“Detransitioners” around the world told their stories yesterday on the sixth annual Detransition Awareness Day, an event spotlighting the false promise of transgender ideology that drugs, hormones and surgeries can “transition” a person into becoming the opposite sex.
Hundreds of men and women who endured damaging, irreversible medical experiments shared how they came to reject a false opposite-sex identity and embrace their natal sex.
“Life Beyond Transition”
The annual Detransition Awareness Day, first held March 12, 2021, was created by a coalition of groups “to raise awareness and break down the stigma around detransition.” Keira Bell was one of those who helped launch that event. She was 16 when she was prescribed puberty blockers by England’s National Health Service and then received male hormones and a double mastectomy.
Since then, she has gone back to embracing her natural femininity and has become an outspoken critic of medical interventions for those suffering distress over their maleness or femaleness.
This year, Genspect, an international organization that “advocates for ethical, non-medicalized responses to gender distress,” sponsored a Detransition Awareness Day event in Washington, D.C., “Life Beyond Transition.”
An estimated 70 detransitioners gathered for the event, in addition to clinicians, researchers, lawyers, educators and policymakers.
Genspect Executive Director and Founder Stella O’Malley predicted the event would be “the largest gathering of detransitioners ever held anywhere in the world.”
Detransitioner Stories
It’s not easy to leave transgenderism – especially after undergoing a regimen of drugs, hormones and surgeries and living as the opposite sex. Many who have detransitioned do so because they have found faith and truth in Christ.
It’s important to tell their stories in order to counter false transgender ideology, protect children from harmful medical procedures and demonstrate how trusting Jesus begins a journey of healing and transformation. Here are three testimonies from those whose Christian faith initiated their journey away from transgenderism.
Heyer has been telling his story for at least 20 years, publishing his autobiography Trading My Sorrows in 2006. Heyer traces his sexual identity struggles to being sexually abused as a child by an uncle and dressed in girls clothes by his grandmother.
Married for 19 years, successful in business, and the father of two children, Heyer’s life looked like good on the outside. But since childhood he lived with the desire to dress in women’s clothes and be a woman.
After a divorce, and a short visit with a psychologist to refer him for surgery, he endured a number of procedures: electrolysis; breast and buttocks implants; a nose job; facial surgeries; skin peels; hormones; and, finally, “sexual reassignment surgery.”
But eight years of living as a woman did not solve Heyer’s sexual identity disorder. An encounter with Jesus Christ and the support of pastors, counselors and church members brought him grace and forgiveness and placed him on the long, painful road – not without relapses and failure – toward healing.
Heyer has been a fierce advocate for protecting children from what is falsely called “gender affirming care,” testifying before legislatures and telling his story around the world. He has ministered to and mentored thousands as they leave transgenderism behind. He published an updated version of his autobiography in 2015, A Transgender’s Faith.
Although she grew up in a Christian home, Laura Perry Smalts explains that feelings of confusion about her sex developed in early childhood. She had a strained relationship with her mom and became very sexualized by a molestation at the age of eight.
She writes:
I spent the next 25 years trying to get fulfillment and love through sex. Feeling objectified by men in high school, I began to believe being female was disgusting, filthy, and worthless. I was sure I should have been a man, so I began the journey of “transitioning” to transform my appearance.
In 2007, she began living full-time as Jake, taking testosterone and undergoing a hysterectomy and double mastectomy.
But none of that helped:
After years of hormones and surgeries, I was empty and broken. I was devastated to realize that none of the changes I was making had actually made me a man, and I knew they never would. All I had done was change the outside. The result? I felt trapped in a world between male and female.
God was still at work, drawing Smalts back to Himself. She tells about His transforming power in her life:
Today, completely reconciled to my family, I continue to experience God’s healing and restoration. In May of 2021, He brought an incredible man into my life, Perry Smalts, and we married a year later in 2022.
Laura Perry Smalts now ministers to those caught in homosexuality and transgenderism through her ministry, Eden’s Redemption, and her book, Transgender to Transformed.
“I grew up believing that men were superior to women. My dad was verbally and physically abusive to my mom and me, birthing within me the belief that women were hated, weak, and vulnerable,” writes KathyGrace Duncan.
She explains that the disconnect from her body began at an early age:
From as early as age 4, I felt I was in the wrong body. I fantasized about my pretend girlfriend, and with my peers, I always played the male role: the cowboy, the protector, the fireman. But as I grew older, life became more complicated. Wearing dresses to kindergarten, for example, was a very traumatic experience for me, and my fractured feelings grew stronger and stronger.
Duncan was molested by a family member from ages 10 to 12, creating further sexual identity confusion. She then began living as a man:
I found a doctor who prescribed me hormones to expedite my transition into manhood. Then I had both breasts removed. Before long, I found myself caught in a cycle of broken relationships, pornography addiction, isolation, and self-rejection, living as a man for 11 years.
Eventually, she came to faith in Christ. Still presenting as a man, even involved in men’s ministry at her church, it was several years before she came to an awareness that God wanted her to embrace her femininity.
The journey back was not easy. She had to walk with God through the pain of childhood hurts and brokenness, forgive those who hurt her, develop healthy relationships with women, and confess and receive forgiveness for her own sins. She writes:
By age 36, everything matched: my heart, body, and mind. Today God sees me as a daughter and a friend, and walking in community with others has further solidified my identity as a woman.
KathyGrace ministers to those leaving lesbianism and transgenderism at The Portland Fellowship.
Even while giving a cautionary tale of irreparably harmed bodies, detransitioners’ stories offer hope. Hope that we can end this evil ideology that has poisoned the minds of so many young people. Hope that we can bring reconciliation to broken families. And hope that a relationship with Jesus Christ can lead more people into healing.
Related articles and resources:
Focus on the Family exists to help families, and that includes help navigating the issues of homosexuality and transgenderism. Focus offers a free, one-time counseling consultation with a licensed or pastoral counselor. To request a consultation, call 1-855-771-HELP (4357) or fill out our Counseling Consultation Request Form.
Changed Movement: Testimonies of Leaving Homosexuality and Transgenderism
‘Chloe Cole Act’ to Protect Minors From ‘Trans’ Mutilation Reintroduced in Congress
Chloe Cole: Gender Reassignment Surgery Regret
‘Detransition Awareness Day’ Highlights Those Embracing Their True Identity
‘Detransition Awareness Day’ Spotlights Those Who Left Transgenderism
‘Detransition Awareness Day’ – Testimonies From Those Who Left Transgenderism
Detransitioner Finds Faith, Realizes, ‘I Will Always Be a Female’
Focus on the Family: Transgender Resources
God’s Amazing Grace in a Transgendered Person’s Life (Part 1 and Part 2)
HHS Releases Report on Harms of ‘Transgender’ Medical Interventions for Minors
The Journey Back to My True Identity (Part 1 and Part 2)
Laura Perry Smalts’ Authentic Shift From Transgenderism To Embracing God’s Design
