The addiction causing men to live as 'trans': ‘Sexuality can be programmed’

LaRell Herbert once believed the only explanation for his lifelong gender confusion was that he had been born in the wrong body.

So after leaving the Mormon faith, embracing a secular worldview, and undergoing a gender transition, Herbert openly identified as a woman for seven years.

And he believes it all started when he stumbled onto pornography on the internet.

“I had this weird experience where when I started exploring pornography, I realized that there was a very particular flavor of pornography that was my poison, you might say,” he tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on "Relatable."

“This happened to be BDSM pornography,” he says, noting that after some “self-healing,” a repressed memory surfaced.

“I had this repressed memory from when I was 5 years old come up where I was restrained, as just a child, restrained by this electrical cord and violated sexually,” he says.

As his addiction grew, he “started envisioning [himself] in the shoes of the women in the pornography.”

“That was the only thing that would do it for me. And also it felt like a victimless crime. If I could pleasure myself to the thought of me being in their shoes in the scenario, then it wasn’t a sin in my mind,” he explains.

“And this is one of the things that I like to teach people now, is that sexuality can be programmed,” he continues. “We of course all are born with the biological sex tendencies that are in us because we’re male or female and attraction to the opposite sex is natural to one’s biology.”

“If that differs at all in your psyche, in your system, that means that something happened, some sequence of experience happened to you as a child or you were exposed to things in a certain sequence that made you develop the perspective you have now,” he adds.

With the addition of his childhood trauma, Herbert recognized that his “sexuality was very much programmed by viewing that pornography, by repetitively exciting those feelings.”

Herbert was also married when he began his transition, which led to a lot of “distress” in his marriage — especially for his wife.

“I didn’t want to cause her distress, even though I felt like I had to pursue being a woman in order to be happy. I at some point told her basically, I can’t go on living if I can’t do this,” he tells Stuckey.

“I think it was largely for selfish reasons at the time. I’ve learned that being trans is a very selfish thing. It’s all about me and my needs and what I can do for myself to be happy, and you forget the people around you,” he adds.

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