Sadly, we may soon be adding the letter “D” for “de-transitioner” to the LGBTQ acronym.
Ritchie Herron, 35, a civil servant living in Newcastle, England, is one of the growing number of individuals who mistook his struggle with mental health for gender dysphoria. Four years ago, Herron underwent an irreversible vaginoplasty operation which he claims to have regretted the moment he woke up from surgery.
During an interview published by The Daily Mail on Saturday, Herron said, “My first thought as I came round was ‘Oh God! What have I done?'”
In addition to his emotional anguish, he told the Mail that the simple act of emptying his bladder continues to be a painful, ten-minute process and his sex drive is nonexistent. He added that his crotch is numb and “shell-shocked.”
Herron is currently in the process of suing the National Health Service of England for being fast-tracked by an NHS “gender clinic” into “making the biggest mistake of his life.” The Mail reports that, in the last decade, referrals to gender clinics has surged by an alarming 1,700 percent and most of these patients are children or young adults.
Herron said he had “suppressed his homosexuality” for decades and now realizes that his “confusion” was caused by his inability to accept he was gay.
According to the Mail, Herron “says he buried his sexuality, which left him with depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
“[I]n his 20s, he stumbled across the idea of gender dysphoria in an internet chatroom. Older men on the forum convinced the vulnerable young man he ‘must be trans.’”
“At that time for Ritchie, it felt like a lightbulb moment. After a series of breakdowns, in 2012 he decided to seek professional help.”
Still on the NHS’s long waiting list in March 2014, he took out a payday loan to pay for a psychiatrist at a private gender clinic where “he was diagnosed with ‘transsexualism’ after just two 30-minute appointments,” the Mail reported.
He assumed the name of Abby and began taking testosterone blockers.
In March 2015, Herron was referred to the Northern Region Gender Dysphoria Service and began seeing a psychiatrist at the NHS gender clinic in Newcastle.
Herron told the Mail: “The first question you get asked there is, ‘Do you want genital surgery?’ I wasn’t sure. But I’d heard you could get therapy if you were on the waiting list for surgery, so I said yes.”
Concerned he was making a mistake, a family member attended one of his appointments and according to Herron, “She told the doctor I was on a high dose of antidepressants and had lots of complex issues, and yet they were referring me for gender treatment.”
Still, in July 2015, he received a referral for the surgery. He said he wasn’t ready yet.
Two years later, he received a second referral. When he indicated he still wasn’t ready, he was informed he would be discharged from treatment at the clinic.
His therapy, he said, had been a “lifeline.” The thought of ending therapy threw him into turmoil. He said he’d been feeling suicidal at the time.
In May 2018, Herron had the surgery. He’s discovered since that surgeons have left him with a radically altered body that is no closer to being that of a woman than it was before.
Attorney Peter Harthan is representing Herron in his lawsuit against NHS. Harthan told the Mail that his client and others like him face “a lifetime of medical care and consequences” and “cannot be put back together again.”
“My concern is clinicians failed to identify red flags and change direction,” Harthan said. “Proper consideration needs to be given to issues such as OCD, internalized homophobia, depression, drug use, sexual abuse and childhood trauma as potential reasons for patients’ rejecting their sexed body.”
Herron said, “I’m proof the whole system has to become far more robust. How many more people are there out there like me?”
“This is an avalanche waiting to happen. Transition is now being sold to people on a mass scale. It’s like PPI, but more sinister.
“In a few years, I’m sure we’ll have law firms asking people if they transitioned and would like to claim compensation,” he added.
Herron is now in the process of detransitioning. And he’s not alone. A growing a number of transgenders now regret their decisions.
Young people, believing that changing their sex is the answer to their problems, quickly sign up for the surgery only to become deeply disillusioned afterward.
Herron, who posts on Twitter under the handle TullipR, explains:
Perhaps Gender Clinics are overwhelmed because we explained away puberty, social awkwardness, trauma, OCD, Same sex attraction, gender non conformity and autism in a neat all-inclusive package that comes with its own community, available online 24/7.
— TullipR 🦎🌈♂ (@TullipR) May 19, 2022
Imagine telling someone going through puberty that discomfort with your body is a sign of gender dysphoria.
— TullipR 🦎🌈♂ (@TullipR) June 12, 2022
From his story, it looks like he was a vulnerable young man who was quickly pressured into this diagnosis and to surgery.
Many young people, particularly adolescents, are mixed up and like Herron, think transitioning will solve their problems. Unfortunately, health professionals, school counselors and hip parents are often too quick to agree with them.
Cases like Herron’s are a wakeup call. Rather than glamorizing this dangerous trend and worrying about offending transgenders, society needs to take a closer look at the irreversible damage it’s already inflicted on so many people.
Responsible parties (and indeed the whole rotten system) should face a reckoning. These people are destroying the futures of vulnerable young people to the applause of western liberals everywhere.
A previous version of this article was published on The Western Journal.
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Instead of suing the NHS, which probably needs suing, maybe he should move his target to the psychological field, that condones this kind of nonsense, because of non-scientific and only politically charged BS that they get their steam from. That “Profession” needed something else to screw up, so they did.
While the psychology professions have some real gems , like Dr. Jordan Petersons, the bulk of that “Profession” are more charlatan than anything else.
When you have quacks who will whore themselves out to fantasy ideas about gender, treat it to the extent of having biologically determined males go and have “Corrective” surgery, to become what they can never be, there is a problem with the so-called “Profession”.
That 35 year old whatever you wish to call him, would have been better off on the island that Gilligan crashed on. Maybe his lawsuit will make him feel better about his situation. After all, money makes it all better.