Interview by ASSOCIATION FOR THE
DEFENCE OF CHILDREN'S RIGHTS - CONSULTANT TO THE UN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COUNCIL
Scott, thank you very much for answering our
questions. The French public is very grateful for the opportunity to benefit
from your expertise and experience. Can you talk briefly about your life
journey and your transition?
I am forty-eight-year-old transgender man who transitioned at age forty-two, and I am a parent to three teenagers. Before my transition, I was known to the world as Kellie King, a dynamic, powerful business sales executive, consistently leading the sales charts while acquiring countless honors, awards, and accolades.
At age 42, I made a decision that turned my world upside down. Everything that was once gold turned to coal, almost instantly. That decision was to transition from a lesbian to a transman, to become Scott Newgent.
I endured medical complication after medical complication due to transgender healthcare. I lost everything I’d ever worked for: home, car, savings, career, wife, medical insurance, and most importantly my faith in myself and God. In a battle to survive, I went from ER to ER, trying to solve a mystery of why my health was failing. I learned firsthand the truth about how dangerous and perilous medical transition really is. I learned the hard way that if you get sick because of transgender health, you will witness physicians throwing their hands up and saying one of two things: 1) "transgender health is experimental, and I don't know what's wrong" or 2) "you need to go back to the physicians who hurt you in the first place."
My medical complications have included seven surgeries, a pulmonary embolism, an induced stress heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, arm reconstructive surgery, lung, heart and bladder damage, insomnia, hallucinations, PTSD, $1 million in medical expenses, and loss of home, car, career and marriage. All this, and yet I cannot sue the surgeon responsible—in part because there is no structured, tested or widely accepted baseline for transgender health care.
Every time I closed my eyes to give up, my children's faces appeared within my mind, a reminder that they were worth any amount of pain. Every time it became too much, I said silently and consistently, "Not today, not tomorrow, give me all you got, but I am not leaving my children."
This determination unlocked a key to my medical recovery. As I began to recover from several near-death experiences due to my transgender transition, I studied obsessively. I was shocked at the sub-par doctors around the world who are not being held accountable, and my jaw dropped at every website and journal article I read.
Still, the bomb that ignited a fire within me was after I discovered the medical industry was pushing children to transition medically. Once I learned what they were doing to kids, my profound, relentless nature forged the way to join the hands of disparate groups to fight for our children. . With each roar, I hope to open the door for more transgender people who believe like I do to find a home and for parents to confidently stand up to medical professionals and say, "no, my child will not be medically transitioning during childhood." I hope and pray I’m doing it: getting people to join hands, from all different walks of life, beliefs, sexualities, and political stances, to join together and say collectively, “For This, We Stand Together - Medical Transitioning Is No Place For A Child.” I thus founded TRevoices - TRans Rational Educational Voices - which is leading the charge in truth, reality, and care for everyone who is transgender, thinks they are transgender, or is touched by transgenderism. Through all of this struggle, I feel blessed to have a voice that helps others.
If you agree, please consider joining us at TReVoices!
Your experience of trans identity leads you to advocate against applying transition processes to children: can you explain the main reasons for this?
When you start to medically transition, you are told a Disney version akin to watching toddlers skip through the daisies; imagine watching the sun set and leaning back against a tree and sipping ice tea. This is the image that was painted for me. At 42, even I wasn’t able to decipher what the complications were as the medical and mental health industry made transition seem as simple as chewing gum. Each time I asked a question, my concerns were skimmed over, making me feel insignificant and childish. Now I was middle-aged and a successful business sales executive. If I was intimidated, children and adolescents don’t stand a chance
So, as I was recovering from several near-death experiences, I began to investigate medical transitioning and realized that trans health has no baseline for care. This was hammered home when several attorneys told me in no uncertain terms, “Trans health has no baseline - These medical complications you have? There is nothing to compare it to, so we can’t help you sue. These are experimental procedures.” People point to WPATH standards, but they are filled with “At doctor’s discretion” and that does not stand up in court.
As I dug deeper, I discovered that Lupron, the pharmaceutical company that makes hormone blockers, didn’t have FDA approval to treat children with gender dysphoria. Studies on this cohort had not been done. Yet, they claim it’s reversible. Lupron was sued, lost to the US government, and fined $874 million for false advertising and bribery and deemed a “criminal enterprise" in 2001. And this is the company the world is listening to? Moreover, the original Dutch researchers who made the protocol to give puberty blockers to children with child-onset gender dysphoria have just this winter come out and said there are no studies to support the new usage of puberty blockers for kids with sudden adolescent-onset gender dysphoria.
As I started to recover, I joined Twitter and the news kept getting worse. A 4000% increase in children claiming to be trans and put in the meat market line to begin transition. I discovered that Lupron makes eight times more profit when children are prescribed hormone blockers than when the prescription is written for adults. Yes you read that right!
Truly I could go on and on, and each fact would drop the jaw of the people who read this. You can learn more shocking facts about medical complications at my website, TRevoices.
What advice would you give to children and
adolescents who want to make a transition and think that this is the only way
for them to be happy?
I have an ex-mother-in-law. She drove and still drives me nuts. She still calls me Kellie. She's almost deaf, and if we are ever out in public she uses female pronouns and screams when she talks. People stare because I look as female as the Jolly Green Giant now, so she just appears to be a crazy old lady and people laugh! We have had a love-hate relationship; but I love her because she's family.
One visit she was sitting on the couch reading, and I slammed the front door open. I was yelling at someone at work for dropping the ball, and I was ranting and raving and cursing, and I threw my phone and it shattered! Yes, I’m passionate. I started ranting to my partner why I was mad. When people just did exactly what I said, I would be happy. My mother-in-law walked in the kitchen and as she was pouring hot water into her tea cup, she said, “Kellie, happiness is an inside job; nothing on the outside will bring happiness.” I looked at her and said, “Shut up, Melody!” Now, we all laughed. She knows me and I said it in a funny way, trying to release her of the wonderful insight that I thought was total garbage at the time. But as I left that kitchen, something clicked and in my soul I knew she was right: Happiness is an inside job!
People need to understand this. Right now we are taking children who do not fit at a time when they are desperate to do so, and we are robbing these kids of the opportunity to find internal happiness. We are telling children who would grow up to be lesbians, gay men, autistic, awkward, Nobel winners, all the kids who are going to grow up and be cool, butt-kicking adults because they experienced hardship in childhood, all the kids whose childhood experiences that made them dig deep to find a core belief in themselves, and saying, “There is something wrong with you. If you just take this hormone blocker, or inject these synthetic cross-sex hormones, or chop off your otherwise healthy breasts, you will fit in. And if oops we are wrong and you are not trans, then don’t worry because it’s all reversible.” In other words, we are lying to our children - and to ourselves as a society.
So I want to remind these kids and their parents: Happiness is an inside job. It can be extremely hard to do the work of coping and building resilience to discomfort, but it can be done.
You seem to be saying that if you were now back in
your pre-transition situation, but with the knowledge of what the medical
transition path involves, you would have proceeded differently. Is this
correct? What would you have considered as an alternative path?
This has been an evolution for me, and my views have changed since I came into the activism arena almost two years ago. If I had a magic ball to take me back to the time when I decided to medically transition, I would say that “No” I would not transition again. That has been hard to say publicly because quite frankly it's embarrassing. Well, I have far surpassed the embarrassing stage, haven't I? Might as well rock the situation I got, as my sister says! So No, if I had to do it again I would not.
But there is another falsehood that people are spreading: “Detransing.” And it's not what people believe it is. The truth? I can never go back to being who I was. Never. Believing I could go back is just another fantasy, and quite frankly I am done with fantasy. Medical transition is permanent: period! Hormones are permanent and come with lasting effects; we have no clue what is going to happen to these young kids taking them for the rest of their lives. We see kids at 19 with the size of a 12-year-old heart limiting their life; we see young adults who have begun to experience early-onset osteoporosis. We are in a strange place where it’s considered “not loving” to tell the truth. I say forget that. Parents? You need to know that hormone blockers cause damage, are not reversible, and using them for gender dysphoric kids does not improve mental health! All the studies they did that said they helped mental health? Retracted - and the journalists forgot to report it. I believe people will be hauled off to prison shortly for gross medical malpractice.
So no, I would not medically transition again. Medical transition has given me permanent heart and lung damage, recurring bacterial infections for life, and a deformed arm It cut my dating pool by 90% and took years off my lifespan. This decision has cut short the time my future grandkids will have me, if I meet them at all. So for me, I am past the bullshit. I don’t have time for it anymore! Medical transitioning is not for kids. It doesn’t fix anything, and it’s not life saving. But convincing people it is sure makes a lot of money for companies and doctors, doesn’t it? A lot of this is about the money. We’re taking that if transgender identification continues its current exponential growth patters, more than 20% of the population will be trans in 20 years - and that is a ton of money!
What attitude can you suggest to parents whose
child declares himself or herself to be trans?
A mom sent me an email to tell me how she handled her daughter telling her she was non-binary:
“My daughter told me she’s non-binary today, and I looked her dead in the face and said, Well, tell ‘them’ to clean their room. Then I walked away and said, Love, I don’t care who or what you are, I love you!”
This mirrors my stance. The medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry are making an epidemic out of nothing. Gender dysphoria has an 80% chance of being resolved with talk therapy!
How do you respond to a child who becomes desperate
when he or she asks for puberty blockers and is asked to wait? What alternative
can you suggest?
When did parents become afraid of their kids? The media is giving parents wrong information, and I understand the unease they are feeling. But if I can do one thing it would be to put the parents back in the driver's seat and offer them a word we seem to have forgotten world-wide. It’s a scientific word that is so powerful it has saved many children from devastating decisions in childhood. I want all parents to write it down and take my strength and rigid immovable stance and my energy and knowledge of having done it and having teenagers too.
Parents, learn this word - inside out - READY? NO!
Often, simply questioning the appropriateness of a
transition process in a young person with gender dysphoria is considered transphobic
behavior. Yet you yourself are a trans man, and you work to protect children
from engaging in these trans-identity processes before they come of age. What
do you think of these transphobia accusations?
Being concerned about your child is not
transphobic! It doesn’t belong in this situation. We have lost our way with
what bigotry means. So channel my energy and say it loud, say it proud, and
most importantly say it without reservation:
Medical Transitioning In No Place For A Child!
Who cares if they call you transphobic now? In 20 years, they will call you a hero!
Heroes never have easy lives, do they?
Interview: Scott Newgent (genderdysphoriaalliance.com)
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