Ritchie Herron tells NR he was pressured into having his penis removed by a U.K. gender clinic.
Editor’s Note: This is the first installment in a series on individuals who have “detransitioned” in the wake of gender-related medical interventions.
As a teenager growing up in Newcastle, U.K., Ritchie Herron dealt with undiagnosed autism, frequent panic attacks, and severe OCD. Facing bullies at school, he found an escape online, where he quickly got sucked into shady sites filled with pernicious characters.
At 24 years old, Herron told his doctor he was suicidal. “I was dealing with childhood trauma, but I didn’t know it,” Herron told National Review. “I think I was having PTSD. I was not a well person.”
Searching for answers, in 2013, Herron came across information about gender dysphoria on the internet. Then he heard that a gay peer of his had transitioned to a woman.
“I didn’t know that was an option,” Herron, now in his mid 30s, said. He found an online trans forum and started posting pictures of himself. “Much older men in their 40s and 50s were adoring me. It was intoxicating. I went from having zero self-esteem to them saying absolutely everything I wanted,” he said.
Herron, who said he appeared more feminine at the time because his puberty was significantly delayed, landed on websites “where they sexualize you quite a lot, especially if you’re young and look the part, which I did.” Some of the transgender individuals he interacted with made virtual sexual advances, he said.
They indoctrinated Herron, he said, to believe that testosterone was “poison in my body.” Due to his OCD, Herron already felt antsy about contamination and feared his natural testosterone would turn him into a horrible man.
“I’m obviously a heterosexual woman in a man’s body. That’s what I told myself,” he added.
Users on the forum encouraged him to take artificial estrogen to make him more attractive. “They said, ‘Imagine what you’ll look like with hormones! Even cis men will want you,’” Herron said.
They also told him how to bypass the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) to obtain a private diagnosis so he could be prescribed a testosterone blocker.
As for the transgender people Herron talked to online, “although they were nice, they all looked like men in dresses,” he said. “They were saying that as a cautionary tale to me. Like, ‘You don’t want to end up looking like me because I’ve felt this way all my life and if I was your age, I would have done it then.’ It was very convincing.”
In March 2014, Herron, who then called himself “Abby,” received a private diagnosis. Many months later in 2015, he went to a gender clinic, the Northern Region Gender Dysphoria Service, in Newcastle. At his first appointment, the psychiatrist immediately, and repeatedly at every subsequent visit, asked if he wanted gender-reconstructive surgery. “I said, ‘I don’t know, I just got here, I kind of just want some help,” Herron said.
The clinic also referred Herron to a gender therapist — someone who is trained in sexual theory with a specialty in transgenderism — whom he saw every two weeks for five years, he said. While Herron said he benefited from those sessions, he was bamboozled into thinking that his distress as a gay kid meant he was transgender. The therapist who made this judgment was a gay man himself, he noted. Herron’s initial hesitancy to transition, the therapist argued, was the result of “internalized transphobia” and “disconnection” from his body.
Over the next few years, Herron grappled with a gut feeling that he should not get surgery. Already extremely vulnerable mentally, he said the clinic prodded and coaxed him into going under the knife.
“I was getting hair removed but I kept moving around the appointments just to postpone it further and further because I really wasn’t sure. I really didn’t want to do it, I just couldn’t voice it because I was unwell,” Herron said.
In 2015, he told the gender clinic he needed time to deliberate. In 2016, the facility brought it up again, and said they’d refer Herron for genital surgery. But when he received the letter from the hospital for a preoperative assessment, Herron second guessed the decision and asked to cancel.
By March 2017, Herron said the clinic told him: “If you don’t want surgery, then we will discharge you because we’re not a psychological service, we’re here to get people the medical treatment they need.”
With no advocates, Herron agreed to take the plunge, realizing that surgery was a condition for continued counseling.
“I could never really win,” he said. “But I swallowed my pride and said, ‘Fine, if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is.’”
The next day, the gender therapist echoed the clinic, fueling Herron’s false sense of urgency that he had to destroy his male anatomy to finally find peace, he said.
“He lit a fire under me, that if I didn’t do this now I would regret this later,” Herron said. The clinic amended Herron’s files to refer him for surgery, with ongoing therapy. It was a done deal.
Herron attended a preoperative assessment with two other patients, which struck him as odd.
“It was really weird. They were kind of blasé. It was as if you were getting your haircut. It was so relaxed,” he said.
The surgeon, typing on his computer, faced away from Herron and barely spoke to him, he said. Most of the communication was with the head nurse.
“I was confused. I thought I was going to talk to a surgeon, not be in a room with two other people and talk to a nurse,” Herron said. “But when you’re in that environment, you’re so grateful for every little thing that happens to you, so you don’t question anything. You dare not speak up because you will get shut down by the head nurse.”
Then the nurse brought out a huge hardback book, Herron said, and started presenting the pages to the three. They were pictures of women’s vulvas.
“The purpose of this, according to her, was to show us that every woman’s vulva is different,” preparing the patients to accept what was likely to be an aesthetically displeasing outcome, he said.
In 2018, Herron had a vaginoplasty, in which the penis is inverted to create an artificial vagina.
“I immediately experienced regret,” he said, and expressed this to the gender therapist three months after the procedure.
National Review has reviewed medical documents confirming that Herron did in fact undergo genital reconstructive surgery in addition to other interventions such as voice therapy, facial hair removal, and hormone injections.
But the therapist assured him he was merely experiencing rumination, not regret, from the general anesthetic, which can sometimes exacerbate OCD. The therapist referred him to an OCD psychologist, who told Herron he also had unstable personality disorder.
Then, after nearly 300 visits in five years, Herron was discharged from the gender clinic, left with a mutilated body and extreme physical and emotional anguish. The clinic did not respond to a request for comment.
Herron comes forward at a pivotal time in the debate over how best to treat gender dysphoria, especially in young people. A divide has emerged between several European countries, which are opting for a more skeptical approach to medical interventions, and the U.S., which is in thrall to the so-called “affirmation” approach that sees any hesitation to prescribe puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and ultimately surgery as a cruel denial of the transgender individual’s autonomy.
Herron’s home country recently shuttered the Tavistock Clinic after an independent review revealed that children seeking treatment at the clinic were prematurely guided toward medical intervention, leading to serious adverse consequences later in life.
None of Herron’s friends who surgically transitioned warned him about the negative complications, he said. Later, Herron learned one of them had suffered bleeding, prolapse, and rectovaginal fistula, in which an abnormal hole develops between the rectum and the vagina that can result in the passage of stool through the tract.
Many of them also lost sensation, Herron discovered, long after it was too late. One friend of his who had surgery six months before Herron had “no pain, no pleasure, was just numb completely,” he said.
As a child, Herron was diagnosed with a skin condition that causes patchy, discolored, thin skin around the genital and anal areas.
“The surgeon just ignored it. Because they ignored it in the tissue they used, some of the lichen sclerosis is at the very back of the cavity, which is prone to infection,” he said. “They didn’t care.”
Herron’s sexual function is now limited to stimulation of the prostate, he said. A peculiar compulsion many transitioners have, according to Herron, is to show people their reconfigured sex appendages for validation.
“People’s natural reactions . . . they tell you everything,” Herron said.
A mutual friend of his showed his new vulva to another mutual who was trans. “They were like, ‘Uaaahhh! That’s disgusting!’” he said. “It’s horrible to look at. It looks like a baboon’s ass. It looks like the butt crack is extended all the way to the front.”
“This is irreversible. The erectile tissue is gone. The nerves are shot. Everything is f***ed inside. It’s not okay,” Herron said.
A few weeks ago, Herron had a urethral dilation to help him urinate properly, since that’s been greatly inhibited since the surgery, he said.
Herron started a private international support group for detransitioned males, many of whom say their bones have been ruined by the hormones.
“Some of them have had bone-density scans and their hips are aged at the age of 80 and they’re only 19 and 20,” he said. “We’re falling to bits. We’ve all got autoimmune issues. I’m dealing with geriatric issues as well. I’ve got pains in my back.”
As for Herron’s next chapter, he has representation and will be taking legal action against various players, who he says either committed or were complicit in medical malpractice.
“This is not a natural procedure for anyone to have. It’s caused these lifelong issues,” he said. “It’s just not something I ever thought I’d have to deal with. Yet here I am.”