This Formerly Trans 14-Year-Old Has A Message For Questioning Kids
The Federalist 14 December 2017
Family First Comment: This is a superb read – as more and more people fight the media- blackout and speak up about transgender-regret. Fascinating that teens are now speaking up…
“Telling the truth is not hate speech. Noor’s mother lovingly told her daughter the truth and encouraged her to test the truth. What is hateful is affirming trans people in living out a delusion that cannot lead to long-term internal healing. If affirming worked, we would not read about trans suicides, and I would not hear from so many who regret gender transition.”
Noor Jontry believed she was male from ages 11 to 13, but has changed her mind. Now at age 14, she is sharing her journey into the trans-male identity and back to her female self.
In an interview on the website 4thWaveNow, Noor gives extraordinarily mature insights into her thoughts and feelings as she changed from being certain she wanted gender transition to finding less drastic ways of addressing her gender dysphoria and becoming comfortable in her female body.
Gender dysphoria is the strong feeling of unease about one’s gender not matching one’s physical body. Noor says, “I learned that being female isn’t a feeling. It’s a biological reality and I could feel however I feel without it meaning I was male.”
When asked why she wanted to be male, she said she didn’t like her body and wanted a different one. She also realizes in retrospect that “I used being trans to try and escape being scared about being small and weak. I thought that if I presented myself as a man I’d be safer.”
With the encouragement of her mother, she researched the medical effects of puberty blockers, cross-gender hormones and surgery, and came to see that her initial beliefs—such as there being no dangerous side effects from hormones or blockers or thinking that she could delay puberty forever—weren’t true. She says she now understands that testosterone is a powerful drug that can damage female organs, and puberty blockers negatively affect brain development.
When asked about dysphoria, Noor says, “It is definitely a real feeling! But being uncomfortable is part of being human. If you can’t cope with those feelings, then you need help learning better ways to cope. My psychologist understood I had dysphoria and we worked through the trauma that caused it.”
‘Dysphoria Always Has a Deeper Root’
I have come under fire for suggesting people with gender dysphoria spend time with a psychologist to work through, as Noor puts it, “the trauma that caused it.” In my 10 years of working with trans persons and their families, I have found 100 percent of those who write me can identify the onset of gender dysphoria in themselves or their loved ones.
So many traumas can cause gender dysphoria, including emotional loss, abuse, and extreme changes in the home. According to research, almost two-thirds (62.7 percent) of transgender people have some type of co-existing psychiatric disorder, such as depression, phobias, and adjustment disorders.
As Noor has discovered and articulates so well: “Dysphoria always has a deeper root. ‘Trans’ isn’t the right word. We’ve learned to know it as trans but really what I think some people feel is extreme, chronic dissociation, possibly from trauma and PTSD.”
That’s what happened to me. I didn’t want to be the boy who experienced the pain in my young life, so I wanted to escape into being someone else. In medical parlance, I dissociated. According to scientific research, I’m in good company. Almost a third (29.6 percent) of trans people have dissociative disorders. Researchers evaluated 118 individuals with gender dysphoria and, in addition to dissociative disorder at 29.6 percent, found a high prevalence of lifetime major depressive episode (45.8 percent), suicide attempts at 21.2 percent, and childhood trauma at 45.8 percent.
I also suffered childhood trauma. So I followed the recommendation of gender professionals and underwent irreversible gender change. Living as a woman, I still experienced severe gender identity distress, and attempted suicide. Eventually, I was diagnosed with a dissociative disorder, which, I found out later, had driven my unrelenting desire to become someone else. Thankfully, when I received appropriate counseling for my dissociative disorder, my desire to be a woman dissipated and I returned to life as a man.
READ MORE: http://thefederalist.com/2017/12/14/formerly-trans-14-year-old-message-questioning-kids/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=c66608809d-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-c66608809d-83919629
