When I first started this journey, my Testosterone (T) and Estrogen (E) levels were checked in Sept 2014 before I started hormone replacement therapy. The results:
T=211
E=<20
The E level was no surprise as my body doesn’t naturally produce E in any usable quantity, but the T level was indeed an eye-opener. It was far below most statistical norms. Look at the left-most column in the attached chart for one who is 43. I wasn’t even at the 5th percentile.
All those years of emotional pain with so little T in my system!
Internally, I couldn’t imagine the testosterone-induced depressive hell I endured for 4 decades could have been any worse. But what if I decided to try T shots to help with the usual issues of getting older? That’s the manly thing to do, right? That means, what if T was actually in the ‘normal’ range? How much worse would the depressive hell have been back then? T wasn’t the solution, it was the enemy.
I shudder to think it could have been any worse than it was. But adding T to bring it into the mid-range, 400-600 would have been emotional disaster. Even the thought of being 2x-3x more of a depressed alcoholic because of T injections makes me cry. It was terrible enough. I’m glad I didn’t go this route, not even for a single T shot.
My last hormone test recently, the results:
T=<20
E=227
The numbers reversal is crucial…the depression and all the other muck disappeared with the introduction of E into my bloodstream. The numbers don’t lie. I am healthy and thriving!
I am thankful for advances in science because my lifelong depression is gone forever due to using estrogen. Truly a benefit to living in the 20th and 21st centuries in this country. However, many consider this evil and part of some “LGBT agenda”. I’m part of no agenda, don’t lump me in with one either, I’m me. The facts are clear, as a result of hormones and gender transition I’m alive without depression and thriving without needing a bottle of vodka.
So why are people so against trans people using cross-sex hormone therapy when it is the cure to lifelong depression, anxiety, and emotional numbness?
Russell Moore, a higher-up of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) wrote a dissertation in 2009 “John or Joan”, in which he clearly tells the possible member in his church John, who is transitioning to Joan, to stop hormones. When I read that, my jaw dropped. I can’t fathom someone who knows so little about this subject yet commands so much power in this organization, could negatively affect so many sitting in their pews every Sunday. He is affecting the hiding transgender people in those churches in substantially painful ways, driving them further into depression and too often with substance abuse.
Why then, would influential Mr Moore require someone to stop the very thing that is curing their ailment? Do we take away the medical inhaler from the asthma patient? Are we to remove the wheelchair from the handicapped person? Do we take away the pace maker from the patient with a weak heart? …all because we assert that God doesn’t make mistakes? Do we then claim the heart patient, asthma sufferer, handicapped person, and transgender individual are all confused about their physical condition? Are they all delusional?
No, of course not. But the church at large insists on treating transgender people as if we don’t know anything about our situation, thus insistig trans folks are confused and delusional. They make the assumption that something early in our youth steered us the wrong way. Such as us seeing an X rated movie or porn magazine when we were around 11 years old and that perverted image stuck in our head, driving us to live life as the opposite gender. Of course it didn’t, but they believe this false theory.
Did the handicapped person see someone in a wheelchair then say to themselves subconsciously “I want to live a life of hardship, I am handicapped!” No. This is absurd.
Did the heart patient have an obsession with clocks when they were younger causing them to want a pace-maker? Of course not.
Did the asthma sufferer purposely try to smoke mom or dad’s cigarettes when they were very young, causing them the delusion that are asthmatics later in life? No, that’s silly.
But then, why do powerful leaders insist that transgender people are confused and delusional when they approach this subject? I think it’s because it’s what has been handed down to our culture in preceding generations. Looking back at the church’s history, people afflicted with ALS were considered demonically possessed, but until science figured out they’re not, the church kept praying over them, commanding non-existent demonic spirits to leave their withering bodies. And when these non-existent spirits didn’t leave and the ALS sufferer didn’t get better, they sent them to insane asylums. Yet the church at large still considers transgender people outcasts and filled with demonic spirits and insists on sending us away from the very thing that transforms us to the better: gender transition.
Right in front of us is proof that refutes Mr Moore’s demand that trans people need to stop hormone treatments: replace the T with E in male-to-female transgender people and in virtually every trans person the depression clears up.
We are not delusional, the numbers don’t lie. We are not an agenda, we are not your political nor spiritual enemy, we are humans made by God, just like anyone else.
The ones who are confused and delusional are the ones who know little to nothing about this subject. They cite bloggers such as schizophrenic Walt Heyer time and again as gospel against being trans even though he was misdiagnosed decades ago. He was never transgender, read his back story. Then these leaders angrily insist they know the “right” answer, the “Godly way”, which is neither right nor Godly. Their way inflicts intense pain that, like ALS patients, never gets prayed away. Their way has one purpose: to make people conform to a role they are comfortable with in their presence. Yes, they are playing God. The god of their finite knowledge, but a god nonetheless.
In God’s presence, He loves all his children, he doesn’t tell them to conform to a system. He asks them to open their hearts to Him, to his son Jesus, no matter how one looks. It really is that simple.
Russell Moore, Michael Brown, Franklin Graham, et al…your advice to transgender people has been proven wrong time after time. Your stance is on the wrong side of salvation and the wrong side of truth. The numbers in my hormone tests don’t lie. When will YOU repent for misleading your followers spiritually and politically in regards to transgender people?
-MJ
Chart: NORMAL TESTOSTERONE LEVELS IN MEN: AVERAGE RANGES BY AGE
https://www.menshormonalhealth.com/normal-testosterone-levels.html
Russell Moore’s “John or Joan?”
http://www.russellmoore.com/2009/05/25/joan-or-john-my-answer-part-one/