Detransitioner pens new book about 'embracing God's design' after living as a woman for eight years

Fox News

18 hours ago

A man who lived as a woman for years believes those who struggle with their gender need to address the underlying issues that drive them to question their identity in order for them to "embrace" who God made them to be.
Walt Heyer, 84, detransitioned 40 years ago after identifying as a woman for eight years. Heyer runs a ministry and website called "Sex Change Regret" where he says he's helped thousands of people who regret trying to change their gender.
Heyer and Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, Director of the Center for Family Studies at the Family Research Council, spoke to Fox News Digital about their new book, "Embracing God's Design," which addresses "the spiritual and psychological crisis behind transgender identity."
The book details the major players in the history of the transgender movement and argues that left-wing activism has influenced diagnostic and ethical standards in the counseling field and harmed patient care over the past two decades. The authors argue that uncovering the root causes of gender confusion is essential to treatment. They also give advice on how friends and family can help those struggling with their gender identity.
Bauwens, a former trauma therapist and researcher, claims that a great number of people who experience gender confusion also were abused, neglected or had other adverse experiences in their childhood.
Professional counseling standards have changed over the years and now push for affirming one's gender identity as part of treatment, she said, adding that this doesn't address the patient's trauma.
"When you look at the data, around half of those who identify as transgender also report some type of abuse, whether it be emotional, psychological, physical, sexual abuse," Bauwens told Fox News Digital.
"It's actually not only malpractice, it's borderline criminal to treat someone with a surgical procedure who clearly matches the profile of someone who's had really severe abuse," she said. "Some of the reasons that are used to quickly get people 'gender-affirming care,' such as suicidality, that's a very common experience of someone who's had abuse. Self-harm is a very common experience of somebody who's abused."
Heyer's own history of gender confusion started at a young age with family members who abused him.
"I was being cross-dressed by my grandma secretly and she was affirming me. She made me a purple chiffon evening dress and that was a secret for about two-and-a-half years," he explained. "When I decided to take the purple dress home and my parents found it, and they realized grandma had been cross-dressing me, and I was enjoying it as a four or five, 6-year-old boy, then the heavy discipline started with my father. Then his adopted teenage brother sexually molested me. So that's where the trauma comes in."
Heyer started identifying as a female as a teenager and became an alcoholic in his 20s as he dealt with the grief from his father dying from cancer. He started taking cross-sex hormones and was eventually diagnosed with gender dysphoria in his 40s and underwent sex change surgery to live as "Laura Jensen" for eight years.
He said his therapist "didn't take into account that I'd been sexually, physically and emotionally abused which was really the problem, and it wasn't gender dysphoria."
"I've worked with thousands of people over the last 20 years. And when I work with them, I always ask them, what caused you to not like who you are?" Heyer said of his ministry. "When we dive into this discussion, they peel back the issues, and we look back, and we find out that they were sexually abused and emotionally abused, physically abused. They were abandoned. They were in foster care."
"Something happened that caused them to not like who they are. It's not even a gender issue. That's why Jennifer referred to it as an identity issue. They like to say that it's a gender issue because then you can apply hormones in surgery, but that doesn't fix the problem."
Heyer credits God for "redeeming and restoring his life," as well as a few Christian counselors who helped him to get sober, address his gender issues, and turn his life around.
The Christian authors believe that the modern gender movement is a spiritual battle that should be taken seriously by people of faith.
"The gender movement isn't just about erasing male or female. It's actually about erasing the very image of God and family, because family is the first place that we learn safety, security, and there are attributes of male and female that God has uniquely embedded in our DNA, in our design," Bauwens said. "And when you erase those or attempt to erase those, you're erasing an aspect of the very heart and nature of God."
"We look at our young people in our world, especially our country right now, and many people are saying, 'why is there such a mental health crisis?' As if we can divorce this current issue from the very mental health crisis that we're trying to fix," she continued.
"When you erase the very design of God, in a generation or try to do that, then we're left with people who have no identity, no rudder, no sense that there's a higher purpose to life, that there is meaning through relationship and how God made us… So I would argue that there's much more at stake with the battle we're facing. And it's really a good fight of faith that we are embracing here," Bauwens said.