Transgender Regret - It's Real & This Is What Is Looks Like!

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By Trans Regretter Scott Newgent

Follow on Twitter @NotScottNewgent

“You’re the transman Scott Newgent, from the ‘What Is a Woman’ documentary, right? Don’t we know

I immediately look down to avoid eye contact. It’s one thing to be remembered for a great success in life. It’s quite another to be recognized for the single most significant regret you have, one that never releases its grip, leading to a life mirroring the biblical Job: unending physical and mental health trials as well as financial tribulations. And I say that as an agnostic.

The woman refuses to leave my table at a coffee shop where I am desperately looking for a work-from-home job, as I’m now without the finances for a car. Her insistence forces me to look up and I recognize her. I have, indeed, met this woman and her husband and children — the type of meeting that only happens once but leaves a soul forever changed.

Years prior, I had visited them in their home in an effort to sell them vinyl windows. Due to complications from gender-affirming medical transition, I was struggling with urinary infections that were nonstop for 17 months. I’d had a phalloplasty, otherwise known as “bottom surgery.” That’s the last, most drastic, and least successful type of gender-affirming surgery available, but the number of people undergoing it is skyrocketing. According to a study published this summer by JAMA Network Open, gender-affirming surgeries almost tripled between 2016 and 2019. Most of those were “top surgeries” — removal or changes to breasts — but 16,871 of them were genital surgeries, including hundreds of minors.

For me, gender transition was and continues to be dangerous, causing massive and recurring health issues. It cured nothing. It gave me PTSD. My left arm, from which the skin was taken to create a faux phallus, has essentially left me disabled. My right arm — my good arm — recently was diagnosed with hairline fractures because I stopped taking testosterone a little while ago. I basically now have brittle bones decades too soon.

I needed that job selling windows for the health insurance, which would cover a procedure out of state. My own state didn’t have a qualified surgeon willing to take on the complications from my surgery. So I fluttered from one ER to the next, weekend after weekend, working five days in between. I had to endure three months of ring-around-the-ER-posy. This game I was forced to play left me with lasting financial debt that I will never be able to repay — yet another regret.

The insistent infections had taken their toll on my health, both physically and emotionally. A month prior, a doctor insisted I get a PICC line. This tube traveled up my arm and ended right at the entrance of my heart, remaining for over 30 days. Each day, I would wake up, go to the hospital and receive IV antibiotics before I headed off to sell windows in people’s homes.

I distinctly recall the pain I had felt as an infection pulled on my bladder like daggers. I was giving my presentation, saying, “Here is the latch that opens the windows,” when the woman interrupted me: “Scott, sweetie, you have blood running down your legs.”

The kindness and genuine concern I felt from this couple, despite being strangers at the time, created a sense of comfort I will never forget. Their rare empathy hit a nerve, and I could not stop the tears I knew were coming. Once they started to flow, they didn’t stop. I could not catch my breath, hyperventilating into the embrace of this woman and her husband. It was in his strong grasp I lost the ability to stand, yet I stayed upright because he held me along with his wife as his mammoth arms encircled us both.

It was this nurturing man who began to comfort me in a whisper, “Shhh, it’s OK, Scott, it’s gonna be OK, you’re OK, let it out.” He reminded me of my father, who’d passed away a decade prior. Even though we were the same age, I felt from him a fatherly love I clearly must have needed. I was so grateful.

The woman in the coffee shop is still there, smiling at me, oblivious to the regrets that flash through my mind. “Oh my, Scott, how are you? We saw you in the documentary and were so thankful to see you alive; we have been worried about you for years. How are you now? Scott, what powerful testimony you have and are giving to so many.”

I look up at the expectant woman to give her my answer. “How am I? I’m still alive. And I live for my three kids.” When I was at my lowest, I thought about giving up entirely. But my kids’ faces came before and I made a promise: to live and to tell others about what happened to me. I’m far from perfect, as a person and as a parent. But I try. I try to help others so they don’t have the regrets that I have.

My most major regret — having experimental bottom surgery — led to a cascade of others.

About five years ago, I began a fight to stop childhood medical transition. I started by helping write the first bill that was heard in North Dakota and have not relented, becoming one of the leading worldwide voices to stop this experimental practice. Yes, a trans man is leading the fight, and that in itself should give the medical community pause.

The obligation has weighed heavily on my family. I have been let go from good-paying jobs because of my activism. I’m crippled with debt. I’m trans and I cannot detransition, even though I’d like to. The process has gone too far; there is no turning back. And so all I can do is try to be as resilient as Job, even though I understand no better.

The woman smiles and wishes me well. I go back to looking at the want-ads with the free Wi-Fi from the coffee shop. I’m still an agn exostic, but I’m also better off than Job.

Scott Newgent is a gender transition regretter in Dallas.

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