READ THE WHOLE REMARKABLE PIECE BY TYLER O'NEIL ON JAMES SHUPE'S COURAGEOUS RETURN TO HIMSELF AND SEXUAL REALITY. A WHOLE LOT OF SUFFERING WENT INTO HIS SAGA
First Trans Person to Obtain Legal 'Non-Binary' Sex Status Changes Back to Birth Sex in Blow to LGBT Movement
ABOVE: James Shupe in front of the Gainesville, Fla. Department of Veterans Affairs.
THIS MONTH, the first person to obtain a legal "non-binary" sex designation has successfully petitioned the court originally responsible for his "non-binary" status to order that the sex on his birth certificate be restored to "male." In documents exclusively provided to PJ Media, James Shupe's petition described his "non-binary" designation as a "psychologically harmful legal fiction." He told PJ Media he hopes this decision will prevent a woman currently seeking "non-binary" recognition from following the same lies.
"The
charade of not being male, the legal fiction, it's over," James Shupe
told PJ Media on Tuesday. "The lies behind my fictitious sex changes,
something I shamefully participated in, first to female, and then to
non-binary, have been forever exposed. A truthful accounting of events
has replaced the deceit that allowed me to become America's first
legally non-binary person."
"The legal record has now been
corrected and LGBT advocates are no longer able to use my historic
non-binary court order to advance their toxic agenda," he added. "I am
and have always been male. That is my biological truth, the only thing
capable of grounding me to reality."
While
he became a hero for the transgender movement, Shupe now aims to dispel
the lies of gender identity and reverse the harm caused by the
precedent of his "non-binary" legal designation.
He referenced the case of Jones David Hollister, a woman who identifies as non-binary and is currently fighting to change her legal designation to non-binary. Hollister's brief to the Oregon Court of Appeals cites Shupe's case.
"I
hope that Hollister and all the others are denied the right to change
their sex to non-binary because it's fraud and legal fiction based on
pseudoscience," Shupe said. "I was indoctrinated to believe that I had
this thing called a gender identity and that suppressing it was causing
my mental health problems. It was all a lie."
He
said he had embraced the lie of transgender identity as a crutch while
struggling with deep psychological issues that would have been better
addressed by therapy.
"I
ended up in the psych ward three times because of hormones. I had blood
clots in my eyes because my estrogen levels were 2,585 instead of 200,
low bone density, problems controlling my bladder, and emotional
instability," Shupe said. "Blood tests indicated I was dropping into
kidney disease territory (EFGR below 60) for about 18 months, I had
chronic dermatology issues and skin reactions to estrogen patches, I
passed out on the kitchen floor from Spironolactone."
High-strength marijuana prescribed to him as he was passing through Colorado gave him hallucinations.
"The gender
transitions were supposed to fix my mental health problems, but I kept
getting worse instead. The high-powered marijuana made me psychotic. I
started hearing booming noises and having visions of being some Indian
woman," he recalled. "I started believing I was some kind of chosen one
who was picked to restore the third gender to North America, that's what
I thought the visions were telling me."
Shupe went public about his detransition in an interview with PJ Media's Bruce Bawer earlier this year after he asked for his official Florida documents to restore his legal sex to male.
Born
in 1963 in Washington, D.C., Shupe spent eighteen years (1982-2000) in
the U.S. Army. He has been married to his wife, Sandy, for three
decades, and had a daughter with her. In 2013 he began
identifying as a transgender woman, claiming that he had struggled for
years and that he had been harassed in the military because he was
perceived as gay. He lived in Pittsburgh for a year, took experimental
hormones, and changed his name — but he stopped short of a surgical sex
change. In November 2014, he moved to Portland, Oregon, which he found
more hospitable for a transgender woman. He lived there until September
2017
.
The New York Times published
a profile on him in 2015, but only a year later, he rejected his female
identity for a new one. In June 2016, Multnomah County Judge Amy Holmes
Hehn issued a court order to change his sex from female to non-binary.
He
wanted his Washington, D.C., birth certificate to reflect this gender
identity, and that required a court order. With the stroke of a pen,
Shupe became the first person in the U.S. to be legally recognized as
"non-binary." The sex on his birth certificate was changed to "X,"
meaning indeterminate. This made him a hero in the LGBT community.
USA Today reported
that Shupe's "three years of living like a woman were nearly as painful
as those spent as a man." Presenting himself as a transgender woman, he
had felt pressured "to maintain a hyper-feminine appearance 24-7," or
he would find himself "getting called sir."
Shupe
began to struggle with the concept of gender identity as something
other than biological sex. Explaining the non-binary identity, he told Oregon Live,
"I was assigned male at birth due to biology. I'm stuck with that for
life. My gender identity is definitely feminine. My gender identity has
never been male, but I feel like I have to own up to my male biology.
Being non-binary allows me to do that. I'm a mixture of both. I consider
myself as a third sex."
Yet he began to question the damage the transgender movement has caused in society. In July 2017,
he worried about "the future of transgender children," arguing that
they need "societal change," not "surgical procedures," "cross-sex
hormones," or sterilization. He supported a bathroom-privacy ballot
initiative, and Lambda Legal dropped him as a client.
In
just a manner of months, Shupe went from supporting transgender
military service to defending Trump's requirement that servicemembers
live according to their biological sex.
Suddenly,
the media was no longer interested in his opinions. "Not a single
Oregon media outlet has been willing to talk to me, let alone report
that I've reclaimed my birth sex and have denounced gender ideology," he
told PJ Media on Monday. "They dropped me after I supported Trump's ban
on gender dysphoria in the military. That got me canceled.
This
year, he took the final step. "In January 2019, I walked into the DMV
and confronted a clerk with my U.S. passport, telling her 'look, I'm a
male, I'm reclaiming my male birth sex, and I want a driver's license
with 'male' instead of 'female,'' " he recalled.
This
change would only work in Florida, where Shupe still has an ongoing
case to change his name back to "James Clifford Shupe," rather than
"Jamie Shupe." After this change, Lambda Legal dropped all mentions of
Shupe from their briefs in the case Zzyym v. Pompeo, which involves an intersex client who was denied a U.S. passport.
In
the spring of 2019, he asked the Social Security Administration to
restore his male birth sex. "Social Security refused to accept a
doctor's letter stating I was biologically male. They forced me to use
their template, claiming I had undergone a gender transition to male,"
he recalled.
While Florida
granted his request to return to "male" on his driver's license, this
change "wouldn't override the Oregon court order that made my sex
non-binary and was getting used by the LGBT advocates to advance other
cases, so we had to go back to Oregon."
On December 11, Shupe petitioned the Multnomah County Court for the order to restore his male designation.
"The
purpose of my request is to restore the original male sex designation
that I was correctly observed to be at birth and to restore the precious
name given to me at birth by my parents. I was not born in Oregon, and I
have a Florida case pending to restore my name to JAMES
CLIFFORD SHUPE," he wrote in the petition. "I am no longer pursuing
surgical, hormonal or other treatment to affirm a non-binary identity,
and I wish to reclaim my male birth sex."
"Despite six years
of hormonal treatments, my sex was immutable, and I remained the same
biological male I was at the time of my birth. In hindsight, my sex
change to non-binary was a psychologically harmful legal fiction, and I
desire to reclaim my male birth sex," he added. "Despite my documented
history of severe mental illness, my birth certificate has been changed
twice previously. ... Since receiving the 2016 non-binary court judgment
in this case, I have been correctly diagnosed with a 'sexual
paraphilia' by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the root cause of
previous confusion about my sexual identity."
Even getting that diagnosis proved to be a battle for Shupe.
"I
then began confronting the VA about rubber-stamping me with gender
dysphoria when in fact I had sexual paraphilias, a transvestic disorder
with autogynephilia and masochism. The psychologist at the VA who had
diagnosed me with gender dysphoria then dumped me as a patient when I
asked for the diagnosis to be changed. The VA finally gave me the
paraphilia diagnosis in April 2019, the endocrinologist did it," he
recalled. "The VA then outsourced me to the civilian sector to a
therapist unqualified to treat me, the only one willing to take me as a
patient."
VA doctors were all too happy to diagnose gender dysphoria, but they mostly refused to consider sexual paraphilias, which Ph.D. psychologist Ray Blanchard says is the real cause.
Shupe told PJ Media he later realized the judge who granted his "non-binary" court order had harmed him.
"The
Oregon judge physically and mentally harmed me by silently
rubber-stamping the non-binary court order to advance a transgender
agenda, to which she has ties," he said. Before the proceeding, Shupe’s
lawyer told him not to worry because the judge herself had a transgender
kid.
Although Shupe brought
doctors' letters testifying to his identity, the judge did not even ask
to look at them.
"She was negligent in her duties as a judge to not
explore my mental health and motivations as to why I was seeking the sex
change. If she had of done so, she would have uncovered my severe
mental health issues, the sexual paraphilias, and the fact that the
doctors' letters were written after a discussion with the two of them
that my sex change to female was a failure and becoming non-binary was
bailing all of us out," he recalled.
The judge even got scared afterward, according to Shupe.
He
also claimed the doctors who approved his change from female to
non-binary abused him. "Why didn't they force me to go to mental health
for an evaluation about why I felt the sex change was a failure instead
of giving me yet another one?" he asked. One doctor even gave him
psychotropic drugs. "I stayed doped up to cope with my life as a fake
woman."
It has taken
tremendous courage for Shupe to come forward with his story. His
non-binary status made him a hero in the LGBT community, and he could
have remained quiet about his detransition.
"It's
an incredibly painful thing to walk back a landmark court decision that
made you internationally famous and admit the whole thing was based on
lies and deceit," he told PJ Media. Yet he felt compelled to speak out
and warn against these destructive lies.
Follow Tyler O'Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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