Detransitoner Chloe Cole made a desperate plea for Congress to act against gender treatments and surgeries, testifying on her 19th birthday Thursday that, "My childhood was ruined."
"What message do I want to bring to American teenagers and their families? I didn't need to be lied to. I needed compassion. I needed to be loved. I need to be getting therapy to help me work through my issues. Not affirmed to my delusion that by transforming into a boy, it would solve all my problems," Cole said in her opening statement before a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing slated to discuss the "dangers and due process violations of 'gender-affirming care'."
"We need to stop telling 12-year-olds that they were born wrong, that they are right to reject their own bodies and feel uncomfortable with their own skin. We need to stop telling children that puberty is an option. That they can choose what kind of puberty they will go through just they can choose what clothes to wear or music to listen to," she continued. "Puberty is a rite of passage to adulthood, not a disease to be mitigated. Today, I should be at home with my family, celebrating my 19th birthday, and instead I'm making a desperate plea to my representatives learn the lessons from other medical scandals like the opioid crisis to recognize that doctors are human too. And sometimes they are wrong."
"My childhood was ruined, along with thousands of detransitioners that I know through our networks. This needs to stop. You alone can stop it. Enough children have already been victimized by this barbaric pseudoscience. Please let me be your final warning," she said.
Cole, who had a double mastectomy at age 15, described to lawmakers how discomfort with the changes of puberty, being intimidated by new male attention and looking up to her brothers ultimately resulted in her coming out as transgender in a letter placed on the dining room table at just age 12. Her parents responded by seeking help from medical professionals.
"This proved to be a mistake. It immediately sent our entire family down a path of ideologically motivated and coercion," Cole said. "The gender specialist I was taken to, taken to see told my parents that I needed to be put on puberty blocking drugs right away. They asked my parents a simple question ‘Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living transgender son?’ The choice was enough for my parents to let their guard down. And in retrospect, I can't blame them. This is the moment that we all became victims of so-called gender-affirming care."
Cole said that she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and fast-tracked onto puberty blockers and testosterone, of which she received her first injection of at age 13.
"It's caused permanent changes to my body. My voice will forever be deeper, my jawline sharper, my nose longer," she said. "My bone structure permanently masculinized. My Adam's apple more prominent. My fertility unknown. I look in the mirror sometimes, and I feel like a monster."
Cole described how "menopausal hot flashes made focusing on school impossible" and said she still gets "joint pains and weird pops in my back, but there were far worse when I was on the blockers." Of the double mastectomy, she described how she still struggles to this day with sexual dysfunction and has massive scars across her chest.
She said the skin grafts doctors took of her nipples "are weeping fluid today, and they were grafted into a more masculine positioning."
"I was cancer free, of course. I was perfectly healthy. There was nothing wrong with my still developing body or my breasts. Other than that, as an insecure teenage girl, I felt awkward about. After my breasts were taken away from me, the tissue was incinerated before I was able to legally drive," Cole said. "I had a huge part of my future womanhood taken from me. I will never be able to breastfeed. I struggle to look at myself in the mirror at times."
"When my specialist first told my parents that they could have a dead daughter or a live transgender son, I wasn't suicidal. I was a happy child who struggled because she was different," Cole testified. "However, at 16, after my surgery, I did become suicidal. I'm doing better now. But my parents almost got the dead daughter promised to them by my doctors. My doctors had almost created the very nightmare they said they were trying to avoid."
In an emotional moment later in the hearing, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, gave Cole an opportunity to respond to the testimony of the other witnesses. Cole chose to address that of Myriam Reynolds, who testified about what she perceived as benefits of "gender-affirming care" for her now 18-year-old transgender son.
"I understood that Mrs. Reynolds is scared for her child. And I just want to set the record straight that I don’t hate her, I don’t think anybody in this room hates her. In fact, I see my own mother and my own father in her," Cole said, beginning to choke up. "And that clearly, she really loves her child, and she’s been doing the best with what she’s been given. And unfortunately, it’s not much. And for that, I’m sorry. I mean I think every parent deserves the utmost grace and guidance with how to help their child."
"That being said, I don’t wish for a child to have a same result as I did. I don’t wish for anybody to regret transition and de-transition because it’s incredibly difficult. It comes with its own difficulties, and it’s not easy. And I hope that her child gets to have a happy and fulfilling adulthood."
