IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE BORN IN THE WRONG BODY?
IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE BORN IN THE WRONG BODY?
You’ve probably heard the phrase “born in the wrong body”, but what does that mean? Individuals and educational resources have adopted this terminology to describe the feeling that your body doesn’t match your feelings about your gender. In our post-truth culture, people claim that truth is relative, that someone else’s truth is not necessarily the same as my truth. Yet deep down, we all know that truth matters.
For example, let’s say you witnessed an armed robbery at a gas station where the perpetrator killed the attendant. He grabbed the cash out of the register and ran. The robber was wearing similar clothing to what you had on, and he was of similar height and build. Another witness mistakenly claimed that you were the robber. The police arrested you, and you were sentenced to death. Clearly, you would care that there is absolute truth.
Truth matters for our bodies as well. If a doctor is mistaken about a medical condition, they might give us a wrong treatment plan that could be harmful instead of helpful.
That actually happened to me when I was nineteen years old. Before I lived as transgender, I had severe health problems. I went to a naturopathic doctor, took thousands of dollars worth of nutritional supplements, drank fresh vegetable juices, ate a healthy diet, and exercised regularly. I had worked hard to achieve optimal health.
But a year later, however, I started having health problems again. I seemed to be regressing. I was gaining a massive amount of weight again, I had less energy, and I was generally not feeling well. The same doctor who had helped save my life a year earlier, discovered in horror that he had recently prescribed estrogen instead of progesterone by mistake. The overdose of estrogen was wreaking havoc all over my body.
The truth was that my body was low in progesterone and high in estrogen, and I needed progesterone to balance my hormones. The wrong hormone levels in our bodies affect not only our sex characteristics, but many parts of our bodies, including vital organs. Even the brain has hormone receptors and needs the right hormones to function properly.
These differ between males and females. Regardless of how you feel about the sex that you are, it is critical to treat your body according to its biological sex.
Some people argue, “I have a female body, but a male brain,” or vice versa. But sex chromosomes are found in nearly every cell of the body, including brain cells! It is biologically impossible to have a male brain in a female body. However, one can feel like they don’t fit in with their same sex, or they don’t like being their biological sex for one reason or another. That’s the real issue. Addressing a mental/emotional problem by changing the body will never work for that reason. The body isn’t the problem as much as we might wish it were that easy.
I remember one time hearing the host of my favorite radio program ask the question, “Why is it that trans people always try to change their body to match their mind rather than try to change their mind to match their body?” I was outraged at his incredulous suggestion—that changing my mind to be at peace with my body was possible. However, I couldn’t get that thought out of my mind. It haunted me night and day. I knew the reality was that I did not want to change my mind to match my body because I hated being female.
WHY DO PEOPLE FEEL LIKE THEY ARE TRANS?
When I began my transition at age 25, I was absolutely convinced my body was the problem, and I needed to make it match my male brain. The truth is, I hated being female because I had never felt like I fit in with girls. I was teased and made to feel ugly—mostly because of weight problems—and rejected. As I entered high school and college, I was shocked by how men objectified women and treated us like sexual objects. I began to hate being a woman, and I was jealous of men. As I entertained that thought, I realized I had always felt like I was a boy, even as young as I could remember. Yet now I understand that all those memories were based on the emotional pain of rejection. I felt like I should have been a boy because I did not seem to be like the other girls.
But after nine years of medical transition, I discovered with great disappointment that transitioning from one sex to another is not possible. All the hormones, surgeries, and various procedures can make someone look like the opposite sex. A ‘transgender’ person, however, will never fully function as the opposite sex. I realized I would never be able to father my own child. I would never be able to get natural erections. Even if it were possible, I realized that there was something deeper to being male or female than the various body parts and functions, even though I couldn’t understand it at the time.
I knew that I was living a lie. The truth was I didn’t want to be female, because I felt so unwanted and unloved as a girl.
Many ‘transgender’ people initially believe that their transition has been a success and that it has solved their problems. Regret is low in the first several years. Why? Because the transition initially suppresses the emotional pain. Any new adventure in life will produce the same feelings of excitement, such as going to college for the first time, going on an exotic vacation in a foreign country, starting a new job, or beginning a new romantic relationship. Like a transgender identity, all of those experiences can be both exciting and create feelings of nervousness and uncertainty. The excitement usually outweighs the nerves, and we press forward despite our fears.
However, as the person discovers that gaining the appearance of the opposite sex has not actually made them a person of the opposite sex, depression and frustration begin to creep in. Generally, the person tries more and more medical procedures in an attempt to make it “real”, only to discover it’s all artificial. It’s nothing more than an actor playing a role for a film. Worse yet, they begin to realize that having a different appearance hasn’t solved the deep emotional wounds. They didn’t recreate themselves; they only hid the person who was in pain.
WHY DO WE HATE OUR BODIES SO MUCH?
So, the question is, why do people hate their body so much? Or why do they hate their identity so much? This isn’t just a transgender problem. Most people hate something about their bodies, and most people spend an enormous amount of time and money trying to improve or even perfect their body. This is true for bodybuilders, models, athletes, etc… but also true for nearly every person on some level. There are always new trendy diets, weight-loss medicines, and new workout programs that are guaranteed to make you lose 100 pounds. There are beauty creams, makeup, plastic surgeries, breast implants, tattoos, piercings, and much more that we all use to make ourselves look better.
The truth is, God created us for another world—a perfect paradise called Eden, where we would have never experienced pain, or suffering, or death, or disease, or divorce, or rejection, or abuse, or any of the painful things we suffer in this world. But the first two people God put on this earth, Adam and Eve, chose to sin and rebel against God. They thought they knew better than God. As a result, all of the earth, including our bodies and our minds, and all of creation, was cursed under sin.
Romans 8:20 says, “Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse.”
Ever since, all of us have chosen sin. As Romans says, "No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one… For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” (Romans 3:10-12, 23).
We have all continued to infect this world with sin. Most people in our lives will likely sin against us, and we will likely sin against them. When we love people, we don’t love them with God’s perfect love. Our hearts are sin factories. We are continually filled with jealousy, envy, selfishness, bitterness, and pride. Even the good things we do or say often fill us with pride as we try to prove to the world how loving we are.
Our bodies feel awkward because we’re under the curse of sin. We all know there is something not quite right about this world and ourselves. We think the answer is to recreate ourselves—to make us into a person that isn’t broken. And that’s partially true. In fact, Jesus affirmed that in John chapter 3. “Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.’”
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
God knows that you need to be a new person. He knows that you are broken and in desperate need of being fixed. He knows all of the pain, trauma, rejection, and brokenness we have been subjected to, both at the hands of others and because of our own sin. We do need to be reborn, resurrected from the ashes of brokenness. But we can’t accomplish that. We can’t make ourselves someone who isn’t broken by the curse of sin. Only Jesus can. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
This is what the Bible prophesied about Jesus: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favor has come, and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies. To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory.” (Isaiah 61:1-3).
In this life, we will only see a glimpse of the redemption that Christ accomplished by giving His life for us on the cross. He defeated death and sin. Yet, until all people have had a chance to hear the good news of Christ and the Gospel is spread to the ends of the earth, we are still in this broken world. In this life, He will heal your wounds and your broken heart, He will help you overcome sin, and He will bring beauty from the ashes of the pain in your life. Then, one day, when we are taken from this world, we will enter His eternal kingdom that will never again be under the curse of sin.
“For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.” (Romans 8:22-23).
In Revelation 21-22 we’re told that God will wipe away all tears. Forever. We will never again be broken. We will never again be under the curse of sin.
To answer the question posed at the beginning of this article, no one is born in the wrong body if by that you mean, born as the opposite sex. However, all of us are born in the wrong body in a sense, because all of us were born in a body that is under the curse of sin. It has fallen from its glorious, intended state. Remember, Romans 8 above says that we’re all groaning, longing to be free of the curse of sin. If you choose to try to fix your own brokenness, you will only find temporary escape from the pain. Then you will suffer under the curse of sin forever by eternal death in hell, separated from your creator. But, if you allow Jesus to heal the brokenness by surrendering your life to Him, He will make you into a new creation, and He will transform your heart and mind. Then, you will live eternally with Him forever free of the curse of sin.
Click here to hear Laura share how Jesus rescued her from a transgender identity and transformed her life—a story she now shares to reveal God’s design and redeeming power.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “born in the wrong body”, but what does that mean? Individuals and educational resources have adopted this terminology to describe the feeling that your body doesn’t match your feelings about your gender. In our post-truth culture, people claim that truth is relative, that someone else’s truth is not necessarily the same as my truth. Yet deep down, we all know that truth matters.
For example, let’s say you witnessed an armed robbery at a gas station where the perpetrator killed the attendant. He grabbed the cash out of the register and ran. The robber was wearing similar clothing to what you had on, and he was of similar height and build. Another witness mistakenly claimed that you were the robber. The police arrested you, and you were sentenced to death. Clearly, you would care that there is absolute truth.
Truth matters for our bodies as well. If a doctor is mistaken about a medical condition, they might give us a wrong treatment plan that could be harmful instead of helpful.
That actually happened to me when I was nineteen years old. Before I lived as transgender, I had severe health problems. I went to a naturopathic doctor, took thousands of dollars worth of nutritional supplements, drank fresh vegetable juices, ate a healthy diet, and exercised regularly. I had worked hard to achieve optimal health.
But a year later, however, I started having health problems again. I seemed to be regressing. I was gaining a massive amount of weight again, I had less energy, and I was generally not feeling well. The same doctor who had helped save my life a year earlier, discovered in horror that he had recently prescribed estrogen instead of progesterone by mistake. The overdose of estrogen was wreaking havoc all over my body.
The truth was that my body was low in progesterone and high in estrogen, and I needed progesterone to balance my hormones. The wrong hormone levels in our bodies affect not only our sex characteristics, but many parts of our bodies, including vital organs. Even the brain has hormone receptors and needs the right hormones to function properly.
These differ between males and females. Regardless of how you feel about the sex that you are, it is critical to treat your body according to its biological sex.
Some people argue, “I have a female body, but a male brain,” or vice versa. But sex chromosomes are found in nearly every cell of the body, including brain cells! It is biologically impossible to have a male brain in a female body. However, one can feel like they don’t fit in with their same sex, or they don’t like being their biological sex for one reason or another. That’s the real issue. Addressing a mental/emotional problem by changing the body will never work for that reason. The body isn’t the problem as much as we might wish it were that easy.
I remember one time hearing the host of my favorite radio program ask the question, “Why is it that trans people always try to change their body to match their mind rather than try to change their mind to match their body?” I was outraged at his incredulous suggestion—that changing my mind to be at peace with my body was possible. However, I couldn’t get that thought out of my mind. It haunted me night and day. I knew the reality was that I did not want to change my mind to match my body because I hated being female.
WHY DO PEOPLE FEEL LIKE THEY ARE TRANS?
When I began my transition at age 25, I was absolutely convinced my body was the problem, and I needed to make it match my male brain. The truth is, I hated being female because I had never felt like I fit in with girls. I was teased and made to feel ugly—mostly because of weight problems—and rejected. As I entered high school and college, I was shocked by how men objectified women and treated us like sexual objects. I began to hate being a woman, and I was jealous of men. As I entertained that thought, I realized I had always felt like I was a boy, even as young as I could remember. Yet now I understand that all those memories were based on the emotional pain of rejection. I felt like I should have been a boy because I did not seem to be like the other girls.
But after nine years of medical transition, I discovered with great disappointment that transitioning from one sex to another is not possible. All the hormones, surgeries, and various procedures can make someone look like the opposite sex. A ‘transgender’ person, however, will never fully function as the opposite sex. I realized I would never be able to father my own child. I would never be able to get natural erections. Even if it were possible, I realized that there was something deeper to being male or female than the various body parts and functions, even though I couldn’t understand it at the time.
I knew that I was living a lie. The truth was I didn’t want to be female, because I felt so unwanted and unloved as a girl.
Many ‘transgender’ people initially believe that their transition has been a success and that it has solved their problems. Regret is low in the first several years. Why? Because the transition initially suppresses the emotional pain. Any new adventure in life will produce the same feelings of excitement, such as going to college for the first time, going on an exotic vacation in a foreign country, starting a new job, or beginning a new romantic relationship. Like a transgender identity, all of those experiences can be both exciting and create feelings of nervousness and uncertainty. The excitement usually outweighs the nerves, and we press forward despite our fears.
However, as the person discovers that gaining the appearance of the opposite sex has not actually made them a person of the opposite sex, depression and frustration begin to creep in. Generally, the person tries more and more medical procedures in an attempt to make it “real”, only to discover it’s all artificial. It’s nothing more than an actor playing a role for a film. Worse yet, they begin to realize that having a different appearance hasn’t solved the deep emotional wounds. They didn’t recreate themselves; they only hid the person who was in pain.
WHY DO WE HATE OUR BODIES SO MUCH?
So, the question is, why do people hate their body so much? Or why do they hate their identity so much? This isn’t just a transgender problem. Most people hate something about their bodies, and most people spend an enormous amount of time and money trying to improve or even perfect their body. This is true for bodybuilders, models, athletes, etc… but also true for nearly every person on some level. There are always new trendy diets, weight-loss medicines, and new workout programs that are guaranteed to make you lose 100 pounds. There are beauty creams, makeup, plastic surgeries, breast implants, tattoos, piercings, and much more that we all use to make ourselves look better.
The truth is, God created us for another world—a perfect paradise called Eden, where we would have never experienced pain, or suffering, or death, or disease, or divorce, or rejection, or abuse, or any of the painful things we suffer in this world. But the first two people God put on this earth, Adam and Eve, chose to sin and rebel against God. They thought they knew better than God. As a result, all of the earth, including our bodies and our minds, and all of creation, was cursed under sin.
Romans 8:20 says, “Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse.”
Ever since, all of us have chosen sin. As Romans says, "No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away; all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one… For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.” (Romans 3:10-12, 23).
We have all continued to infect this world with sin. Most people in our lives will likely sin against us, and we will likely sin against them. When we love people, we don’t love them with God’s perfect love. Our hearts are sin factories. We are continually filled with jealousy, envy, selfishness, bitterness, and pride. Even the good things we do or say often fill us with pride as we try to prove to the world how loving we are.
Our bodies feel awkward because we’re under the curse of sin. We all know there is something not quite right about this world and ourselves. We think the answer is to recreate ourselves—to make us into a person that isn’t broken. And that’s partially true. In fact, Jesus affirmed that in John chapter 3. “Jesus replied, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.’”
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
God knows that you need to be a new person. He knows that you are broken and in desperate need of being fixed. He knows all of the pain, trauma, rejection, and brokenness we have been subjected to, both at the hands of others and because of our own sin. We do need to be reborn, resurrected from the ashes of brokenness. But we can’t accomplish that. We can’t make ourselves someone who isn’t broken by the curse of sin. Only Jesus can. “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
This is what the Bible prophesied about Jesus: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. He has sent me to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favor has come, and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies. To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory.” (Isaiah 61:1-3).
In this life, we will only see a glimpse of the redemption that Christ accomplished by giving His life for us on the cross. He defeated death and sin. Yet, until all people have had a chance to hear the good news of Christ and the Gospel is spread to the ends of the earth, we are still in this broken world. In this life, He will heal your wounds and your broken heart, He will help you overcome sin, and He will bring beauty from the ashes of the pain in your life. Then, one day, when we are taken from this world, we will enter His eternal kingdom that will never again be under the curse of sin.
“For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.” (Romans 8:22-23).
In Revelation 21-22 we’re told that God will wipe away all tears. Forever. We will never again be broken. We will never again be under the curse of sin.
To answer the question posed at the beginning of this article, no one is born in the wrong body if by that you mean, born as the opposite sex. However, all of us are born in the wrong body in a sense, because all of us were born in a body that is under the curse of sin. It has fallen from its glorious, intended state. Remember, Romans 8 above says that we’re all groaning, longing to be free of the curse of sin. If you choose to try to fix your own brokenness, you will only find temporary escape from the pain. Then you will suffer under the curse of sin forever by eternal death in hell, separated from your creator. But, if you allow Jesus to heal the brokenness by surrendering your life to Him, He will make you into a new creation, and He will transform your heart and mind. Then, you will live eternally with Him forever free of the curse of sin.
Click here to hear Laura share how Jesus rescued her from a transgender identity and transformed her life—a story she now shares to reveal God’s design and redeeming power.
