“We bar kids … from being able to drink or smoke cigarettes or buy marijuana or rent a car. I’ve been traveling a lot and sometimes I can’t even get a hotel room because I’m under the age of 21. And yet, I still was able to get my breasts removed when I was 15,” says Chloe Cole.
“I fell into the delusion that I was actually a boy just living within a girl’s body,” Cole says. She began taking puberty blockers and then testosterone at age 13. She got a double mastectomy at age 15. And at age 16, she realized she had made a terrible mistake.
Cole shares her story and why she is going to sue the medical group and hospital that facilitated and advised her and her parents on her medical transition.
“They said that there was less than a one to two percent regret rate,” Cole says. “And they never brought up what might happen, what the process would look like for that to happen. I didn’t even know that it was possible until it happened to me … They said that it was really a matter of life or death if I wasn’t allowed to transition.”
Interview trailer:
Watch the full interview: https://www.theepochtimes.com/chloe-cole-the-dark-side-of-unconditional-gender-affirmation_5062267.html
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Chloe Cole, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Chloe Cole:
Yes. Thank you so much for having me here.
Mr. Jekielek:
You’re here at this summit on ending gender ideology here in Washington, DC.
Ms. Cole:
Yes.
Mr. Jekielek:
Why don’t we just start with that. Tell me what you were talking about.
Ms. Cole:
Yes. That was at the Heritage Foundation Building. On the second day of the summit, I gave an account of my experiences transitioning as a minor.
Mr. Jekielek:
This was a long path for you, and it started very, very early. I think you were only 12.
Ms. Cole:
Yes, I was 12 when I first started identifying as transgender.
Mr. Jekielek:
Give me a picture of what happened. For some people it’s even hard to imagine how you get that idea.
Ms. Cole:
In order to get into that, I do have to talk about my early childhood. From a pretty young age, my parents were constantly in a fight with both my school and my doctors. I had some difficulties with things like getting my assignments done or staying organized in class. I also had some issues socializing and getting along with other kids my age, especially girls.
My teachers noticed this and they suggested to my parents that I might be on the spectrum. But when my parents tried to get me diagnosed with autism, the physician just said, “There’s no way that she’s autistic. She’s too smart.” That was the answer they got, and they were refused a second opinion. But I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was around six or seven, and then they started putting me on medication for it at age 10.
So, I wasn’t the easiest kid to raise. I was a bit of a tomboy growing up. I’ve got two older brothers. Growing up, I would play with their toys and play video games with them and play in the dirt, things like that. I did have a feminine side, but as I got older, I started to feel almost ashamed about that and I repressed that part of me. I think it was due in part to the teasing that I got from boys. Then eventually when I was in middle school, I started to feel inadequate compared to other girls and women.
I started using social media and there was a specific body type and certain features that were presented as the ideal that I felt like I couldn’t really match up to. At the time I didn’t really understand it. A lot of what I was going through as a kid was pretty normal, but I never really had these conversations with anybody growing up.
When I got my first phone, everybody in my class was using apps like Snapchat and Instagram, and I made my first Instagram account. I was seeing a lot of things that I guess you’d say were either questionable or just not really easy for an 11-year-old to understand, not only the images of young women that I was seeing, but also the content posted by other people my age.
I started getting exposed to a lot of feminist ideology. It implanted this idea in my head that being a woman in this world was awful and dangerous. A lot of the women and girls that I talked to growing up would complain about getting their periods and having to go through the physical changes of puberty, their fear of becoming pregnant and giving birth, and eventually getting older, aging, going through that process and going through menopause.
It was often talked about in a negative light. Hearing all this stuff about growing from a girl into a woman without being told about the benefits that really come with it made me not want that for myself. Some of the posts that I was reading even said things like, “Oh, we’ve historically been oppressed and it’s still that way.” Some even said that it was getting worse, that our reproductive rights are being taken away. It was quite scary for me to be reading all of that at a young age.
At roughly the same time, in the online communities that I was browsing, I was a nerdy kid. I liked my video games and cartoons and things like that. In a lot of the communities based around those topics, there happened to be a lot of people around my age in their early teens to their 20s where there seemed to be a lot of overlap between that and identifying as LGBT or gay or bisexual or transgender.
The algorithms and the content that I was seeing started to shift. I started seeing content that was focused specifically on the topic of sexuality or gender identity. A lot of them were infographics about the process of transitioning and how gender dysphoria works. I started noticing some parallels with myself, especially with the gender stuff. First, I started questioning maybe what if I’m bisexual or pansexual, and then it became questioning of my gender identity.
After being exposed to all that for some time, and especially at such an impressionable age, it was a natural progression, and there is an appeal for kids. It’s all these phrases and these colorful flags, and even almost a culture around it that draws you in, especially if you’re a kid who struggles to socialize in-person and doesn’t really have much of a community. That was definitely me.
At some point, I decided that it just made sense that I wasn’t actually a girl and that I was instead a boy. There was one theory that I read that the reason why people experience gender dysphoria is because they actually have the brain of the opposite sex. And so, that makes them take on characteristics and behaviors that are more frequently associated with one sex or the other. This has been debunked several times, but I was only 12 and I was impressionable.
Mr. Jekielek:
And there’s this whole world that you were in, an online world, that reinforced all of this.
Ms. Cole:
Yes. At school, I did struggle a bit to make friends, especially after I moved schools before middle school. So I turned to the internet. At first, I started just cutting my hair a little bit shorter each time I got a haircut, then buying more clothing from the boys section. Then eventually, I decided to change my name and I came out to some people at school, some people online, and my oldest sister. Eventually, after a few months, I decided that I wanted to go through the process of medically transitioning.
It was scary, and I knew that I would have to at least talk to my parents about it and get them on board with it. I wasn’t sure how they would react. It’s really a big conversation to have, and as a parent, that’s not really something you would expect to hear out of your kid. I knew this at the time, and I wanted to allow them some time to think about it.
I started the conversation through a letter that I left on the coffee table, actually. They were surprised, but they wanted to support me. They were cautious. They weren’t really sure what to do. They decided maybe we should try to get to the bottom of this and get a professional involved so that we know how to deal with this.
Mr. Jekielek:
Just a quick question. Up to now, this is you interacting with people online, and reading things. There are no teachers, medical professionals, or anybody else involved.
Ms. Cole:
No, I never saw anything like that. I never saw anything about this subject in school, actually. I graduated last year. It was never discussed in any class I had, actually. But at this point in time, I wasn’t really directly interacting with people about this subject specifically online either . I was mostly just following or viewing these communities, but it still left a pretty considerable impact on me.
Mr. Jekielek:
Sure, clearly.
Ms. Cole:
The power of suggestion.
Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, absolutely. You’ve told your parents now, so what happens?
Ms. Cole:
Yes, they decided it was a good idea to start sending me to a therapist. They didn’t get what they wanted and what I really needed. The causes behind my dysphoria were really never explored. Instead, it was really just like, “Oh, okay. You say you’re a boy and you want to be referred to by this name. Yeah, that’s true. You’re a boy.” No real questioning.
I was referred to a general specialist after about a month or so, and I had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Shortly after that, I started expressing to my parents and my physicians that I had a desire to transition medically.
My mom and dad pushed back on this, actually, especially my dad. He wanted me to wait until I was 18. He didn’t want to have me make such a complicated decision at such a young age. He wanted to leave that responsibility to me when I was legally an adult. But they were effectively coerced into allowing me to do this, because the medical professionals talked to them about it.
They said that there’s less than a one to two per cent regret rate when people would transition. They never brought up what might happen, or what the process would look like for that to happen. I didn’t even know that it was possible until it happened to me.
Mr. Jekielek:
The regret rate?
Ms. Cole:
Yes. My dad asked about that. That was what they told him. They never presented any other options to them. They just cited the suicide statistics. They said that it was really a matter of life or death if I wasn’t allowed to transition.
Mr. Jekielek:
I’ve often heard, and people have told me on this show, that it’s very common for parents and kids and even adults who are thinking about this to be told, “If you don’t let your kid transition, they’re going to commit suicide.”
Ms. Cole:
I don’t remember them saying this to me. They actually told that to my parents while I was out of the room even. I didn’t believe this at the time. I wasn’t suicidal until I was about 14 or 15, a year or so after I started these treatments. But the way I saw it at the time was that it was a condition that I had, and because it was a condition, it needed to be treated, and this was the treatment.
Mr. Jekielek:
So, you’re 13, and you are beginning the process of medical transition. What does that look like?
Ms. Cole:
After only about a half-a-year between getting the diagnosis, I was referred to an endocrinologist. I would be put on blockers. Then after I got my first blocker shot, about a month later, I had gotten my prescription for testosterone as well. So, it was really quite quick.
Mr. Jekielek:
That’s almost unbelievable. Were you told of the potential side effects of these treatments?
Ms. Cole:
They did list some side effects on the consent forms. They weren’t comprehensive. They didn’t list some commonly known side effects. But I was told that the testosterone, or really the lack of estrogen in my body, would cause an atrophy in certain reproductive organs. I was also told that it might affect my ability to conceive children as an adult.
But I was 13 at the time when I consented, when I signed off on these. I wasn’t thinking about having kids. I was being expected to make an adult decision on things that I had no experience with and no knowledge on.
Mr. Jekielek:
It really does sound like that, doesn’t it? Let’s go a little further along the way. Very quickly, you’re on puberty blockers, you’re on testosterone. Then what happens?
Ms. Cole:
In the amount of time between starting the blockers and the testosterone, after all the hormones were cleared out of my body, I was in a state of what could be considered an artificial menopause. It caused me to experience hot flashes and itching all over my body. It did make me lethargic and I struggled to focus just a little bit more in class. I pretty much woke up every day just hoping for the next big step, which for me was testosterone.
When I started on the testosterone, I felt great. I finally had hormones back in my body. I had my energy back, and I had my appetite back. Very shortly after, I started seeing the effects of it, the first of which would be my voice dropping. That came in only a matter of probably two weeks. It was pretty dramatic. My voice dropped pretty low, actually, a lot lower than it is now.
But I also started building a little bit of muscle. My facial features started to become a little more rough and squarish. My hair and my eyebrows got thicker. I started growing a very small amount of facial hair. My shoulders got bigger and I became stronger and more physically fit. For the first time, really, I felt confident about myself.
Mr. Jekielek:
Wow. At this point, you’re thinking this is something that’s working?
Ms. Cole:
Yes. I would say there was a bit of a honeymoon period even. About halfway through my sophomore year, I started expressing to my therapist that I wanted to get a double mastectomy, which at the time we called top surgery.
Mr. Jekielek:
Right. What do you think of that euphemism? I’ve heard about that.
Ms. Cole:
It really downplays the real seriousness of this operation almost in a childlike way. It’s almost like it’s really being broken down to make it easier for a kid or somebody who’s young to digest it a little bit more easily.
Mr. Jekielek:
You are a kid going through all this. Trace to me to the point where you realized that something’s wrong.
Ms. Cole:
Before I got the surgery, by the time I was in my sophomore year, I really was not in my best shape. I was diagnosed with depression and social anxiety, and they started medicating my depression. I just continued to get worse.
I was also using a chest binder since my eighth grade year, after an incident of a boy at school who had assaulted me. I would wear this thing for, I’d say, about eight to 12 hours a day. I would be at school for eight hours. I would wear it whenever I was out of the house, whenever there were people over, or whene