Walt Heyer was never transgender, yet underwent SRS. Distraught that he was approved for surgery, he hopes to make the psychological community stop SRS.

Walt has a unique circumstance. Walt was eventually diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, archaically called multiple personality disorder. One of his identities happened to be a woman and that identity gradually came into dominance. Not realizing this, he interpreted his feelings as transexual and had SRS. Eventually counselors gave him an accurate diagnosis which provided the proper treatment to eliminate his other false identities. Heyer's situation is undoubtedly tragic. 

Rather than going against transgender people, as most gender defenders do, Heyer criticizes the psychologists that approve any SRS. His story is not one of being transgender but of having a dissociative disorder. Walt was not transgender. So while God may have healed him from that disorder, it does not give insight about people who are transgender. Walt mistakenly, if not deceptively, assumes that because SRS was inappropriate for him, it is inappropriate for trans people too. He never gives a justification for this over-simplification. On his websites, he puts himself into the same category of people who have supposedly regretted their transitioning such as Marissa Dainton, Michelle Burke, and Renee Richards.

The solution to Walt's criticism is not ending SRS or using reparative therapy. Reparative therapy would not have helped him either. A potential solution might be to add a further requirement to the diagnosis of gender identity disorder that the client not have a dissociate identity disorder.  Needless to say, psychiatrists are not taking his views of SRS seriously but gender defenders pass his story around like gospel.  Help4Families promotes his book as having insight into transgenderism. I don't consider Walt to be transgender because he rejected his female alter ego as not being his real ego. ". . . a treatment for a disorder [gender identity disorder] I didn't have. I wasn't a man trapped in a woman's body. I was an alcoholic with dissociative disorder." (Trading My Sorrows, p118.)

While Walt is a Christian, his rarely comes up. Never in the excerpts from his autobiography and just one sentence on its website.

Personal Correspondence

Walt emailed me complaining about this page. I corrected one error I made in ignorance, his personal motivation for his autobiography. We emailed dozens of times and discussed many issues over months but never got to the bottom of any of them. It seemed he would make a claim, I would counter his claim, then he would change subjects. Here is our correspondence in a nut shell.

• Walt believes he is transgender. "Then what is a transgender, if not somone who was a female in a male body who underwent the surgery?" I countered he doesn't believe he was female. Walt ignored me.
• Walt changed his mind and no longer thinks he had dissociative identity disorder at all. I asked why he thinks this and for the opinion of a psychiatrist. Walt ignored me.
• I asked Walt that if he doesn't want me saying he had DID, why do his multiple websites promote that fact? He ignored me.
• Walt believes he has a phenomenon of "hormones and crossed wires" promoted by Dr Anne Vitale. I asked him why his personal experiences clashes with so much of Vitale's research. He ignored me.
• I asked Walt if he takes female hormones, which Vitale recommends as a cure. Walt ignored the question several times.
• Walt insists that I am lying and that Renee Richards really does regret her transition. I asked him for his source and how he explains my sources. He ignored them.
• Walt says that all psychologists who recommend SRS are trans themselves. I told him this is obviously untrue. He ignored me.
• Walt claimed these trans psychologists are only pushing their own "agenda," not helping their patients. I asked him what their agenda is and pointed out this is a logical fallacy, an ad hominem attack. He ignored me on both counts.
• At one point says he doesn't have all the answers but also says SRS is always the wrong answer and growing with Jesus Christ is the right answer. I asked him about this and whether he believes SRS is always wrong. He ignored me.
• I suggested if Walt was unhappy with this page, he should edit it to remove and add what he thought was appropriate. He did. He wrote only from his perspective, claiming that God led him back to manhood. I told him he can write whatever he likes in his book and websites, but this website does not have that opinion. I also asked him for clarification on several issues that did not make sense. He ignored every point and became angry that I would not upload what he wrote.
  

Finally, Walt wanted to talk about my exegesis of Galatians 3:28, something which does not even appear (currently) on my site. I told him I didn't want to change subjects, especially onto something unrelated to everything we discussed so far. He refused to respond to any of my questions until I discussed Gal 3:28 with him.  He would frequently accuse me that "I do not feel you want to engage in truthful dialog." I asked why he thought this. Why would I spend so much time writing to him and asking questions if I just wanted to lie about him? Of course, he ignored me. I care intensely about truthful dialog and I think my writings plainly reflect that  feel this was Walt's attempt to manipulate me through guilt.

He stopped writing me, so I told him we could talk about Galatians. He said he didn't have time but would after Christmas 2009 but never contacted me again. (I'm writing this February 21, 2010.)

See Also