‘Why Do I Still Hate Myself?’ Scottish Woman Realizes Gender ‘Transition’ Didn’t Take Away Her Problems

A woman in Scotland recently told the BBC that obtaining hormones and surgery to physically appear as a man did not eliminate her problems, and when she began advising mental health professionals of her regret, they offered little help.

Sinead Watson says that she read about gender dyphoria online when she was 21 and concluded that she had the condition as a number of the symptoms lined up. She decided to move forward with presenting herself as a man.

“I was very aware that I wasn’t going to literally change my sex, but I thought if I could transform to such an extent that I passed [as a male] and lived socially and legally as male, that it would solve all the problems I had,” she said. “So, if I transition, then all of the depression and self-hatred and discontent with my body would go away.”

Watson stated that she felt better for a while, but her problems never really went away. At first, she thought that maybe she just needed to give herself more time.

“I thought, ‘The longer I’m on testosterone, the more facial hair that I get, the more fat distribution, the more muscle mass, the more goes on, the better I’ll start to feel,”‘ Watson explained.

After undergoing a double mastectomy in 2017, she felt a “period of bliss” where she was pleased that she had reached a goal in the transformation — but it didn’t last. She realized there were deeper problems that were not going to be solved by presenting herself as a man.

“[W]hen the novelty of that wore off, I thought, ‘Why do I still hate myself? Why do I still have all these issues?’” Watson recalled. “And at that point, it was like, ‘Am I going to keep going? Am I going to get the hysterectomy, am I going to get the phalloplasty, and I’m still going to feel this way, or am I going to have to address the other problems that I have?’”

Watson soon came face-to-face with the realization that she regretted what she had done. She told the BBC that 2018 was the most difficult year of her life, but the mental health community was of little assistance.

“I got next to no support from mental health professionals. They seemed very uncomfortable whenever I discussed transition regret,” Watson lamented, adding that it was her family and friends who helped her through. “I probably wouldn’t be here without them, to be honest.”

When asked how she views a newly proposed bill that would make it easier for Scottish residents to change their gender, and would lower the permitted age to 16, she said that the measure is will sadly result in a “tidal wave” of young people seeking to get on board.

“I don’t know how anyone can claim that a sixteen-year-old who’s not old enough to drink, not old enough to smoke, [is] old enough and emotionally mature enough … to state in their statuatory declaration, ‘I intend to permanently live as this sex,’” Watson opined. “That’s when you’re forming your identity and who you are. You can’t say at sixteen that you know of a certainty that you are going to live this way.”

She outlined that she believes the recent uptick in such cases likely stems from young people who feel like misfits and who find a sense of community in the transgender world.

“I think when young people are lonely, maybe they don’t have many friends, maybe they’re not close with their family, … they turn to the Internet to find comfort and community,” Watson outlined. “And if they are sort of insecure about their bodies — maybe they are, in particular, gender non-comforming — they’ll be very, very warmly welcomed.”

“It’s like social contagion. It sweeps people up and brings them in, and initially, it’s very comforting. It’s like you find an online family and you don’t feel alone anymore.”

But, if the person doesn’t really have the condition, she mourned, “you end up like me, where you’ve irreversibly changed your body with hormones and surgery, and you feel humiliated, you feel ashamed of yourself and you feel completely betrayed by the people who allowed this to happen.”

Watson said that she knows of many others who regret their sex change efforts just like she does.

View the BBC’s interview with Sinead Watson here. 

As previously reported, while some view transgenderism as a medical condition, Christians believe the matter as a spiritual issue — one that stems from the same predicament all men everywhere face without Christ.

The Bible teaches that all are born with the Adamic sin nature, having various inherent feelings and inclinations that are contrary to the law of God, and being utterly incapable of changing by themselves.

It is why Jesus came: to “save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).

Scripture outlines that Jesus came to be the propitiation for men’s sins (1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10), a doctrine in Christianity known as substitutionary atonement, and to save men from the wrath of God for their violations against His law (Romans 4:25, Romans 5:9, Romans 5:16), a doctrine known as justification.

The Bible also teaches about regeneration, as in addition to sparing guilty men from eternal punishment, Christ sent his Holy Spirit to make those who would repent and believe the gospel new creatures in the here and now, with new desires and an ability to do what is pleasing in the sight of God by His indwelling and empowerment (Ezekiel 11:19, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Titus 3:5).

1 Corinthians 15:45 states, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam (Jesus) became a life-giving spirit.”

“Bitter experience teaches that the imprisoning net clings too tightly to be stripped from our limbs by our own efforts. Nay rather, the net and the captive are one, and he who tries to cast off the oppression which hinders him from following that which is good is trying to cast off himself,” also wrote the late preacher and Bible commentator Alexander Maclaren.

“But to men writhing in the grip of a sinful past, or paralyzed beyond writhing and indifferent, because [they are] hopeless, or because they have come to like their captivity, comes one whose name is ‘The Breaker,’ whose mission it is to proclaim liberty to the captives, and whose hand laid on the cords that bind a soul, causes them to drop harmless from the limbs and sets the bondsman free.”

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