PR: Bill blocking public universities from transitioning minors passes committee

Prisha Mosely Testimony, as of June 20th, 2023:

My name is Prisha Mosley. I am a 25-year-old woman who has suffered severe and lasting injuries due to “gender-affirming care” as a minor. This “care” included medical intervention to make my body appear as that of a male.

I support legislation that would prevent doctors and other healthcare providers, who are supposed to protect children, from harming them through so-called “gender-affirming care.”

As a teenager, I suffered from a number of mental health issues, including ocd, borderline personality disorder, anxiety, and depression. I also suffered trauma from sexual assault. And I engaged in self-harm.

At age 17, after meeting with me for a matter of minutes, a counselor told me that I was actually a boy and that changing my body to be more like a boy’s would fix my mental health issues. Around that same time, a doctor prescribed me testosterone.

While I was still 17, a surgeon familiar with breast reduction surgery for women met with me and expressed eagerness in performing gender-affirming “top surgery” on me. At age 18, my healthy my breasts were cut off of my chest and incinerated.

These healthcare providers, whom I trusted to take care of me, misled me into believing that changing my body to look more like a boy’s body would solve my mental and psychological problems.

As a result of these healthcare providers’ actions, I have suffered severe and lasting injuries. These injuries are both psychological and physical in nature.

My body did not develop the way it should have and does not function normally. I am unable to nurse a child. I do not know if I will be able to conceive and give birth to a child.

I have suffered painful and irreversible changes to my genitals. My voice has been permanently damaged. My larynx, crushed by the overgrowth in my throat caused my testosterone, prevents me from singing and raising my voice. Even speaking for long periods hurts. My body aches every day. My muscles burn and my bones ache. I was promised male puberty, and instead, I got menopause. I may not ever get to have children now.

I suffer daily with phantom breast syndrome, a waking nightmare in which I am haunted by the ghosts of my missing body parts.

I suffer from chronic pain and a host of additional medical issues and psychological and emotional anguish, as a result of the medical and surgical abuse that I was led into by the healthcare providers who were supposed to take care of me.

Instead of being treated for my depression, anxiety, and borderline diagnosis, I was fast-tracked down the path to life-long medicalization.

Legislation preventing children from undergoing such life-altering procedures could have protected me and many others like me. I was utterly convinced by adults that I had been born in the wrong body, and that hormones and surgery were the cure.

I now understand that surgery on the body cannot change the brain. No doctor should remove healthy body parts or prescribe sterilizing drugs to children for a social contagion of mental suffering.

Walt Heyer Testimony, as of June 20th, 2023:

My name is Walt Heyer, and I am asking you to support the protection of minors from puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries that remove healthy body parts.

I lived eight years as a female named Laura Jensen after undergoing reassignment surgery forty years ago in 1983. I have since worked with hundreds of people over the last ten years who have been hurt by the gender reassignment industry. As someone who identified as transgender and went through the medical so-called transition process, I bring seventy-eight years of first-hand experience to the table. Over the years I have written several books on the topic, and now run the website SexChangeRegret.com.

For me, my transgender story began at four years old when I became curious about the dresses my grandmother made. She made a purple one for me and affirmed me, telling me how cute I was for over 2 years. Later, when my uncle found out about the dress, he began mocking me and molesting me. When I told my parents, they didn’t believe me. Around the age of thirteen I I took on a female identity for the first time. I kept it secret and called myself Chrystal.

Later in life I went to a gender therapist, Dr. Paul Walker, who told me that the only way to overcome my distress was to undergo hormone treatments and reassignment surgery. Dr. Walker was recognized as the top gender therapist in the country at the time, and had written the original Harry Benjamin International Standards of Care for treatment of gender identity disorder. Those standards of care are essentially what they are still using today. The gender medicine community tells teens and their parents those same lies today.

I now travel the world telling my story because Dr. Walker was wrong. To a person undergoing gender transition, in the beginning it feels like the right thing to do, even exciting, for the first few months or years. I felt at peace for the first four or five years after I transitioned. Then I realized the high cost of that tenuous peace. Identifying as female requireddestroying the identity of Walt so my female persona, Laura, would feel unshackled from Walt’s past, with all of its hurt, shame, and abuse. It’s a marvelous distraction for a while, but it isn’t a permanent solution when the underlying issues remain unaddressed. Medical intervention for what is a psychological issue is a band-aid. A band-aid that permanently harms a person, especially a young person.

We need to start actually helping these young people. I ask every person who comes to me for help, “When did you stop wanting to be who you are?” One-hundred percent of them can give me an answer. When they tell me their stories, I weep with them. Their stories are often so deep and hurtful that nobody wants to talk about it. But we need to start talking about it. People are saying that these interventions are needed to help prevent suicide, but often times the procedures themselves cause the suicides. It is insane to treat depression with hormones and surgery. These children need to go see a good, kind, professional psychotherapist to help them work through their situation.

Speaking from my own experience and on behalf of numerous people with stories like mine, I must say there is absolutely nothing good about affirming someone into a cross-gender identity. It will ruin their life. Hormones and genital surgery couldn’t solve the underlying issues driving my gender dysphoria, and I’ve talked with dozens of others like me who realized too late that surgery wasn’t the answer. Why would we abuse children with hormone blockers and cut their bodies apart as a way to effect treatment? It’s actually insane if we stop to think about

it. We are ruining a generation of young people, and it’s serious business. I’m not pulling any punches anymore, and you shouldn’t either.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I am 37 years sober after using alcohol and cocaine to mask the pain in my childhood and my regret after the surgery. Now I travel the country telling my story. North Carolina legislators, please support this bill and protect these kids.

Walt Heyer

[email protected]