FSTDT

The U.S. Supreme Court hears a landmark case on gender identity and sex Tuesday, in oral arguments for R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. James Shupe offered his perspective in an amicus brief for that case.
The following is an interview between me and Shupe, who made waves for being the first “legally non-binary person” in the United States. Shupe achieved clarity through therapy, and returned to life as his birth sex even though the LGBT community shunned him. He’s begun to share his story and speak out against the dangers of transgender medicine.

In 2016, an Oregon circuit court ruled Shupe could change his gender to nonbinary, the first legal ruling of his kind. LGBT activists lauded it as a landmark decision that now plagues Shupe.
Here’s a closer look at his experience living as the opposite sex, regretting it, returning to live as his birth sex, and becoming a vocal opponent of transgender medicine altogether. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
For readers who may be unaware of your journey, describe why you decided to become the “first legally non-binary person” in the United States?
I experienced a major mental health crisis at age 49. I began researching psychiatric issues on the internet. It didn’t take very long for me to stumble upon gender identity disorder, transgenderism, and transsexualism.
At first, I was skeptical that I could actually be a female based on this newly discovered thing called “gender identity,” something I’d never heard of before because I’d always understood myself to be a male. But numerous medical and media articles describing mental health issues disappearing after undergoing a gender transition quickly convinced me that I was a woman and that transition would fix me. I also discovered the Department of Veterans Affairs had a newly launched transgender medical care program [that] erased all of my doubts completely.

At the time, I was especially vulnerable to being duped into believing that I was actually a female trapped in a male body despite not feeling like one for two reasons. 1) I had fragile mental health and was desperate for a cure. 2) During my military career, I’d often cross-dressed for sexual pleasure and had an attraction for men while dressed as a woman, a problem I’d acted out on during several occasions.
So this newly discovered information about being a female because of gender identity based on “feeling like a woman” was a much more palatable explanation for what I had previously understood my behavior to be per military regulations: transvestism.
So, armed with this new information and false beliefs about myself, I immediately began identifying as a transgender woman, mimicking the role of a stereotypical female, and taking female hormones. I also planned to undergo a vaginoplasty surgery to have my penis cosmetically reshaped into a vagina. I was born in 1963, so I’m older than the theory of gender identity, a term first used for transsexuals in 1966 when John Hopkins opened their gender clinic.
Unfortunately, all of this turned out to be delusional thinking. By the end of the charade, I’d come to the realization that my sex change was a failure and a hoax and by then I was just as desperate to escape being legally classified as female as I was previously was to solve my mental health problems.

After a good-faith period of participation in the grand gender experiment, I came to believe the whole thing was smoke and mirrors, complete quackery. By then I knew I wasn’t a female and like others before me, I had similarly discovered by trial and error that changing your sex is impossible. You could say that becoming non-binary gave me the means to save face and as a byproduct, I became famous for doing so.
What does it mean to become non-binary?
Like everything else with gender, non-binary is a made-up term. It’s a “catch-all” terminology for all of the transgender identities that fall outside of male and female. It can mean anything from you think of yourself as transmasculine or transfeminine, or neither male or female, or even a combination of the two.
How long did it take before you realized your quest to become non-binary was actually a result of trauma?
It wasn’t until late 2018 and early 2019 after two psychiatric hospitalizations that I was able to face up to the truth about myself and my sexual behaviors. Once I was willing to do that, I became familiarized with what Dr. Ray Blanchard had correctly theorized about men like me decades ago: that I am sexually attracted and aroused by the idea of myself as a female.
Dr. Blanchard claims there are two types of transgender women: homosexuals attracted to men, and men who are attracted to the thought or image of themselves as females. The latter is the most prominent population group in western countries, and sadly that’s the motivation for all of these middle-aged men such as myself who begin to believe they are women after what’s essentially a sexual fetish has been undiagnosed, gone untreated, or been misdiagnosed as gender dysphoria, and has then escalated and developed into an alter ego female personality.

First, my sexual behaviors were a coping mechanism for my very painful mental health issues that were rooted in the trauma of my childhood sexual abuse as well as violence I’d experienced and witnessed. Second, I was also now feeding what had become an escalating sexual addiction that was being fueled by pornography and yet another sexual paraphilia I’d developed: masochism. Experts in these fields of expertise state that sexual paraphilias are often comorbid and I agree.
Who bears the blame for your transition? You? Your doctors?
I’ve gotten feedback that insinuates that I got exactly what I asked for from my medical providers during my two gender transitions. But the truth is my doctors and mental health professionals bear significant blame, because the work of Blanchard and others on autogynephilia was published all the way back in the 1980s, yet most psychologists and psychiatrists either know nothing about it or intentionally chose ignorance. It’s framed as an unpopular diagnosis.
When I confronted my caregivers at the VA that had rubber-stamped me with gender dysphoria instead of a sexual paraphilia and asked to be reevaluated, their response was to fire me as a patient and then claim that they had no experience treating sexual paraphilias. However, the VA has already done studies explaining why people like me are acting out sexually but the folks treating me didn’t put two and two together. Instead, they fed and enabled the delusion that I was a woman, making them the most culpable.
Describe when and how you realized you needed to “de-transition.”
Becoming non-binary was like redoing the whole gender experiment all over again with different parameters and then getting the same outcome. I didn’t stop taking hormones and by then I had an even bigger mess to walk back because I was no longer a relatively obscure transgender woman. I now had international fame associated with the landmark court decision to cope with, making reclaiming my birth sex much more difficult.
But admitting and accepting the truth about myself gave me the strength to reclaim my male birth sex. And after I did, I began treatment for my correct diagnosis: a transvestic disorder with autogynephilia.
What does “de-transitioning” feel like? Is there a feeling of loss? Anger? Relief? Is it harder than transitioning?
There was no sense of loss and it’s certainly easier than transitioning because you’re not fighting against your biological reality, societal pushback, and forcing others to indulge your delusion.
I do have plenty of anger about having been medically experimented on by people with advanced degrees who should have known better, leaving me feeling duped about having fallen for the quack theory that I have a gender identity. I now realize that I don’t.
I was falsely led by mental health practitioners to believe that my feelings decided my sex, but that’s neither scientific, measurable, nor enduring because my feelings can and have changed. I’ve come to realize and accept that the only thing capable of reliably grounding me to reality is my male chromosomes and reproductive system.
All of this legal fiction and outright fraud has indeed left me very bitter and angry. I want the people who have caused me physical and mental harm held accountable for their actions and roles in the medical experimentation that was perpetrated against me.
Do you believe most people who have decided they are transgender would have been better off remaining their biological sex?
Yes, I believe everyone would be better off being recognized solely as their biological sex. The medical procedures being touted as “gender transitions,” if they work at all, are in fact nothing more than cosmetic changes to people’s bodies. I’m proof of that.
But here’s the biggest thing: even if you could somehow argue the medical treatments are legitimate hormonal and surgical procedures, lying to the patient about being another sex based on the pseudoscience of gender identity and forcing everyone else to play along is nothing short of medical malpractice and legal fiction.
How did you decide to go from a non-binary person who has de-transitioned to somewhat of a public critic? Is your personal story well received?
First and foremost I had to do so because people were continuing to use my court decision to put more and more non-binary sex markers on state driver’s licenses, and they were also continuing to write about my court case in academic and legal journals. And this was occurring against a backdrop of readily available information on the internet, my Wikipedia page, and on my personal website explaining that I had reclaimed my birth sex. Some of these folks were intentionally casting me in a false light to advance gender ideology.
What are your expectations for the case SCOTUS is about to hear, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as it relates to your personal journey? Should gender identity be protected under the law like sex?
I think the justices will rule in favor of R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes and protect religious freedom because the male plaintiff, who claims to be a female is, in my opinion, the exact same thing as I am: A cross-dressing man that is sexually aroused by the image of himself as a woman. I sincerely believe that he and I both suffer from a transvestic disorder and with what Dr. Blanchard refers to as autogynephilia.
While I believe that autogynephilia is a mental health problem worthy of treatment and compassion, based on my experience I think it’s unworthy of public or employment accommodation, even if it has progressed to gender dysphoria.
Like myself, because the man in the case who now identifies as a woman’s transvestic disorder has apparently gone untreated for probably decades, and because quack theories about gender have been allowed to proliferate and infiltrate society and law, his sexual identity problem has apparently gotten so out of control that he now believes he’s a female. That’s unfortunate, but he’s not a woman and neither was I. So I feel the Supreme Court needs to set the nation straight about that in order to protect females and religious freedom.
We need to quit wasting so much time and resources and return to a clear-cut definition of biological sex because a lot of children are now being harmed by gender ideology too. As to whether gender should be protected under the law? The answer is no, because it’s based on nothing more than personal feelings, perceptions, stereotypes, and pseudoscience.

Walt Heyer knows firsthand what it’s like to undergo sex change surgery and then regret it. After living as a woman for nearly a decade, he decided to accept his biological sex and de-transition back to male. By then, Walt had received intensive cognitive therapy that helped him recognize early childhood trauma he had experienced.
The trauma resulted in a mental condition known as dissociative identity disorder (DID). In the clarity of that realization, his gender dysphoria simply vanished. His life as a “woman” all amounted to an attempt to escape reality. Sadly, too few people consider the possibility that gender dysphoria can manifest as a byproduct or symptom of other mental conditions, and most certainly of DID. (More on that below.)

Walt suffered huge waves of regret as a result of following through with his urge to be a woman. He had eagerly taken the bait of politicized medical practitioners, who hurried him along in the transition. He not only regretted what he had done to his body, he also grieved over the estrangement from his wife and children caused by his drastic change in identity.

There was collateral damage to other personal relationships as well. He also regretted the lost decade of his life in which he lived in the persona of a woman.

Heyer’s New Book Shines Light on Trans Life Survivors
Heyer has written several books on transgender regret, but his sixth and newest book, “Trans Life Survivors,” is not his personal story. It’s a compilation of the stories of many others caught up in today’s “transmania.” They specifically sought out Walt to get some much-needed support. They’ve shared their lonely, surreal experiences falling down the trans rabbit hole, hoping to escape as he did.

Walt’s correspondents describe a wide range of frustrating and confusing experiences. Some are nudged into transgenderism by social pressures and emotional manipulation. Many are hastily sent into surgery without adequate counseling (or any counseling at all), or are misdiagnosed. Some of those regret their decision very shortly after having irreversible surgery.

Many concerns about childhood traumas are ignored by therapists who are politically motivated to push as many patients as possible into sex change. They also fear intense ostracism and vicious backlash from the trans community if they “come out” as a potential de-transitioner.

Walt wrote “Trans Life Survivors,” he says, because he wants others “to catch a glimpse of the raw emotions and experiences of people who are harmed by the grand – and dangerous – experiment of cross-sex hormones and surgical affirming procedures.”

Helping Others Escape the Trans Rabbit Hole
For many years, Heyer’s website was virtually the only place for a trans regretter to get some relief from the social and political pressures crashing down. Many of his readers express a joyful sense of liberation in knowing that they are not all alone.

Much of their isolation is caused by our society’s slavish obedience to political correctness, which dictates that there is “no such thing” as transgender regret. Even worse, the transgender lobby is making it very difficult for such people to get the counseling they desperately want and need.

They’ve set up roadblocks in the form of new laws that virtually ban standard cognitive therapy for people who diagnose themselves with gender dysphoria, particularly those who are undecided about their path or actually regret it after the fact. Any legitimate form of talk therapy—therapy that allows for real Q-and-A that doesn’t necessarily result in affirmation of gender dysphoria—has been smeared with the label “conversion therapy.”
Regretters are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. They are not unlike recruits in a dangerous cult who sense that something is amiss, but feel trapped in a Hotel California (or even a Jonestown).

So “Trans Life Survivors” is a godsend for people struggling with trans regret, no matter what stage of transition or de-transition they are in. The book highlights 30 stories gleaned from among the many hundreds Heyer has received from his readers. Many more transgender people have contacted Walt over the years. Walt has been trying valiantly to keep up with the increasing volume of contacts.

His readers are grateful to find a place they can get real and rare information about how changing their identity might affect them down the road—or, increasingly, how they can de-transition once they realize how unhappy the process has made them.

Just Imagine How Regretting a Sex Change Would Feel

Can you imagine what it must be like to tell a therapist of your experience being abused as a child, which you offer as a possible explanation for your dysphoria, only to have the psychiatrist totally ignore that aspect of your past and instead push you to sex-change procedures as the only way to overcome your angst?
Imagine that you then defer to and trust the professional’s expertise, and you accept the treatment. Then, can you imagine, after going through all of that—the hormones, the mutilating surgeries, etc.—you realize it just didn’t work? You end up asking yourself: What did I do? Why did I go ahead with this? Then the trans lobby tells you it’s all your fault, you should have known better, and you’re not really trans anyway, so shut up.

That’s Billy’s story. But his story has a good ending that inspires regretters who have lost hope. Billy de-transitioned, fell in love, and ended up marrying a woman with children. This echoes Walt’s own life experience after de-transitioning. He too fell in love and married an amazing woman. They live a very joyful, rich, and fulfilling spiritual life together as Christians.

Such happy endings and strong relationships might seem unlikely to those who think they’ve hit rock bottom. But those results are real, and they are a source of much hope to those who yearn to de-transition, but who feel “abandoned, ostracized, outcast, and alone,” like Kevin, who reported that his sex-change was the biggest mistake of his life. Only God knows how many regretters Walt has steered away from suicide and towards renewed life.

Hard-to-Find Resources
In “Trans Life Survivors,” you’ll also read about “Blair,” who holds a Guinness World Record for most gender-reassignment surgeries: 167 surgeries to make him feel more like a woman. Needless to say, it didn’t work out. But we can easily suspect in his case the existence of surgical predators who take advantage of vulnerable people. Many others, like Michael, recognize that it’s all “a sick money-making industry.”

Others who have communicated with Walt include parents whose children are being pressured into gender transition by public school officials, social media, and pop culture. “Trans Life Survivors” also includes chapters on the medical realities of sex change as well as the politicization of medicine and psychiatry that locks people into a transgender identity.

The book ends with a useful listing of further resources for those who seek to find a way out. Such resources are very hard to come by, so the book is truly a public service.

Suppressed Support For Those De-Transitioning
After the novelty of the transition wears off—and it very often does—the regretter is stuck in a never-never land of keeping up facades and pretenses. Many report that the constant charade is emotionally draining and casts a pall over life. But if they express a desire to change back, their friends in the trans community often become angry and reject and isolate them.

Walt cites numerous studies confirming that most cases of gender dysphoria co-exist with other mental conditions.
Being shunned by one’s own community is painful. Eric wrote: “I’m trying to come out as a regretter, and I’m finding the community backlash to be difficult and the lack of medical support to be troubling.”

Walt knows that feeling very well. The transgender lobby has come out hard against him when he has spoken publicly about his personal experiences. In addition to smearing him with various epithets such as “religious nut” or “transphobic,” the lobby has worked hard to de-platform him.

Media Matters went into panic mode and ran a smear article when Walt gave a persuasive interview to CNN’s Carol Costello after Olympian Bruce Jenner’s 2015 transition. (Walt’s instincts tell him that Jenner regrets his decision, but is hopelessly stuck in the cultish trap of the limelight. I believe he’s right about that.)
Eric reported an unsettling lack of medical support. Walt cites numerous studies confirming that most cases of gender dysphoria co-exist with other mental conditions, such as DID, bipolar disorder, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. If those other conditions were first treated through cognitive therapy, there’s no telling how much that would alleviate gender dysphoria without any need for invasive surgeries and hormonal treatments.
But this seems to be a well-guarded secret by political and media activists with a stake in promoting identity politics in general, and gender ideology in particular. Why? Probably because it could solve their problems, and their problems are the bread-and-butter of identity politics.

Free Speech Is More Important than Ever
The pressure can be even worse when dealing with the government agencies that supposedly respect the right to choosing one’s sex. Walt spent about 30 years—making eight to ten attempts—before he finally got a judge in California to reinstate the word “male” on his birth certificate. Despite all that, the transgender lobby insists Walt was never really transgender in the first place! Yet, strangely, they accept his diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder.

Would they allow people with gender dysphoria to seek out therapies that actually explore its psychological source?

The key question is this: Would Walt’s accusers allow others the same therapy, allowing them clarity to sort out whether their gender dysphoria is a part of a co-existing condition? After all, when claiming that Walt was “never transgender” they often point out and accept his diagnosis of DID. The Media Matters story cited above did just that.

So would they allow people with gender dysphoria to seek out therapies that actually explore its psychological source? And then allow their condition to be treated so their gender dysphoria might actually vanish without facades and surgeries?

Obviously not, since this goes against the trans activists’ claim that there’s such a thing as a woman’s brain trapped in a man’s body, and vice versa. Real cognitive therapy threatens to collapse that house of cards.
The ban on so-called conversion therapy is really a ban on all talk therapy that doesn’t affirm self-diagnosed gender dysphoria. Any therapist who so much as questions a patient’s yearning to be the other sex risks losing his or her license, or worse.

If the patient has nagging questions, therapists cannot even entertain those questions without putting license and job at risk, since the interpretation of what constitutes “conversion therapy” is so loose. It’s all up to trans activists and their legislative machinery. Psychotherapists are increasingly aware that they are now legally required to play along with each and every self-diagnosed case of gender dysphoria presented to them, or face legal consequences.

De-Transitioners Are Simply on a Journey Home
When one speaks of “going home” in the poetic sense, it has nothing to do with abuses or dysfunction that one might have experienced, leading to gender dysphoria. Being “home” simply means having a sense of being in the right place, living out your God-given purpose in your God-given body. It means being comfortable in your own skin so you can enjoy the view outward instead of constant navel-gazing.

When you don’t have that joy, or if you’ve lost it along the way, a different sort of dysphoria sets in. It can go by the name homesickness.

At some point in our maturity, we realize that joy and adventure don’t have to be in some alien place. When you go looking for your heart’s desire, to paraphrase Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz,” there is much to discover right in your own backyard.

In fact, there is probably even more excitement in discovering the true reality of who you are than in pursuing shiny objects, trying to pretend to be someone else, and then trying to force everybody around you to cater to that persona. How exhausting.

The Joy Outweighs the Sorrow
As scary as de-transitioning might seem, once the possibility of it is validated by someone like Heyer, who’s been there and done that, there is a great joy in it, no matter the physical disfigurement or the years wasted.
At some point, like Dorothy, you realize that there really is no place like home.

Trent explained this when he wrote that he was very much looking forward to having his breast implants removed and getting men’s clothes back into his wardrobe: “It’s really been so exciting going back to who I really am!” He also noted: “Hidden deep underneath the make-up and female clothing was the little boy carrying the hurts from traumatic childhood events and he was making himself known. Being a female turned out to be only a cover up, not healing.”

Such attempted cover-ups are analogous to reaching for a mirage. In this case we might say it’s a rainbow-like mirage. Regretters are not unlike Dorothy—and all of us—who sang wistfully searching for a place “over the rainbow” where our troubles melt away. But the rainbow always recedes as you try to reach it. And it’s ephemeral, disappearing with varying conditions.

At some point, like Dorothy, you realize that there really is no place like home. You can finally see the magic, the warmth, in the seemingly mundane. But regretters first need to escape the isolation and the loneliness foisted on them by a culture that rejects their condition.

As Walt notes, they need support to make this trek, as did he: “Regretters going back need people around them to lend strength for the journey – people willing to listen with love, speak healing words, provide emotional, legal and financial assistance and cheer them on to their homecoming.”

“Trans Life Survivors” serves as a road map to make that journey back home.