A woman who has lived for fifteen years as though she was a man has now said she regrets ever having surgery to ‘change sex’.
As a teenage girl Debbie Karemer was raped multiple times by her father.
This horrendous childhood experience stayed with her, and experts have told her it brought on post-traumatic stress disorder which she believes led to the desire for surgery.
‘Mutilated’
Debbie changed her name to Lee and underwent the irreversible surgery aged 44.
She had her breasts, uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes removed, and doctors fashioned a prosthetic penis for her.
She believes part of the decision to have surgery was her reasoning that if she did not have a vagina, she could not be raped again. But she now feels her body has been “mutilated”.
Missing Debbie
Debbie said: “I wish I could turn back the clock and just have the foresight of what the nightmare the next 15 years would be.
“I’m a woman – I’m not meant to be a bloke. I’m trapped. It’s a complete mess – where do you even start? I just regret the decision.
She is now on an NHS waiting list to have further surgery to ‘detransition’, and says “I miss being Debbie”.
Walt Heyer
Walt ‘detransitioned’ 25 years ago and set up sexchangeregret.com to help others in a similar situation.
He has explained how his grandmother’s push for him to cross-dress from an early age drove him to confusion over his gender.
He had sex-change surgery as an adult and lived as a woman for 10 years, before accepting that the change had not solved his problems and he returned to living as a man.
He spoke to The Christian Institute in 2016: