JEREMY BATE
“I no longer suffer from debilitating depression, thanks to my awakening to a new life in Christ.”
Born in England in 1965, I first experienced conflict with my identity and questioned whether I was possibly a girl around age five. As I was learning to read, I realized I identified with the female characters in books, so I assumed I was supposed to be a girl. Ashamed, I kept these feelings hidden for most of my life, squashing and ignoring them as much as possible. Like an addict who can’t get free, however, I could never seem to shake off the feeling that I had been born into the wrong body. When I was eight, my family moved to Australia, and by the time I was 16, we had stopped going to church. Although I had taken Catholicism seriously at times during my early life, I drifted away from the faith and became a pagan in my early 20s. I was indoctrinated to believe the lie that the church was hateful and bigoted, especially in regard to sexuality. During those years, I began a relationship with a woman, and we had two children, but eventually, the relationship broke down. When I was 30, I actually read the definition of transsexual for the first time and thought to myself, this must be me! Those feelings were confirmed by a psychologist whom I began seeing after my relationship split. When I said I was concerned about going against nature, she replied, "What about going against your own nature?"
From that point on, the predominant message from both media and books that I came across was very supportive of the trans phenomenon, convincing me that I was born this way and that the only solution was to embrace a new identity as a woman. Not much dissenting information existed at the time, but what I did find, I had already learned to frame as transphobic. In fact, I visited one psychologist and two psychiatrists, and none tried to find the root cause of my confusion about my sex. Because his previous trans-identifying patients had committed suicide, my first psychiatrist was reluctant to put me on cross-sex hormones. However, the second psychiatrist prescribed hormones straight away. Confident this was the right course of action, I continued to push forward with laser facial hair removal. By the time I was in my mid-30s, I had begun a relationship with a woman, who was very understanding. With her support, I underwent a full suite of surgeries and procedures to look like a woman at age 38.
In total, I lived as if I were a woman for 20 years, and though I often felt awkward, I lived a fairly normal life. I even played women’s soccer. But after my second relationship ended in 2010, I became very depressed and began to do a lot of soul searching. Though I didn’t question that identity, it gradually began to feel less important to me. Seven years later, I had an awakening in which I began to question my politics as well as mainstream science. I realized much of what I had accepted as reality was not founded on objective truth. Science, I discovered, can be based on false assumptions and sometimes serves a political and ideological purpose. Nonetheless, I avoided questioning transgender science because I knew that it would likely lead to reversing all the efforts I had made to become a woman. Eventually, however, I had to face the facts. And when I investigated, I found transgender science to be weak, flawed, biased, and lacking adequate peer review. That’s when my journey toward desistance began in earnest. A YouTube lecture by a reputable doctor outlined how trans groups were lobbying within medical professional bodies to further the trans agenda by dictating a medical policy of “affirming” treatment. But what further sealed the deal was when I learned that my mother had taken DES (diethylstilbestrol), a potent estrogen and so-called anti-miscarriage drug prescribed to millions of women between the 1940s and ‘70s. Research revealed that 20 percent of boys exposed to the drug in utero experienced dysphoria relating to their sex. I realized DES was likely the cause of that confusion. All of these revelations prompted me to desist and embrace my natal sex. I discussed my feelings about this with a “transhealth” social media group and was immediately banned for merely questioning the science.
I began taking testosterone at age 52, and within a few weeks, my male sex characteristics began to reemerge. Because of my surgeries, however, I knew I could never fully reverse the effects those procedures had on my body. I still have some breast growth that cannot be reversed. And along with loss of fertility, I’m unable to produce my own hormones, which often results in migraines, hot flashes, and lethargy (during times of hormonal deficits). What’s more, my pituitary gland is wildly hyperactive because it continues to try to get my non-existent testes to produce testosterone.
But my journey to wholeness did not end with efforts to restore my physical body. Three months after beginning to desist, I came back to the Catholic church after a friend told me about reintegrative therapy for those seeking to diminish same-sex attractions. I discovered there is no “born this way,” and that the church was not hateful and bigoted as I’d been led to believe. My mental state today is vastly different from my former life. I no longer suffer from debilitating depression, thanks to my awakening to a new life in Christ. In hindsight, I wish there had been more mainstream dissenting information freely available, especially within Christian churches, the medical community, and the political arena. It is my hope to one day see a paradigm shift wherein medical science embraces the growing evidence that refutes the dangerous procedures and drugs endorsed by WPATH and where the so-called “transgender medical” industry openly refutes procedures and drugs to identify as the opposite sex, calling them ineffective or harmful, as evidence supports.