Posted By Bernard Gaynor on Thursday, October 2, 2014 9:25 am | 5 comments

Matthew became Chelsea and then became exhausted fighting through the make-up each morning.

So now ‘she’ wants to become a he again. Of course, this also involves demands that the British taxpayer fork out for all the surgery involved. By the end of all the nips and tucks, it will cost around £24,000. In Aussie lingo, that’s about $45,000.

So it’s an expensive way of proving that women can’t make up their minds.

Except that this time it’s not a woman at all. And Matthew/Chelsea knows it too:

‘I have always longed to be a woman, but no amount of surgery can give me an actual female body and I feel like I am living a lie.

‘It is exhausting putting on make-up and wearing heels all the time. Even then I don’t feel I look like a proper woman.

‘I suffered from depression and anxiety as a result of the hormones too.

‘I have realised it would be easier to stop fighting the way I look naturally and accept that I was born a man physically.’

‘I thought the surgery would make me feel complete, but it didn’t.

‘I knew deep down that, even though I had had surgery, I had still been born a man.

‘But I tried my best to block out my feelings.’

It’s also a great way of highlighting that ‘celebrity advice’ should not just be taken with a pinch of salt. Whenever it’s given, the sensible person should run screaming in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately for Matthew, he went ahead with ‘sex-change’ surgery against the advice of his doctor. Instead, he listened to Katie Price, AKA Jordan, who told him ‘to go for it’ one evening in a darkened nightclub. So he did. And then the bright light of day truly showed the lady that all that glitters is not gold. Matthew had not found his stairway to heaven, but the express lift to hell.

Now Matthew is going round and round. And while he does, those in power continue to pretend that he’s a woman. Even the newspaper articles describing how he’s ‘becoming’ a man ‘again’ use female pronouns. Everybody wants him to be something else. It’s almost as if this whole situation is summed up in the final verse of the Powderfinger song, Up and down and back again:

If everybody knows just who you are
When your walk on role becomes a major part
Have you ever attempted to be yourself
When everybody wants you to be someone else
Up and down and back again
Going up and down and back again

There are four points to make about this saga.

Firstly, I feel pity for Matthew. It is clear that he suffers from a deeply troubling and uncomfortable affliction. The Matthews of this world carry enormous mental anguish from a difficulty accepting who they are. Most of us will never know that pain, but I can easily understand why it would lead to severe depression and suicidal thoughts. But for the grace of God, we could all be there. And by the grace of God, such afflictions can also make a man truly great. There is no courage without fear; there is no growth without facing and overcoming adversity.

Secondly, this pain cannot be erased by living a lie. The truth cannot be hidden. The very term ‘transgender woman’ implies that the person has a different essence than real woman. And if that’s the case, then whatever ‘transgender women’ are, it does not involve being a woman. The qualification screams out that the construction of femininity is fake. And if it’s painful accepting the sex that you were born with, the long term agony of living a lie must always be worse. It would surely crush a soul to wake each day with the gnawing knowledge that you are an adult trying to play dress-ups for real.

Thirdly, the solution for those who suffer from an individual inability to accept reality cannot be found in forcing an entire society to accept a lie. Matthew was a man, is a man and will forever be a man. The truly compassionate response to this situation is to help him to accept that truth. Instead, we all take on the burden of deceit when we allow political-correctness to overcome sanity. Matthew might have individual issues, but a society that pretends he was ever a woman is engaged in collective fraud. In many ways, that is much worse.

Fourthly, it must be recognised that these situations are always intimately linked with a brazen level of self-obsession and selfishness. Matthew’s anguish stems from an unhealthy inward focus. And he admits it too:

‘It was draining to constantly think about how to walk and speak like a girl.

That one sentence says it all. A person living a transgender life is constantly focused on themselves and whether they fit the expectations of others. They are trapped inside a self-imposed mental prison, unable to live freely as who they really are. And from this self-obsession comes selfish demands. In Matthew’s case, he simply expects that the British taxpayer will fund his next batch of operations:

‘I can’t afford to have them done privately, so I am hoping to have the op on the NHS.

‘I can’t work at the moment because I am too upset after what I have been through.

‘I am considering having penis reconstruction too. I don’t feel bad about the NHS paying for the surgery as I don’t consider it a choice.

‘I need to have these operations for the sake of my mental health. I am lucky enough to live in a country where there is free health care.’

‘I know I need these changes to make me happy and no one should deny me that.’

I am glad that Matthew has found the courage to stop living a lie. But he has not yet accepted the responsibility that he carries for his decisions. Having a ‘sex-change’ operation is a choice, and it is lie to say otherwise, just like it is a lie to pretend that they actually work. If Matthew wants cosmetic surgery to correct his previous cosmetic surgery, he should accept the responsibility for funding it himself.

And if he can’t do that, instead of demanding that the state step in, he might like to consider humbly asking for help. If he did, I would gladly chip in. I’m sure many others would as well.