You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist

Swell AI Transcript: 156. William Allen.mp3
William Allen:
We just want to go into a women's restroom to pee. That's all we want to do. And yet they're taking pictures of themselves inside women's restrooms. Now, how creepy is that? That's what upsets people. And they don't understand that. And then they say silly things like trans women are women. They're not. There's absolutely nothing whatsoever about you that is a woman. Not your chromosomes, not your skeletal structure, not your muscular structure, not anything. Your reproductive system is different. If archaeologists dig up your bones in a thousand years, they will know that you are a man. There is absolutely nothing about you that is a woman. As much as I will chastise them for that, I have the utmost compassion for these people because I know what it was like. I know what they've gone through. You must be some kind of therapist.

Stephanie Winn: Today I have the pleasure of speaking with William Allen. He is a detransitioned man who lived for 30 years. That's right, 30 years as a transgender woman. He has recently authored the book, Not Man Enough to Be a Woman, and he's here to share his story today. William, thank you so much for joining me.

William Allen: Stephanie, how are you? Thank you for having me.

Stephanie Winn: So as I was saying before we started recording, you win the award for person who spent most number of years living as a trans-identified person who I have had the honor of speaking with. So it's a real privilege. It almost reminds me of when I interviewed Bob Withers, who was a therapist for someone with transition regret in the early 90s. Similarly, you began this so-called transition process in 1993, and only in 2023 did everything change for you. So I'm going into this not knowing much about your story, but maybe as a starting point, you can read people the X post that I initially found you through. I guess this one blew up on social media.

William Allen: Yeah, it did. It was Detrans Awareness Day on the 12th of March, and I had been posting the declarations of fellow detransitioners, and it dawned on me I should just do one myself. So I did a short one, I posted it, and yeah, it did. It just blew up, and I think that's how you discovered me. And I just tried to be honest with it and short and to the point. So here it is. I am William. I detransitioned 30 years after transitioning in 1993. While pretending to be a woman, I ruined relationships, deceived many, and acquired new relationships fraudulently. I came to Christ, was changed from the inside out, and now I want to live as God created me. And there it is.

Stephanie Winn: There's obviously more to the story. Yeah, there is so much more to the story. And I'm coming into this not knowing. I know you've done other interviews, and you've written this book. But sometimes it takes months to get people on the show, and sometimes it's a super quick turnaround time. So for me, when I saw that post, I was like, definitely got to know his story. Let's get this guy on the show. And then, boom, we scheduled it right away. So I'm really coming in blind. So where should we begin?

William Allen: Well, probably at the beginning. As a child growing up in the 60s, the very first thing that I can ever remember is, well, it's not the only thing, but the most prominent thing that I can remember is wishing I had been born a girl. I don't know why. I can't explain it. If you had known me then, I was just another boy growing up in the 60s and I had a lot of neighborhood buddies. We played Cowboys and Indians and rode our bikes and got into all sorts of trouble. We built forts and I was in the Cub Scouts and the Boy Scouts. You just never would have known that this was a part of me. And I would have, after all that, I would have my private time in the evenings. And just outside my bedroom was a walk-in closet that my parents put all the clothes that they didn't wear anymore. And I would play dress up in my mother's clothes, not my dad's. I was an only child, so that wasn't really an issue, and I could do that in secret, and nobody knew about it. And even at that age, I knew that I had to keep this hidden. I knew that instinctively, I just, I knew that this wasn't right. And so I kept it hidden. And I had to deal with this growing up as a child in elementary school and getting through high school and on into college. And all that time, I thought I was the only one in the world that felt the way that I did. I couldn't figure it out. I didn't ask for it. I didn't want it. I was attracted to girls. I dated high school and college. And I never could understand why I wanted to be a girl. I was attracted to girls, but I wanted to be one. And I can't say You know, you hear all these people say today, I'm a woman trapped in a man's body. Or I really, I am a woman. Trans women are women. No. All through those years, and even through the years living as a woman, I was never under any delusion as to who and what I was. I was a man pretending to be a woman. But somehow that was enough for me. I knew I could never be a woman. But I passed. I put some effort into it. Unlike a lot of the people you see today who do absolutely nothing and they just look hideous. And even there are some that look fine, you would never guess. But as soon as they open their mouth, the jig is up. And I guess my attitude is, if you're going to do this thing, put some effort into it. Do something with your voice. But most of them, they just don't even care. They just expect the world to adapt to them. And of course, back in my day, we didn't have any resources. I had to figure out everything on my own, and it wasn't until after I got out of college and moved out to Portland, Oregon for my first job out of university that I found a group. I found other people like me. There was a support group there. It was such a relief to just find out that there are other people like me. And that's where I discovered that this, you know, transitioning, this was a possible thing. So, yeah, it was a difficult life. And in every other aspect, it was a fairly normal life. I had loving parents growing up. I had a lot of friends growing up. I was active in my church. I even got married. I met a girl on an airplane that actually, I got on the plane in Portland, and the flight had originated in Seattle. And I sat next to this girl, and by the end of the flight, I knew that was who I was going to marry. And we did. We got married within a year. When that happened, when I met this girl and fell in love, this compulsion that I had that had occupied so much of my brain throughout my life, all those desires had gone away. I was raised in the church, and I always called myself a Christian, and I had prayed to God that he would just take this away from me. And I prayed then, and it seemed like he did. Cause I was so in love, you know, this was a new life that I was starting and yeah, all those desires just went away for about two years. And then it came back and it came back with a vengeance and it took over and I couldn't hide it anymore. And it ruined my marriage. And I came very close, right to the edge of suicide. And yeah, I lost my wife, lost my house. I still had a job and I kept working and that was difficult. And it was about three or four years after that is when I, I couldn't take it anymore. I knew that, uh, I'm either going to wind up dead or I have to make this transition. I have to do this thing. And I gave into it, transitioned in 1993.

Stephanie Winn: I have so many questions already. But you said, at that moment in time, I'm either going to wind up dead or I have to transition. So there's the transition or suicide narrative, which, as you know, is very prevalent. And I know we're sort of hopping around, but I'm curious how you see that now. Because it sounds like, at the time, that is really how you were thinking and feeling. But if you could whisper something in William's ear back in 1993, what would it be?

William Allen: You know, I've gotten that question before. And it's tough. You know, if I could go back, there's really nothing. I mean, how would you explain that? to yourself as a child or a teenager? How could I explain that? How could I put it in terms that the younger me would understand? I was stubborn, and I was bound and determined to do what I did. And there were people in my family, there was one of my uncles is a pastor. And after I had already transitioned, years after, They didn't affirm me or anything, and I had lost contact with them for many, many years. But it was the death of my parents is what kind of brought me back to, at least in a proximity with some of the other family. And they asked me, why didn't you come to us? Why didn't you tell us? And my only response was, there was nothing you could have said that would have stopped me. It was a desperation move for me. It was a survival move. Fair enough. You know, you hear people saying that this so-called gender-affirming care is life-saving care. I don't deny that there is a very high suicide rate amongst transgenders. I was almost one of them. But there are no studies. People claim that there are studies, but there are no studies that show that so-called gender-affirming care reduces that rate. They just don't exist. And it either is or it isn't. I got through it somehow.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, I mean, you know, as as bizarre as gender ideology is, it isn't completely unique for people in a desperate place to have some suicide or plan B option in their mind, you know, suicide or join a cult, suicide or move to some faraway land, right? Suicide or go chase this van on tour around the country. I mean, when people are young and impulsive and have a lot of unaddressed mental health stuff. There can be these things they latch on to. And so trans is not completely unique in that. And I think you make a fair point. And it's a sobering point for a lot of people who are wanting to hear how they can get through to someone is maybe nobody could have possibly gotten through to me. Maybe there's nothing anyone could have said to me. Not even my own older, wiser self could have said the right thing to me. But, let me put it this way, what do you know now that you didn't know then? Or how do you see the problems that you had at that time in your life differently now?

William Allen: Well, growing up, once I was into high school, dealing with this issue, I kept wondering, why am I this way? None of my friends are, at least not that I know of. I just, I could never figure it out. I always thought if only I knew. Maybe there was something I could do about it. When I was in college, I was majoring in computer science, and I took a couple of psychology classes. And they seemed pretty easy, and I took a whole bunch of them, and one of them was abnormal psychology. In the book, I was really hoping to find out something about it. But there was one chapter with one paragraph that mentioned the words transsexual and transvestite. And that was it. There wasn't any real substance in the book back then about it. So again, all through those years, and even into my adult years as Maggie, which was my name, I always wondered, why was I this way? Now I know, and with respects to what happened to me, it's because there's sin in the world. It's just as simple as that. Everybody's got something. I could never put my finger on anything that my parents did. I asked them a lot of questions. I couldn't point to any trauma in my life as a child. I've talked to other transgender folks and detransitioners, and a lot of them can point to something. that was maybe a trigger or a cause of their condition or their feelings. But I just was at a total loss. And that always had bothered me. But as I cover in the book, in my late 20 teens, it was something that happened to me. I just can't deny it. All my life, I thought I was a Christian. I was raised in the church. My parents took me to church. They told me Jesus died on the cross for my sins, and I believed it. I heard that nonchalantly, like I just said it, and that's how it resided in my head. It wasn't any more important to me than a job or a hobby. It was just something that was there. But in the late 2010s, something happened, and I heard the gospel at a new church that I was going to, and I realized that I'm not a good person. I finally understood, and I truly believe that people can't understand and appreciate the good news of the gospel unless they first understand and appreciate the bad news. And that's what led me to Christ. That's what led me to repent, which it was something that I had always missed in my life. I didn't even know about it. This new pastor was talking about things I'd never even heard about before. So yeah, it was a powerful transformation. And it became clear to me afterwards that, yeah, I don't like this life anymore. And I have to say, I was perfectly content living out the rest of my life as a woman. My next door neighbor and best friend, she didn't know about me, about my past. She thought of us as sisters. And she's about my age. And we used to joke about how we're just going to grow old as neighbors, as sisters, wearing our moo-moos at the casino, you know, hanging out at slot machine with our oxygen tanks behind us. And she had no clue. And I don't mean that sound like I'm bragging. But I was successful. And I mean, I did all the things. I did the hormones. I had my beard removed. I did the surgeries. And I was never a great-looking woman. And hopefully, it's hard to believe now. But I am stuck with this baby face. So that does cause me some problems from time to time. Yeah, it was a powerful transformation, and I knew I had to detransition. And I did. And it took three years.

Stephanie Winn: This appeared in childhood without any external influence.

William Allen: That I know of.

Stephanie Winn: You didn't know why you were this way. That you know of, right? Important caveat, right? Because sometimes people forget things from childhood. But you didn't know why you were this way. One thing I wanted to ask is, did it change in puberty? Because this initially was before you would have had any adult sexual feelings. Right. Did it become erotic, start off as not erotic?

William Allen: I mean… Yeah, it was never really erotic for me. And as a child, you know, it was fantasy. I saw people on TV that I thought, that's what I want to aspire to. You're probably too young for this, but there was a TV show on called Bewitched way back when. Do you know it? I know of it. Okay. And the star of that was Elizabeth Montgomery. And I wanted to grow up to be her. I understood that that was just a TV show. And it was just for fun. And I knew that that was an actress. And I knew her real name. But still, there was something about her. And I wanted to grow up to be her. And then when I would do my dress up, I would look in the mirror. And I liked what I saw. And then you mentioned puberty. When that hit, That was tough because now I've got hair growing in places and my legs didn't look good anymore and my body shape was changing. My voice came down. I mean, it's just a lot of things and it was a tough thing for me to deal with. But at that time, everything else that normally occurs, occurred. I noticed girls, and I liked them. And I dated a lot. And like I said, I just kept this other thing hidden.

Stephanie Winn: What were you like socially as a child? Because some of the activities you described from your childhood, they were like very normal boy things, aside from the dress-up. Yeah. Like what you were doing with your friends. Did you have a boyish personality? Were you more mild-mannered?

William Allen: No, I had a boyish personality, and I got into a lot of trouble. I was ornery, and I was being disciplined a lot. My parents were both loving, but my father was a disciplinarian, and I got disciplined a lot. And back then, you got paddled. and paddled or whipped at the belt or whatever. That's that's my grandfather did that. My father did that. And I got grounded a lot. And in high school, I got started getting into a little bit more trouble and rebelled. And there's a lot more detail about that in the book and got into some legal trouble. And He, he exercised tough love for a couple of years and I hated him for it. I mean, I hated him and I, you know, I was a teenage boy. I was trying to think how, how can I get back at him and how can I, I'm going to run away never to be heard from again. Or, and the thought then even crossed my mind of just killing myself as revenge. You know, well, this will show him, you know, and the rest of the family will hate him for it because I did this. He drove me to this. It's just crazy. Things like that went through my head. But I can't I don't know if that behavior was rooted in. In this secret that I had. Could be, I don't know.

Stephanie Winn: Or the other way around?

William Allen: Or the other way around, yeah.

Stephanie Winn: It did seem like there was some conflict with your father. Maybe some, perhaps, hatred towards the parts of you that reminded you of him.

William Allen: I don't know about that. It's possible. You know, it was so long ago, and I mean, I'm not, I don't have any formal training in that area, so, you know, I'm open to open to possibilities, open to ideas about that. But honestly, I look back at it now, and he was a good father. And he exposed me to a lot of things, sports and music and science and engineering and those types of things and camping. We did a lot of things together. And he was just a wonderful father, but he was also He was a disciplinarian. And I thank him for that. I remember writing him a letter. when I got out of college. And at this time, he didn't know about my proclivity or my compulsion. But I wrote him a letter and thanked him for what he did, and Mom, for what they both did, for being tough, exercising that tough love. Because I knew I was headed for jail or the morgue or something. He did what he had to do. He let me hate him for two years. And he wasn't abusive or anything. And he wasn't going to let me get away with anything. I mean, I was grounded. I couldn't go to anywhere except school and youth group at church. And I always had to be taken there and picked up. My mother had to quit her job. And so I was never by myself. I was always under supervision for two years. And I had to earn their trust. I really, yeah, in that letter, I thanked them for doing what they did. I know that had to be tough to do, but they did it out of love.

Stephanie Winn: You're describing yourself like you were a really problematic child. Could you paint a picture? What were some of the behaviors that concerned people?

William Allen: Well, probably the worst things were I stole a couple of cars and wound up in jail. Now, as a teenager, actually, it was my father that discovered what I had done. I probably would have gotten away with it if he hadn't figured out that I was acting pretty hinky, because one of the cars I stole was from a neighbor down the street. And when there was a crime lab in their driveway, when we were going out to dinner one night, he picked up on the fact that I was acting very strangely. And when we got home, he questioned me and he got it out of me. And, uh, and so we, we went to tell that neighbor what I had done, and then they had to call the police to let them know that they found the culprit. Cause they were, they had launched a huge investigation. And, uh, but you know, I had seen all those, those crime shows as a teenager, you know, and I, I wiped the car clean. I didn't leave any fingerprints, nothing. They wouldn't have had me.

Stephanie Winn: You had some antisocial traits.

William Allen: Apparently, yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Do you remember what it felt like to have the compulsion to do things like that?

William Allen: No. To me, it just seemed normal. Like I said, I was just ornery. And from early childhood, I was always doing things like that. Well, not that bad. But when I lived in Ohio, I was always getting in trouble around the neighborhood. You know, firecrackers. I was trying to blow things up and just do it out.

Stephanie Winn: When you say it was normal, were your friends like that? Your siblings?

William Allen: Yeah. I didn't have any siblings, but the neighborhood kids, yeah, we all did that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie Winn: Okay.

William Allen: And oddly, in fact, the fellow that lived across the street from me, one of my best buddies, he was a year older than me. And I kind of looked up to him and he kind of led the way. And he taught me a lot of these things, these things that we did, the trouble that we got into in the neighborhood. And I always got caught. And my father always kind of knew what we were doing and where we were doing things. And it dawned on me in later years that it made perfect sense because it was the same neighborhood he grew up in. He grew up in a house that was only four houses away from where we lived. My grandparents were still there at the time. So he knew all the hiding places. He knew all the places in the neighborhood to do things and get in trouble. But this fellow that lived across the street from me, Todd, I've only just recently reconnected with him, and he's a pastor. I never would have guessed that he'd be a pastor now, but he is a pastor.

Stephanie Winn: So I'm trying to understand you as a child, and I'm getting a mixed picture here, but I think the thing that really stands out to me is several minutes ago, you said, now I know why I'm this way or why I was this way. It's because there's sin in the world. Everyone has something. I'd imagine within your religious framework that things like stealing neighbor's cars are also under that umbrella of sin, which is part of why I wanna kind of dig into like, oh, what was that compulsion like to have those antisocial urges? Because there are people who are like that as children and they grow up to be criminals and they're sociopaths. They derive pleasure from exploiting others, right? And then there are people who grow out of it. Your story is unique in that you had some of those antisocial behaviors as a child, and I'm not really hearing you linking that a lot with the trans identification, which wasn't even called that then, right? It was more like the urge to cross-dress as a young child, devoid of any social context. This followed you all the way into your marriage. It destroyed your marriage. Finally, it was 1993. And how old were you, by the way, in 93?

William Allen: Early 30s, like 32, 33, something like that.

Stephanie Winn: OK. So that was when you started acting on it. And now you have this religious framework. So how does the religious framework, this really general concept of sin, which can mean a lot of different things, how does that help you understand why this, why you?

William Allen: Well, going back to when I was a kid and stealing a car, You know, certainly then I had never heard the terms antisocial or had any concepts of anything like that. I stole a car simply because I wanted to drive. I liked to drive. And obviously, I stole my own dad's car a couple of times prior to that. But his car wasn't available, so I thought, I'm going to go steal somebody else's car. I'm going to skip school. I'm going to go steal a car, and I'm going to drive around all over town. And I did, because I liked to drive. I was 12, 13 years old at the time. And I just didn't see an issue with that. And obviously that was a problem. But like I said, after the two years of my parents not trusting me and enforcing discipline, I finally got it. I was trying to think of ways to get out of there. And I knew that if I did, it would just lead to really bad things, criminal activities and such. And I mean, they saved me. They really did. And after that, I was pretty good. I understood compassion for others. I understood I had manners even, and I just treated people totally different. Now, as to the religious aspect of it, as I said, I thought I was a Christian all my life. I'd been active in church, and at key points during my life, I would pray. Like when I got out of school and was going out on my own, I thought, okay, this is kind of a major thing. I'm going out on my own. I gotta fend for myself. I'm responsible for myself. And I thought, this is kind of huge. So I sat down and I prayed, and I said, Lord, I'm gonna need your help. And I said, you've probably heard the sinner's prayer. And I said that prayer, because I realized that maybe I wasn't saved.

Stephanie Winn: What is the sinner's prayer?

William Allen: It goes something like, Jesus, I know I'm a sinner, and I want you to come into my heart. Those are kind of the key points, which is not biblical. But a lot of people think that it is, and there's a lot of so-called pastors out there that are pushing that narrative. But I said those things, and I thought I was saved. You've heard the term being saved. And then some other point in my life would come up, like the day I was getting married, and that morning I'm thinking, I don't think I'm saved. And I would say that prayer again. And again, it wasn't biblical. What happened to me, this was after both my parents had died. I was living out in the Pacific Northwest. And in 2015, my father was terminal. And so we knew he didn't have much time left. He had been dealing with cancer for about three years. And my mother was pretty old, and she was getting sick as well. And I was telling her that I was still in contact with my mother, but my father and I were estranged for 23 years. We had not spoken since that night in 1993 that I told him what I was going to do. One morning, I got a call from an aunt and told me that my mother had died. And I thought, no, dad. And she said, no, it's your mother. Totally unexpected. I had just talked to my mother the night before, and she had finally agreed to let me come down and take care of her. My father was in the hospital pretty much full time at that point. And my mother and I had still been in contact all those years. And so yeah, she said I can come down. And I told her I would drive across country and I'll be there in a few days. And yeah, then she died the very next morning. So instead of driving, I got on a plane and I came home and there's an aunt and uncle here that had not affirmed what I did and we had not been in contact. Now my aunt, she had just contacted me about two years prior to that. So we had been talking at least just on the phone, but she had never seen Maggie. So I've got to actually come home now and, and deal with, you know, my mother dying and my father's going to be dead in any day now. And, uh, so that, that was tough for them as well. It was tough for me. It was awkward. Um, and it was awkward for them. Uh, Because they had known William growing up, and they had never even seen Maggie. So it was awkward for them and the whole family. But they stepped up, and they helped me. And my aunt and I would go to the hospital to see dad, but I didn't go into the room. My aunt would go in, and I just was hanging out in the visitor area or in the hallway. And she kept trying to get me to go in, and she and a nurse, they conspired. And, uh, something happened. I mean, it's, it's very detailed in the book. It's hard to talk about. Um, but there was a deathbed reconciliation. Um, and he died the next day. Uh, I, I wish he could have seen me now, but yeah, that was 2015. I was still Maggie man at that time had no. no plans to detransition or anything. So that was tough. I look back on that and it's a very sad thing. And my aunt, she always said something. And in these most recent years, she kept saying, oh, if only your dad could have accepted this, you know, you two could have had so much fun together. He was an engineer and I was an engineer. A sailor, he was a sailor, I was a sailor. We had a lot of things in common. And yeah, she's right. We probably could have had a lot of fun together. But if I hadn't done what I did, yeah, we could have had a lot of fun together as well. So it's a tough thing to deal with.

Stephanie Winn: You seemed emotional when you talked about him seeing you as you are now. What do you wish that your father could notice about you today, the person you've become?

William Allen: Just that I've detransitioned, that I've come around, I've seen the light, however you want to put it. See, he was always proud of his boy. And when I was young, I became an Eagle Scout. I was in Boy Scouts. Eagle Scout, that's my boy. He's an Eagle Scout. That's my boy. Proud of my boy. And then I got a college degree. I'm the first one in the named line of my family to get a college degree. And that's my boy. He's a college graduate. Proud of my boy. And then I got a pilot license. Ah, my boy's a pilot. Used to tell all his friends, my boy's a flyer. Proud of my boy. And then one day in 1993, I told him that I wanted to be a girl. And that had to be devastating. Had to be devastating. He got very angry. In fact, the title of the book comes from that conversation. That night, at one point, he had gone off on a diatribe about his sisters. He had six sisters, one brother. And he told me about how wonderful they were, how nurturing they were, and all the, a lot of ways that they're superior to men in many ways. Women in general, really, it wasn't just his sisters. And how they had to tolerate so many things. And all of these things are true. And as he was saying this, this rage just kept building up in him. I was just sitting there like, uh, like I was a child again, you know, my head down, listening to my, my dad lecture me. And I'm kind of off in another world. I'm just listening for my name and, or, or look at me. And, uh, finally he just, you're just not man enough to be a woman. And so. 30 years later when I'm writing the book, I needed the title and that popped into my head. So that's where the title came from.

Stephanie Winn: What do you think he meant by that?

William Allen: He didn't think I would be able to manage it. He had told me all the things that women have to do and put up with and tolerate. And he just didn't think I was man enough to do that. I understood the notion that he was trying to convey. I got it. But like I said, he said it in frustration and anger. And after that conversation that night, yeah, we hadn't spoken for 23 years.

Stephanie Winn: Many of you listening to this show are concerned about an adolescent or young adult you care about who's caught up in the gender insanity and therefore at risk of medical self-destruction. I developed ROGD Repair as a resource for parents just like you. It's a self-paced online course and community that will teach you the psychology concept and communication tools the families I've consulted with have found most helpful in understanding and getting through to their children, even when they're adults. Visit ROGDRepair.com to learn more about the program and use promo code SomeTherapist2025 at checkout to take 50% off your first month. That's ROGDRepair.com. Well, so let's talk about this idea that you were not man enough to be a woman. I mean, I, I respect your father for saying that. because it's easy to have a bias where you see what's hard about your side of the fence and easy about everyone else's. And I sometimes talk about trans identified youth having this sort of grasses greener syndrome where they're really kind of cherry picking what aspects of being a man or a woman they choose to focus on to support their narrative. And so for your man being a manly man as he was to respect and appreciate that women have our own hardships. They're just different hardships than the ones men face. But you lived as a trans woman for 30 years. You believe that you so-called passed for some of that. Yes, I'm aware there will be people commenting on YouTube about how the trans people always think that they pass. And, you know, I'm not here to make any judgment because I'm not looking at photos of William from the year 2005. That's not what we're doing right now. I think, you know, we're here to talk about William's subjective experience and recollection of living that life. Like you said, you had this, you know, best friend, and that you deceived people in relationships. So what did living as a so-called woman teach you during that time?

William Allen: Well, it was a learning experience. Like I want to reiterate, I never thought I was a woman. So from the beginning, it was a totally new experience. It's just that I wanted to be a woman. And I knew that I couldn't ever actually be a woman. But I had gotten so many comments from people when I would go out in public or go to one of these support group meetings as a woman that affirmed what I did. They were very affirming, right? I got to tell you, and hopefully later we'll talk a little bit more about the trans community and so-called gender-affirming care. I got to say, affirmation is like crack. Got to have it. Can't live without it. Need some more of it. Where can I get it? The more affirmation I got, the more willing I was to go to the next step. And that's what people need to understand today. Affirmation is not a good thing. Um, but I, I, I experimented, I worked on the, uh, on the presentation. I went to a voice coach and altered my voice and, um, it was able to do that successfully. And even when I was talking on the phone, people just didn't know. Um, and then once I, I transitioned on the job, but once I left that company, Wherever I went, I could see no indications that anybody knew. If I'm out and about, it was just total indifference that I got. Nobody seemed to notice.

Stephanie Winn: You've highlighted some of the nuances and distinctions around how you thought about this. And this is one of those things that, as I'm sure you're aware, varies from one trans-identified person to the next. This is one of those things I try to understand when I'm working with parents in my consulting role. And they're telling me about their kid, because some kids say, well, no, I know I'm not really that. It's just that I want to be perceived as that. And then for other kids, it's, no, I am that. And then there's a few other variations on it as well. So for you, it was, you always knew that you were actually a man. But so when you talk about affirmation being like crack to you, I can imagine that operating slightly differently in someone who holds an underlying belief, I am that, and I'm being recognized as that thing that I am, versus someone who's, I know I'm not that, I want to be that, I wanna be seen as that. And I'm getting seen as that. So how did that drug work on you? Was there a thrill in deceiving people? What was the thing that got you about affirmation?

William Allen: I wouldn't say it was a thrill in deceiving people. And deceiving people wasn't what I was setting out to do necessarily. And I know that sounds odd because my next sentence is going to be I just wanted to be perceived as Who I'm presenting myself Which is deceiving people So I I get that that's kind of it It's like a feeling of success Yeah, yeah, I I just wanted to be accepted for I how I thought of myself, you know? And like I said, I put an awful lot of effort into it.

Stephanie Winn: How did you think of yourself?

William Allen: As a woman, I kept trying to picture myself as a woman.

Stephanie Winn: Even though you knew you weren't?

William Allen: Right, right. It was this overwhelming compulsion that just got stronger throughout my life. I couldn't shake it. In the book, I describe it as a turd. I couldn't shake off my shoe. And I tried. I never asked for it. I got a lot of counseling from different counselors. I even sought out pastors from different churches. And one thing I got to say, back in the day, we had standards. We had a process for going through this. There's this thing called the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care for Transsexuals, and it's a step-by-step process. You have to have a minimum number of hours of counseling, you have to get a new medical doctor and get an evaluation, and you have to make a transition, and you have to live for a year that way before you can have any surgeries. All that's thrown out the window today.

Stephanie Winn: By the way, just for listeners' context, what William just described was the organization that has evolved into WPATH today.

William Allen: Has evolved into WPATH, yep. You know, I was going through that whole process, but early on, and like I said, I was seeing other counselors. I saw one counselor, and he wanted to treat it as a sexual addiction. And he wanted me to go to this group session. And I went to one, and I never went to another one. I heard things in that session that I wish I had never heard. Even today, they still haunt me. So that, yeah, that didn't work out, but we tried all sorts of different techniques. And I saw pastors too, and nobody really knew anything about it. None of the pastors could even really help me out. One pastor at a church, And now I realize it was probably a very progressive church, kind of like an early adopter of the progressive churches. I told him I always prayed for a miracle that God would just change me to where I, not change me to a girl, but change me where I didn't have these feelings anymore, this compulsion. And he actually said, well, maybe this is the miracle that you can make this transition. Now at the time, I didn't really know much about God or the Bible, but I thought, I knew enough to realize that's not right. So I got up and walked out of there. That was crazy. Never went back.

Stephanie Winn: That's so interesting that you wanted, so you were trying to get help, psychological help, because you felt that this was an unwanted compulsion. And then someone within your faith community came at it from the stance of sort of the devil on your shoulder, if you will, like, no, you can go ahead and maybe this is God. Maybe God is giving you the opportunity to indulge this fantasy. Maybe he thought he was being helpful when he said that, but you instinctively- He probably did, yeah.

William Allen: Yeah, I knew that there was something inherently wrong. Something inside me told me that.

Stephanie Winn: And with all the help that you did seek, counseling and pastoral counseling and so on, was any of it helpful? Or did anyone at any point say anything that resonated for you, that gave you a better understanding?

William Allen: No, nobody. And all that, you know, this was kind of the lead up to caving in. I wanted to make a concerted effort. to make this go away. But I just couldn't do it. And the compulsion just kept growing. And I realized I'm either going to wind up dead or I've got to do this thing. It was survival. So I finally just made the decision in late 1992 that I'm going to do this. I'm going to transition and started making plans. And one of the first things was telling my parents about it. So I had flown home for the holidays that year and told them that on New Year's Day, 1993. And then I flew back to Seattle the next day. uh, had already been on the hormones for a while and been letting my hair grow out. All these steps, I had already talked to work things out with my, my employer who, by the way, I was going to leave. I was going to resign. Uh, I told them about it just cause I, I needed to use them as a reference for my next job. And, uh, I also needed them to update their records. And, uh, I told him, I don't want to cause any troubles here. I'm going to resign. And they talked me into staying, which I thought was, wow, that's amazing. But that was Seattle, and a very, very liberal population there. And they were OK with it. So I transitioned on the job. And I have to say, it went fairly well. The hormones had an amazing effect.

Stephanie Winn: What do you mean, an amazing effect?

William Allen: They softened my skin. They changed my hair texture. I grew breasts. Just a lot of changes. And when it wasn't sudden, it took a few months. Muscle mass decrease, just a lot of things. And anybody today that says that puberty blockers and hormones, cross-sex hormones, are safe and reversible, they're lying. They're just lying. These are permanent changes. And I was euphoric. That's what I wanted. And like I said, I was having my beard removed at the same time with electrolysis, and that's permanent.

Stephanie Winn: You say that you were euphoric. You also said it wasn't erotic, which I think is going to be hard for some of my listeners to believe, especially, you know, considering that you are the heterosexual type of man. We do, you know, understand that it started early in childhood, but You know, a lot of what the sort of turf gender critical community is exposed is that there is an erotic motivation for a lot of these men and that when they talk about so-called gender euphoria, they're talking in part about getting that erotic thrill. But do you want us to understand it as something different?

William Allen: You're probably talking about autogynephilia. Yeah, that wasn't me. There was absolutely nothing erotic about it. It was euphoric in that, in the sense that I'm now living as a woman. There was no sexual gratification out of it at all.

Stephanie Winn: And what did that, like help us understand the high that you got out of that.

William Allen: It was a lifelong dream that I was finally getting to realize. And I just, people were behaving differently toward me. I'm obviously dressing differently, just everything about it. Now that wore off after a couple of years. It was a novel thing at the time.

Stephanie Winn: Can we talk about the placebo effect for a moment? Sure. So, you know, I'm just kind of putting this together as we go, but something I've been thinking about that I want to address in some way, and actually I'm realizing no better time than to address it with you right now. So before we started recording, I'd mentioned to you that I just started taking thyroid medication. So some of my listeners who follow me on social media and pay close attention to my life might have known that I have some health issues. And one of my health issues is that I have been very, very, very cold and also chronically tired. And so I have a lot of the main symptoms of hypothyroid, but was not diagnosed hypothyroid until just now. just last week by my amazing naturopathic doctor. She's the best I've ever had. And I guess a lot of my labs have looked pretty normal, but she read between the lines, looked at certain ratios, plus my symptoms, and said she'd be willing to put me on a trial of thyroid medication, which I never thought I'd get to try. And I'd been curious for months, like, if we could only just turn up the dial on my thyroid, how would I feel? So I had an interesting experience of euphoria at this experience last week of my doctor telling me that she would prescribe me Lebothyroxine. And before I even got the pills, I just felt this like elation, like, oh my goodness. And so for me, what's motivating that feeling is that I've been suffering. for a long time feeling really unwell. And out of all the different things I could try, this is the thing that for me had the most significance as maybe that would transform my life, but no doctor will ever give it to me. That was my narrative, right? So when my doctor says, oh yeah, no, your thyroid is suboptimal. I don't mind prescribing you a trial of this medication. I was like, just mind blown. And it really affected me emotionally. and you know that energy carried me to pick up my first prescription and I've noticed a result right away which you're not supposed to. It's supposed to be something that takes a few weeks to build up. Now some of the result I'm experiencing is very tangible because my hands are literally warm to the touch and I could touch anyone and they would notice I'm warm when I used to be cold. Also, as I'm sitting here talking to you, normally when I sit in this chair, unbeknownst to the people I'm talking to, I actually have a heating pad in my lap to keep me warm and I don't need that today because they turned up the dial on the thermostat of my thyroid. So here's where I'm going with this, right? I had this remarkable experience of feeling euphoria and elation, like, oh my goodness, my doctor's gonna prescribe me this life-changing medication. And so part of that's like hope for realistic possibilities, like feeling warmer, which is actually happening. Part of it is maybe a little overblown, like there's a part of me like, wow, what if I just, you know, 10 pounds just magically melt off because it's my thyroid that's making my thighs chubby or whatever, you know? So I was having this experience and at the same time thinking, is this how trans-identified people feel when they are thinking about getting on hormones? I mean, it's a very similar experience in some ways because I have in my mind, I've been suffering for a long time and this is going to change my life. Wow, isn't that amazing? And that's a really similar narrative. So I wonder about that kind of placebo that, you know, it's like the similarities and differences because I'm taking a medication that can actually fix a physical problem with me. But so you say you think I'm on to something. I mean, tell us about your understanding of You know, how much you relate to that and the connection you see between kind of the euphoria and the placebo effect and the promise of what these drugs can do and the significance that holds for people psychologically.

William Allen: Well, once I had made the decision to proceed, that in itself was just a huge relief. Because I wouldn't have to be fighting this so much. It wouldn't be occupying so much of my day. I could focus on my work and other things. So that in and of itself was a huge relief. And then when I started seeing results from the hormones, Wow. Yeah. Breasts started to grow, and I wanted that. Other things started to change. And by March of 1993, March is when I made the full-time transition, living as a woman. I had to live like that for a year before I could have the bottom surgery, what they call the bottom surgery today. It went well. It was kind of a high because now I'm living like I've always wanted to. I got up in the morning and I had a ritual in my head that I perceived so many women had, you know, just getting dressed, doing their hair, doing their makeup and going off to work and then coming home and getting comfy. It was no longer just a fantasy life that I had in secret in the privacy of my own home. I was living it. And it was enjoyable. It was novel. I was ecstatic about it. And when I wrote the book, that chapter and one of the others were the last chapters that I wrote, each chapter of the book, I tried to put myself in that mindset of that time frame as I wrote, as I wrote about my childhood and my college years and various other things. And when it came time to talk about the transition and what came after that, at the time, I was happy. I was finally getting to live life like I wanted to. And it was tough to write that. One reason I put it off to the last, because I don't see it the same way anymore. I look back on it now with disdain, right? But at the time, yeah, I was just so happy. And it was always something new, it seemed like. Men started holding the door for me. when I was out in public. I took a road trip with a friend from work, a girlfriend from work. And she didn't even know about it. She worked at the same company, but she was unaware that I had made this transition. She wasn't there when I did it. And in fact, she got kind of upset when she found out later. But we had done this road trip up to Canada. And we stayed in hostels, youth hostels. And I was staying in the women's dorms. Nobody knew. Now, you've got to think, this is back in the 90s, right? A lot of people didn't even know about this kind of thing. And if they had found out that there was this dude living in the women's dorm at a hostel, it would have been some trouble.

Stephanie Winn: Can you say that you look back on that with disdain now? And you said, I think, right in your opening that you harmed people through this. So how do you look back on these issues now about deceiving people about your identity, being in women's private spaces?

William Allen: See, at the time, I didn't really think I was hurting anybody else. I knew I'd hurt my father. And I had ruined some relationships with only about half of the family was I still in touch with. And it's a large family. There were nine kids in my dad's family. So I had a lot of aunts and uncles and my 24 cousins. I'm just on first cousins just on his side of the family. But I generally didn't think of it or see it as harming anybody else. I see that way differently today. People online and they post things like, you know, trans people existing affects you negatively in no way whatsoever. Well, that's not true. You've been coming after the children. You're invading women's sports. You're stealing medals and trophies and accolades and sponsorships and endorsements from women. You've infiltrated the government and you're bringing legislation against women. You're mocking women. Y'all tried to change Title IX and penalize women for calling you out, making it so that they would go to jail. You're shoving in her face. All sorts of things that you're doing that negatively affect other people. And my message to the trans community is you went too far. If you hadn't done all that stuff, especially with the children, probably nobody would have given you a second thought. You could live like you wanted to. I hear people coming at me calling me a hater and transphobe and all sorts of things. And my response is, you just went too far. You brought it on yourselves. It didn't have to be this way. We just want to go into a women's restroom to pee. That's all we want to do. And yet they're taking pictures of themselves inside women's restrooms. Now, how creepy is that? You know, that's what upsets people. And they don't understand that. And then they say silly things like, but trans women are women. They're not. There's absolutely nothing whatsoever about you that is a woman. Not your chromosomes, not your skeletal structure, not your muscular structure, not anything. Your reproductive system is different. If archaeologists dig up your bones in a thousand years, they will know that you are a man. There is absolutely nothing about you that is a woman. Now, I, and as much as I will chastise them for that, I still, I have the utmost compassion for these people because I know what it was like. I know what they've gone through and I try to respond to these people that come at me lovingly, and I try to tell them that there is another way. And you had asked earlier, why do I look back on it all now with disdain? Well, it was because of the transformation that I underwent. And that was the only thing that had ever worked for me. It's been five years. when that happened, and in 2021 is when I started, that happened in 2020, and in 2021 is when I started the detransition.

Stephanie Winn: Sorry, what happened in 2020?

William Allen: I was saved, for real. That's when I came to Christ, and I repented, and I put my trust in Jesus, and, you know, you hear people say that, you know, these radical Christians, these born-again Christians, I had always heard that, and now I'm one of them.

Stephanie Winn: I cannot- Was there something that brought you to that point?

William Allen: Yeah, yeah. Well, I had started going to a different church. When I came back to Florida to bury my parents, and I was talking about my mom, she died first, and then my father, he died nine days later, so we did a double funeral. But I started going to a different church here with my family, and I heard this pastor talking about things that I had never heard before. And I was going there off and on and I kind of went back to work for a while out in the Northwest, but then I came back and he was talking about sin and hell and repentance, things I'd never heard any other pastors talking about in my whole life. And it wasn't necessarily what I wanted to hear. but somehow that lent it more credibility, and it got my attention. And then I found other pastors online. I'd stumbled onto them on YouTube, and they were all saying the same thing. And so I really started, yeah, I had tried to read the Bible many times, but it just seemed like gibberish to me. I never could get through it. And I hear that from a lot of people. But now I started reading the Bible and it was just making so much sense once I understood. And the main thing was, what I tell people, trans people today, if we actually can get into a conversation, because they'll, They'll tell me stories about how they're treated by other so-called Christians, and you have to detransition, or you have to do this, you have to do that. I'm not coming at them with that. I realized that it wasn't my lifestyle that had condemned me. I wasn't too worried about that. What had condemned me was that very first lie that I ever told in my life. See, God's standards are pretty high. It was that first thing that I ever stole in my life, even as a child. That's what condemned me. We're all sinners. Nobody's good. And if I'm talking to a trans person, a gay person, whatever, they'll get hung up. They'll say that I'm attacking them for being gay or trans. No. I'm not attacking you. First of all, I'm not attacking you. First of all, I love you. I love you so much that I'm willing to speak truth to you. If I didn't love you, I wouldn't even bother. I wouldn't care. I wouldn't even talk to you, but I do. And it's, yeah, you're trans, I get it. I'm not coming at you from that angle. I'm coming at you from the angle that you're a sinner, just like I was. It's like I am, we're all sinners. We've all done these things. And once you realize that, Once you see your sin in its true light, once you see yourself for who and what you are, that's when you get this wave of dread that comes over and you think, wow, okay, I'm a wretch, I'm a sinner, and there's nothing I can do about it on my own. That's why we need a Savior. That's why we need Jesus. So many people just don't get that. They think it's about coming down on trans people, saying, you have to detrans, you can't live like this, you're an abomination, you're a… I'm not going to call you that. You're a sinner, just like the rest of us. That's what it's all about. And I didn't actually detransition until after I was saved.

Stephanie Winn: I think that word sin has very different connotations to different people, you know, in terms of like the filter that they're hearing it through. Like the, the way that, the way when I hear people speak about it in a way that I find relatable and digestible, um, there's, I don't know if you're going to relate to this at all, there's almost a laid back quality. There's almost an edge of humor to it. Like, cause that's, that's where the grace comes in. There's the holding it lightly. Like, of course we miss the mark. Right. You know, if you think about sin and its original translation of missing the mark, like, of course we missed the mark, you know? Um, And I think holding it lightly and holding each other lightly in that there's a lot more kind of room to feel the grace and the warmth. And I think I like the way that you put it earlier when you say something that about in order to receive the good news, you have to first receive the bad news. It's the acceptance of it's looking honestly, at least this is how I'm translating what you're saying, right? Like it's looking honestly at these flaws about yourself and your ways, recognizing that you're no better or worse than any other human that makes room and creates the need as well for God's grace. So that's how I hear it. But I think the way that some people, especially those who reject religion, hear sin, doesn't have any of that in it. It doesn't have mercy or warmth or humor or humanity in it, right? There's more of this like, I guess, very harsh, punitive, condemning, connotation and there's kind of the sense that I can either choose to subscribe to a belief system that pegs me and everyone else in this really horrible way, or I can avoid that belief system, reject those beliefs, and be exempt And I think where I can see the bridge between those worldviews is that, well, if there is truth in the message, then you're not exempt just because you reject it, right? You can reject what you're hearing because you're hearing it through a filter that triggers shame or rebelliousness in you or a fear of losing your autonomy or a fear of being seen. You can reject the emotional associations you have with the concept. so that you don't have to grapple with that, but that doesn't mean, that doesn't give some like official declaration as to whether or not there's truth in the concept of sin. And I think, you know, I tend to operate from first principles. And so if I think about sin as that translation of missing the mark, do we miss the mark? Well, yes, of course we do, right?

William Allen: Yeah, I talk to a lot of people and some like you mentioned that They just don't believe in God. And like you said, they just feel exempt. It doesn't really affect them. But look, gravity exists whether you believe it or not. And if you choose to believe it or not, that it doesn't exist, you're going to have a very short life. As to the existence of God and the concept of God creating the universe and everything in it and Jesus, I used to have a blind faith and all that, but I've studied this. There is so much scientific evidence. I mean, I can talk to you about the first and second laws of thermodynamics and talk to you about irreducible complexity, the anthropic principle, all these things that scientifically prove the existence of God and creation. I can talk to you about DNA evidence. I can talk to you about archaeological evidence, logic and reason, the laws of cause and effect. I can talk to you all about that. And I can have these arguments with atheists, but the best evidence that I have of these truths is what happened to me. And I can't stay quiet about it. If you see somebody, on a train track and the train's coming at them and they got their earbuds in, they don't hear it or they don't feel it, it would be criminal of me to just let them get hit. I'm gonna do whatever I gotta do to get them off that track, right? And what happened to me was a complete transformation. After I gave my life up to Christ, after I repented, and put my trust in Jesus in very short order, everything started to change. My views on everything changed. It wasn't like I was being indoctrinated. I wasn't even going to the church at the time. I was going to this church as Maggie, by the way, and nobody there knew. If they had known, they would have sat me down and talked to me or escorted me out the door. I was still going back out to the Pacific Northwest and working part-time, and I would come back to that church. I was doing a lot of this investigation on my own, but once that happened, everything changed. And I saw what my lifestyle was doing. I had never even considered that I was deceiving people. And all of a sudden, I saw the deception that I've created. And you've alluded to this, and I've gotten comments from people that, well, people, they just chose to be deceived. They really knew. They didn't know. I was a truck driver, too, for a number of years. And that's an industry that probably wouldn't be safe for someone like me, had they known. And I worked with a lot of fellas, and they all thought the world to me. They looked out after me. One guy, a very, very good friend, and he looked at me as his big sister. He's my trucking little brother. And when I told him only just this past year about my past and my future, he was stunned. And his wife didn't know either. They just, they did not know. So I saw this deception that I had caused. And that hurt me. It wasn't fair to these people. I was using women's restrooms. When I go to hostels, I traveled Europe for a while. I was there for three months and stayed in women's dorms and hostels. That just wasn't fair. And then all the relationships that I just absolutely ruined. I saw things in a totally different light. And I just didn't want it anymore. As I said before, prior to all this, secularly speaking, I was content living out the rest of my life as a woman. That's how I thought I would die. But all of a sudden, I didn't want to live like that anymore. I knew that I wanted to detransition. And I did it to glorify God. I did it because I wanted to. And I wanted to be able to use it as evidence to show others, this is what God can do for you.

Stephanie Winn: Can you tell us about your relationships? I mean, you said that you had fallen in love and gotten married prior to your transition. Transition, yeah. Was there more about that story or about the relationships that you had while living that way?

William Allen: After I had transitioned, it was two or three years later, I noticed that I had been getting attention from men. And I kind of started to like it. Now, prior to starting, I had asked some of the people in my support groups, you know, if somebody goes through a transition, what happens to their, you know, their sexual, how does that affect their sexual attraction? And what I was told was that if you're straight to begin with, you'll most likely be straight afterwards. So you go through the transition. If you're a male to begin with, straight male, you go through it. Then you're a woman and you'll still be straight, meaning you'll then be attracted to men. Still, it's an opposite sex attraction. Or if you're gay to begin with, you go through it. And now as a woman, you'll still have a same sex attraction, which means now you'll be attracted to women. So I didn't necessarily want to turn to be a lesbian because then there's a whole other set of issues I got to deal with. And I didn't want to be attracted to men because at the time that just kind of gave me the oogies. I mean, that was, that was nauseating. I've been straight all my life. So I didn't know what was going to happen, but. I just, who I, how I was living was more important at the time. So I just chose not to even think about that. But like I said, after a few years, I started getting attention from men and I liked it. And men started asking me out. And so I went on some dates. And yeah, I talk about that in the book a little bit too. And there came a point where One fellow was saying, and this is hard for me to say, this is just gross. He said he was in love with me and I just, I lost it. And he wouldn't leave me alone. And I told him about my past and he got mad, but then he came back three days later and said, I still love you. And that turned my stomach because I didn't want to be with a guy that would want to be with Tranny. Isn't that a crazy thing to say? Yeah. So that was when I made a vow to never, I didn't want to date anymore. I didn't want to date men anymore at all. Cause I didn't, I looked at him, I saw him totally different because he was willing to be with a transgender person, with a transsexual. And I just said, no, no.

Stephanie Winn: What were some of the medical consequences that you faced from all those hormones and surgeries?

William Allen: Well, it's hard to say. I'm old now. I'm in my 60s. And I sure do have an awful lot of aches and pains. I don't know what, if any of them can be attributed to the hormones. I'm sure probably some of them can. I had osteoporosis. Parhenia? Osteopenia? Osteopenia, which is like almost osteoporosis. But they figured that was a hyperactive parathyroid. So I had a parathyroidectomy and that helped. But maybe, I don't know if that was caused by it or not. So I it's I'm sure there are effects. Yes, uh, some of the effects have not worn off. I um, What little hair I have on my body has changed. It's like translucent It's like my hair on my head is turned white all the hair on my body. I used to Excuse me I had a hairy chest as as a man and that's all gone um, so those are effects that I'm stuck with now and then of course this baby face uh

Stephanie Winn: When you decided to detransition, did you decide to take any further medical steps?

William Allen: Well, I had to get a mastectomy. And that was tough. Detransition, it took three years. And a lot of people ask why it took so long. Part of it was I had to get myself in the mindset for it first. I had to plan for it. I was working at the time. So I had to save up some money for it. Once I made the decision, I had told my family and friends about it. so they can get in the mindset. And I felt bad for the ones that had affirmed me before, because now I'm going to do it to them again. Now they're going to have to go through this whole process again. But my family has been absolutely wonderful and very supportive. Finding a surgeon took a year. I started looking just in my own general area, and I was calling doctors that dealt with cancer and things like that. They were with me right up until the point that I mentioned that I'm detransitioning. Then they didn't want to have anything more to do with me. Some of them even hung up on me. A couple of them said, you need to call plastic surgeons. I started talking to them. Same thing. As soon as they found out I'm detransitioning, They didn't want anything to do with me. So I'm having to look at other areas in the state. I'm looking all over Florida. And I couldn't find anybody. And I was at my wit's end. I had heard about this organization in Nashville that you go to. And basically, you can just say, yeah, I'm transgender, or I'm this or that. And they'll give you a letter that you can take to your insurance company or any doctor and get whatever surgery you want. You can talk to them over the phone, 20-minute phone call. I was going to call them up and say that I'm a woman and I'm going to transgender to be male. I need a mastectomy. That's what I thought I was going to have to do. And they probably would have paid for it. Right before that, I'm not kidding, the day before I made that phone call, I got a call from a surgeon in Miami Beach, Florida, that said he would work with me. had to be Miami Beach, Florida. Very expensive. People come from all over the world to have stuff done there. And it was very expensive. But I did that, and that took a while. Even after I had that surgery, I had to go back to work still as Maggie for about three more months still to get the money that I needed to finish things up. And I had to wear prosthesis and everything. And then, uh, then I started the, the, the, the name change. I had to go to court and get my name changed again and go through that whole process. So October of 2023 is when it was, I say that that's when it was complete. It's still going on. Um, there's only just a couple of weeks ago that I finally get all my bank accounts switched over and there'll still be some more things that I've got to do, but.

Stephanie Winn: What a process.

William Allen: Yeah, it is.

Stephanie Winn: What about hormones? Are you now on testosterone?

William Allen: I'm not. I've talked to my doc, and he asked me how I felt, and I said I felt fine. I've been off the hormones, off the estrogens, for over five years now. And I still get hot flashes every now and then. It just drives me nuts. If you haven't gotten there yet, I feel for you. And I have that most respect for women in all sorts of arenas. It's awful.

Stephanie Winn: But aren't you worried about bone density? Well, I am.

William Allen: I am. And it's something we're looking at. And we're going to look at levels in my next physical coming up in April. And so he may or may not put me on testosterone. So we'll see. We'll see how that works out. Yeah, it's been a crazy life.

Stephanie Winn: How's your support system?

William Allen: Oh, wonderful. Yeah, just wonderful. Everybody I've told so far, my neighbor, my best friend, I told her, and she was just stunned. I sat her down one day. I said, look, we got to talk. No interruptions. We had to pick a time. And she was worried that she had done something wrong. And I said, no, no, no, it's all me. It's not you. And I told her, I said, look, I'm going to knock your socks off, and then we're going to talk about it. And then when you got your socks back on, I'm going to knock them off again. And we had that talk. And she was stunned. I said, I used to be a man. And she was sad for a while. And then we talked about it, though, and she thought she could deal with that. But then I told her. I'm going to detransition. And there's an aspect there with her of her losing her best friend. Now, we're still friends today. We still do things. But it's a different kind of a relationship now. The fellow I told you about out in Washington, that's a different relationship now, too. He hasn't seen me yet. One of these days, I'm going to get out there and do a visit. So we talk on the phone pretty regular, but until then, he just refers to me as the OG tranny. But he's okay with it, and his wife is too. I have a lot of family that's supportive. People at church, you know, I could easily have gone to another church after I finished the detransition, but I wanted to write a letter to the pastor of that church. It's a big church, and I wanted to at least tell him who I was and what he did for me. He got things started for me. And I wrote this letter, turned out to be a three and a half page letter. He called me back the next day and he was surprised as well. Cause like I said, nobody there knew. And he asked if he could use my story. He was preaching a sermon that next Sunday on repentance. He asked if he could use my story. I said, sure. And, uh, In that letter, I asked him if he'd be willing to baptize me now as William, and he said, yeah. So that next Sunday, he preached a sermon, then he outed me at the end. That was the first time I was ever outed publicly. He told my story, and the people there just welcomed me, and they cheered and applauded. It was just, it was amazing. There's a video of that pinned at the top of my feed on X, and it's like a five or six minute video of him telling that. It's just, it's a tearjerker. So if your viewers, if you wanna see that, go check that out. But I decided to stay at that church. They all welcomed me in. And so yeah, I'm a member there. I have a huge, huge support system there.

Stephanie Winn: Wow, well, I'm glad to hear that. Is there anything else you wanna add?

William Allen: Well, yeah. As far as what we're dealing with today, I want parents to know that affirming a child's behavior and falling for a doctor telling you or asking you the question, would you rather have a dead son or an alive daughter? Don't buy into all that. They're just lying to you. It's a huge industry. It's all for the money. The American College of Pediatricians, a year or two ago, put out a report stating that 80 to 95% of children with gender dysphoria, if left un-medically treated and un-socially transitioned, will resolve their issues by late adolescence. They grow out of it. Let them. Now, I was obviously one of the 5 to 15% who didn't. But the vast majority will. Why are you doing this to children? Also, there are thousands of young adult detransitioners right now who were transitioned as children. And they're mad. They've got osteoporosis. They've got heart conditions. They're impotent. They're sterile. And they're mentally and physically scarred for life. And I guess the message I have for churches is get ready. These people are hurting, welcome them in. They need to hear the gospel. And then the last thing, just since I've been doing what I've been doing, I hear from parents, I hear from loved ones of people that are caught up in the trans agenda or whatever you wanna call it, They're transgendered themselves and they don't know what to do. They've lost their son or their daughter. They just want their child back or their niece or nephew or their brother or whoever. And they're asking me, how do I deal with this? And it's hard. I mean, first of all, pray. Love them unconditionally, unceasingly. But my advice, and I'm not a counselor, I'll say this right now, but just from my experience, do not, do not, do not affirm them. Like I said before, that's what they're seeking. Affirming is going to make them more willing to take that next step. You're just going to send them over the edge. If they haven't made that step yet, affirmation will take them there. So don't do that. It's a tough thing to do too. Like my parents gave me that tough love when I was a kid. They didn't know what was underlying, but sometimes it's tough to love on your children or your brothers or your parents.

Stephanie Winn: I'm not sure if you know this, William, but I have a program for those parents on how to communicate with these trans-identified youth.

William Allen: Really?

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, it's called ROGD Repair.

William Allen: I saw that, yes.

Stephanie Winn: Yeah, yeah, so it's a whole course, because I've been talking to these parents for years now, and the last year, I've just been exclusively doing that instead of therapy. I'm not doing any therapy, I'm just doing the parent consulting. And that allowed me to really focus on taking all the concepts and tools that I work with my coaching clients on and putting it into a program. And, you know, I think you're right, but it's like people need more, right? Like, so then what? So, okay, I don't want to affirm them, but what about this? But what about that? What about when they, you know, raise their voice? make these threats and accuse me of these things. How do I respond to that? And how do I respond when the environment is working against me? And, you know, it's like you said, we do have that data on desistance being, you know, a naturally occurring phenomenon for the vast majority of youth. But I think it gets more complicated in this current environment because not only are kids being medicalized in a way that makes this temporary identity crisis permanent, but also the environment is so affirming that desistance can't just naturally unfold because there's so much to be gained from the identity. So the program is for those parents in those high stakes, low leverage situations. And some of them are listening to this right now. The people who are in the program get early access to new episodes as just kind of one of the perks of membership. But yeah, people who listen to my program, excuse me, people who listen to this podcast but aren't in the program have certainly heard me pitch it a lot. But if this is your first time listening to my podcast and you're just now hearing about it, welcome. Well, William, thank you so much for sharing your story. It's really an honor to be interviewing you about this today after all of these many years, and I'm really grateful to see you thriving. I mean, your body has been through a lot, and your mind and identity, what a huge transformation, but it seems like your faith and your faith community are so grounding and healing for you. So we will include in the show notes your bio, any links you want me to include, like the link to your book, Is there anything else you wanted to mention here at the end about where people can find you? Anything like that?

William Allen: Yeah, just on X and website, which is listed on X. It's not manenoughtobeawoman.com. And there's some other interviews there. There's my bios about the book. You can order the book from there or just get it from Amazon. Yeah, I'm just trying to make my way here and just trying to get the word out to people.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you so much for what you're doing, William. It's been a pleasure.

William Allen: Thanks for having me. Pleasure.

Stephanie Winn: Thank you for listening to You Must Be Some Kind of Therapist. If you enjoyed this episode, kindly take a moment to rate, review, share or comment on it using your platform of choice. And of course, please remember, podcasts are not therapy, and I'm not your therapist. Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for this awesome theme song, Half Awake, and to Pods by Nick for production. For help navigating the impact of the gender craze on your family, be sure to check out my program for parents, ROGD Repair. Any resource you heard mentioned on this show, plus how to get in touch with me, can all be found in the notes and links below. Rain or shine, I hope you will step outside to breathe the air today. In the words of Max Ehrman, with all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.