender change.

There should be a sign at the door of the operating room that reads:

Enter at your own risk.

It is just not a huge success.

Child Transgenders--We are not born that way

I was a transgender at age 5, dressing in a purple chiffon evening dress as often as I was at grandma’s house. She made my dress and helped dressed me as a female.

 For as long as I can remember I wanted to become a girl. I laid awake in bed at night thinking about my life as a female. Wanting to become a female from my boy body occupied 90% of my "thought life" and the desire only grew stronger each day.

Even in my teen years the desire never went away. It was so strong it became part of my dream life to picture myself as a female adult.

Eventually I was able to fulfill my life long desires and dreams. I underwent the gender surgery, took hormone therapy and even got a new California birth record that gave me a new gender and the female name of Laura. 

But kids become adults. Feelings, desires and dreams can, and often do, change. I learned first-hand how foolish it was to make life changing decisions based on what others told me, even when it supported my strongest feelings and life long desires. Today I regret the gender change.

Unfortunately the young transgenders today will be the regretters of tomorrow, sadly.    

Forget about male and female—the gender menu is expanding

The growing and expanding of genders can be found in the new trend of visually non-conforming genders. They are almost cult like, in my view, anti-standards of the norms, the latest way to protest against the stereotypical male and female genders. 

Do you remember the trend a few years ago when young folks were dressing all black in what they called the "Goth” look?  Silver chains hanging all over their body, starched stiff black hair and big black untied sloppy boots. They wanted to look very different but ended up all looking the same—bad. Then came the tat craze—every inch of skin tattooed, including the tattoo sleeve. Bodies became billboards for old loves, moms, and words you would not print on paper. Then the trend of body piercing. Mouths opened to reveal metal on the tongue. Nose rings, lip rings and rings where rings have no business hanging at all. They wanted to look different but unfortunately, once again, they all look the same—bad. 

All the young people are desperately trying everything they can to visually non-conform to illustrate in a public way "I do not want to be like you" but they always end up looking the same as their peers.

We know transgenders and transsexuals spend thousands and thousands of dollars on multiple plastic surgeries so they will conform nicely into a male or female gender. Transgenders want to go unnoticed at work and in every social environment.

But what’s coming next in genders may be shocking.  The next wave in genders is to make no effort to look male or female, quite the opposite. The non-conforming want to be noticed and make every effort to stand out. And they have come up with new gender names; no male or female for them, no sir.

The new  terms made their appearance in the Transgender Task Force survey, names  like butch female, aggressive drag performer, gender-queer, third gender, two-spirits, gender non-conforming and last on the list, feminine male.

I saw a bumper sticker on a good looking babe’s car that said, "So many males but too few men." That tells the story, unfortunately.

Transgenders and Suicide: Discrimination or Psychosis?

I keep thinking about the high rate of suicide attempt among transgenders.

I will provide for your review links I feel will provide for you the sound evidence that transgenders attempt suicide at a rate of 41%, or almost 10 times the rate of the average American, not because they are suffering from discrimination, bullying or inadequate civil rights (a theory put forth by the activists), but because they suffer from a wide range of psychiatric and psychological disorders, reasoning based on sound medical research.

I think we can agree that the attempted rate of suicide among transgenders is high, maybe as high as ten times the national average. For those who haven’t thought about this before, here are three links to consider:

1. A Swedish study of transgenders says, “Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behavior, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.” http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0016885
    
2. The Transgender Task Force survey report, Injustice at Every Turn, reports that among the transgenders they surveyed, the suicide attempt rate was 41%. http://transequality.org/PDFs/NTDS_Exec_Summary.pdf
    
3. The US average attempt rate is 4.6%. A study by Kessler, Borges, & Walters of Harvard University says, “It has been estimated that approximately 4.6% of individuals in the United States have made at least one suicide attempt in their lifetime.” (Kessler, R. C., Borges, G., & Walters, E. E. (1999). Prevalence of and risk factors for lifetime suicide attempts in the National Comorbidity Survey. Archives of General Psychiatry, 56, 617–626.)  

Now, what contributes to suicide attempts? According to the research, it is overwhelmingly due to psychiatric disorders:

1. The website, StopaSuicide.org, developed by Harvard psychiatrist Douglas Jacobs, MD, says, “Studies have shown that over 90% of people who die from suicide have one or more psychiatric disorders at the time of their death.” http://www.stopasuicide.org/suicide.aspx 
2. Harvard research Kessler says that specific risk factors lead to suicide attempts:
   “…specifically, the presence of a major depressive episode, drug dependence or abuse, conduct disorder, and antisocial personality disorder, as well as the presence of psychiatric comorbidity all significantly increased the risk of suicide attempt.” http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~nock/nocklab/Nock_Kessler_JAbP_2006.pdf

But the Transgender Task Force survey report does not mention any of the abundance of scientific research that relates suicide attempts to psychological or psychiatric causes. It also did not ask respondents why they attempted suicide. Without giving any scientific reference, the survey report says that the cause of the high rate of suicide attempts among transgenders is probably due to the loss of job, home, and family, and implicates social discrimination as a contributing cause. Thus, they argue for civil protections.

Simple common sense refutes their reasoning. Think of it – we are experiencing grave economic distress in our country, people are losing their jobs and homes, but we aren’t seeing a massive increase in suicide attempts. That’s because mentally healthy people can handle loss. What I take away from the research mentioned here is that the high rate of transgender suicide attempts is evidence of the high incidence of psychiatric disorders, such as anti-social personality disorder and depression, among transgenders.

Psychiatric and psychological disorders will not be resolved by new civil rights laws.  

The GBLT advocates are apparently unaware or in denial of the facts.