Trans Away The Gay: Gender-Affirming Care IS Conversion Therapy | Scott Newgent
13 October 2026
With Scott Newgent
North America
Scott Newgent, who transitioned from female to male in the United States and later suffered severe medical complications, tells Mia Hughes that homophobia drove her towards surgery: a difficult relationship, a trans-identified therapist, and a gynaecologist who told her, without testing, that she was likely intersex. Newgent now campaigns against paediatric gender medicine, arguing it is cosmetic rather than life-saving, and that affirming a same-sex-attracted teenager's cross-sex identity can itself function as conversion therapy. With Newgent due to address the UK Parliament on 21 October against a proposed conversion-therapy ban, the discussion bears directly on Ireland, where similar legislation is also being drafted.
Scott Newgent is an American woman who, in her thirties, transitioned to live as a man and underwent a series of surgeries that she says left her with life-altering medical complications. She has since become a prominent critic of gender-affirming care, testifying to lawmakers in the United States and campaigning specifically against its use with minors, which she describes as cosmetic rather than medically necessary. In this conversation with Mia Hughes, Newgent traces her transition back to homophobia rather than gender identity: an unhappy relationship dynamic, a therapist who was herself trans-identified, and a gynaecologist who told her, without running any tests, that she was likely intersex. Newgent describes how that chain of encouragement, combined with her own discomfort at being attracted to women, led her toward sex-altering procedures in Texas and the physical and psychological fallout that followed. The episode's central argument is that routing gay, lesbian and bisexual young people toward medical transition, rather than helping them accept their sexuality, amounts to a form of conversion therapy aimed at eliminating same-sex attraction. Newgent discusses the wider gender debate, the tensions this creates between the L, G, B and T communities, and her own experience of homophobia within gender-identity spaces, a claim that sits at the heart of the episode's title. The timing is pointed. Newgent is due to address the UK Parliament on 21 October to oppose a proposed ban on so-called conversion therapy, which she argues is written broadly enough to criminalise exploratory psychotherapy and silence clinicians who raise concerns about paediatric transition. That debate is not purely a UK matter for Irish readers. The Government here has also committed to legislating against conversion practices, with a general scheme for a Conversion Practices Bill published in recent years and still moving through pre-legislative scrutiny; its definitions have drawn similar criticism from therapists and clinicians worried that ordinary exploratory counselling could be caught by the wording. Ireland's gender services are also under active review. The HSE's adult National Gender Service operates out of Loughlinstown, and HIQA has separately examined the model of care proposed for a paediatric gender service, following the same caution that emerged from the Cass Review in the UK. Newgent's account of complications after irreversible surgery, and her argument that affirmation can mask untreated homophobia or unresolved trauma, lands directly in that debate about what Irish clinical guidelines should require before any young person is referred for medical intervention. For a site tracking the facts behind this podcast, the episode is a reminder that the conversion-therapy question is not settled simply by banning conversion therapy. How Irish legislators eventually define "conversion practices" will determine whether exploratory therapy, like the kind Newgent says she needed and did not get, remains legally available here.
