Mick Hartley

More people speaking up about the nightmare of "gender-affirming" care:

When Ritchie Herron woke after gender reassignment surgery, he had a feeling he had made a terrible mistake. Five years later, his scars still sometimes weep and he cannot walk long distances or ride a bike. “I’ve awakened from what was a mental health crisis, to a body that will be for ever changed and damaged,” he said. He no longer identifies as transgender and is living as a gay man “as best I can, given what has happened”.

Now, the Newcastle-based civil servant, 36, has launched legal action against NHS England, alongside the “heartbroken” father of a 21-year-old who has been booked in for imminent genital-removal surgery at an adult gender clinic. The two men are demanding a judicial review which includes an independent inquiry into the safety of NHS treatments being offered to young people under the age of 25 who are experiencing gender dysphoria….

Herron was 25 when he decided he was a woman living in a man’s body. He had been bullied at school and struggled to cope with his parents’ divorce, and was diagnosed in his early 20s with depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

He decided he was transgender and “all my struggles were due to gender dysphoria” — an idea he says was encouraged by older activists in internet forums. He fixated on the idea that “my body was being poisoned by testosterone”, he says.

In 2013, he was referred by his GP to an NHS adult gender clinic, and says he was asked early on by an NHS clinician if he had considered gender reassignment surgery. He attended a private clinic as there was a long NHS waiting list, where he was diagnosed as transgender….

In 2017, he was given another referral for surgery, to be performed at a private hospital but paid for by the NHS.

Finally, in 2018, “two days before my 31st birthday, I underwent a surgery that removed my genitals, inverting them in a procedure that has been marked as refined, but is no more civilised than an amputation” he said.

“Today, despite multiple follow-up surgeries, my scar lines still weep, occasionally becoming inflamed and causing crippling pain. In the flesh cavity that was created to mimic a vagina, I feel mostly nothing, aside from the occasional stabs of pain. I can’t use the toilet properly . . . and no matter how hard I push or strain, a dribble emerges, which may continue for hours after I have left the seat.”

Herron was not diagnosed with autism until this year, but says he raised the condition with the NHS gender clinic. He adds that if he had received a comprehensive psychological assessment and treatment for conditions such as autism and OCD at the outset, he would never have undergone genital surgery. “I can deal with my own regret, and my own stupidity, but I can’t deal with the fact that I’m not alone in this. That there are not just dozens, or hundreds, but thousands of others like me, and more to come.

“We deserve a safety net, we deserve to be challenged in our beliefs before we make irreversible decisions that have huge lifelong consequences, we deserve to be caught and cared for. We do not deserve to be punished for asking for help, by being castrated and gaslighted into a way of thinking that isn’t our own.

“It is a matter of urgency that the treatment offered by adult services is reviewed and that safeguards are put in place.”

"First do no harm." Ha.