Speaker 1: Hi everybody, and welcome to the Kylie Cast. I'm Kylie Griswold,
Managing editor at The Federalist. Please like and subscribe wherever
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course like and subscribe there too. As always, if you'd
like to email the show, you can do so at
radio at the Federalist dot com. I would love to
hear from you today. I am so honored to be
welcoming to the show Walt Hire. Walt Hire has more
life experience in his little finger than most people have
in their entire bodies. Walt is in his eighties. He's
just an incredible man and he has a wild story
to tell. Walt lived for eight years as a woman
before realizing the air of his ways, regretting his transgender
identifying path and reclaiming the God given design, becoming a Christian,
and living out his days as a man. Walt is incredible.
I had such an awesome time talking to him, and
I cannot wait for you to hear his story. You
can find him at Waldhire dot com. He's also written
a number of books, He's spoken a number of times.
Definitely go check him out. You can also read more
of his work on the Federalist dot com. But for now,
please welcome to the Kylie Cast. Walt Hire. All right, Walt, welcome.
It is so good to see you.
Speaker 2: Yeaht great to see you. I've been waiting for this
for a long time. So this is a thrill for me.
Speaker 1: You finally got the Federalist invite. It is truly an
honor to have your first Federalist appearance beyond the Kyli Cast.
I'm thrilled to have you.
Speaker 2: So it took me ten years, you know, after the
first article I wrote.
Speaker 1: But you know what, there, that's way too long. If
you ask me, I don't know what happened there. I
think we dropped the ball on that one. So or
honored to have you writing for us from time to time.
So I hope we see another article from you again soon. Well,
I was telling it coming awesome, awesome, I'll look forward
to it. My inbox is open. So I was mentioning
to you, Walt before we started rolling here that at
the first time I heard your story was actually when
I was in college researching for a gender revolution project
and I came across your story. And that was a
handful of years ago, now, before the gender craze really
took off and became quite the mess that it is today.
But so it's really really a privilege to get to
sit down with you and talk face to face with
you about your story. I never thought i'd get the
chance to do that. So, and frankly, I mean, your
story is long before, it long predates the gender craze
that we find ourselves into. So I want to hear
as much of your story as you're willing to tell today,
and specifically your testimony. But why don't we just rewind
all the way back to the very beginning. Can you
just give me a sense of where you grew up,
what your environment was like, what your family was like,
if you have siblings. Just kind of set the stage
for the beginning of Walt's life.
Speaker 2: Sure, I was born in nineteen forty, so we're right
now eighty five years since that started. And then my
dad was an industrial good salesman. My mom was She
worked in a factory, a sewing factory, so they were
both very busy. There wasn't a lot of money. We
were pretty pretty poor family actually at the time we
were growing up in the forties. Of course, the war
was on. My dad's father lived around the corner from us.
He was a super guy, really nice guy. He at
times would preach at church. He was a believer, and
my dad kind of distanced himself from that. I think,
you know a lot of sons and daughters kind of
when their fathers does pastor work, they sort of separate
themselves a little bit. So he didn't follow that real hard.
But so a good family on that side. On my
mom's side, they were really dirt poor, unbelievably poor family
that my mom came out of, which was kind of
contrasted with my dad's side. So my mom and dad
got married. My mom was only eighteen when they got married,
had my brother. They got married in thirty eight, had
my brother in thirty nine, and had me in nineteen forty,
so that's pretty quick go. But my so, I was
being babysat by my mom's mother, who was a drinker, smoker,
and quite robust woman. Actually, she was quite large, and
she would like the women back in those days, they
did a lot of knitting, didn't they. I mean that
was kind of a thing, knitting and.
Speaker 1: Sewing and kind of back around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so she was would try to make clothing
for people and try to make some money, you know,
they think they called them bazaars where that people would
get together and show their goods, and she would try
to make some money doing that. So the contrast was
really kind of remarkable between my mom and dad's family.
So anyway, how it all got started for me and
I had a brother that was eighteen months older than
I was still do but what happened was a lot
of babysitting. I was at my grandmother's house. My mom's
mom and her stepdad only had one leg and he
was a drinker, so it was kind of a unusual environment.
You know. My brother got to stay with my dad's dad,
which was a whole different thing. It was a very
nice three bedroom, two bath house, three car garage. It
was kind of high end versus I stayed in my
grandmother's house and grandfather's house, which was behind a junkyard
in Los Angeles, because we grew up in Los Angeles
in a low town called Highland Park, and so it
was a really rough The house was kind of a
ramshackled old place. If you looked out the front door,
as you saw it was broken down. Cars had been
towed in from the junkyard. So my dad and mom
would do a lot of fishing, and they would take
off on the weekend. They dropped my brother off at
my dad's parents' house and then dropped me off at
my mom's parents and they'd take off for the weekend.
And so my grandmother was making women's clothing. I'm four
years old, three four years old at this time, and
I would just kind of lean on the sewing machine
because there was nobody else around. I mean, it was desolate. There,
there were no kids, There's really nothing to play with,
and she was uninterested in entertaining me, not that she
was even capable, but so I got interested in just
watching her make clothing. And she decided, and I to
this day can't tell you how or why, but she
decided to make me a full length evening dress and
purple chiffon dress. And so she made that for me,
had me stand on this little cushion and made it
for me, and told me how cute I looked in it,
and how wonderful I looked in it. And so I
think this is kind of the start of where the
confusion came. And I think this is so instructive for
us to talk about because this is not gendered as
for you, and people will oftentimes migrate well that's you know,
that's a trans kid or something. You know, in nineteen
forty four, there were no words, right, we didn't know
your grandma's just cross dressing a kid, and we don't
know what that's about. And so, but what I really
think it is is when you take a young child
in cross dress, and like my grandma did me, it
has this effect on me as what's wrong with me?
How come Grandma's only talking about how wonderful I am
when I'm in a dress. So you're planning these very
contrasting seeds. So you begin as a child to want
to be affirmed and liked and so forth. So you're
going to migrate to wherever you're going to get the
most feedback that's positive. And that feedback happened to be
when I was wearing the purple dress, right right, Just
what happened, and so that built within me this whole thing.
And then she then remarkably she said, don't tell your parents.
This is our little secret. Well, you know, what's a
four year old kid?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Today, I would know if somebody said this is a secret,
you'd automatically know there's something wrong, right. I mean, that's
a big red flag right there.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: What that means is your parents aren't going to approve
of what I'm doing and I shouldn't be doing it,
but we're going to do it in secret.
Speaker 1: Right, which sadly is a pattern now. I mean that
happens a lot in public schools and elsewhere. Just the secrecy.
It's one of the hugest red flags I think about
this whole movement.
Speaker 2: That's why it's so important. I think that's why the
Lord had me go through this so that I could
talk about this at eighty five years old. I mean,
this is eighty one years ago, and to be able
to reflect on that, I think is so instructive and
even brilliant on the Lord's part to have me be
able to document that real life experience which we're seeing
with schools today, so we know if you take a
child in a firm them and do this to them
before their brains are fully developed, which takes to twenty
five or thirty. For me, it may take even longer
than eighty five. Is still working on getting it there,
but I think this is I believe they know that
by cross dressing kids at a young age, they can
affect their long term behavior. And so they and my
grandma didn't know that, but so I'm learning through this process.
So anyway, two and a half years of doing this
at Grandma's house, and I decided that I got so
accustomed to that purple dress that I decided I was
going to sneak the dress home, even though it was
a secret. I put it in a brown paper bag,
and when Dad picked me up, I took it home
and put it in my bottom dresser drawer.
Speaker 1: So a perpetual thing this was happening every time you
would go over there, or most of the times you
would go over there.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent time. I was going out, Yeah, for
two and a half years, So you're building something there, right,
And she never talked about the fact that, you know,
I like to wear cowboy boots, that I had blue jeans,
that I was kind of a scruffy kid. I don't
I didn't ever see myself as being a feminine kid.
I was small, but you know, I liked bicycles, I
liked sliding in the dirt. I was gruffy, I was
dirty all the time. So was what she was doing
was kind of the opposite I believe of where I was,
but it was It just shows you what you can
do to a young child in their early development by
doing these things. So I went on for two and
a half years, took the dress home and thinking that
I would wear it when I had a chance, when
I could hide and do it, and then sort of
feel what I was getting from grandma, because you know,
in a typical household in the forties, parents aren't affirming
their kids as a boy or girls. It was you know,
you just grew up, you know, you know, you weren't
waiting for daddy. Well, you're a really cool guy, you know.
And then right, so, so you had this grandma who
was doing this, and dad was a great guy. But
when my mom found that purple dress in my dress
or drawer when she was putting clothes away, she pulls
it out and she goes, where'd this come from? I said, well,
grandma made it. Grandma made it. I mean she was
like shocked. And then my dad heard that, and that
caused this huge explosion and major fight, screaming and yelling,
and so what I realized then, if.
Speaker 1: You were with your mother or with your grandma, my mom.
Speaker 2: And dad going at it. Look what your mom's doing
to my boy? What you know that kind of thing,
And he's slamming doors and she's yelling and they're yelling.
And here's the other thing that happened there. I was
told to keep a secret and I didn't, right, I
broke the secret. So now I'm feeling bad because I
feel like I caused them to have this. Arguments like
now it's my fault.
Speaker 1: Right, secret that you never should have had to keep
in the first place, and now you're feeling shame for
having shared it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I didn't keep it, and now I'm seeing
the consequences, which I don't like looking at of breaking
the promise or the secret. So as my dad then,
nineteen forty six, he didn't know what to do, right.
He's an auxilary policeman for the Los Angeles Police Department.
He's a judo expert, he's a strong man, he's a
man's man, he's fantastic guy, and he didn't know what
to do. So he decided that any infraction or anything
that I did at that time that required some discipline
or he felt needed to be disciplined, was done with
a hardwood floorplank, and he beat the crap out of me,
be honest with you. Pardon me for saying that, but
I mean it was he left welts on my little
butt at six years old. So you got the cross dressing,
then you got the hardwood floorplank. And then he had
an adopted older brother, actually it was a teenager younger
brother that was adopted Uncle Fred. And because of the
purple dress, Uncle Fred decided that I was fair game
to be sexually molested when I was eight and nine
years old.
Speaker 1: So sorry, So you see.
Speaker 2: This is not particularly uncommon by the way, is this
is not this is not. This story I believe is
so instructive for the Lord Jesus Christ to allow me
to speak through it and to it this many years later,
because this is happening every day in our country. That's
happening every day in households, and we need to understand
when we talk about these things, the damage that's being
done not just to the child, but to their long
term development as a child is there's a term for it,
and you've probably heard of because I've written articles about.
It's called adverse childhood experiences. And adverse childhood experiences are
the result of causes trauma. It causes PTSD, dissociative disorders,
a group of things, obsessive, compulsive, and all these things
are sort of the underlying issues when you suffer trauma
as a child, and that's trauma. It seems Grandma did
psychological and emotional abuse by cross dressing.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: I want people to hear that when you cross dress
a child, you're doing psychological and emotional abuse. It's not
just cross dressing a.
Speaker 1: Kid, right right.
Speaker 2: And then my dad did physical abuse, and then my
uncle did sexual abuse. Now there's not too many abuses
left in the box to lay on a kid before
they're nine.
Speaker 1: Years old, that's the trifecta. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I'm trying to work through all this stuff
and I'm not doing real well with it. So just
to be kind of humorous. That was the way I
sort of buried my pain was. I was always trying
to be a jokester in humors, although I found myself
isolating from others because I felt awkward. And I remember
a day. I don't know how old I was, but
I remember one day I could not stop crying. I
just could not stop crying. I was in so much pain.
And my dad and mom were going to go to
dinner and they decided, you know, I'm only like nine
years old at the time, maybe ten. They decided to
leave me at home and said, I don't want to
bring this kid. They just left me at home. They
went out to dinner and left me in the house
by myself at ten because I was crying. But you see,
they didn't and again these are important things to consider.
They didn't reach out and sit down with me and
say why are you in pain? Wouldn't that have been nice? Right?
Sometimes parents as good as my dad was good as
my mom was. Some things we miss and I'm sure
I did that when I was raising my kids too,
So I'm not saying I'm perfect. It's just something we
can go through these processes and kind of instruct ourselves
to have these little things we look for and make
sure that we don't make those mistakes. And instead of
telling me to sit home and they take off and
go to dinner, find out what's wrong.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, it's so important for kids to have a
safe adult to talk to about these things because whether
it's you know, a child in a Christian home who
doesn't feel that they can talk to their parents about
same sex attraction, or a child who's struggling with their
identity that doesn't talk to their parents, somebody's going to
talk to them about it. So the question is, you know,
who is that person going to be? And it's really
important that a child can talk to his or her
parents about it. So it's not from the school counselor
who says, okay, now let's keep this conversation a secret
from your parents, for instance.
Speaker 2: Right, And so when I told him what uncle did,
Uncle Fred did about molesting me, there was another blow
where they said well, we asked Uncle Fred, and Uncle
Fred said, he didn't do that, so you must be
lying to us. So, you know, you start accumulating these things.
And all of a sudden, now because I said that,
because you had mentioned child needs a safe adult to
talk to, right, I can't talk to anybody because they
don't think I'm telling the truth. Right because Uncle Fred
said no, he's lying. I didn't do that. So and
I understand Uncle Fred wanted to protect himself. I get that.
So anyway, by the time I'm thirteen years old, I
am really confused. I don't there's no words like genderness
for you, transgender, any of that stuff. And so I
took on a kind of a secret identity called Crystal West,
probably in my early teens, and I would secretly go
out in the backyard or places I could go cross
dressed than when I knew my parents weren't going to
be around. And if the car started coming in the
driveway at a place, I could go hide and undo
the cross dressing. And so all these things were What
was the cross dress about? Well, I was trying to
recapture what Grandma was talking about about this nice kid. Right,
this is how wonderful I was, because that's what she talked.
So I'm trying to find out why how do I
get to be in wonderful right? And the only place
that that seemed to be was inside this with this
stress over me.
Speaker 1: So even though you're not looking for outside affirmation or
validation anymore when you're cross dressing, that was the one
time when you felt that I'm accepted, I'm praised, I'm
liked this way. Is that what you mean? Is that
what was going on psychologically?
Speaker 2: Or I think what you know? I've thought through that
a million times, and I can't say definitively exactly why
I was doing it, whether it became an addiction or
a habit or an obsession. Maybe more in line with
what it was I in my mind, I think, well,
maybe I was just trying to recapture hearing what grant
Emma was saying. If I put on the dress, I
could then replay in my head how cute I was,
or how nice I was, or how wonderful I was
because I was in pain. You know, when you're in pain,
you want people to tell you how wonderful. Yard has
an effort to try to get out of the pain.
So I'm cross dressing at thirteen and taking on a
name Crystal West. I'm telling one or two real close
friends that I have about what I'm dealing with and
finding that in the fifties that's not safe thing to
do because they would immediately abandon me and kind of
shun me. And I understood that later on. But then
there was this thing Christine Jorgensen hit the headlines. Was
a marine soldier I forget which branch of the service
that they called, went through the surgery and became a transsexual.
That was the first terminology that was done. And so
they called it a transsexual. And the surgery, who apparently
was done somewhere in Europe, Germany or somewhere I'm not
even sure.
Speaker 1: And when you first heard this term, was it an
immediate oh, that's that's what I am or want to be,
or just finally give language to how you were feeling
or what?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, it did all of those things. It gave
language to it. It said that must be what I am.
And see, here's the thing. I can say it today,
But I can say that must be what I am
without being able to process the fact that I've been abused.
See this was this whole thing was about abuse. I
was trying to escape abuse, right, And I can tell
you definitively, I never really wanted to be a woman.
That was never what it was about. I just did
not want to be in pain. How do I escape paint?
I spent my life trying to escape pain, right, and
I did it in numerous ways. Cross dressing was supposedly
one of the relief things, you know, and so I anyway,
I took on that identity. I kept that secret. I
had a girlfriend. I never had same sex attraction. I
never had the homosexual part. I don't even know what
that's about. And ninety percent, frankly, more than ninety percent
of the thousands of people I've worked with were not
homosexual or had same sex attraction. So it's usually what
I found. Like with me, it's usually a broken identity.
In helping somebody, you need to find out how it
got broken, what caused it to be broken, what caused
you to not like who you are? Is the message
that I always work with.
Speaker 1: So I went on girlfriend. Did you share any of
this with the girlfriend at the time or was it
all very private and secret?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It was private for a while until I started
building trust with her. And her name was Loulah Joey Phipps,
your redhead, amazing sharp gal. And so I finally had
the nerve to tell her, and she was so wiped
out about me telling me. I've realized I can never
tell anybody ever again because it just destroyed her, you know.
And and so these these events that you have really
shape how you go through life, who you can talk to,
and what you do, and how you live, and where
your what your secrets are, and and and and so
they they shape all the pathways you take. And many
times the pathways are unhealthy and they're destructive. And so anyway,
I went on through that, and I had a few
more girlfriends, but nothing real serious.
Speaker 1: And then and since you said you didn't actually uh
think that you were a woman or necessarily even wanted
to be a woman, or maybe that's not how you
would characterize it, but there was no feeling of like
resentment or jealousy about these girlfriends and the lives they
were living, right because it wasn't ultimately a sex a
sex thing, It was just an identity thing. You didn't
want to be Walt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't want to be the guy who was
cross dressed by grandma, beat up by my dad, and
sexually abused by my uncle. I did not want to
be that guy. I didn't have too many other choices
on where I could go with that, right, And so.
Speaker 1: Back up just a second. Was your experience with your
grandmother is? Are those your earliest memories? Do you remember
childhood before being cross dressed?
Speaker 2: I do. I had an event before that with my
mother when I was probably two and a half inch
and I wasn't sure about what this was. And it
was probably only eight or ten years ago that I
found out that my memory was true about it. But
I knew something when I was maybe two or two
and a half three years old with my mother happened
and it was a very painful thing, and I didn't
know how to deal with it. And we finally had
a chance to talk about it. My mom admitted to
me just before she passed away that when I was
two three years old, somewhere in there, that she almost
killed me from shaking me so hard because she was
so angry at me.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, like she she tried to kill you,
or she accidentally almost.
Speaker 2: She accidentally almost did it by just shaking the daylights
out of me. And I do have a vague rememory
of that. And yeah, she she remembered it, brought it
back and we talked about it. When a lady I
think in Minnesota or somewhere was convicted of shaking a
baby to death. Yes, and that was probably how many
years ago it was. She said, that could have been me,
you know, and so and I had some recollection. But
you know, when you don't have all the pieces, you know,
your brain at two year old two and a half
year old brain put all the pieces together. I never
confronted her about it, but she finally confessed it to
me and to my wife, my current wife, and so
and so she said, yeah, I almost killed you and
and and as devastated you know that. And and here's
the thing. This was the one thing too, that I
realized about my mom. She never and she lived to
be eighty six years old, never said she loved me.
Speaker 1: Wow, Never, not even late in life, like as she's
confessing these things to you.
Speaker 2: No, she was so upset with all the things I
went through, my struggles that she only saw that as
her big burden, not she you know, my life gave
her a big burden. That's why she saw it. I
ruined her life, basically, Wow, so so, But she really
cared for my brother, who was older, and so I
know I was trying in the best way. I think
there's also the element of me trying maybe if I
was a girl, maybe mom would like me.
Speaker 1: Sure? Sure, I think yeah, Oh sorry, I was just
going to ask was there an element of that with
your grandmother? I mean, you probably can't psychoanalyze your grandmother
or her intentions, but do you know why the repeated
cross dressing and the you know, all of this, you're
so wonderful, you're so cute with the dress, Like, was
there a sexual component to that? Was there? Or wish
for a girl component? Like do you know if there was?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there might have there might have been. Yeah. I
don't have the why she was a drinker. She wasn't
she was not bright. She was raised in the dust
bowl and all that stuff. She had a terrible life.
Her first husband divorced, her second husband only had one leg.
I mean, they lived in a trailer park. It was
you know, it was low lolo go. So I don't
know where she came up with this, and I don't
know if she was trying to make me into a
girl or whatever. But the damage, it lasts a lifetime.
Isn't that amazing? It lasts a lifetime. Yeah, you can,
you can get healed through the power and grace of
Jesus Christ and move on with your life. But there's
still battle scars, you know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, And then how long did the abuse with
your uncle last? Was that very prolonged or was it
a one episode type of thing or.
Speaker 2: Oh, it lasted for probably a year or so, not frequently,
but it lasted for a while.
Speaker 1: But there was no adult that believed you.
Speaker 2: No. No, And even when I told my older brother,
you know, when we're both in our twenties, he said, no,
that now, wrap and you're making that up. His dad
told me, you made it up? Okay, So I had.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It just made things a little bit more challenging. It
didn't make them impossible. It just meant that I had
to I had to build the one word that I
really love. I had to build resilience. That's the word
that kept me. Resilience. And you just keep If you
don't have resilience, man, you're gonna you're going to crash.
I didn't have the best. I've got it. I've got
it now, but it took me a while to build
that resilience. So, you know, I went on went on,
and then I was identifying as some other female, probably
in my teens, and I was actually going to I
had a car. Then I would go to these dress
up balls they had, you know, they would have a
queen for a day, which is a guy dressing up,
and they'd have and they were pretty big in LA.
They had, you know, a few hundred people in a
theater and they'd have these people, probably more I really
couldn't associate him with because I think they were more
drag like. And I think the drag group was homosexual.
I wasn't. I never partnered with any of them. I
never got to be friends with any of them. I
was an observer and watched this happening and I found
it interesting, but I couldn't put the pieces together for me.
You know, why am I drawn to that? Why am
I going to They're doing the same thing I am,
And what are they about? What are they doing? So?
And then I, you know, and I was going to church.
I was really trying to find a relationship with Christ through.
Speaker 1: This, and how old were you at the time.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm nineteen by this time, okay, twenty, and I started.
I was very interested in aerospace, and I started working
in the aerospace industry and worked on I eventually became
in a OHIAD design engineer on the Apollo Space Missions
one and for North American Aviation. I worked on the
area of cryogenics. I helped develop cryogenic connectors that couldn't
withstand the three hundred and fifty two degree below zero
temperature in the tanks. And so I was making really
good money. I was, you know, I was wearing these
one hundred and twenty five dollars shoes and seventy dollars
slacks and thirty dollars ties when I'm in my twenties, right.
Speaker 1: And are you living with or near your parents at
this point or when did you break away from there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, unfortunately, my dad passed away from cancer when
I was.
Speaker 1: Twenty oh which sorry to hear was and I was.
Speaker 2: At his bedside. And the story behind that was he
got cancer. In those days, they just sent people home,
and he had lung cancer. And so I was actually
we're working during the daytime and going to my mom's house.
We'd take shifts where she would be up all night
caring for him because he had to have morphine and
he was in these braces. He was just really sick.
And then I would go to work and come back
and work, stay up with him all night. So we
just trade these things. And at the end of a month,
I'm working at this aerospace industry on the polic space missions.
And my boss I can still remember his name, Katsumi Wakamatsu,
So kats if you're out there, baby, he's a cool guy.
So I was driving forty miles to work because my
mom needing me at home where dad was, and it
was a long race for so forty miles each way
was pretty intense. And so I went to work one
day and the boss, he says, come into the office
and I said, what's up? I want to talk to you.
So he said, you know, you're usually really high energy,
you're usually really on the ball, but there's something something
not going right. What's up? And then I told him
about my dad and about taking care of him because
he's sick. I'm up all night and so a month
for many hours. You know, if you're you're up a
whole day in a night and then going to work
the next day. And so he said, go get your
time card. I actually thought he was going to fire me.
And so I went and got my time card and
he held the time card he says, you go take
care of your dad. I will fill your time card
in every day. You don't have to worry about money.
You feel about your dad. Wow, that was what an
impression that made. I mean, I wept all the way home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so was John. I mean, maybe this is maybe
this is reading too much into it, but was that
the one of the first expressions of real love and
care that you had received in your life?
Speaker 2: Or I mean, now that was powerful and to actually
actuate that point I missed the word. But anyway, yes,
because look I can remember it today and talk about
it today like it happened today, because that was such
a nobody else has ever done anything like that in
my life. That was powerful. Just go home when you
come back, you're good.
Speaker 1: Yep, and so so sacrificial and giving and yeah, just
love an action in a way that you hadn't seen.
Speaker 2: I'm sure man, that was something. So and my dad
did pass and then I went back to work, and
then I went to work at a different facility with
a different bus, and and I grew through the ranks.
I was there for five years working on electronic things
and had a great job. But here's where the things
started to go a little haywire. You know, I couldn't
get the abuses. I couldn't handle them. They were affecting me.
And I started drinking. Okay, you know, you go after work,
you're you're in your twenties, and you know the people
you work with, come on over and have a drink.
You come on over, and I have a drink, do
this and that. So I got I was drinking way
too much, and I was having res I hit things,
rec cars. I was having a bad time because I
couldn't I didn't know where could I go with this
bucket of pain that I had from my childhood. Here
I am at this level as a youngster, working in
an environment where I can really be successful. But I
have this big, huge baggage that I don't know what
to do with and I don't even want to frankly
talk about with anybody.
Speaker 1: Right, And what did that look like? I mean, day
to day, hour to hour. Was it something that you
just thought about constantly? Is it something that work distracted
you from? Like what did that look like in practice?
What were you thinking and feeling you know while you
were at work and while you were driving, and you know,
while you were drinking, Like, yeah, what was I was like.
Speaker 2: I'd get to work. I was super responsible, always on time,
never late, no matter what. I always did fantastic work.
I was dedicated to my I was a perfectionist. After
I got off work, I started drinking on the way home.
And so I was married at the time, having children.
I had two children. I was becoming very, very irresponsible,
and I was really not liking who I was. I
really I didn't like who I was. It's bad enough
I didn't like who I was as a kid. Now
I've got this duality in life where I'm continuing to
cross dress secretly throughout my life. You know, so these
I would go sneak off to a hotel and do this.
So I spent my entire life, from the first time
Grandma cross dressed me, my entire life struggling with this
whole identity thing and who was I? And so as
I went went on, and eventually I started doing cocaine.
You know, I got divorced. I ended up having the surgery.
I went to a therapist and told him Doctor Paul
Walker in San Francisco. Doctor Paul Walker is no lightweight.
He actually wrote the original WPATH Standards of Care. Oh wow,
he drafted him. When he first drafted him, they were
called the Harry Benjamin International Standards of Care. And he
was the caretaker of those standards that became WPATH in
the nineties, and he massaged those standards all through that.
He diagnosed me in nineteen eighty one when I went
to his office because I was making money, and they said, Oh,
this guy's the big, big boy Huna, this is the
guy you need to go to. I went there. I
was intoxicated. When I showed up in his office. I'm
dressed up as a female and I don't even remember.
I think I had Lola. I don't know what name
I was even using then. And the first session he
diagnosed me with genderness for you, and he says, come
back next week and I'll have a letter of approval
for surgery.
Speaker 1: Wow. Never asked about your past, never asked me.
Speaker 2: I told him about my past. I told him everything
I've told you. I told him, and he said.
Speaker 1: Wow, Wow, Okay, so let's let's rewind for just a second.
So let's go back to how did you meet your
first wife and what did that look like. Did she
know anything about your struggles about your cross dressing? How
much did she know about your past and about your
the pain that you were dealing with.
Speaker 2: I met her at the time. I was driving. I
was going back and forth to work and helping my
mom in La and.
Speaker 1: So I went to church when your dad was sick.
Speaker 2: My dad was sick, so I would take the opportunity
to go to church on Sunday night. It was a
Young Young Person's group and I was with my friend Steve,
and I told Steve when Sue walked across the floor,
I said, I'm going to marry her. He said, well,
you are a nut. You can't. You can't do that,
you know. So after the after church, I said, did
you like to go for some ice cream? And so
she said yeah. So I took her to ice cream
and we built a relationship. Her dad was very wealthy
executive at Disney Studios. Yeah, and so we built a
relationship and I was, you know, she knew the struggle
I was having with my dad. And I think that
was you know, she felt that she wanted to comfort me,
and she knew that I was traveling back and forth.
But we ended up getting married in nineteen sixty one,
and we were married for about fifteen years. But during
those fifteen years was the most tumultuous, most Oh my gosh,
bless her heart. You know, she's a believer. We went
to church, but I was absolute tragic mess because there
was there really was nothing and no one that anyone
knew what to do with people who struggled with this stuff.
Speaker 1: So she knew you were struggling with these Yes.
Speaker 2: I told her right off the bat, and then she said, well,
we'll work through this, you know. And I was pretty
confident I could work through it. I thought, well, if
I if I got if I had a good job,
it would go away. If I had kids, it would
go away. If I got married, it would go away.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all these things would fix it.
Speaker 2: Everything would fix it. Right if I just you know,
had two parking places, two cars, and I was a
big shot at work, that would fix it. Nothing fixed it,
and so they when I then was approved for surgery,
I told her, you know, about the fact that I
was going to have this surgery and course that ended
our marriage, as it should. And so my daughter then
at the time was enter teens and she didn't speak
to me for eight years, and that, rightfully, I totally
supported her not speaking to me for eight years. I
think she did the right thing.
Speaker 1: Was the dration of you living as a woman, which
we know, we know you can't actually change your sex,
but right, okay, that was the direction of that.
Speaker 2: Okay, So she was waiting for me to find my
way back. So and my son, he took it a
little different because he would just say, when when I
was having these struggles, you know, yeah, I know this
thing about what's on the outside, but I know who
you are on the inside. Kind of the brightest bulb
and the chandelier really when you think about it.
Speaker 1: So, and how old was he at the time.
Speaker 2: I think he was about twelve, Okay, yeah, so so.
So the truth is I struggled for forty six years
with cross dressing, transgend or whatever you want to call it.
I don't call it transgenderism. There's no such thing. That's
one of the things that pains me so deeply. There
is no such thing as a transgender I was never
a transgender. I never detransition. There's no transitioning. All these
words are. The thing that probably pain me the most
is that when I read an article and says, you know,
a trans runner, there is no such thing as a
trans runner. It's a guy identifying as a female. I
don't know why we can't write this way. You know,
we're doing such a disservice to the whole nation by
calling these people trans.
Speaker 1: And well, it works to the benefit of the industry.
You know, it's all euphemism, it's all yeah, it's all propaganda.
It's language manipulation tended to achieve this desired outcome. What
kind of language do you suggest that people use. Give
them some tools to put in their toolbox to refer
to some of the outings.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I say, you're struggling with your identity.
It's an identity issue. It's not even about gender. I
have any you know, As you know, I've worked with
thousands of people. I haven't found one of them and
had genderdice for you, even though they were all diagnosed
with genderdice for you, when you spend time with them
and get to what caused them to not like who
they are, and deal with the underlying issue. It's never
about gender. It's not even a gender issue. It's all
kinds of other issues. And I've written many articles in
The Federalist about that, and in fact, that's a good segue.
Speaker 3: The Treasury just made a huge announcement regarding illegal immigrants.
Speaker 4: The Washed Out a Wash podcast with Chris Markowski. Every
day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the
economy and how it affects your wallet.
Speaker 3: The Treasury says illegal immigrants will be removed from the
financial system completely. If you can't get a job here
and you can't get benefits, you're not going to come.
This should have been done years ago.
Speaker 4: Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street,
it's affecting you financially.
Speaker 2: Be informed.
Speaker 3: Check out the Watchdot on Wall Street podcast.
Speaker 4: With Chris Markowski on Apples, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Yes, I was going to ask you about your new
book for Pete. This is also a good reminder for
anyone who is just listening to the podcast. It will
be a great time to go over to YouTube or
Rumble and watch this episode there so you can see
the full video version of my conversation with Walt and
see his book that he just flashed on the screen
Embracing God's Design. Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and this book is really I wrote it
with doctor Jennifer Balance, who is a trauma therapist, because
I suffered trauma, and I want people to understan and
that you don't have gender dysphoria. You've been suffering from
adverse childhood experiences, or you've got addicted on the internet,
or it was a social contagion, and these social contagents
are just as powerful. I've had teachers tell me that
they have students that have come to them and confessed
I'm afraid to not identify as a transgender or I
will be bullied. It's just the opposite of what people think.
You know, I'm being bullied because I'm a transgender. No,
you're being bullied because you're not. And so there's a
lot of things to unpack in this. So the language
I use is when somebody writes me, and I actually
have fun doing this, and they write me and they
say I'm transgender, I transition, I have gender dys for you,
and I have a gender therapist. Right in back, I say, well,
your gender therapist is a quack. You're not a transgender,
you've never transitioned. And if you work with me, I'll
bet you find out you never had gender dysphia. And
so we have we open the door up. And and
what's interesting is in working with the people that I've
worked with who reach out to me, when when they
find out that they're not when I don't address them
as transgender, that's a relief to them mm hm, and
I don't use their pronouns. You know you it is
on any level. You can't biologically change anybody. You can't
medically change anybody's gender. You can't sign. I don't care
what you do. All you can do is cosmetic work.
And in this book, Embracing God's Design is a document
by the surgeon who did my surgery and undersigned by
doctor Walker, who wrote the Standards of Care, where they
say you cannot change Get this the word inter morphology.
What is that? That's who, that's what you're made of.
You can't change who you are. That was a clever
way for them to dodge saying you can't change your gender.
They just used inter morphology and to cover themselves, give
themselves cover for doing the surgery because they were still
in business. It's the hormones themselves are over a four
billion dollar business. It's probably four point four bill I
don't know what it is today. So it's a money game.
And the people who advocate for this, if we look
at them, they're the same people who tear down statues.
They're the same people who kill babies in the womb.
They destroy things. The only thing that this is my
line on transgenderism. It only devalues, dehumanizes, and destroys everybody
it touches. Devalue, dehumanize, destroy because under God's design, you
have purpose as a identifying as a transgender. Leave me,
there's no purpose there. God gives you a purpose. You
can no longer when you have all these surgeries, become
a father or bear a child. They're destroying things. This
is to me, this is you know, I'm eighty five.
I know I don't have a ton of years left.
The sand is coming out of this, and for me,
the most important thing is for people to stop this
absolute insane nonsense of calling people transgender. There are none.
You know, they're cross dressers or they're struggling with their
identity and so they're strictly. You know, I've called it
even in the Federals. I think I had one where
I called it folklore, you know, so it's phony. I've
tried to the truth is, I've tried to come up
with every way to help people identify this in such
a different way. Well, I just don't get why we
continue saying they trans I don't even like D transition,
I get. I get really upset. Well, you're a D transition.
No I'm not. I never transition. They got body parts
of I was on hormones for twelve years. I was
an idiot, you know, I.
Speaker 1: Was mutilated and I regret it. Yes, and so right.
Speaker 2: I just hope and pray that we can start using
the language and be more instructive to people to stop
calling people transgender. I say transgender identifying person.
Speaker 1: Yes, yep, yeah, that's the kind of language we use
at the Federalists too. We're very careful. We even try
to use sex instead of gender wherever we can, because
sex is, you know, your physical embodiment, like things are gender.
Language has a gender, but human beings have an embodiment.
They have a physical biological sex, and it goes all
the way down to your chromosomes. I mean, this is
not even just determined by your genitalia, and it's certainly
not something that's assigned at birth. It's something that is
inherent to who you are. And you know, especially as Christians,
we know we're not just a physical body either. It's body, soul, spirit, mind,
it's all of these things and they're not they're not disconnected.
You cannot just change your body and therefore change change
your change who you are at your core. And it's
it's such a lie. And I love that you said,
you know how freeing it is for people to actually
hear you say you are not transgender, or to correct
you know, these patterns of language manipulation, because you cannot
be freed of these of these things unless you're you're
willing to tell the truth about them. And I think
it's such a lie that it's a kindness to use
people's preferred pronouns, for instance. And I mean, we know
as Christians that we don't wrestle against flesh and blood.
We wrestle against principalities and powers and the enemy, meaning
the devil. And when we engage in these kind of
language games, we're believing the lies of the enemy, that
that truth is malleable, that human beings are, that God
makes mistakes, that you know, I mean, there's so many
lies wrapped up in this that we just fall for
hook line and sinker by letting, letting trans ideologues define
what is kind and good and true and beautiful. And
it's just.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and and and when you think about it,
when I've said this a million times, my wife's heard me,
Oh well just stay quiet, you keep You've said that
a million times. I'm going to say it again. Uh,
is a woman nothing more than a man with full
of hormones with his genitals cut off?
Speaker 1: Are you asking me? Is a woman that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I think that absolutely not. That's my point.
And so this is what they're trying to push on society,
and they've successfully done so for a long time. And
and we could get into the fact that there's there's
other factors involved here, like auto gnaphilia that nobody to
talk about, which is a huge issue. And Leah Thomas
had gone public with being auto gynophilia. Well, if you
identify as autogilia, you're not transgender. Sorry, that's a sexual
fetish disorder. Let's get honest about it. You have a
sexual fetish, Come.
Speaker 1: Clean, right, right? Can you explain what autogonophilia is for
people who maybe haven't heard that term before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a man dresses up in feminine clothing and looks
in the mirror. He sees the object of his affection.
This is what brings him to sexual arousal. So it's
a sexual fetish disorder. And for transvestic fetish disorder, it's
a piece of clothing, shoes, other objects. And so these
are mental disorders. These are absolute disorders. And to give
them the title of transgender and give them some special
play in society just absolutely infuriates me. And so you know,
this whole thing about honesty. I love the fact to
what the Federals does. That's why I've stayed with them
for so long. And so I just I'm really trying
to finish out my life getting this language right and
getting people, everybody who writes and publishes articles to stop
talking about trans people trans You know, parents say I've
got a transcitt. You don't have a transkit. You got
a kid who somebody's told was trans. I was a
kid at four years old. I know what happens, and
it didn't good right. And I think telling somebody their
trans well it may make them feel good is also abusive.
Or using their pronouns does not honor and glorify Jesus.
Because that's the place where my dividing point comes. I
don't want to say anything that doesn't honor and glorify Jesus.
So sorry, buddy. You know, somebody just wrote me yesterday
and says, talk to her. You know she just I said, Well,
when mister White wants to talk to me, he can
write me and I'll talk to him about it. But
I don't. I don't play those games. And I think
there's some place we have to start. And and for me,
the most beautiful part was when I got sober and
I started going to a a and I spent a
lot of times. I went into a woman's recovery center.
I was still struggling, and and I started going to
church as Laura and and I started going to the church.
When I talked to the senior pastor there, Jeff Ferraar,
I told him, you know, I'm struggling with this stuff
I had this childhood. And he said, well, we have
a PhD Christian therapist here that I'll talk to him
and see if he wants to talk to you. So
doctor Arnold in Samontao, California, he he just kind of
gave himself to me in terms. He said, here's my
phone number, call me anytime. I'll meet with you anytime.
Never charge me a time. He said, I'm really interested
in just learning your struggle. And so we didn't have
a formal weekly thing. We just had from time to
time getting together. But in that process and then going
through AA and getting four or five years of recovery
by nineteen ninety. I had just written a poem in
nineteen eighty nine that was called who Am I? And
I was struggling, and the poem was I'm reaching out
to you. Can you reach down to me? Can you
pull me up? And I didn't use the word God
or Jesus, but that's who I was reaching out to.
And I was writing that poem because I'd been standing
on top of a building rate to commit suicide, and
the cops, the crowd called, and the cops got me down,
and I sat, after going to jail, sat in my
car and wrote the poem who Am I? But then
going through the twelve step program of alcoholics anonymous and
working with another therapist and going through I had twenty
one line papers, twenty one pages have line paper, and
I just kept writing things down, resentments. You know, my
mom didn't believe me. My mom did this, my mom
did Dad did that, all these resentments and things, and
I came to this point in meeting with this therapist
for three and a half hours where I just took
everything out of the trunk and threw it in front
of Jesus and asked for forgiveness. I no longer blamed
anybody but myself. I didn't blame you know, the doctor
for diagnosed me with gender just for you, the doc
that cut all the body part. I didn't do that anymore.
I gave it up and just took it on and said,
you know, this is mine, You own it. You take
it from here. And when I was done with that,
the therapist said, well, we need to go pray about this.
So we went to his office and we started praying.
And during that during that prayer, it took me a
while to kind of get connected in the prayer. I
was really exhausted. Ever, three and a half hours of
therapy and I'm in prayer, and so all of a sudden,
I couldn't hear him praying. It just went totally silent,
and I and in my vision, I looked up and
there was Jesus looking at me, coming down, and he
was he had his arm he was actually on a
trajectory coming down, and he had his arms stretched out.
And I looked, he's actually coming for a little baby
sitting in front of me, and I'm looking at that baby,
and I want that baby's me. He's coming for me
as a little baby when I was first born. And
he picked that baby up and held the baby in
his arms, and he looked at me straight away and said,
you are now safe with me forever. And he disappeared.
And I realized he didn't just come when I was
fifty years old. He didn't just come at fifty. I've
been struggling for forty six years. He came to me
and redeemed my life from day one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He had his hand on you and brought him to
yourself since the beginning.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so it took me probably a year to
even be able to talk to anybody about it. It seemed
so powerful. I had to process what happened. I didn't
even tell the therapist I was working with what happened.
I was, what is it? Gobsmack, dumbfounded. I don't even
know what worked. I was blown away. I mean, yeah,
it was beyond anything that I've ever had or ever
will have again. And it was probably about a year
later I was thinking about it, and there was I
had a big decision. I don't remember what that was.
And I kept getting this little nudge in my shoulder,
you know, and I'm driving down Highway for in California,
and it dawned on me that nudge, that little thing
I'm getting my shoulder, its Holy Spirit trying to get
my attention to tell me what I needed to do.
And when I made that connection, when I get that nudge,
I know the Holy Spirit is right there with me,
and it happens. It's been happening ever since.
Speaker 1: So wow, what a beautiful picture just of the freedom
and the importance of repentance because this followed your you know,
owning so much of this as your own sin and
your own baggage, and you know, as much as you
were abused by other people and you were traumatized to
be able to not only forgive others as Christ forgave you,
but also own it as you know, the things that
were also separating you from God, and just be able
to lay that at his feet and then experience such redemptions,
just such a beautiful picture of the gospel and of
what it looks like to actually become a follower of Christ's.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 2: It proved to me that until you let go of things,
He's not going to come, not full force, not holding
in his arms. I mean, he might come, he might
read em you, But for me, I had to get
rid of absolutely everything. Forty six years of garbage, yeah,
that had been stored up, brokenness and horrible things that
had happened, alcoholism, drug addiction. Man, I was going through
it today. I've got thirty nine years sober.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, congratulations.
Speaker 2: So it took yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So okay, let's rewind a little bit again, because
there's part of your story that we kind of breezed
over that I want to make sure I have the details,
and I'm sure as a significant part. So okay, So
you get the note from your doctor to have these
medical interventions or whatever terminology you're going to use, And
I mean, was this something that you immediately pursued and
what did that look like? Was it hormones, Was it surgery?
Like what types of things were you pursuing in order
to change your identity?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had actually been on hormones for about four
years before I went there. Okay, but and i'd got
him secretly. You know, everything I was doing was secret.
Speaker 1: From your wife? Also, did she know at the time
that you were on the roads? Okay? Okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so so then I had the official thing.
It's like, okay, there's that almost a validation that I
was on the right track right, which I wasn't. But
so I set the time to go have the surgery
during the summer, and I told my wife I was
going on a business trip with I was working for
American Honda Motor Company by then, and so I lied
to her about where I was going, what I was doing.
I'd set it up to go have the surgery. I
went to Trinidad, Colorado, paid doctor Biber seven thousand or
eight thousand dollars for the quote surgery, and went to
the hospital and signed into the hospital. I remember standing
at the desk at summer day and signing in at
the desk, and I looked around and I just given
the doctor money and I'm ready to go in the
hospital to be prepared for surgery in the morning. And
I turned around and walked out, and I started walking
every single street in Trinidad, Colorado. I was going up
and down, up and down. I was. I didn't know
what to do. I didn't know where to go or
what to do. And I went back finally went back
to his office, said I want my money back. I'm
not going to do this. This is crazy. And so
he gave me the money back, and I got on
a bus and went back to Denver, Colorado, flew back
while and I took the money. And my son at
the time was, I don't know, maybe thirteen, I don't know, young,
young teenager. And I said, you know, you and I
are going to build a car together. And so I
took the money I was going to use for surgery
and went and bought a Camaro and made it our
little project, a little orange Camaro. And I was trying, man,
I was to pull my life out of this desperate
pit that I was in. I didn't want things to
go south, you know, And it's painful, and it's even
painful thinking about it today. So I tried, but I
kept collapsing you know, the evil of that whole stuff
is just pure evil. It's like a cancer, man, It's
like a cancer that just kill you. And so I
went back to uh doctor Walker, who wrote the w
PAT Standards of Care, told me what I went through,
and I said, he said, I'll write you another letter
of approval for surgery.
Speaker 1: So there was no there was no response of oh,
maybe this isn't the right course of action for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, I got two letters. I didn't get one.
I got two, and so that one I told the
wife I was doing it. I went and did it.
I became I did, and so she knew. She said, well,
when you're done, don't come home. And I understood that.
So that was the beginning of the end of the marriage.
And and you know.
Speaker 1: And that surgery was it was it just castration or
plastic surgery or what did that like? What was the
course of carey unquote was Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was the typical vaginal plasty that they do. I
had I had already set up to have implants put
in and do all that stuff, and I was still working.
I hadn't told Honda at the time that I was
going through this, and so I was getting a lawyer
together to kind of protect myself on the employment side,
and started working with the lawyer, and the lawyer kind
of bailed on me, and so I went and told Honda,
you know that I was getting my birth record changed
to Laura Jensen, female. And I was an executive and
I was like in the top tier management there. I
had been helping develop the accurate division for Honda. Okay,
no small, small job, right, And they came to me,
opened my desk up, took all my stuff in it,
put it in a box, walked me to the gate,
and I was done. I was finished. And from October
twenty fifth, nineteen eighty three, until probably the end of
the nineteen eighties or in the nineteen nineties, before I
got a good job again, I didn't have it. I
was doing. I had a hundred different jobs. I was homeless.
I lived in a camper show I worked doing dishes
for a restaurant to get food. I lived at a
guide that owned a restaurant. I lived at his house,
feeding his cat so i'd have a place to live.
I mean, I was. I was on the margins man.
I had two years where my income was less than
forty five hundred dollars a year.
Speaker 1: Wow, And did you think during this time, despite this hardship,
that you were on the right track, that you were
doing the right thing? I mean, was there you know,
I know a lot of people who identify as transgender
describe a feeling of euphoria when they cross dress or
when they when they pursue you know, a medical intervention
or something. And as we know, I mean often that
fades and actually is worse for self harm and suicidal
ideation and such. But I mean, was there did you
have that sense of you know, quote unquote euphoria? Was it?
Did you think this is this? Is it like it's
going to it's hard now, but it's it's going to
be better.
Speaker 2: Well, when when I was in the hospital and had
the surgery, I had that euphoric feeling in the hospital
and I thought, yeah, okay, now you know this is
going to be Everything's going to be okay. And I
had a friend that I worked with who she's a
dear friends still a dear friend today, that let me stay.
She had a big house. She let me stay in
the room there and she cared for me and for
a while until it just became unbearable for her to
see just to see Walt go to Laura. That was
puzzling for her, and she tried, and so I think
I tried. You know, that's seven years. I mean I
worked for FDIC and banking. I had some good jobs.
I worked for the postal Service. I went to school
at that time. I was studying psychology. I took numerous
courses on psychology, and I actually got a counseling certificate
to become a counselor because I thought I could help
people with this issue, not realizing that that was going
to help me more than anything. I was going to
help myself far more than I was at the time.
So I was working my way back and then at church,
and I decided that, you know, I needed to help
more people. So I decided to start the website sexchange
regret dot com to find out if I was the
only one that went through this and regretted it and
had the kind of childhood that I had that may
be responsible for what was going on. At that time,
I knew nothing, you know, I just trained in how
to execute a good session with somebody to do counseling.
So I just started a website. My wife's a geek.
So she started the website sex change regret dot com.
The first year, I think we had about seven hundred
people come to the site, and by wow, by March
of twenty fifteen, which was about eight years after it
got started, I think I don't remember all those states,
but by twenty fifteen we were getting three hundred and
fifty thousand people a year. Wow, twenty thousand a month.
Speaker 1: That's remarkable because when you consider, I mean, how much
less of a phenomenon and how much less social contagion
there was around this issue at that time, I mean,
that is an astronomical number when you consider how much
smaller this was at the time. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I wrote my first article in February twenty fifteen
that was published in The Federalist, and it was about
protecting kids, and so that started my journey, and then
I published them in USA today newspapers all over the world.
And so I've been grateful to be an award winning
author and award winning speaker as well worldwide. And so
that is only by the grace of God, not because
I'm good. Somebody who wrote me a note and says
you have a lot of wisdom, I said, I have
a lot of experience wisdom. I think I'm probably a
little short on but.
Speaker 1: So the Lord's clearly given you quite a lot of
it as well. Can you tell me what your personal
regret journey looked like? What was what was the breaking
point for you? I mean, were you still identifying as
Laura when you had your encounter with the Lord or
had you already transitioned to Walt or I was not
de transition, But were you going I was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was probably right in the I was in
the zone. I was kind of I was going back
and forth. Okay, I lived in days as Laura days
as well, and at that time with the Lord solidified it.
But okay, yeah, I was working as Laura selling carpet
in Monterey, California, Okay, And it came just came to me.
I thought, do you really want your idea identity to
be that of a transgender? And that's when I wanted
to drop this whole transgender thing. Is that your purpose
in life? And I realized that that's no purpose at all.
That is like the most empty thing that you could
possibly have, to just be identifying as a transgender. I mean,
that is nothing you have. It's as empty as life
can get. There's no substance to that. You've destroyed your body,
you've destroyed your family. You have a daughter who's not
talking to you. You don't have the career you once had.
And although you're selling carpet and you're able to make
ends meet living in a six hundred dollars a month
apartment in Monterey, California, this is not a life. And so,
and I'm working on my recovery, and so I think
this was where I started to connect. I went to
a pastor, Jeff Ferraur, and started going to church, and
I think it just took a long time. It took
about two years for all this stuff to gell out,
whether it was you know, write in the poem and
or meeting Jesus. I say that because I don't want
people because I hear this, people say, well, you just
pray it away. Well, nobody prays anything away. There's a
lot of work. Yeah, prayer is significant and absolutely essential,
but don't expect three or four prayers to cut through this.
I have probably had, you know, ten thousand prayers before
I ever got to where I was. But I think
you pointed out something earlier. I had to give it
all up, right, I mean I had to take responsibility.
And I think that's when the Lord he can enter
in and begin to guide you down that path of
frustoration and redemption.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So what did the for lack of a better word,
reversal process look like? Were you? Were you able to
undo many of the changes that you'd undergone, and I
mean did you did you just can you stop taking
wrong sex hormones cold turkey or what did that look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I had to go through that where they started
to do a mix where it was half to stosterone.
And so this was a process of about two years
working with an indo chronologist to break this process down.
So it was very deliberate, very precise. It wasn't done
over the internet, which is nonsense, and there was there
was no attempt to get any of the body parts
reversed because I'm I believe that taking body parts off
does not change you into a woman. Putting him back
on is not going to make me. I'm a man.
I'm a man that was mutilated, and and what it
really did was didn't change my gender, changed my ability
to function, It changed my functionality, It didn't change my gender.
And I think that's a more honest way of saying.
What we're doing with these women and with these men
is changing their ability to function as they were designed.
And so anytime you take any piece of equipment, I
don't care whether it's a microphone or a TV or anything,
and you start changing its function, it goes, it becomes
worth it, it ends up in the scrap file. And so, yeah,
I was just I was. Probably the deepest pain that
I have is what I did to my wife and
my children. I quite honestly still struggle with forgiving myself
for what I did. I know the Lord's forgiven me.
I married for almost twenty eight years and sober all
these years. My life is fantastic. I'm very blessed. But
the harm that was done is why I'm so passionate
about making sure that people don't get hormones. I don't
care how old you are, and stop this nonsense. I mean,
it's just it makes me weep. I mean, some of
these letters I get from people. I'm working with a
guy from Mumbai, India, and I get people from all
over the world that I work with, and we're making progress,
but it's tough, you know, And so the restoration. They
didn't change me. They hurt me and they mutilated me,
but they didn't take away my resilience, and they didn't
take away my relationship with Jesus Christ. And they didn't.
You know, I'm still here. I'm eighty five, I'm kicking
some booty and I'm just getting started and I want
to do it. There's a worship song called that was
Made for More. I don't know if you've heard that,
but it's it's fantastic. It's kind of my song.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: It says I'm not made for the grave, I'm made
for more. And so I'm going to keep singing that
song and keep going.
Speaker 1: I love that. I love that. I'm going way over time,
and I'm so sorry. But I have a couple more questions,
if you'll allow me to pick. I would love to
hear some of your thoughts on therapy, because I'm curious
what you think about. I've heard you talk a lot
about here and elsewhere about trauma therapy versus finding a
gender therapist, for instance, that people who are struggling with
their identity don't need gender therapy. They need to deal
with childhood traumas because that contributes to so much of
so many of these issues. But at the same time,
I've seen so much of a cultural trend of people
basically you saying trauma as childhood trauma, as a crutch
or as an excuse for you know, setting boundaries with
their parents and just for familial estrangement and other kinds
of very self absorbed and self centered behaviors. And people
will call things trauma that are really just you know, oh,
I was raised in a religious environment, or oh, you know,
I was spanked as a child, And I'm not talking
about being hit, you know, with a wooden plank. I'm
talking about like normal, you know, faithful parenting. And so
I'm curious how you feel about this culture of you know,
over over emphasis of childhood trauma when you have people
like you who have experienced real childhood trauma that has
dramatically affected your life. And also like, how do we
differentiate there and what do you think about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think that's a great question. And certainly
kids are brilliant, right, and they can use things against parents,
and I think it's what we put I'll do it again,
you know, in the book. In the book, because this
was written co written by me, and doctor Jennifer Bowence,
a trauma therapist. There is a thing called little Tea
and big T and little T can be traumatizing in it.
And I think it's important to understand that sometimes trauma
is perceived that never happened.
Speaker 1: Can you give an example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I believe my mom is being mean to me,
or I believe you know they're doing this, or you
believe something like you believe you're transgender. It's false, but
you can believe something that you can say that I'm
in I'm living in a hurtful environment and it may
not be. But then there's there's there's so many different
important steps in dealing with somebody who's struggling. Is not
all trauma. There's a lot of Internet addiction issues. I mean,
we've got kids doing furries. We've got kids identifying, you know,
as some character of female character on the internet. These
are serious addictions pornography. So I want to make sure
that we don't put everything into trauma because it's not.
I think there's simple things such as social contagion, kids
joining kids because they want to be in a group,
and the kids there's a group conscience thing and they'll
do that hole I'm transgender thing to go along and
get along. I've got a network of people. So I
think anytime we work with somebody that's struggling, as I do,
I keep digging until I find what the little nugget is,
you know, and you can work through talking with somebody.
I've worked with people for three years, you know, like
just two or three email. I've had some I've been
able to resolve in three emails, but sometimes it takes
a long time. So I think if somebody is pulling
the wool over your eyes, you've got to be careful
with that too, because they can use these things to
manipulate people and right and people. And I think there's
another issue that is there's kids today want labels. They
want to have a label. This is this is why
I want to be a D transitioner. Well you're not well,
but I want to be a D. You know, I
want this identity. That's why they have all these different
gender identities. They want to label. They want attached to something.
There's only two genders, male and female, but they want
something else. So they invented. And so I think we
were I was going to actually go out on the
stage sometime and just have a coat on with all
these labels on it, and then start peeling them off
and reading them and going, we need to throw all
this stuff away. There's only one lebel you need to wear,
and that's your identity is in Christ and your function
is the way God designed you, and and to live
up to that and not let anybody deter you. And
I feel the need to once again say, keep in
mind that the gender stuff is only for the purpose
of destroying you. Mm hmm. The value to humanize and destroy.
That's anytime we think about this whole gender clinic thing.
Remember they they aren't there with a Bible reading scripture
to you. They're there to take your genitals off and
make sure that your breasts are cut off, make sure
that you can never function as God designed you. That
is a poke in the eye to the Lord Jesus Christ,
and it destroys your ability to function for the rest
of your life as you were designed for life.
Speaker 1: It excerciation for life, that lines their pockets for life.
It guarantees that you will need to continue to see
them and get quote unquote care for the rest of
your life. And it's not caring, it's it's evil.
Speaker 2: It's demonic, it's absolutely destructive, destroys people. So I just
think that in working with people, I've learned there's there's
so many ways to navigate this. And I never put
it all in a trauma box. I don't put it
all in the internet box. I don't put it all
in you know, the social contagion, because I've gone to
a doctor's house who struggled with one of his kids
and sat down and you could just see the dynamic
in the room. The father was very domineering and the
son was scared to death of his dad, and he
was starting to identify as a female. And then my
wife went with the mother and then we've got together
and talked about it, and the daughter was getting all
the attention, and he decided that if I did as
a female, I would get the level of attention my
daughter's getting. This is so common. I've actually read stories
in UK where a daughter will commit suicide because the
boys are getting the attention that she's not getting and
she can't get. And one of them she even changed
genders to become a boy to try to get said
she changed genders. She didn't, but it cost her her life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you see because it's just heartbreaking.
Speaker 2: And we talked about that. My mom never told me
she loved me, so, so did Walt ever get the level?
I mean, maybe we pointed out somewhere a guy says,
you just go take care of your dad and I'll
take care of this. I mean, maybe that was kind
of the first glimmer, you know, And so it's just
I think we have to be really careful about when
we work with people and understand they don't have genderdice
for you. They have dysphoria. I'll go with that. They
don't have gendernice for you, because there's a thing called
generalized asphoria. It's clinical. You can look it up. Generalized
as for you is right there, and so it can
be a but if you talk about generalized as for you,
you can't give somebody hormones and cut body parts off,
can you?
Speaker 1: Right? Right? Exactly? And what what? Oh god?
Speaker 2: No, I was just going to say, when when you
have everyone, every single person, without exception, it's diagnosed with
gendernice for you, you know, it's bogus mhm right as
categorically impossible diagnose everybody with gender is for you, because
it that makes the whole thing just a fraud. It's
the biggest medical fraud of my lifetime. This whole thing
is bogus, is plastic bananas, and it ruins people's lives.
Nobody should be doing. I want to sit in front
of the President of the United States and say you
get this stop today, mm hmm right, and he understands it.
Speaker 1: Right. I think there are very few people in positions
to do much about this who understand the gravity of
the situation.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 1: What what advice do you have for people who maybe
are struggling with this and are looking for a therapist
who's going to lead them in truth and not just
write them a prescription for hormones and a you know,
a care plan quote unquote that involves them going in
for surgery. How do you how do you know how
to find the right therapist who shares the worldview that's
based on truth and who's actually going to counsel you
into alignment with what is true and good and beautiful
and not just make you, you know, put you in
the patient for life pipeline. We go toute people good therapists.
Speaker 2: We go into great detail in that book embracing Guy's
design about how to do that, but I'll give you
the kind of the overview you need to interview a therapist,
and if they are a gender affirming care therapist, run
the other way. If they're a therapist who is looking
to diagnose something like if you go in and meet
a therapist and say, well, let's first test you on
the trauma scale, Let's see if there's anything there. Let's
look somebody who's actually looking somewhere else. You want someone
who isn't buying into the gender thing.
Speaker 1: Which gender affirming care is another great example of a
euphemism that doesn't mean anything like the word says. It's
not it's not affirming of your actual gender or your sex,
and it's certainly not caring. So that's another way they
get you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the true if they were doing gender affirming care,
they would never give them hormones and then never.
Speaker 1: Do surgery, right exactly erectly.
Speaker 2: I mean it's like they flip all this stuff up
side down.
Speaker 1: H yep, yep. So walt, before I let you go.
You've been running this nonprofit? Is it still called sex
change regret? Is that where people can find find you
if they have.
Speaker 2: Questions Because it got so big and there were so
many things, and I was up working answering emails seven
days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year.
And because I'm the only I'm the only one here.
I contacted Lucas Miles that influenced church in Granger, Indiana.
Lucas is part of Turning Point USA. He's on the
pastor side of that, and I trained people at his
church to take over sexchange regret dot com. So now
what I have is walt Hire dot com that has
uh That's that's where I live today, and there's a
lot more people that go to sex change Regret dot com.
But I'm working to speak to more churches and to
have more conversations like this, which I think are essential
in helping. I've tried to start a podcast. I've done
a few. I'm not great at starting things like that.
My wife is, but so so at Waldhired dot Com,
I'm still here. I think the most important thing for
me to do next year is get out and talk
and try to really get people to start waning away
from transgender runner transgender with the Air Force, they got
the Air Force got seventeen transgender They're not They're men
and women identifying. Yes, yes, so I'm trainable. You know,
I'm not stuck on It's just I'm stuck on not
calling them transgender. I'm stuck on not saying they transitioned
or de transition, and I'm stuck on the fact that
it's not about gender, And I'm stuck on the fact
that your gender was not assigned to birth by the way,
it was innate and fixed when at conception. Sorry you
can't fix.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Can you just share maybe one of the
most miraculous or impactful stories that you have seen over
your many years of work in this with somebody who's
contacted you or that you've gotten to meet or I mean,
I'm sure there are way too many to count, but
can you just share one to maybe give some hope
to somebody who is struggling and just you know, for
people who are maybe watching a loved one struggle with
this or pursue a path that is contrary to God's design,
like I'm sure they would love to hear a story
of hope and change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I was This is how long ago I
was watching Tucker Carlson on Fox. I don't know how
long he's been off there that long ago, and I
was in my office, which is my reclining chair. I
don't have an office, and I was working on my company.
Speaker 1: Lie that up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I got an email from a guy who says,
I'm seventy three years old. I transitioned when I was thirteen.
I have a gender therapist. I'm I transitioned. I'm transgender.
I have a gender therapist. I was looking at your website,
sex change Regret that comments when I had it back then,
and I just wanted to know what you think about
my situation. I'm going I haven't even heard anything except
you just said that you transition and you had a
gender therapist. So I sat there and looked at that
and go, why is a guy looking at sex change
regret dot com a little clue? So I wrote him
back and I politely said, well, and I said this
earlier because I love this. When I did this, I said, well,
your a therapist is a quack. You're not a transgender,
you've never transitioned, and you don't have genderice for you.
If you work with me, we're going to find out
what really happened. Would you like to do that? You
just contact me and will work on it. So I
turned to my wife and I said, well, I sent
that one and we'll see what happens. And he wrote
back the next day and said, well, that's kind of
curious what you had to say. What is it that
you want to know about me? And I said, well,
you said you transitioned to thirteen. Also I want to
know is what was your home environment like? What was
your life like? Was what was happening when you were
thirteen years old? Just tell me mom, dad, brother's, sister's, uncle, ant, whatever.
And so I wrote back and he says, well, my
mom was a raging alcoholic and she would get a
butcher knife about three times a week and chase my
dad around the house trying to murder him.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2: And so I got a little smile on my face
and I wrote him back and said, well, I'm not
a therapist. I'm not a doctor, but I think you
may have suffered from some trauma maybe. And I said,
the next time you go back to your wackoed gender therapist,
tell him that Waldhire told you that you need a
trauma therapist. And don't wear your little red pumps, don't
dress up like a girl, go as a guy. And
go for therapist like you normally wouldn't. And so I
didn't hear from him for a couple of days, and
I thought, you know, tellingm a therapist Waldhire told me
to tell you this, I thought that would just make
their head explode. And so he wrote back and he says, well,
I went in and told my gender therapist I needed
a trauma therapist. Waldhire told me, in fact, I needed
a trauma therapist. And my trauma therapist turned around and said, well,
isn't that interesting? She says, I'm also a trauma therapist. Okay,
you're in luck. I'm going to find out if mister
Hire is right. I'm going to test you on the
trauma scale. And so instead of the.
Speaker 1: Usual why on earth is a trauma therapist and also
a gender therapist not starting with trauma? There's a red flag?
But sorry, continue, you think.
Speaker 2: The money, baby. So this is why this one really
was so interesting to me. So she tested him on
the trauma scale and he came out seven out of ten,
which is extraordinarily high. And he talked in terms in
his email to me about how wonderful therapy was with
his therapist. Anybody who's ever been in therapy. Therapy is
not wonderful if you're getting any work done, It's terrible.
And so the next one he came back, he said,
it was the worst session I ever had. It was terrible,
it was painful, and went on and on. He said,
she gave me a two hour session. I had emd
R therapy. And I'm not an advocate. I'm not speaking.
It's just this is a case of what happened. So
and he says, Walt, guess what, I'm free one session
with somebody who was a gender therapist who treated used
the skills as a trauma therapist to treat him, and
he was free. And so I wrote him back and said,
I out it. I'm not buying. I said, I'm going
to write you back in a few days. I wrote
him back in a week and I said, hey, how
you doing. He said, I'm free't I've done? And I've
So I wrote him back. I wrote him back four
weeks in a row, and on the fourth one, I said,
I want to write a story and publish it in
the Federalist about your story. And he went berserk. You know,
he said, I am so angry about being mistreated for
so long, and destroying my life this way. I don't
want anybody to know. I don't even want to talk
about it, and I don't ever want you to contact
to me again. He was upset, and rightfully, so, you know,
he said, this is not something he said, I can
celebrate the fact that I'm off the hook, but I
can't celebrate the fact that sixty years in my life
went down the drain, right, right, That's what he was
dealing with, right, And I'm trying to and I was
trying to benefit from the law of his sixty years
of life by writing an article, and he saw me
as as kind of an enemy at that point. I
get and it was insensitive for me to do that,
but I thought it was so interesting, so that one,
you know, and that all happened within from the time
that I got his email until the time he was
free was four days.
Speaker 1: Wow, after six days, truly remarkable. I'm sure she didn't,
but I hope that therapists found a new line of
work after misleading a client for sixty years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's three hundred and twenty bucks a week for
just sitting there making.
Speaker 1: Happy, but also how encouraging that you know, it truly
is never too late to be free from the lives
that have you in bondage. And that's really just a
beautiful story of coming out of that.
Speaker 2: So Amen, And you know, the people I've worked with
for twenty years, I want to say that, and people
reach out to me. I've never asked for money. I've
never asked for donations. I've never asked people to buy books.
I've been doing this because of the pain that I've suffered.
I don't want people to go through that. If you struggle,
I want it to end quickly, and I want you
to get the help you need and find the right
person to do it. I don't do the therapy. I
just guide you to the kind of help. You see,
the kind of therapy that is going to help you.
And certainly in every case you need the Lord Jesus
Christ to be there alongside you to bring good healing
and redemption and restoration.
Speaker 1: That's right, and that work is clearly resonating with people,
as evidenced by the thousands upon thousands who have reached
out and found you and found freedom and found Christ
and just yeah, from that life that is just so destructive. Well,
this is the last thing, and then I'm going to
let you go if anyone is listening to this, who
might be struggling with this right now, Who's who's trying
to figure out where to turn or has maybe been
dealing with this for years, or has maybe just just
fell down an internet rabbit hole and is can fuse
What is one thing, one piece of advice, one piece
of wisdom? What would you say to a person who
might be listening and is in that boat right now?
Speaker 2: Get that book and read it embracing God's design. Read it.
Don't just use it as a doorstop. Read it. It
is absolutely chock full. It's not just a book to
read and enjoy. This is a book that deals with
how you need to navigate these things. It's for parents
who have a childhos struggling, is for the individual who's struggling.
Is for pastors who is guided toward pastors and churches
so that they could even have small group study. Thing
on the website, it's called embrace thedesign dot com. Go
to embrace thedesign dot com. This uh, these give you
the tools. This is toolbox that you can get and use.
And if you still have questions or anything, you can
certainly write me I'll be happy to answer you. And
and so I think this is This was just published
in May, and Joey Pullman did a fantastic article on it.
Speaker 1: Awesome, awesome, Well, thank you so much for all of
your time today. I took way more of it than
I intended to, but it was truly a pleasure to
hear your story and to talk with you. And like
you said, everybody go read Embracing God's Design. Go to
Embrace God's Design dot com, findrace dot.
Speaker 2: Com, Embrace the Design dot com.
Speaker 1: And the Design dot Com. Sorry about that, yeah, critical, Yes,
I'm leading the listeners astray. I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: It's okay, listen. It was just real and a pleasure
for me to be on. I can't tell you how
much I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Oh wonderful. It was so great for me to truly
the pleasure was all mine. So thanks so much, Walt,
and everybody go find him online. And also you can
read more of his work at the Federalists. There's plenty
of it there. So thanks so much. Well, I hope
to have you back again, you bet, thank you, thank
you so much for tuning into this week's episode of
The Kylie Cast. Once again if you have not done
so before, please like and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Subscribe to the specific Kylie Cast channel on Spotify and
Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. If you
haven't yet, next time, check out the full video version
on my personal YouTube channel or the Federalist channel on Rumble,
And of course go check out Walt Hire's website at
Walthhire dot com and read his new book, Embracing God's Design.
I will be right back here next week with more
so until then, just remember the truth hurts, but it
won't kill you