The Impact of Testosterone and Transitioning on Girls | Chloe Cole

Intro to Chloe Cole

Nobody's sane would think that. Oh, our doctors our own health care system are incentivizing children to go through this and just pushing them through the system and creating basically an entire generation of sterilized and traumatized young men and women. Without seeing any evidence, nobody would think that. Cuz it sounds like a horror story. And it is a horror story. It wasn't until about like a year post-op that I started thinking about it. It all hit me at once.

All of these epiphanies that the decision came from a place of trauma. Eventually the fun of being seen as a young man just went away and it was just another part of my life. It gave me some time to kind of reflect on like the loss of entire parts of my body. It's important to remember that our physicians and our doctors are still just people. They're flawed. It doesn't take a degree to understand that it's wrong to chemically castrate and then mutilate a child. You'd think that under any circumstances.

These are perfectly healthy children who have psychiatric issues and trauma that can be dealt with in a less invasive manner. Chloe Cole, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. It's good to be out here. And you're out here for AmFest. Yes, I am. You're speaking at it, correct?

Yeah, I'm going to be speaking this Saturday. Oh, good for you. Thank you.

Chloe’s Background and Story

So, before we jump in, I have a whole bunch of questions for you cuz you have a unfortunately crazy story. Uh do you want to give a brief background about who you are and what you do? I consider myself to be an advocate for for the safety of children, especially in regards to the health care system and for the rights of parents and families. Um mostly because of my own experiences with being a detransitioner. I went through a social and medical gender transition between the ages of 12 to 16. After years of going through quite a bit of an identity crisis during my childhood, I was kind of a tomboy. I didn't really feel like I felt I didn't really feel like I I fit in a whole lot with most of my peers for most of my my school days.

And I had body image issues partly stemming from a bit of an early puberty that I was going through. And I didn't really feel like I had the confidence to really reach out to people to the adults around me or really anybody around me to talk about these things. But when I found the online transgender community, I felt I thought that I'd found I finally found the answer that I was going to become happy and whole and pursuing a new identity as a young man. And so I actually end up going through um puberty blockers. I took weekly injections of testosterone starting at age of of 13. And at 15 years old, I had a radical double mastectomy to surgically remove my breasts. And it took less than a year for me to realize post-surgery that I wanted to become a mother one day, that I was grieving my breasts, and I wanted to fulfill the role the feminine role of a wife, and this potentially would be taking all of that away from me.

And I didn't need to change anything about myself. My sex was not the problem. My body was not the problem. I was beautiful the way that I was, and I didn't deserve to go through this. So I de-transitioned um at 16 years old, and since then I've been speaking publicly about my experiences with the transgender community, with this subset of of medicine, and against the use of these procedures for for children because I think that children deserve to be allowed to grow up with their bodies fully intact. Yeah. Cuz they can't you cannot become an adult.

You cannot fully enter into adulthood if you don't go through puberty. I'm really sorry you went through that. Um like I can't imagine. I had like my own health issues and I was like I was doing some background reading about what you went through and I was like it's so much worse like what's going on with the trans stuff than like people get sick and people have hard childhoods and things but this is like unfair to a level that is like evil. It's shocking. Like you'd never you it's just it's insane. So like thank you for talking about it.

Thank you. It's the fact that it's so crazy and it's so shocking that's allowed this this virus to spread as quickly as it has because nobody sane would think that oh our doctors our own health care system entire states entire governments are incentivizing children to go through this and just pushing them through the system and creating basically an entire generation of sterilized and traumatized young men and women. It sounds like a conspiracy theory. Without Without seeing any evidence nobody would think that. So for years nobody believed that it was happening. Because Because it sounds like a horror story. It doesn't sound like a And it is a horror story.

Nobody wants to think that it's going on but it's not until really people like me start coming out talking about the damages to our bodies and things that have happened to us at such young ages start to see really just what's been been been happening under our noses for for decades now. If you guys aren't on Peterson Academy you're missing out. There are over 25 8-hour courses on there from people like Vervaeke, Michael Malice, Keith Campbell. My dad has three 8-hour courses out now including Nietzsche, Sermon on the Mount and Intro to Personality which is excellent. Brian Keating's on there, David Eagleman on brain plasticity just came out which I love. Go to petersonacademy.com and come in and see what it's like. We have a 7-day money-back guarantee, so you can poke around the website, look at the courses, and get a refund if you want, no strings attached.

Any age is welcome. The courses are university level. Thanks, guys. Enjoy the rest of the podcast. So, I wanted to just get to know like what exactly happened to you to make you start looking in these like trans forums? Were you you said you were well, like anxious, you were tomboy. I was a tomboy as a kid, too.

I had like my hair was cut really short in grade four. I played sports. Like I hung out with the boys. I didn't like school. I didn't like my friends. I was depressed. I was like prime target.

You know, it was like I I and I can remember a bunch of my friends being like they would have they could have happened to them. Like it it it could easily happen. So, what what do you think led you, well, down that path? Was it the school, social media? I mean, it was it was a mixture of different things in my life. I felt like I definitely aligned more with my male role models in my life, particularly my older brothers. Because they were the ones who mostly were were looking after me and the ones who I was closest to my family.

I didn't really feel like I related a whole lot to like my older sisters, especially, or like the girls at school. I was bullied pretty pretty hard um in my early elementary years um up until high school, up until I started high school. And it always felt like there was something that just set me apart from the other the other kids around me in some way. smarter, to be honest.

What Led to the Transition

I I like I'm I'm not not just putting that out there. That can make There's this huge discrepancy. Like you go to you go to elementary school or high school, even, and you associate with everybody that just lives around there, which you never do at any other point in your life. Like you never do that. Eventually, you you to a point in your career or something where you're associating with whoever else is kind of at your level. Like my guess is you were probably like significantly brighter and that was just like what's going on. Does that definitely alienate people? a part of it.

Like I just never felt like I was really on the same level as my other peers. And it was very hard to connect with them. Um especially the girls my age. I couldn't really understand them very well to be honest. And at first like being a tomboy was something that I actually took a bit of pride in. It was something that set me apart from the others and it had these qualities that they didn't. But eventually like as I got into middle school, I feel like around that period of your life socialization becomes more sex oriented and almost more segregated between the two the two sexes.

Now I couldn't be making friends with boys without being accused of like having crushed on them or like being in a relationship with them. Yeah. There was actually one time where there was a boy who I was really close friends with had somebody spread it There was somebody who spread a rumor that I was making like weird like sexual comments about him when I wasn't and our relationship ended up breaking breaking apart because of these rumors. I didn't have a chance of defending myself against. It really sucked. I had a lot of things like that happen. And I just never felt like I could defend myself or like find any niche that I could really fit in especially after after moving schools in fifth grade.

It was just like I was back at square one after years of struggling to finally find a community that I could like surround myself with. I finally found friends and then it had it taken away just after that. So it was like where is my identity? Who am I to the people around me? They don't It feels like I'm never valued. It feels like nobody ever pays attention to me and like I'm nobody. And I kept trying to find some means of understanding myself and then being able to have other people understand me.

Um First I I I was I was an artist through throughout most of my my early years and I would use making like portraits of other people or like their favorite like comic or their favorite like cartoon characters and such or celebrities or making comics as a means of interacting with with other kids. And eventually as as as we got older it just they didn't take as much interest in that anymore. And then I went through As everybody started going through puberty eventually or even before that I was starting to get exposed in school mostly through my classmates to some pretty inappropriate things. I had some very precocious peers who would talk about things like pornography and sex and things that they were seeing like on the computer or on their phones or or the movies that their parents would just like let them watch. And I feel like my understanding between of between the two sexes and of what it means to be a woman and what a woman's worth comes from started to really take a shift. And it was like so this is how the boys are thinking about me. This is how they think about women.

I don't feel like I'm very pretty. I don't feel like there is I feel like there's I'm feeling this pressure to become something that I'm not and there's a standard that I'm trying to hold myself to that I don't want to. Like I want to escape this and on the other side of things interacting with the girls I would always hear about like how rough puberty is and how scary periods are. And even from from older women these negative messages about things like that we just can't control like aging and menopause and I would every now and then I would I would even hear like female teachers saying things like oh I don't want to have a I would never want to have a daughter. I'm glad that I only have sons. Oh yeah but yeah. these messages just culminated into me thinking that my femininity and being a woman was just going to be overall a negative experience and with me already feeling left out from other women it was like why would I ever want this? It feels like there's nothing in store for me.

And at times like I feel like I just would have been happier if I were born male if I were like my my older brothers. But I didn't really actually believe that until I started seeing You asked if I was exposed to it in in school. It wasn't really something that It wasn't something that was really in the curriculum yet actually. Which might sound crazy considering that I come I I come from California. I'm from the middle of California and this was never really a part of my schooling and I graduated just a few years ago. For me it my first real exposure to it was through social media and it was through communities that were like kind of oriented around my own personal interests that seemed pretty innocent just things like illustration or like character design or or cartoons or like books or comics that I would read right? And a lot of the the kids in these communities around my age it wasn't like celebrities that I was following it was just other other normal kids who had a lot of the same I noticed that they had a lot of the same struggles that I did with like their identity and their body image and being bullied.

Social Media’s Influence

And yet once they started talking about trying to turn um trying to become the opposite sex and and eventually going into a social transition like changing their name and pronouns and asking everybody around them to refer them um as such, changing their their clothes and eventually going down the medical route. It seemed like they were becoming like they were happy amongst themselves. And it was like there was this sense of community amongst them that was kind of novel to me in a way. It was like all these different people from different backgrounds and all now coming together and bonding over like their shared experiences and especially their shared hardships. And that was something that for pretty much all my life up until that point, I had wished that I had for myself. So, subconsciously I I wanted to be a part of that. And I also felt like I was starting to understand myself a little bit more and more through this lens that maybe the reason why I was so different from everybody around me and especially the girls and women was that I just wasn't meant to be one of them.

The thing that really hooked me was the brain sex theory. I started hearing in the community about how there's this theory that the reason why people develop gender dysphoria or the distress around their sex is because they have brain patterns that are more similar to a to a member of the opposite sex.

The Brain Sex Theory

Now, this theory has been debunked. It's completely unfounded. But I didn't know that at the time. And so, like my little 11 12-year-old brain, it was like wow, this makes perfect sense. Now I know why I'm a tomboy. Now I know why I don't feel like I'm one of the other women around me. This is just who I am.

And I conceptualized these feelings that I had in my brain as like some sort of neurological neurological condition that I had. Yeah. And the trans community is so hell-bent on medicalization. It's really the only option that's ever talked about. So, I thought, "Okay. So, there's this condition that I have. And now I have to treat it."

Yeah. And so, the first step in this treatment consists of the social transition which I as I explained earlier is it starts with the changing of your name and and the way that you present yourself and reintroducing yourself to the people around you. And I the first few times I got called like sir and by my this new chosen name that I had for myself. It was weirdly exhilarating. Like it's like this it's almost like a kind of high that you get from this affirmation in your in your choice and this new self that you've created. And eventually I came out to my mom my mom and dad after those first few times my friends and sometimes even like strangers calling me by calling me this because I thought, "Okay. This sort of euphoria is a sign that I'm going in the in the right direction that I'm going to be happier this way."

And when it came to telling my parents, they were they weren't really sure how to react actually. It was kind of like they wanted they they wanted to they could see that I was at that that stage of my life where naturally I was going to try to branch out and try new things and and and in an attempt to develop my identity, right? And they respected that. But they also didn't really know how they could help me. And they knew obviously that it wasn't their son. I wasn't a boy. I wasn't transgender.

I was their daughter. I was just the way that my mother's womb made me. And perhaps these feelings that I was having came from a place of of pain. They could see very easily that it came from some of my mental health issues and some of my social my social struggles through um during during during my school days.

Therapy That Failed to Help

And they wanted to help me. But they didn't They knew so little about the subjects. They never had to deal with this at all with any of my older siblings. So they decided that they would get the help of mental health professionals to try and see where these feelings have come from and hopefully help me help me through this while also just letting me be a kid and not really inter inter intervening during this period of my life. Just allowing me to grow up. But their expectations were just completely subverted the the first day of therapy. They weren't allowed in.

They weren't allowed in the room. They had no idea what was going on or what was actually being talked about during during these these therapy sessions. And even I expressed to them like I'm not satisfied. Like I don't feel like this is doing anything for me. But I want help. And so they decided that they were going to see they were going to talk to the psychologist themselves and ask like what is going on in her life that's so bad that she wants to change her body into she is. Why is she already talking about things like going on on hormones and all these other medications and potentially getting surgery?

She's far too young for this. Why can't we wait until she's at least legally an adult and maybe she'll understand herself better later at that point in life and the responsibility isn't on us to take upon this these procedures that she potentially could regret. And as soon as they mentioned regret, the doctors just got on them and said it's actually quite unlikely that she's going to regret this. They cited a vague statistic. It was something like 1 or 2% regret rates that they said or detransition rates. I can't remember what it was. I wasn't even the in the room for this, so I couldn't refute any of this.

I couldn't refute anything that that they were saying. But they said it's more likely that your daughter is going to regret going through puberty and kill herself than she will ever regret going through detransition or going through transition. And it was like a threat that they were giving my parents. Yeah. It was like the threat of life or death for for their daughter. They just really drilled this idea into their heads that they could lose their kids' life if they didn't say yes to this and that this was their only this was my only option. A lot of a lot of people um they give my parents crap for this for for having signed off on treatment.

But I don't blame them at all because they never wanted this for me. They never wanted me to undergo these procedures. They were doing the best with what were given. Yeah, I don't think people understand the weight that physicians carry when they speak to you. You know, like it took me not to compare our situations again, but it's the best that I have with like surgical stuff. Like I I went to surgeons for my ankle that said you need to amputate.

Parental Influence and Medical Pressure

And I remember my mom nearly fainting. And they talk to you as if they're 100% certain. They've been trained for 30 years, 20 years, whatever through residency. You don't know what you're talking about. They know what they're talking about. These are the facts. Which is why you need to be so careful about who you go to.

And I don't think most people realize that like any physician, particularly the ones you were working with, or social workers, or whatever, like you don't just talk they're a person. It like at best they're a person who's been brainwashed into thinking they know everything, which is way more dangerous than like the average person that's at least aware they're not educated on every topic. I'm not a fan of like not a fan. It's so dangerous. It's statistically it's dangerous. And like people don't realize that. They're like, "No, they're trained."

Yeah, trained to not be able to think. Like so bad. Right. It's important to remember that our physicians and our doctors are still just people. They're flawed. Yeah. And really it doesn't take a degree to understand that it's wrong to chemically castrate and then mutilate a child at You'd think that. under any circumstances.

Like these are perfectly healthy children who are they're dealing with, who have psychiatric issues and trauma that can be dealt with in a less invasive manner. Yeah. These children do not need these treatments. They're I mean the efficacy of these treatments is being is highly disputed. Yeah. And at the end of the day this is an area of medicine which I can barely call it medicine that Yeah, that's for sure. on ideology. There is no such thing as a successful transition because you cannot actually become the opposite sex.

None of these treatments actually made me into a young man. And I was becoming more and more cognizant of that fact the further that I went into it. At first going on hormones and seeing the changes happen to my body, my face, and sounding and looking more like a young man, eventually going to my high school years being treated as a young man was exciting. It was novel. It was just a completely new experience and now like now that I was I was basically starting my my social life from square one. And I could rebuild myself you in in this identity. And I was entering into male social spaces and be be I was it was I can't even lie.

It was kind of a it was kind of a fun experience just like being one of the guys and getting to be in that dynamic. And there are there are times when it was pretty validating that you know, I was I wasn't I wasn't half bad looking at the time. You know, I looked like pretty much any any other 15-year-old boy except I probably groomed myself better. So I had a bit of an appeal to like the other girls my age and a lot of them like actually had crushes on me.

What Transitioning Felt Like Initially

Like I would have girls who would like come up to me like like flirting with me. Um and it was like I'd never had anything like that before. And like I'm completely straight, but in a in a in a sense like I was kind of like climbing up the the female social ladder in a really in a really strange way. Like I was kind of exiting like out of all the unhealthy dynamics, but like I I'm a woman. So I understood like all the Like I understand like what I understood like what gets girls. Oh, it's so dark. So, it was like so dark, but But, yeah.

Like I I had the looks of a young man, but I also had like a natural feminine essence of of a woman. And I feel like when you're a girl that age, like you're kind of attracted more to softer men. Yeah, probably. Yeah, that makes sense. Eventually though, like I started realizing, wait, this is like actually like I'm not attracted to these women. It's more of a nuisance than anything at this point. And my actual dating pool is like really small.

Like the men who I was interested in never returned feelings, obviously, because I looked like a guy. They're straight. It didn't matter that I was actually a woman, but the men who were would often There's a term, chasers, for people who have like a fetish for like transgender people. And I got a lot of people who were who were like that. Like I passed pretty pretty well as the opposite sex, and for the most part like nobody other than like the people who I went to like elementary and middle school with knew that I was actually a woman. But, upon like realizing this, I would have some people saying like I I could tell that they had some really gross intentions. They didn't like for me They didn't like me for me.

They didn't value me as a human being. I was just a fetish, something for them to throw away. And I attracted like a lot of pedophiles during this time. Like there were a lot of grown men online and even like people like who like just graduated from school while I was in my freshman year, like even while I was still in middle school, who were like trying to to go after me.

Creepy Dating Experiences

It was horrible. And with the influence of the testosterone, unfortunately, I did fall into some pretty unfortunate circumstances. Um So, as women, we have these instincts around our sexuality. We're made to be the more choosy sex in terms of our partners and to we court and and marry or choose to have sexual relationships with because we carry most of the reproductive burden. Now, when you put a woman on testosterone, well, it's a sex hormone, so obviously it's going to change her behavior, her way of thinking, and her sex drive. With those instincts completely melted away from me and with the intense high sex drive, like I was constantly it made it so that sex basically became like a hyperfixation for me. And like all of my friends during this time were like hypersexual and like getting like already getting into relationships or or like hooking up and I felt like I had to like play catch up with them.

I thought like because of the culture the hypersexual culture that I was growing up in that I was inferior for not partaking in that. Yeah. That being said, like I There were times when it got really close and like I was actually being groomed by adult men on the internet who were like planning to like physically meet up with me in my hometown, even like rent out hotels for a day. Oh my gosh. What are these What are the these forums? Is it just like on regular social media or is this Um this was on Well, this was on on regular social media, yes. Oh.

Um primarily Instagram. I even had like some older friends who were like sending me sending like men my way. Yeah. It was just a horrible situation that I that I was in. I could have gotten seriously hurt. I could have gotten Yeah. trafficked for all I know. I thank God that I mean, it was already kind of a traumatic thing to happen for me.

Kind of. But the fact that nothing actually happened, that I wasn't actually taken advantage of physically, I'm very thankful of. But I started to realize the toll that all this was taking on me um as I got older. You're worried about Reflecting Reflecting on not only like how ballsy it made me what with these these experiences with being being groomed by adult men and also like the changing dynamics socially. Eventually, the fun of being seen as a young man just went away and it was just another part of my life and I feel like young men these days have it pretty rough. It can be very lonely to be a young man if you don't have like a community around you, if you're not going to church, if you don't have a spiritual or communal anchor in your life. And I didn't.

Like it was already unnatural that I was trying to fulfill fulfill this role that I wasn't made for. But just being in that that dynamic, I think has given me perspective on how hard men have it these days. Which I feel like isn't really talked about enough. There is the the male loneliness epidemic is a very real thing and I saw it not only through my own experiences, but also with a lot of my male friends as well. They felt like they had nobody who they could talk to. A lot of them were suicidal and they felt like at the end of the day, like there is nobody who they could truly connect with on a person-to-person level and that they were alone despite being surrounded by a bunch of people. Do you have any idea does social media play a role there?

Like you're you're younger than I saw that a bit like when I was in school, but social media really had nothing to do with it until I was in about like grade 10 or 11, which was good. Um, but I like I saw it.

Youth Mental Health Issues

There there were kids with mental health problems and like cutting themselves, stuff like that. Like I saw that, but it wasn't I don't know, it wasn't common. Like I knew one kid really that like or two or three maybe that had like really trouble. Was it like higher when you were in school? I mean almost all my friends at the time had some sort of mental health issue and a lot of them like crazy. I would say probably about half of them had experienced suicidal ideation at some point in their lives or had attempted suicide even. And That's insane.

As Yeah, it's not natural. This is not the environment. This is not the way that children should be growing up. How old are you? I'm I'm 20 now. So this wasn't too too long ago. I was in high school starting 2018.

Okay, I'm 32. So when I was in middle school I was kind of part of the like edgy, didn't quite fit in artsy crew. I wasn't part of the like popular crew. Um And really it sucks to be a part of the popular crew I feel like. Yeah. You know what? Just school just sucked.

I hated school the whole time. There's rumors all the time. Everyone's a It just sucks. But I think for mental health issues like I was on antidepressants. I was very depressed. I was the only kid except for one other kid in 70 that I knew that was depressed. And then when I went to an art school, which has more of the like creative like depressed types, honestly, there were when it started out, there were like a handful in 500 people.

It wasn't common to have a a mental problem. Like it I was always kind of like the one that had a weird health issue or something. It would definitely wasn't common. I started out as that in middle school and then all of a sudden, I think I think you're right about the influence of of social media to to an extent. I feel like it creates this What on on social media, especially on platforms like Instagram, which are very image-oriented, Yeah. you want to like project like the best parts of your life out and only the best parts. So, what other people are seeing, or when you're looking at somebody else's posts or like their like their own personal profile, you're just seeing the best of them. You're not seeing that the pain that they they go through.

They're not seeing like any of their their issues or or their flaws or their trauma. No. So, you get the sense of like so, this is how life should be like. I should look like this. I should have a body I should have a body like this. I should I I That was That was a big thing for me. That was part of That's That was a big part of why I had body image issues um that eventually led into me trying to shney.

Was that I grew up in the age of curvy, hourglass, like post-Kardashian. 2018 was a rough year, yeah. Like I I I And you know like during in middle school, I wasn't adult, obviously. So, I wasn't I wouldn't be fully developed. But also like I was kind of like a skinny, athletic sort of girl. I was like I had like larger shoulders and I was like I wish I was bottom-heavy. Like I wish I looked more like other women. Like I feel like I look like a teenage boy just looking at myself in the mirror.

And I I feel like I'm never going to match up to this. And I think that extends into issues other than like body image for for women. Like you're seeing like just this almost unhealthily like positive and happy image of other people's lives. Mhm. And it's also very isolating, too. Social media and really it just our our smartphones have made it so that we've become more comfortable interacting when we're not face-to-face. Yeah.

Yeah. I know. It's It's weird. I can't imagine like we had uh something I don't know if you've heard of MSN, but it was called MSN. It was just a messaging app and that came out remember that. I don't think I was I wasn't old enough for that, but Oh, I I had that in grade I don't know. Like middle school element may I think it was middle school and I remember just being like, "Wow, this is amazing."

I can't imagine having something like Instagram in middle school. oversimplified. It's incredibly oversimplified. Yeah. Uh I don't envy that. Yeah, I I looking back on my childhood and my adolescence makes me wants to avoid two things for my kids. Public schooling and social media. Having I've basically been in front of a screen for as long as I can remember.

And the environment of public school was I don't feel like especially for kids who are kind of like who tend to think outside the box, who tend to be more creative and be more out there the school doesn't care about you. And they don't care about parents, either. They don't care about what the parent the needs of not only the child but also the family. And if you can't if you're not listening to the parents, then you can't you genuinely can't help the child who's a student. Like outside of the whole trans thing, like I had I had an IP plan. Um it's not quite special ed, but it's just like a different like a like an individualized It's short for individual individualized education plan. And I was They ignored all of my accommodations for it to the point that eventually it was just like completely absent by the time that I was in my senior year.

Yeah. That's It's surprising. It's bad. I I think I don't know if public school is good for anybody to but it's not as bad for some people. If you do think outside the box or you're a little bit different, then you end up like this happened to me a bit. You I ended up associating with like the most troubled people because they were more interesting and that's just a bad idea. It was like that just a bad idea.

Like Uh I mean the same the same end up happening with me when I was when I was in high school when I end up getting into things like substances and just doing things that I shouldn't have and I felt like I started doing things that I wouldn't have normally not only because of peer influence but also because the fact that I was on testosterone which it just radically changed my personality. I would became pretty ballsy. Like I was I was like now like I was just trying like test every limit that I possibly could. And I was by by the time that like I was I was like halfway through high school in my sophomore year like I was just in a really bad place. I wasn't paying attention to my studies anymore. Like I was completely checked out of life basically just like skating by getting high, doing nothing with myself and as I fell further and further into the sort of bottomless pit it felt like I started wondering again like why aren't I happy anymore? Like I was put I was I'm being put on this path that I was told by doctors that I was told by doctors and an entire an entire community of people who are just like me was going to make me happy.

So what's the issue? So I started like I started ruminating again. I started thinking like okay, I need to figure out what it is and get it fixed. I started feeling insecure about my body again after years of being on testosterone and not really thinking about it anymore. When I looked down at my body, my breasts were still there. I I was already I was already like a few years into my puberty and like I was fairly developed for for a girl my age before I started on the hormones and and the treatments. So, I had to like use this like they call they call it a binder.

It's like It's kind of like a tank top, but it's made out of like a It's a It's a compression garment basically that like smooshes down the breasts. Sounds comfortable, right? Yeah, no. And I'd wear this every day whenever I would go out, whenever I'd go out like into to school or whenever we would have guests over to make it look like I didn't have breasts. But it's like at the end of every day like I would take a shower after after I would take a shower after school and I would see that this part of my body that I was deeply insecure about was still there. And so, I thought well, maybe the issue is that I have to go on to the next step. Surgery.

Yeah. I need surgery. I don't want to be I don't be want to be wearing this uncomfortable device anymore. I want to be free. I want to be able to not have to change out in the restroom. I want to be able to hang out with my friends with my shirt off during during pool parties and stuff. I had this like elaborate fantasy of what life would be like if I had a flat chest.

And I told my doctors about about all this and the conveyor belt that I was on started moving again towards surgery. And it was it was a pretty straightforward process. I think that the the meetings with my doctors about this started when I was roughly about 14, and then I finally went under the knife when I was 15. So, it was about a year It was about a year long, and the only reason why I surgery got pushed back was because of the whole COVID thing with all the lockdowns in California and everything. But, I had surgery during lockdowns, actually, during the time where they were pushing people away for for elective surgeries that would include include that would improve quality of life. And yet, I was being operated on during this time Oh, that's worse. completely healthy breasts. And that was when the regret started, actually.

That was when my entire attitude around my transition started to shift completely. I started noticing that my body image issues are coming back, and this is during a point in my life where I was like basically completely socially isolated and always just like just in my room because because of the because of the quarantine procedure the quarantining um procedures, I couldn't go to school physically and like see my friends in person, which is very emotionally painful for me already. Yeah. Um And it felt like I was going insane. Yeah. But, I also feel like it gave me some time to kind of reflect on like the past few years of my adolescence up until that point and this major decision that I had just entered to into and like the loss of entire parts of my body. Which the the thought process was hell.

It was horrible.

Surgery Regrets and Physical Pain

Like, not just physically, like looking down at the scars and like having to take care of the wounds, but also reflecting on the fact that I had just lost major parts of my sexuality. And I didn't realize that at the time, but that was actually exactly what I was running away from. I had those experiences with being groomed by adult men online. But I had also been molested a few times throughout my childhood and the most I think the scariest instance of that happening was when I was in eighth grade and there was a boy who came up to me who had been bullying me throughout the school year. Everybody just looked the other way. And it was so obvious where it was going to lead. He would talk to other people.

He would make sexual comments about me to my face. He would spit on me. He would like push me and try to trip me. And eventually one day he just came up to me and the classroom was full. There were other people there. People had have seen it. And he reached for my chest and he squeezed and he twisted my breast.

And he looked me in the eyes he did it. I couldn't say anything. I couldn't move or anything afterward because I was just in so much shock. Aw. But I was This was early on in my transition so I was already in the mindset of like I'm a young man. So it was like who can I tell about this? How am I going to be taken seriously as a man if I'm like screaming for help or like uh the school already was not paying attention to me at all.

I was being neglected with my educational plan. So it was like why would I ever go up to them and report this? And I just thought I got to man up. I just have to man up and forget about this. And for years I repressed that pain and the trauma of that. I didn't realize how much it affected me or that that was actually one of the things that was pushing me to run away from my femininity. It wasn't until about like a year post-op, or less than a year actually, after that happened, that I started thinking about it.

And I realized the decision came from a place of trauma. I never had to do this. That's super self-aware for What were you at that point? I was I was 16, yes. And I also This was around the same time that I was taking a psychology class, and I was learning for the first time about like family dynamics and how children mature from basically from from birth up until the age of 18 um in terms of like how they socialize and and their psychology. And that too was a big part of what led to me detransitioning. During appointments for all three of the major interventions, the the blockers, the hormones, and the surgery, I would hear about either in in very vague terms about how I potentially could have changes to my fertility.

Oh, that's nice. Or about fact that I could lose my ability to breastfeed, but it was like, I want to be a man. Like, if I'm a man, why would I give birth? Why would I want to walk around with a pregnant belly while while like having like an otherwise like masculine-looking appearance? Why would I want to breastfeed when that's not what a father does? And I even told them like, I don't want to have kids because I was between the ages of 13 to 15. Yeah.

A kid that age should not be thinking about having children of their own because they're still very much growing up. And I think just before my my junior year ended, it all hit me at once. All of the this these epiphanies that I wanted to have children of my own one day that that potentially could have been taken away from me forever before I even became an adult. And that this entire decision was being driven by trauma, that I was running away from my real problems. It killed me. I didn't know what to do with myself. But I just knew that I had to I had to escape.

I couldn't I couldn't continue doing this.

Realizing Why Chloe Really Transitioned

Like what was it like for you to like realize that and then overcome it and then start speaking about it? How long did that like how long did it take you to start talking about it after you kind of had this realization and detransitioned? Um the crazy thing is that it was probably only about a year between stopping transition and me publicly speaking. I guess that's not that crazy when you think about it cuz you're like I have to make sure this isn't happening to anyone else. Right. And when I first detransitioned, I didn't think that I had like the rest of my life to live. I didn't think that I had a future.

I was like starting to like plan out my suicide even. Aw. I was like passively suicidal during for most of my days, just like not really taking care of myself. Not paying attention to school or my my studies. And I was just completely broken down during that time. I lost everything that I had known. This community, the support of my doctors, my health, my beauty, years of my childhood, and even my friends at school.

The people around me, I mean, other than like my family were a lot of them were just abandoning me now cuz they didn't know what to do with me. The trans community, like I was I was I went from like being held in the highest regard, being celebrated for surgery and for passing as the opposite sex, and then just losing that all, being told that I was a traitor, that I should have known better. Wow. That it was all my fault. And just getting completely kicked out without really a say in it. And I tried to connect with them. I tried my best to like make amends with them and try to like skirt around subjects and walk on eggshells with them.

I couldn't do it. But that was actually one of the things that pushed me into starting to speak out publicly. Mhm. It made me think like if I'm being treated this way just for talking about the things that happened to me, and for talking about grief, talking about regret, something that I can't help, something tells me that I should continue to do so. And the hatred kind of propelled me forward in in a weird in in some weird sense. Yeah. It was It was very painful to deal with at the time, you know, cuz I was like a little freshly traumatized 16-year-old girl who didn't really have much.

But I I figured that maybe if I keep going, there's going to be a light at the end of the tunnel. And then I discovered that there were other men and women out there who had been through the same thing, who had been through transition, and came out not only with regret, but like parts of their bodies missing and their health compromised forever. Um and also I had the I had a niece and and a nephew just come to the world at at that point in time, and it was like it just completely changed my perspective. It made me reflect, just being with them and helping to take care of them and seeing their little beautiful innocent faces was like This is what I had ripped away from me at young age. How could I be quiet about this? I I can't stand for this. I can't just be quiet.

I feel like I have a responsibility to speak up about what happened to me and to try and get get my together and pick up the pieces of my life as much as I can to help advocate for for children. Not just the people like me, but for the potential children who could be sucked into this. Because my generation deserves better and the generations that come after mine deserve so much better than the identity crisis that we're currently in right now.

The Power of Speaking Out

And so I started speaking out at the age of of 17. And I was still in high school at the time. I I think I had dropped out I I I I I I I I I I I had just dropped out. Like I was about to take my my proficiency certificate exam at the time that I started It started with a Twitter account. Back when X was called Twitter. Yeah. Back before the the big the big change and Elon taking over and I just I hoped that maybe I would accumulate like maybe a thousand followers and that whoever would see it would be helped by it.

Whether it was one child or even if they weren't a child, even if they weren't personally dealing with this. And all of a sudden I started having a bunch of journalists reaching out to me. Wow. parents reaching out to me desperate for help with their kids who are going through the exact same thing. And then I was being asked to testify in front of the legislature. And I had to I had to beg my parents to say yes. Thank God that they did. It took a lot of convincing for them because you know, like I was I I was I'm their baby and I was still a kid at the time.

I was still a minor. So, they were like, "No way. We are not going to send you all the way like halfway across the country. We're not going to just have you go without us." But, then they started to see how much this meant to me and that this is an opportunity for me to be able to pick my life back up and to use like everything that we'd been through as a family um for the greater good. Yeah. And it's led to everything that's happened in the past 2 years up until now.

Like, since I've started speaking out, a bunch of other detransition men and women and families and even like whistleblowers and like the medical community have come out. And a lot of legislative and cultural change has come about the past few years. And I think it just speaks to the beauty of of grassroots movements. I feel like people have become so They become so They I feel like a lot of people these days, part of the reason why there's such a wave of depression is that people feel like they have no power. Like their voice means nothing. Like they are just beholden to corporations and a government that holds all the power above them. Yeah.

That's not true. I used to feel the exact same way about myself. I used to believe that I was always going to be a nobody. That I would never have any any power in my life. Yeah. But, what it took for me to get to this point was just putting myself out there and facing all my biggest fears. I never thought that I'd be publicly speaking.

I was really I was I was quite a shy kid and I was kind of a shut-in at the time that I started speaking out, you know? But, if you put yourself out there, if you step outside, if you push yourself to just be as part of the world. You can make huge strides not only in your own life, but also in the lives of the people around you. That and if you tell the truth There's there's nothing more important than the truth. Yeah, or powerful. It's not in in living and speaking the truth, it's not going to make your life any easier. But that's the beauty of it.

It's the hardship that makes it that makes seeing the light at the end of the tunnel that makes the fruit of your your labor so much more worth it. Mhm. Because in doing anything important they're going to face a lot a lot of hardship. But that's just part That's just life. Yeah. Life isn't supposed to be easy. Yeah.

I agree. I I mean I've I've faced a lot of a lot of difficulties in in doing this. It's I I spend a lot of time away from my family um because of all all the travel and because of just the the busy nature of my my work. And it sucks at times. And even like during during events like I get I get sometimes I get big protests and then sometimes I get people who are trying to threaten my personal safety. I've gotten I've had people threaten to rape or assault or kill me.

Advocacy for Teens and Families

I've had people going after my family and harassing them over social media or over like finding like their their emails or like mailing them stuff. But it's all been been so worth it because the greatest Some of the greatest experiences that I've had while doing this have been the ones where I've met the other men and women or sometimes they're still just boys and girls who have been through what I have or have been through even just through other similar traumatic experiences coming up to me and thanking me. Yeah, for for speaking out and telling me that in doing so, it's helped them to find healing, to find personal growth. I mean, it's it's just been such a such a beautiful thing to to go through, and it's been such it's been such an honor to be able to to be able to to do all this. And really, I I don't feel like my experience is just my experience. Obviously, like I've met a bunch of There are a lot of detransitioners out there now who have been through the process of transition, detransition. But this is just, I feel like an extreme outcome of the identity crisis that young people are growing up in these days.

Yes. Wow, you do a very good job of bringing the gravity to the situation. Like I I think when you hear about these things and you don't know somebody that this ideology has impacted personally, it just doesn't, you know, it sounds bad, but you can't you don't know. It's like when you hear somebody has cancer or something, you don't know like what that does to a family, right? But you're good at explaining kind of the personal element to it. And really, people don't realize that in some way this is affecting them. Like I've been to so many different communities all across the country and even abroad now.

I've been to a bunch of different churches, legislatures, and other communities, and and schools, and at pretty much every place I've been to, I've had like entire lines of people coming up to me asking me for help either with like their own feelings of dysphoria around themselves or their struggles with Wow. transitioning or wanting to do so or coming back out of it or family members, especially parents who don't know what to do with their children who are struggling with these feelings or What do you tell them? What do you tell Yeah, okay, that's a good I mean, we should definitely address that. What do you tell parents who are trying to deal with a kid who has gender dysphoria, is confused, or considering transition? When you have a kid who's going through this, you have to be very controlled. You have to be very measured in the way that you respond to them. Because whether you realize it or not depending on where you're at your your local governments the the health care system or even your child's school could all be stacked up against you. You have to be the one not only to tell them no, cuz you cannot affirm this because in doing so, you're seating ground to this idea that the way that they were made is wrong.

And no child deserves to believe that. But you have to show them that this doesn't mean anything.

How to Talk to Your Kid If They’re Considering a Transition

That they are not actually the opposite sex, and you are not going to regard them as such. You can't overreact or underreact cuz your child is looking for for some sort of boundary or reaction. They're expecting you to either just say yes to everything that they're saying or to be angry at them to push them away further. But there's a middle ground. You can say no. And I mean, depending on your child You know your child You know your child best. So, you might be able to see right away where these feelings exactly are coming from for them.

Mhm. And helping them build their identity in other ways. Because children, especially once they reach like the preteen stage, they'll they'll think that like their identity is built off of like the way that they look or like the name that they call themselves. And it's not unusual for children to experiment with their with their presentation or even with like different names like between the ages of like I'd say like 10 to to 14 and I think that you can allow your child to maybe dress dress differently but you cannot allow you cannot refer them by the the opposite the name of the opposite sex you cannot refer them by different name or by like the pronouns or as the opposite sex. You I'm getting really off track here. I don't No, it's okay. Do you just suggest people don't like don't like how seriously do you have to take this?

Could you be a parent and just say uh Well, the trans the trans like that's not true. You know, try and figure out why they're thinking this way. I'm not going to refer to you that way like no but kindly like or do you get to the point where you have a battle like if they're completely convinced? I can't imagine I just can't imagine being in that situation at all. Depending on the situation and every child and every family is is individual, right? Yeah. It's probably somewhere in the middle.

But you have to figure out where this is coming from where the source is coming from whether it's from from school whether it's from the internet or if it's coming from from their peer group. And then you have to accordingly. If it's coming from from their from their school curriculum you might as well be taking them out of school and moving schools or like starting a home school and which I know isn't an option for every single family but I think it's the best option possible because you have total control over your child's curriculum and what they're learning and also their learning environments that you which you can't really get with with public schooling or even private schooling really. Um but at the end of the day you cannot allow this to consume all of the time all of your time with your child. You have to be able to have a normal parent-child relationship with them and still be able to relax and enjoy time with them as you would their as you would as their their mother or father. You have to You have to be that safe, comfortable place for them to be. And you should be asking like, "Why do you feel this way?

Where are these feelings coming from?" And telling them like, "No, you cannot actually become the opposite sex. This is something that's going to hurt you, but I'm always going to love you the way that you were made, and you are beautiful, and you don't have to change that." That makes sense. Well, Chloe, I would love to talk for longer, but I can't. Otherwise, I would. I'm going to have to get you back.

Maybe we'll do another podcast next year. you have time. That was really like your stories, I don't know. It's just so sad. I'm so glad that you're like talking to people about it and changing so many people's lives cuz then like all the suffering you went through and like everything. And like the repercussions you continually have to deal with, at least you have people coming up to me being like, "Thank you for saving me." Like that. That's so good. the impact that this movement that I've been a part of has made everything just so so incredibly worth it.

Yeah. I mean, it's it's not easy to come out of it or to do what I'm what I'm doing. I still have lasting repercussions with with my health, but I'm getting better every day. And all I have to do is keep pushing. Yay! Well, congratulations on I don't know, getting through that and realizing what you realized at such an a young age.

Closing Thoughts

That's like an incredible age to have self-awareness when you're like Well, when that's going on. So, like good for you. Good for you for like talking about it, and the audience you've grown, and trying to put an end to this cuz it's insane. So, yeah, congratulations on everything. Good luck. Uh where can people if they don't follow you, where should they go to follow you online? Thanks for asking.

I'm on X and I'm also on Instagram as well as YouTube. Um and my username on all all three of those is c h o o o, that's three o's, c o l e, chukol. Or you also could find me by looking up Chloe Cole. If I'm not shadow banned. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Okay. Well, thank you, Chloe, and I will see you at AmFest. See you at AmFest.