SLOBODIAN: The hellish journey of transition — a personal story

Parents wake up! Or risk losing your children to the swarm of ideological predators pulling them away from you — and pushing them down tormented, physically excruciating transgender paths on which there’s never complete healing. No return to normal. No promised peace and euphoria.Who are you going to believe? Ideologues — on social media, in schools, libraries and cheerleaders of exploitative all-age drag shows backed by politicians — bombarding children with ‘positive’ sexual and transgender messages that create confusion and lead to surgical mutilations and dangerous hormones?Or a victim of the “lies” who is determined to protect children from the “evil” of groomers who run away when things go awry while a life sentence of suffering begins for those they deceived?.“If I can use the pain I’ve had from transitioning and the medical malpractice I’ve experienced to save children from being mutilated and having their lives taken from them I’ll die happy,” Amy Rey, who moved from the UK to be with her partner in the US, told the Western Standard.A documentary Leaving Amy is expected to be released this fall. The trailer is gripping and heartbreaking.“I want people not to get sucked up in the lies.”Not long ago, Rey called her mom and sobbed: “I’m sorry I took your little girl away from you.”She’s not calling herself Matt anymore. She realizes she never was a male trapped in a female body. But she’s paying the price for believing “romanticized” lies about the peaceful bliss ahead if she just changed her gender.Instead, what she got was excruciating pain and disfigurement from the surgical mutilation of having her breasts removed. Permanent nerve damage. Episodes of excessive bleeding while lying months in a UK hospital bed fighting off three months of infection after infection.“I would wake up on pools of blood.”Unprecedented bouts of rage for the first six months from the testosterone injections. Depression like she’d never known. And still, “hormonal epilepsy” — uncontrollable tics and seizures.A damning report recently released in the UK, based in part on leaked files, concluded children are being “let down on an epic scale” and condemned the use of debilitating, sometimes fatal effects of cross-sex hormones.Rey was 29 when she had her breasts removed four years ago. She started hormone treatments at age 26.“To youth I would say it’s OK to express yourself. But if this can happen to an adult such as myself, what on earth would it do to children with their undeveloped minds and undeveloped bodies? It's the children we have to protect.”“Most parents, they’re your best friend. They loved you first. They want the best for you. Don’t shut them out. I wish I could go back in time and hug my parents and tell them they were right because now I have to live with this regret for the rest of my life that I took their little girl away.”Parents — except for those who push their kids to transition — are left to mourn alone.“I think it’s similar to losing someone to suicide especially in this day and age where people aren’t just transitioning, they’re also changing their whole personality. It’s like that person died.”“Parents need more respect. They’re hurt on a level nobody can even imagine.”Those who object are threatened and bullied.“Government goes after parents in US too. It’s devastating. It’s evil on a whole other level to tell parents ‘Would you rather have a dead daughter or a live son?’ Or remove them from you, because you don’t affirm them.’Rey said she must live with the damage done for the rest of her life.“I’m always going to look like I do. I’m always going to look masculine. I’m always going to have a deep voice. I’m always going to grow facial hair. Once you’ve made that choice there’s no going back.”That exposes another lie peddled — detransitioning is easy.“It’s permanent. They’re selling it to kids like it’s a stop and start traffic light, like its pause and play. It’s evil. It’s not like that at all.”“Even detransitioning isn’t the word I’d use because regardless of whether you go back to identifying to your true self those changes are still there.”And transitioning?“We should be taught to love ourselves before we get pushed down a path of permanent changes.”“You can take hormones, you can have surgery and look a certain way, but it doesn't change who you are. It gets worse because you do all these changes, and you can't reach that goal. You’ll never reach it because you are not that gender. They lied to my face. I now know that all of it could have been avoided if I’d been told the truth.”She was a tomboy growing up in England who loved the colour blue, watched the Power Rangers and didn’t like Barbie dolls.“I grew up in the 90s when it was still seen as taboo to be gay. In the UK one girl came out as a lesbian in school. She got bullied terribly, so I was young, dealing with not only being a tomboy but also thinking I was in the wrong body. I was terrified because the kids were really mean to that girl … she was pretty much being eaten alive for it,” said Rey, then in Grade 9.“I think it pushed me even more to want to be a male.”“Yeah, (today) they probably would have rushed me down the path faster, started transitioning even behind my parents’ back. These days, it’s so far in the other direction.”Instead of allowing girls to be tomboys and boys to be feminine — the madness is unleashed on children and adults.“They just totally look at transition based on gender stereotypes and that’s really wrong.”They’re raising expectations that aren’t met.“I'd seen these pictures of trans men with the perfect top surgery. They are selling this in a romanticized way. It was sold like that to me. They told me that transitioning would be the cure to my problems. Everything I've been feeling will go away. They didn't tell me was I’d suffer more.”Doctors determined that the tic is the result of too many testosterone shots too frequently.“I was prescribed so much that I was on more than a biological male would be on if he had a testosterone deficiency.”Rey stopped taking testosterone a year and a half ago.“When I came off the hormones my body has been worse because it is in shock. I’m dealing with hormonal epilepsy. When I try to get help for the tics, no Tourette expert will see me because I’m a detransitioner.”Was she warned about any of this?“The gender clinic (Tavistock in London) told me I might get a bit of acne. They said it would make me three times more likely to have a heart attack but that it would be equivalent to a biological male. What they lied to me about was I was three times more likely to have a heart attack than a biological male.”When a mind changes, or complications arise, the injured are abandoned.“When they transition you, they will offer you all the health care you need. But the moment it all goes wrong, or if you detransition it’s like they leave you for dead. Nobody wants to help you.”“They’re selling it as the solution to all your issues. That any depression you felt will magically go away. That’s not true. The illness I got from transitioning, the health issues I have made me more depressed than I’ve ever felt in my life. Nothing could match the depression I felt when everything started to go wrong. There’s nothing you can do about it.”In pain and despair Rey cried out.“I was raised atheist. I was overwhelmed. I called out and said ‘Jesus.’ All of a sudden, I felt this overwhelming wash over of peace that I have never felt in my life.”“I feel blessed from the suffering because it has given me a voice for the kids. I’m living proof of what this can do. I wouldn’t be able to do this without Jesus. He saved me. I’ll glorify him always.”Some people who look at pictures of Rey as a little girl say: “She never left you. She went away for a while, but she’s always been there.”

SLOBODIAN: The hellish journey of transition — a personal story

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