Authenticity? What does it mean when it comes to Gender identity?
I took hormones, had surgery, and lived as a woman for six years, but I was deluded. True authenticity is who God made you to be, not who your trauma says you are.
Overview
LaRell describes how watching a documentary in 2017 prompted his wife to ask if he wanted to live as a woman, leading him to transition socially, take hormones, and undergo vaginoplasty in 2019. For six years he believed he was living authentically, but eventually recognized his marriage and family were suffering. He now attributes his gender confusion to childhood experiences and loss of faith, criticizes affirming gender therapists for validating delusions rather than treating underlying trauma, and urges parents to turn to God rather than medicalization for children struggling with gender identity.
Full Video Summary
LaRell recounts that in early 2017, while watching the documentary Gender Revolution with his wife, she paused and asked whether he wanted to take female hormones and live as a woman. He had felt since childhood that he was truly female inside despite his male exterior, and he confessed that he did want to live as his authentic self. The news devastated his wife and their newly formed family, as they had married only four months earlier. He began seeing a gender therapist, obtained a letter qualifying him for female hormones, and gradually progressed to living full-time in a female expression by August or September 2017. Initially, he felt a sense of peace, belonging, and freedom he had never known, convinced he was finally living authentically. Yet his male anatomy still troubled him, and he quickly decided that gender reassignment surgery was essential to feel truly authentic. In July 2019, after two years on hormones, he underwent surgery to remove his penis and testicles and construct a vagina. Waking from surgery, he felt immense relief and believed his physical body finally represented his internal feelings. For six years, he lived as a woman—something he now says is impossible—and felt comfortable in his body, but eventually he recognized that something was missing. His marriage, family, parents, and he himself were suffering deeply. LaRell explains that shortly before transitioning, he had rejected God and become an atheist. Previously, his faith had kept his gender feelings from becoming a full identity, but without it he felt lost and untethered. He came to believe he had been born in the wrong body, a delusion he says was affirmed by a gender therapist who was herself non-binary and unable to accept her own biological reality. He argues that affirming therapists do not help clients see through confusion but instead validate delusions, often rooted in childhood trauma, to make themselves feel valid. He now believes that early experiences caused him to see maleness as unacceptable and femaleness as superior, and that the affirming mental health system disastrously reinforced this perspective. He asserts that every person is born in exactly the right body and that true authenticity means living in alignment with who God made them to be, not who their experiences led them to believe they were. He urges parents to avoid gender therapists for struggling children, warning that affirmation leads to destructive medicalization, and instead to turn to faith, reminding their children that they were born perfect as the male or female God designed.