Ex-trans pleads with govt to not ban therapy that ‘saved' him from suicide (Robert J. Wenman)
After SRS left him suicidal, Robert found healing in pastoral care. Bill S-202 would jail the very people who saved him. Let Canadians choose help, not silence.
Przegląd
Robert J. Wenman, who lived as a woman for 18 years, told Canadian senators that sex-reassignment surgery deepened his depression and nearly drove him to suicide. He credits faith-based pastoral conversations—now threatened by Bill S-202—for helping him detransition and reclaim his male identity, and he warns the bill would criminalise the very support that saved his life.
Pełne podsumowanie wideo
Robert J. Wenman, a detransitioned man from southwestern Ontario, addressed Canadian lawmakers to urge them to reject Bill S-202, which would criminalize so-called “conversion therapy.” Speaking from 18 years of living as a woman (1994-2012), Wenman insists that the legislation, if passed, would block the very kind of faith-based help that he credits with rescuing him from suicide. He stresses that his journey was not coerced by an intolerant society; rather, he voluntarily sought out a “fundamental Bible-believing church” after medical and psychological interventions failed to relieve his deepening depression. Wenman recounts that he underwent sex-reassignment surgery in 1997, believing it would resolve lifelong emotional pain and inferiority feelings. The initial euphoria quickly evaporated, replaced by “inescapable emotional burdens” that grew more intense. Antidepressants and secular counseling proved useless—he says he wound up educating the therapists—and he reached the point of contemplating death to escape the agony. It was only when he began to interpret his distress as “spiritual warfare” that he experienced what he describes as a divinely prompted awakening: the recognition that living as a woman was “factually untrue” and that his male birth sex was “a blessing, not a mistake.” Rejecting the idea of a “miracle cure,” Wenman nevertheless maintains that pastoral support and prayerful self-reflection allowed him to reclaim his male name and identity. He now views his gender confusion as rooted in undiagnosed Asperger’s syndrome and childhood social awkwardness, not in an innate transgender identity. Wenman therefore frames Bill S-202 as a politically correct measure that would criminalize the pastoral and therapeutic conversations that he and “many others” found life-saving. He closes by appealing to senators to “speak the truth with love and compassion,” arguing that vulnerable Canadians struggling with unwanted gender dysphoria deserve the same opportunity to explore faith-based perspectives that he says spared his life.