Detransitioner gives glory to Jesus for saving him from gender mutilation surgery – LifeSite
(LifeSiteNews) — Another prominent detransitioner has come forward to explain why he deeply regrets pursing “gender-affirming care” to procure a sex change – and why.
Joshua McParland of Belfast began struggling with gender dysphoria at a very young age. “Through primary school people would mistake me for a girl, because I had a high-pitched voice and long hair,” he told Good Morning Ulster. “So that’s where the confusion of my identity sort of happened … because I looked so feminine. You’re like a sponge as a child, absorbing people’s opinions.”
As a result, McParland decided to attempt a “transition” to female, and began taking cross-sex hormones at age 17. According to McParland, he had to pressure his mother get permission to “transition,” and she ultimately supported him. “As a mother, she just wanted to love me,” he said. “I think as a teenager, you think you know it all, and you really don’t. I was partying, I was doing drugs, I was just doing crazy stuff.” In January 2024, he traveled to Turkey for breast implants to better “present” as female.
McParland’s mother is also supporting him as he seeks to reverse the changes he embarked on when he was 17. In February, scarcely a year after he went to Turkey, he had surgery to remove the breast implants he purchased. He has also stopped taking cross-sex hormones. McParland says he now recognizes that he was “running away” from his problems – and that trying to change his sex was wrong.
The catalyst for this realization was his conversion to Christianity, which came just before he was about to get “bottom surgery,” which would have involved castration and the attempted creation of a “neo-vagina.” McParland could not be happier about the fact that he changed his mind. “That was the first time that I was ever honest with myself, that I actually wasn’t a woman,” he said. “I was also giving up a future, with a family and kids. You are literally mutilating God’s creation. It’s so wrong. That’s my view.”
“I never went through with (bottom surgery) because God saved me from it,” he said in a video posted to TikTok. “That shows you how amazing God is. I want to give the glory, honor, and praise to Jesus Christ, because He saved me from a lot of things I was about to do to myself. I was about to destroy His creation and He saved me from that because people told me I was going to become a ‘real woman.’ You can’t change how God created you. Only Jesus can save us from the lies of Satan.”
“All this gender reconstruction stuff, it’s not from God,” he went on. “This is going to offend a lot of people, but it’s also going to save a lot of people from living in the lies that I was living in, too. I pray that this (video) reaches someone in Jesus’ mighty name. I’m not here to be harsh. I’m here to be the truth. … I’m saying this out of love. I didn’t get the bottom surgery done, and I don’t think you should, either.”
When asked by Good Morning Ulster if he was “concerned that many members of the trans community would take offense with his opinions,” McParland noted that is uniquely qualified to understand both sides. “I’ve already walked in their shoes,” he replied. “I’ve been down that path, and now I’m walking with a new life with Jesus.” The BBC noted that Stormont, Northern Ireland’s legislative body, “introduced an indefinite ban on the supply of puberty blockers to under-18s” in December.
McParland is documenting his detransition on his Instagram page as well as on TikTok.
Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.
His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.
He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.
Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.
