The Late-Onset Dysphoria of a Middle-Aged ‘Trans Man’
Reading Scott Newgent’s new memoir
“At the age of forty-two, my history of agony had painted a bullseye on me, making me easy prey for manipulation,” writes Kellie Ellen King, aka Scott Newgent. Although her new self-published memoir, The Lesbian Devil to the Straight Man Saint - a trip through trans HELL & back, suffers from the absence of a professional editor, Newgent tells a compelling story of rapid gender dysphoria in her 40s. The story of her affliction resonates with the adolescent experience of sudden transgender identification in lesbian youth.
When Newgent met ‘Jacqueline,’ she was still married to a man. “It seemed as if I needed to rip off my own flesh to escape the scorching intensity” of the relationship, Newgent writes. For despite her self-acceptance as a lesbian woman, Newgent was still competing with the husband, confronting the homophobic Christianity of Jacqueline’s family, unrecovered from sexual trauma, and affected by her own grandfather’s rejection of her as a lesbian. “The unyielding power of the God of Catholicism shattered my existence into fragments, leaving me fractured and milked, in response to the notion that a misstep occurred during my creation by my parents,” she writes. As a result, “I never met Jacqueline’s family as a woman, they had seen pictures shaking their heads, ‘the lesbian devil.’ I met them for the first time as Scott, the straight-man saint, saving Jaqueline from her sinful past.”
Newgent points to the critical role that gay shame from spiritual abuse by otherwise loving and well-meaning families has played in the spread of transgender identification among LGB youth. More than one detransitioner has spoken or written about the rejection of their same-sex attraction leading them to transition. Audrey Hale, the Nashville Covenant shooter, did not even use the word “lesbian” in her journal, referring to herself instead insultingly as a “faggot.” Newgent’s newfound belief in her transgender soul propelled her towards medical transition. “The volatile mix of religious dogma and homosexuality was a potent toxin, capable of corrupting even the strongest souls,” she writes.
Jacqueline worried that she would be denied access to her grandchildren if she remained in a lesbian relationship. This was the final straw for Newgent, who decided to pursue transition. Now Nugent’s memoir includes messages to her own grandchildren in case she does not live long enough for them to know her, since ‘gender medicine’ has shortened her life. Post-transition, no longer living with Jacqueline or her children, and housebound for fear of not “passing,” she saw that “everything I had worked for – my life’s work – had vanished into thin air.” Newgent estimates that insurance companies have been billed $1.3 million for her care, a figure multiplied by all the usual complications of phalloplasty.
Newgent never understood her experience as dysphoria until she watched Jazz Jennings with Jacqueline. “It was as if lightning had struck her, her eyes wide with revelation,” Newgent writes. “She turned to me and exclaimed, ‘Oh my god, Kellie, that’s it! You were born in the wrong body, too!’ Everything clicked for her; all the pieces fell into place as if guided by divine force.” Newgent was “both terrified and exhilarated at the thought of finding an explanation for my feelings of being out of place in my skin.”
Like so many transition stories, their next stop was “a therapist who identified as a trans woman” and affirmed Newgent, banishing doubts whenever she expressed any. At their first meeting, this therapist asked Newgent how long she had been dressing like a man even though she had always had a feminine appearance and wore a dress to the interview. “Gender ideology may be seen as a step toward progress, but for me, it feels like a giant step backwards in terms of embracing diversity and individuality.” Unfortunately, it worked on Newgent long enough to get her into the surgical ward.
“Surprisingly, the only requirement for becoming a transgender surgeon is to be a general surgeon; no specialized training is involved,” she explains. “This is concerning because procedures like phalloplasty and other bottom surgeries are considered incredibly difficult, comparable to brain surgery, and require highly skilled surgeons.” Only too late did Newgent discover that her surgeon “had moved from California to Austin after facing nine charges of medical malpractice” that “stripped him of his surgical privileges and barred him from practicing medicine in San Francisco.” Sepsis, pulmonary embolisms, fistulas, and a botched skin graft taken from her arm to form the skin-tube phallus: all these complications were inevitable from the moment he lifted the scalpel.
But justice is impossible for Newgent to get in Texas. Eight different attorneys reviewed Newgent’s malpractice claim and all of them disappointed her because the state’s Tort Reform Act “significantly limited the potential financial recovery.” This also helps explain why Austin “has become an international hub for medical transition procedures, particularly for minors” despite legislation banning such procedures for people under the age of 18.
Newgent’s transition regret feeds her fury that anyone is putting a child through the hell she endured. It is her primary motivation for writing and speaking out. Participating in the Matt Walsh documentary What is a Woman? “cost me two jobs,” she says, but was still worthwhile. It took too long for her to understand that she had swallowed a lie. “Our identities are not just self-crafted; they are shaped by forces beyond our control” – by family, by trauma, by the social pressure to conform.
At more than 300 pages, the memoir is not long. Scott Newgent’s small imperfections as a writer do not damage her testimony as a primary source. History will record that the social contagion of ‘transgender’ affected young and old alike, often for the same reasons.
Genspect publishes a variety of authors with different perspectives. Any opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect Genspect’s official position. For more on Genspect, visit our FAQs.
 | A guest post by
|
Trans activists and cishet trans allies paint a sanitized picture of the trans population. The truth appears to be that, except perhaps for trans-trenders, the people lured into chemical castration and sex-mutilating surgery by the promise that changing sex will solve all their problems seem to be a highly unstable lot. The idea that the desire to do the impossible and change sex marks a person as having a mental illness is profoundly out of fashion. Jacqueline's story, however, lends support to the view that many transitioners reach that junction in their lives with a history of mental illness and trauma unrelated to gender dysphoria.
That's something the trans cheerleaders who are public figures elide in their knee-jerk support for "trans kids" and all other trans causes, assuming they're aware of it in the first place. They're victims of their own doctrinaire closed-mindedness.
In a different vein, Mr. Osborne observes: "Newgent points to the critical role that gay shame from spiritual abuse by otherwise loving and well-meaning families has played in the spread of transgender identification among LGB youth." It is an idea that has a lot of currency these days. However, as a budding humanities scholar might say, it is also a concept that requires interrogation. It strikes this reader as counterintuitive and improbable.
Looking at the topic charitably, the gender identity ideology that has captured K-12 education may profess to champion the whole LGBTQ "community" on paper and in the ubiquitous signage, but one cannot help feeling that the programming doesn't prioritize the unique needs of gay youth. That includes inculcating a sense of self-esteem, providing guidance on how to navigate the challenges life throws at gay people and showing how same-sex attracted young people can go on to have happy and successful lives. (This really does need to take place in a school environment, since society would never countenance a general mentorship program for gay youth.)
It is also possible that the gay and lesbian youth who are most at risk of running away from their sexual orientation into the asexual world of gender identity may never be exposed to affirming messages at school because they are home schooled or being educated in Christian schools where being gay is condemned.
It could be that instead of finding a welcoming community of other gay kids online, the lesbian looking for relief from her oppressive Baptist family on the Web will find herself being love bombed by the denizens of the trans communities readers of Eliza Mondegreen's Substack essay know so well.
A skeptic of the proposition that gay youngsters find it easier to transition than to come out would question how family members who reject, say, a gay son, on religious grounds could possibly embrace the same person as a trans daughter. It doesn't matter that the authors of the Old Testament, who condemned gay sex in the harshest possible terms, seemed not to know trans people existed (hint: they didn't). Any pastor worth his tithes could easily cite enough Bible passages blindfolded to preach a hellfire-and-brimstone sermon for the ages against the sins of transgenderism. On the other hand, consistency is not a feature of the religious mind. If there is such a phenomenon as Fundiegelicals who hate homosexuality and but can overlook transsexualism, the world (and sex researchers) need to hear from them.
Long before Judith Butler summoned Queer Theory out of Pandora's Box and loosed it upon the world, gay kids were fleeing toxic home life by the thousands for the gay scene in the big cities. Has the world changed so much since the days of Tales of the City that now their only choice is the living hell of transitioning?
I am increasingly realizing how fortunate I was not to have been raised as a believer and a member of a faith community. On the other hand, having dodged being entangled in a religious family and judged by a congregation and its pastor, I cannot put myself in the shoes of LGB youth who have been subjected to "gay shame from spiritual abuse by otherwise loving and well-meaning families." The experience must be truly nightmarish if it makes gay kids transition. It confirms my view that, in a better world where there religion did not enjoy so much unearned deference from other institutions, these victims' parents and pastors would be subject to prosecution.
An interesting review on an important voice.
The absolute sadness and anguish that comes over me as a parent knowing this similar story is happening to my beautiful , competent daughter who while during Covid, found herself with a new partner after enduring a misogynistic and troubled, dominating same sex partnership which thankfully went south after stalking and harassing my daughter for months on end.
My youngest adult daughter then finds herself partnering with a woman who never dated women & comes from a distinctly conservative, catholic shaming background. Thus she had created a form of walling herself off from her own pain by becoming a faux"trans- they ally" and a "partner" to my daughter. Coming across as an independent and distant daughter living on her own clear across the continent from her own alienated and distant mother daughter relationship. She, "they" then cast aside their own need for Testosterone and pushed my easy going, joyful, comfortable, confident, successful, upbeat, young master's certified teacher with a very close relationship with her mom to seek being a "daddy", a seemingly trans male, injecting Testosterone on herself and avoiding her own sense of connection with being a female and meeting her own mom in person for fear of doubting her most life altering decisions. FFS - If only someone can give us insight into how to spread this wealth with our adult children.