September 7, 2023 • 25 mins
In this podcast episode, Lisa interviews Chloe Cole, a detransitioned individual, who shares her personal journey of transitioning as a child and the challenges she faced. Chloe discusses the lack of support during her detransition and the financial motivations behind transgender surgeries. She emphasizes the importance of exploring oneself and not rushing into life-altering decisions at a young age. Chloe also shares her passion for art and her desire to pursue fashion design as a career. The Truth with Lisa Boothe is part of the iHeartRadio Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chloe Cole was twelve years old when she decided she
was transgender. A year later, at thirteen, she went on
puberty blockers and testosterone. At fifteen, she had major surgery,
getting a double misectomy. Only a year later, at sixteen,
she realized she had made a horrible mistake. Now she's eighteen,
she's de transitioned, and she's speaking out, trying to protect
(00:21):
children from being put through what she went through, and
she joins me on this episode to discuss her personal
journey and why adults are pushing young people to transition.
Stay tuned for this can't missinterview with Chloe Cole. Chloe,
it's an honor to have you on the show. I
(00:42):
just wanted to tell you upfront that I really respect
what you're doing and just trying to bring awareness. I
know that it is scary. It's hard to stand up
against the mob, so just want to thank you for
your courage in doing so.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
And thank you for having me. Lisa.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
What's that been like to stand up against the mob
with this.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I never really expected to be doing anything like this
in my life. I mean throughout most of my childhood
and teenhood, I was like a really shy kid, and
I was kind of like on the artistic side, so
I mostly just like kept myself and I thought that
I would pursue I would pursue a career in something
artistic related, which I probably will down the road. I
never thought that I would ever be doing something like
(01:22):
public facing or public speaking. It's been quite the adjustment
over the past year, but I found that I actually
really enjoy doing it. I get a lot more support
than I do backlash, and that's really nice. But I
get my fair share of hate just for talking about
my experience having conditioned as a kid and what it's
(01:42):
been like going through that as a kid and coming
back from it.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Well, I'm glad to hear you're getting more support than hate.
That's comforting. I'm glad to hear that. You know. Before
we get into your story specifically, I wanted to ask you,
why do you think there is such a push right
now to encourage young people to transition.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
The narrative right now is that the younger you start transitioning,
the better, because when you start a kid on puberty
blockers and hormones and cross sex hormones, then if there
is fork, they won't have the undesired secondary sex characteristics
that would usually pop up during puberty, and therefore that
won't cause them any further dysphoria or discomfort with their body.
(02:24):
But that narrative isn't really take an account just how
difficult it really is to transition as a minor, and
how dangerous these treatments are. The younger you are and
while you're developing.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
How dangerous are these treatments.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
They call it life saving care, but it's really life
threatening if anything, and it's absolutely not care. I mean,
they say that things like puberty blockers and cross sex
hormones are reversible, but none of the treatments that I
have been on, which I've had, I've had my puberty blocks,
I've been onto stosterone, and I underwent in double miseectomy,
(02:57):
none of them were safe, and absolutely none of them were.
I'll never be able to get that lost growth or
my breast back ever. And on top of that, I'm
experiencing very serious complications from all three.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
What are those complications?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
While while I was on the blockers, because I was
already a few years in a pure be it basically
put me into a chemically induced state of menopause, and
so I was very lethargic, and I had a reduced appetite,
and I was kind of depressed throughout the day because
I didn't really have much energy. And on top of that,
I was I was experiencing menopausal symptoms hot flashes and
(03:37):
itching all over my body while I was thirteen, and
that's something that normally I would have not experienced until
I hit maybe my fifties and sixties, as I actually
went into a natural menopause, But the disosterone.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I haven't gotten.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
A fertility test, but it's very likely that I might
have impacted my fertility in some way because my hips
were not expanding and developing as they should have been
through my puberty. I don't know what effect could have
had on things like the quality of my eggs or
the overall health of my reproductive system, but I was
told that it might cause atrophy in my vaginal area
(04:16):
and my fertility. Granted, I was told this when I
was only thirteen years old, and I didn't really know
what any of that meant. I wasn't even sexually active yet,
and I was I didn't even know what things like
ovulation or the four stages of the menstrual cycle where
I only knew that there was a period and somehow
I could get pregnant after it started. I didn't really
fully understand how things like that worked because I was
(04:37):
a kid, and because I didn't have I wasn't far
enough and to my education to have any comprehensive education
on things like that.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I was really young.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
And it also I wasn't informed that that atrophy would
actually spread to the rest of my reproductive system and
even organs in the pelvic area that are outside of
that system, which it ended up affecting my urinary.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Tract as well.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
After a while, I started to take experience a lot
of urinary attract infections and then eventually I start getting
blood and even tissue in my urine, which has since stopped.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I still do have some issues.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
With the urinary tract, like not being able to fully
empty my bladder and the misseectomy, I think is where
some of the worst complications come from. I mean, all
will never be able to breastfeed obviously, now that the
tissue is gone from my body, I'm not going to
be able to grow it back by any means. And
they severed my areolas and the stalk of the nipples,
(05:30):
so I'm never going to be able to breastfeed. I've
also had some nerve damage because of that, and luckily
it's not too bad, but I've lost pretty much all
the erogenous sensation that I would have had in there.
So I've had a large part of myself as an
adult woman, a large part of my sexuality, of myself
as an aspiring mother, taken from me. And now thes
(05:51):
the skin grafts that they use and the surgery are
leaking fluid every day, every moment, and I have no
idea what the flute is. I can't really do anything
about it because I've tried to go to my to
try and figure out what it is, and he gave
me advice that actually made it worse, and he was
very dismissive of my concerns and all these complications that
I've had. I haven't gotten any help from my doctors since.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
My heart breaks hearing you, you know, talk about that
and just laying out what you went through because you
were a baby. I mean, I'm thirty eight years old,
so a twelve year old in my eyes is a
child as a baby. You were thirteen when they put
you on puberty blockers. Fifteen when you underwent a double misseectomy.
Nobody at that age thinks about the future in this way.
Nobody at the age can comprehend a major surgery like that.
(06:35):
Do you feel like these adults preyed on you?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
This is absolutely a form of preying on me.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
They gave me a fraudulent treatment which was eatrogenic and
cause more issues down the line, and failed to treat
my original diagnosis. And it was under the guise of
life saving care, gender affirming care that this would resolve
my generous for you and help me to become my
true self as a man.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
But that never happened.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
And while I truly did believe that I was a man,
nothing that I could have ever done to my body,
no matter what injections I took, no matter what drugs
I was on, no matter what parts of my body
I had taken off or stitchback on, nothing would have
made me a man, because that's something that's determined at
the moment of conception.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
And it's an emotional blackmail, is what I'm hearing. Because
they go to parents and they tell them that you know,
you're otherwise going to commit suicide if they don't go
along with this. And then they go to kids and say,
you're not who you were born to be. You're not right.
You have to change yourself in such a substantial way
to undergo surgery. I mean, so it's an emotional blackmail,
(07:43):
is what it is.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
That is exactly what they told my parents.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
What do your parents think of this? Now? You know?
Where are they on all of this?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
They feel like they've been duped by the doctors as
much as I have. I feel like I really feel
like they were, even if they didn't experience it directly,
they were just as hurt through this tree. It was
really hard for them to watch me try and become
somebody that I wasn't and just get worse over time.
And they were correct at the start. They thought that
(08:10):
this was just a result of distress I had from
things that weren't necessarily related to my sex, especially because
of my difficulties growing up with school and interacting with
my peers and making friends and not really fitting in
with other kids my age, especially the girls. They thought
of it as a mental health issue and that by
(08:32):
sending me to a therapist that it would be worked
on and that this issue would resolve. But the doctors
never did that they never went into any of the
underlying causes behind my gener dys for you, and instead
they just affirmed this false identity. I had this idea,
this delusion I had that I wasn't my parents' daughter,
(08:53):
I was actually their son.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
You had mentioned the mental health aspect of this isn't
what you think is going on with a lot of
these young people who you know are just facing confusion
and trying to figure themselves out.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
That's absolutely where it comes from. There is kind of
a social contagion aspect to it. None of my peers
were transgender at the time that I started transitioning, and
I didn't learn about this from school or in class.
I never heard about things like gender sexuality in the
classroom ever, and I graduated just last year. It was
entirely from social media that I learned about this from.
(09:25):
I was using the Internet a lot because, like I said,
I didn't really get along with my peers, and I
didn't feel like I had much in the way of
the community, and I wasn't particularly close to any of
my family members, probably due to my age difference between
me and the rest of my siblings. But I also
wasn't like any evolved in any sports or clubs at school,
(09:46):
and so I didn't really feel like I had anywhere
to turn, and I was also being bullied. I decided
that I would take to the Internet and just find
my community on there, and the screen certainly was a
lot more engaging than what I had going on in
real life in my classes with my peers and elsewhere.
It didn't help that my school district was handing out
(10:07):
lap pops to kids at the youngest grade levels possible,
and as soon as they hit fifth grade they get
to take them home. Throughout most of my school years,
they were not using any firewall protections or any programs
to like block off things like social media programs, so
you could access just about any app or service you wanted.
I then got my first phone when I was eleven,
(10:29):
and of course, because all my peers had one, they
were all using social media. That was the first place
I went to because I wanted to see what I
was missing out on, and I ended up browsing a
lot of communities around like the video games and cartoons
that I really liked, and that was how I discovered
the transgender community. I noticed that a lot of these
other young people who identified as transgender were very much
(10:51):
like me. They had a lot of the same interests,
like the shows I watched, and their feelings around themselves
and their body image, and just how they related to
other people, especially their same sex. I really felt like
I related to it, their struggles, their their upbringings, and
so I started to feel like a sense of belonging,
even though I wasn't really interacting with anybody directly in
(11:15):
the community at the time, I was mostly just browsing
these communities. I finally felt like I had an explanation
for why I felt so different from other kids my age,
and I really clung on to this explanation. I thought
that the reason why I didn't fit in with other kids,
why I was so awkward, why I was so boyish,
why I felt like I didn't even look like a girl,
(11:36):
was because I actually had the brain of a boy,
and it was just destiny.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
For me to become one. That's it's kind of a
straight pipeline.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
For these kids who don't necessarily conform to things like
gender roles, traditional gender roles, or don't really have much
of a community, aren't really close with their family or
their parents whose parents don't really bring them to church
or raise them with like a strict belief system, and
(12:07):
don't really make them grow up playing like sports or
playing an instrument, or fostering them encouraging them to build
up thrown hobbies as a means of building themselves when
they lack. When a kid lacks that sort of structure,
they'll still search for it in some other way and
they'll cling onto whatever they can find.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
We're going to take a quick commercial break more with
Chloe Coal. On the other side, it sounds like, you know,
young people just searching for for acceptance, you know, searching
for you know, as we all do when you're young
and trying to figure yourself out and you're trying to
figure life out and you're dealing with hormonal changes and
all these different things that happen as a young person.
(12:49):
You know, you had mentioned, you know, going on social media.
How big of a role do you think social media
plays in this increased you know, transitions that are happening
in the United States. It's what role does social media
have in all of this?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I mean, that's how a lot of kids are finding
out about this. It's very easy to find these communities.
I didn't find it wasn't directly presented to me as
soon as I started social media. It started for me
in communities, in fan bases around video games, shows, anime,
and musicians that I liked. A lot of the users
in those communities. There is a big overlot between being
(13:25):
in those communities and identifying as like as gay or bisexual,
or transgender or non binary. I think part of that
is a lot of the users in these communities are
just kind of offbeat kids who don't really have, like
I said, much of a community in real life or
a connection with their own family, and they don't really
(13:46):
feel like they have anybody to bond with over these
these series of media or these these musicians or these
interests that they have.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
And these communities tend.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
To be very liberal because of that, and so it
leads to acceptance of questioning, acceptance of just about anything
from sexuality to different lifestyles to.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
The way that you identify.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
You look at the timeline you know for you, So
you make this decision at twelve that I think I'm
a boy, thirteen puberty blockers, fifteen double miasectomy, regret it
a year later. I mean that is a very quick
timeline were there no professionals, no doctors, no one that
was like, you know what, Hey, maybe we should just
take a pause on this. You should think this through, Chloe,
(14:30):
You're so young. Were there any experts that were trying
to slow this down for you?
Speaker 3 (14:35):
I had one doctor and it was the first uncrinologist
who had an appointment with He said that I was
just too young to be on these treatments and that
he was afraid of how it might affect my brain development.
But I didn't hear about this from any other doctor
or any other source that I had.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
They call it gender affirming, obviously, you know, a term
to make it sound like this is a kind thing
to be doing for young peop Why do you think
they use that term specifically?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
They say that it's affirming the gender identity of the patient.
But that's the problem. It's affirming nothing more than a delusion.
It's not reality. It's not affirming anything real. It's not
affirming your real gender. To be taking away parts of
your body and sterilizing yourself. It really a lot of
these phrases are just covering up and even sort of
(15:25):
infantilizing what these treatments and what this path really means
it makes it easier to sell.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
How hard is it to transition? They put you on
puberty blockers for a number of years, you know, you
undergo the surgery. How hard is it to go back?
How hard is it to de transition?
Speaker 3 (15:41):
I mean, it's difficult enough to go off of these
powerful drugs and deal with the hormonal imbalances that result
from it, as well as the surgeries and having had
your secondary sex characteristics mutated. But as of right now,
there's absolutely no standard of care for people like me
(16:02):
who regret their transition and want to go back. I
mean I had to figure out how to do it completely.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
On my own.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
I wasn't getting any guidance at all about things like
how I should stop taking testosterone, or what my options
might be for my reconstruction, or the complication that I'm
already having for my surgery, And I just haven't really
gotten any of the appropriate care that I've needed my
(16:28):
even psychologically. My gender specialist told me that in the
midst of me talking about the pain of my transition
to regret that it was just another part of my
gender journey, right, and my undercinologists when I told her
that I was going off of hormones. I requested that
I get regular blood tests to try and figure out
(16:49):
where I would be at in terms of like my
body producing its own natural hormones and how my homone
levels are in comparison to where they should be at.
When I got the result back, every time, I was
given the guidelines for a teenage boy. So absolutely all around,
I just didn't get any of the help that I needed.
There's no codes for patients like me. They have absolutely
(17:12):
no standards of care in place for dtrunsitioners at all.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
So they lead you down this path and then they
abandon you when you decide to no longer go on.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
It just about yeah, I mean, there is no discussion
of what it might look like if I were to
regret this and to decide to stop taking these treatments.
I didn't even know what the word dtrenition was until
after I stopped transitioning. I had never heard it before.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Quick commercial break more in d transitioning. You know, there's
so much money in this. I saw one report saying
that the industry surrounding transgender surgery is expected to reach
five billion by the end of the decade. How much
of this push do you believe is financially motivated.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Almost completely, actually, I mean it's financially motivated as well
as ideolog ideologically motivated. I think that's another reason of
why people are pushing this on children younger and younger.
It basically guarantees them to life of being a patient
and a slave to the pharmaceutical industry by interfering with
their puberty. The younger you do it, and once their
(18:13):
sex hormones are either compromised or removed, they're not able
to produce their own sex hormones anymore naturally, and so
they have to be reliant on exogenists hormones of either
sex to live. Basically, otherwise they'll be in an artificially
induced state of menopause for the rest of your life.
At a very young age, there's pretty much a guarantee
(18:34):
at least one of the treatments that you'll be on
that you'll have some sort of complication from them, and
it will either require surgical or pharmaceutical intervention. These complications
and these medications just keep piling up, and you become
very profitable.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
What would you tell young people who are feeling lost
right now and potentially considering going down the road that
you went down.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I think you get the nail on the head that
feeling lost like this is just another part of growing up.
And I don't think you're really supposed to feel like
you've found your path, and so maybe after your twenties,
and for some people it takes even longer than that.
I mean, there's a lot of people who are in
their forties and fifties and they still don't know whether
(19:15):
they want to be on that same career path their
whole life, or whether they want to have children. Being
young is just exploring yourself, is just part of it.
And I think it's ridiculous to expect a child, or
even most people under the age of twenty five, to
be able to make a decision that will affect pretty
much every single part of their life, from the way
(19:37):
that they experience their sexuality down to basic bodily functions
like orgasm, the people that you're attracted to, your romantic
your platonic and familiar relationships, your fertility, the overall picture
of your health, and the way that you socialize. It
is a lot for somebody to take on, especially while
they're so young and while they're still discovering themselves. It's
(19:59):
not fair to expect them to push them into making
a decision that will affect them for the rest of
their life in every single way possible. And it takes
a lot of years, a lot of experience in the
world to know whether this is something that you might want.
And oftentimes a desire to go down this route stems
from previous traumas or comorbid issues. I mean, a lot
(20:24):
of these patients have some sort of learning disability, many
of them are autistic. Many of them have either experienced
sexual abuse or trauma, or they've been abused verbally or physically,
or neglected by a family member, especially in early childhood.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
It makes me so sad to hear. What would you
tell parents who are also facing this, who might be
being emotionally blackmailed right now by professionals, being told that,
you know, the choice is either this or their child
is going to commit suicide. You know, what would you
say to parents who are being burdened by that kind
of emotional black man Not.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Easy hearing those things, especially from a medical professional who
you think you're supposed to trust. But in this situation,
you just might have to go against the advice that
they're giving you and remain logical because the arguments that
they're using are very much emotional blackmail. If your child
is feeling suicidal, it's not because of their sex. There
(21:22):
is some sort of underlying issue that is not being
addressed that they need help with. This is a cry
of help. It's a cry for help from your child.
They need to know that they're loved, that they're perfect
as they are, and the issue is not their body,
but the way that they perceive it. A problem I
notice with a lot of these kids is that they're
(21:43):
very withdrawn from other children and they need socialization, but
they don't. They're afraid of it. They feel as though
they can't fit in with their peers. They won't be
able to find the sense of community of belonging that
they want. It's very important to assess that where they're
learning or what's influencing them to want to become the
(22:03):
opposite sex, and what makes them think that is possible,
whether it's from school, their classes, what they're learning, or
from their peers, or from social media. To address the
problem directly and also making sure that you're fostering other
parts of their life, the growth of say they're building
their hobbies, I think that sports are really important for
(22:24):
the sort of thing, especially as you're growing up, because
you're working on something as part of a team towards
a goal, and you learn things like leadership in sportsmanship,
and you're also you're working on your body in a
way that isn't really focused on the form and how
it looks as much as the function of it. And
I think that's really important, especially for kids who either
(22:47):
have bodied image disorders or at an age where they're
prone developing them, because they learn to appreciate what they
have for what it.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Can do and not for its appearance.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Chloe, what's ahead in your future? What are you hopeful about?
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Well, my goal in my activism is to stop childhood
transition from being performed ever again. To address the affirmative
care model and to fix it and make it so
that it's not so much of a one size fits
all care model for all just FOK patients, to address
the underlying conditions that these patients have, to see them
(23:21):
towards a path that isn't as invasive, to where they
don't feel like they have to address a psychological issue
with a highly invasive set of procedures that will affect
them for life. I think once once the fight's over
and my goals are fulfilled. I've become a very family
oriented person over the years, and I won't have children
(23:44):
on my own. But even after this issue is addressed,
there's still a lot of other issues that are affecting
families and especially children in the modern day.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I don't have children on my own yet, but.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
I have nieces and nephews and younger cousins, and I
worry for them every day. I want them to grow
up in a world where I feel like they'll be
safe outside of activism. Like I said earlier, I've always
kind of been on the artistic side. I love doing illustration.
Growing up, I did a lot of character illustration and design,
and in recent years I've gotten into fashion design and
(24:20):
coordination of clothing and outfits, and it's really been a
big part of my detransition. But I think that I
want to make it into something bigger than that. I
think I want to again into fashion design as a
full time thing and eventually start my own brand one day.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
I love that. Chloe Cole. I'm praying that you have
the most beautiful life ahead and you fulfill all your
passions and hopes, and I just respect you and just
appreciate your courage and speaking out and trying to protect
other kids so they don't have to go through what
they put you through. And I'm so sorry they did that,
but I'm so proud of you for standing up and
speaking out.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
That was Chloe Cole, just eighteen years old. I don't
know about you, but it really just gives a human
side to the suffering that so many people are going
through and figuring themselves out and how easily they are
being taken advantage of, particularly when we're looking at young
people on this issue. So broke my heart. Really respect
what she does and her voice and all of this.
It's so important. I want to thank you guys at
(25:24):
home for listening. I want to thank John Cassio and
my producer for putting the show together every Monday and Thursday,
but you can listen throughout the week. Feel free to
leave us a review, give us a rating on Apple Podcast.
Until next time,
Chloe Cole was twelve years old when she decided she
was transgender. A year later, at thirteen, she went on
puberty blockers and testosterone. At fifteen, she had major surgery,
getting a double misectomy. Only a year later, at sixteen,
she realized she had made a horrible mistake. Now she's eighteen,
she's de transitioned, and she's speaking out, trying to protect
(00:21):
children from being put through what she went through, and
she joins me on this episode to discuss her personal
journey and why adults are pushing young people to transition.
Stay tuned for this can't missinterview with Chloe Cole. Chloe,
it's an honor to have you on the show. I
(00:42):
just wanted to tell you upfront that I really respect
what you're doing and just trying to bring awareness. I
know that it is scary. It's hard to stand up
against the mob, so just want to thank you for
your courage in doing so.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
And thank you for having me. Lisa.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
What's that been like to stand up against the mob
with this.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I never really expected to be doing anything like this
in my life. I mean throughout most of my childhood
and teenhood, I was like a really shy kid, and
I was kind of like on the artistic side, so
I mostly just like kept myself and I thought that
I would pursue I would pursue a career in something
artistic related, which I probably will down the road. I
never thought that I would ever be doing something like
(01:22):
public facing or public speaking. It's been quite the adjustment
over the past year, but I found that I actually
really enjoy doing it. I get a lot more support
than I do backlash, and that's really nice. But I
get my fair share of hate just for talking about
my experience having conditioned as a kid and what it's
(01:42):
been like going through that as a kid and coming
back from it.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Well, I'm glad to hear you're getting more support than hate.
That's comforting. I'm glad to hear that. You know. Before
we get into your story specifically, I wanted to ask you,
why do you think there is such a push right
now to encourage young people to transition.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
The narrative right now is that the younger you start transitioning,
the better, because when you start a kid on puberty
blockers and hormones and cross sex hormones, then if there
is fork, they won't have the undesired secondary sex characteristics
that would usually pop up during puberty, and therefore that
won't cause them any further dysphoria or discomfort with their body.
(02:24):
But that narrative isn't really take an account just how
difficult it really is to transition as a minor, and
how dangerous these treatments are. The younger you are and
while you're developing.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
How dangerous are these treatments.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
They call it life saving care, but it's really life
threatening if anything, and it's absolutely not care. I mean,
they say that things like puberty blockers and cross sex
hormones are reversible, but none of the treatments that I
have been on, which I've had, I've had my puberty blocks,
I've been onto stosterone, and I underwent in double miseectomy,
(02:57):
none of them were safe, and absolutely none of them were.
I'll never be able to get that lost growth or
my breast back ever. And on top of that, I'm
experiencing very serious complications from all three.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
What are those complications?
Speaker 3 (03:12):
While while I was on the blockers, because I was
already a few years in a pure be it basically
put me into a chemically induced state of menopause, and
so I was very lethargic, and I had a reduced appetite,
and I was kind of depressed throughout the day because
I didn't really have much energy. And on top of that,
I was I was experiencing menopausal symptoms hot flashes and
(03:37):
itching all over my body while I was thirteen, and
that's something that normally I would have not experienced until
I hit maybe my fifties and sixties, as I actually
went into a natural menopause, But the disosterone.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I haven't gotten.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
A fertility test, but it's very likely that I might
have impacted my fertility in some way because my hips
were not expanding and developing as they should have been
through my puberty. I don't know what effect could have
had on things like the quality of my eggs or
the overall health of my reproductive system, but I was
told that it might cause atrophy in my vaginal area
(04:16):
and my fertility. Granted, I was told this when I
was only thirteen years old, and I didn't really know
what any of that meant. I wasn't even sexually active yet,
and I was I didn't even know what things like
ovulation or the four stages of the menstrual cycle where
I only knew that there was a period and somehow
I could get pregnant after it started. I didn't really
fully understand how things like that worked because I was
(04:37):
a kid, and because I didn't have I wasn't far
enough and to my education to have any comprehensive education
on things like that.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I was really young.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
And it also I wasn't informed that that atrophy would
actually spread to the rest of my reproductive system and
even organs in the pelvic area that are outside of
that system, which it ended up affecting my urinary.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Tract as well.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
After a while, I started to take experience a lot
of urinary attract infections and then eventually I start getting
blood and even tissue in my urine, which has since stopped.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I still do have some issues.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
With the urinary tract, like not being able to fully
empty my bladder and the misseectomy, I think is where
some of the worst complications come from. I mean, all
will never be able to breastfeed obviously, now that the
tissue is gone from my body, I'm not going to
be able to grow it back by any means. And
they severed my areolas and the stalk of the nipples,
(05:30):
so I'm never going to be able to breastfeed. I've
also had some nerve damage because of that, and luckily
it's not too bad, but I've lost pretty much all
the erogenous sensation that I would have had in there.
So I've had a large part of myself as an
adult woman, a large part of my sexuality, of myself
as an aspiring mother, taken from me. And now thes
(05:51):
the skin grafts that they use and the surgery are
leaking fluid every day, every moment, and I have no
idea what the flute is. I can't really do anything
about it because I've tried to go to my to
try and figure out what it is, and he gave
me advice that actually made it worse, and he was
very dismissive of my concerns and all these complications that
I've had. I haven't gotten any help from my doctors since.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
My heart breaks hearing you, you know, talk about that
and just laying out what you went through because you
were a baby. I mean, I'm thirty eight years old,
so a twelve year old in my eyes is a
child as a baby. You were thirteen when they put
you on puberty blockers. Fifteen when you underwent a double misseectomy.
Nobody at that age thinks about the future in this way.
Nobody at the age can comprehend a major surgery like that.
(06:35):
Do you feel like these adults preyed on you?
Speaker 2 (06:37):
This is absolutely a form of preying on me.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
They gave me a fraudulent treatment which was eatrogenic and
cause more issues down the line, and failed to treat
my original diagnosis. And it was under the guise of
life saving care, gender affirming care that this would resolve
my generous for you and help me to become my
true self as a man.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
But that never happened.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
And while I truly did believe that I was a man,
nothing that I could have ever done to my body,
no matter what injections I took, no matter what drugs
I was on, no matter what parts of my body
I had taken off or stitchback on, nothing would have
made me a man, because that's something that's determined at
the moment of conception.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
And it's an emotional blackmail, is what I'm hearing. Because
they go to parents and they tell them that you know,
you're otherwise going to commit suicide if they don't go
along with this. And then they go to kids and say,
you're not who you were born to be. You're not right.
You have to change yourself in such a substantial way
to undergo surgery. I mean, so it's an emotional blackmail,
(07:43):
is what it is.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
That is exactly what they told my parents.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
What do your parents think of this? Now? You know?
Where are they on all of this?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
They feel like they've been duped by the doctors as
much as I have. I feel like I really feel
like they were, even if they didn't experience it directly,
they were just as hurt through this tree. It was
really hard for them to watch me try and become
somebody that I wasn't and just get worse over time.
And they were correct at the start. They thought that
(08:10):
this was just a result of distress I had from
things that weren't necessarily related to my sex, especially because
of my difficulties growing up with school and interacting with
my peers and making friends and not really fitting in
with other kids my age, especially the girls. They thought
of it as a mental health issue and that by
(08:32):
sending me to a therapist that it would be worked
on and that this issue would resolve. But the doctors
never did that they never went into any of the
underlying causes behind my gener dys for you, and instead
they just affirmed this false identity. I had this idea,
this delusion I had that I wasn't my parents' daughter,
(08:53):
I was actually their son.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
You had mentioned the mental health aspect of this isn't
what you think is going on with a lot of
these young people who you know are just facing confusion
and trying to figure themselves out.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
That's absolutely where it comes from. There is kind of
a social contagion aspect to it. None of my peers
were transgender at the time that I started transitioning, and
I didn't learn about this from school or in class.
I never heard about things like gender sexuality in the
classroom ever, and I graduated just last year. It was
entirely from social media that I learned about this from.
(09:25):
I was using the Internet a lot because, like I said,
I didn't really get along with my peers, and I
didn't feel like I had much in the way of
the community, and I wasn't particularly close to any of
my family members, probably due to my age difference between
me and the rest of my siblings. But I also
wasn't like any evolved in any sports or clubs at school,
(09:46):
and so I didn't really feel like I had anywhere
to turn, and I was also being bullied. I decided
that I would take to the Internet and just find
my community on there, and the screen certainly was a
lot more engaging than what I had going on in
real life in my classes with my peers and elsewhere.
It didn't help that my school district was handing out
(10:07):
lap pops to kids at the youngest grade levels possible,
and as soon as they hit fifth grade they get
to take them home. Throughout most of my school years,
they were not using any firewall protections or any programs
to like block off things like social media programs, so
you could access just about any app or service you wanted.
I then got my first phone when I was eleven,
(10:29):
and of course, because all my peers had one, they
were all using social media. That was the first place
I went to because I wanted to see what I
was missing out on, and I ended up browsing a
lot of communities around like the video games and cartoons
that I really liked, and that was how I discovered
the transgender community. I noticed that a lot of these
other young people who identified as transgender were very much
(10:51):
like me. They had a lot of the same interests,
like the shows I watched, and their feelings around themselves
and their body image, and just how they related to
other people, especially their same sex. I really felt like
I related to it, their struggles, their their upbringings, and
so I started to feel like a sense of belonging,
even though I wasn't really interacting with anybody directly in
(11:15):
the community at the time, I was mostly just browsing
these communities. I finally felt like I had an explanation
for why I felt so different from other kids my age,
and I really clung on to this explanation. I thought
that the reason why I didn't fit in with other kids,
why I was so awkward, why I was so boyish,
why I felt like I didn't even look like a girl,
(11:36):
was because I actually had the brain of a boy,
and it was just destiny.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
For me to become one. That's it's kind of a
straight pipeline.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
For these kids who don't necessarily conform to things like
gender roles, traditional gender roles, or don't really have much
of a community, aren't really close with their family or
their parents whose parents don't really bring them to church
or raise them with like a strict belief system, and
(12:07):
don't really make them grow up playing like sports or
playing an instrument, or fostering them encouraging them to build
up thrown hobbies as a means of building themselves when
they lack. When a kid lacks that sort of structure,
they'll still search for it in some other way and
they'll cling onto whatever they can find.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
We're going to take a quick commercial break more with
Chloe Coal. On the other side, it sounds like, you know,
young people just searching for for acceptance, you know, searching
for you know, as we all do when you're young
and trying to figure yourself out and you're trying to
figure life out and you're dealing with hormonal changes and
all these different things that happen as a young person.
(12:49):
You know, you had mentioned, you know, going on social media.
How big of a role do you think social media
plays in this increased you know, transitions that are happening
in the United States. It's what role does social media
have in all of this?
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I mean, that's how a lot of kids are finding
out about this. It's very easy to find these communities.
I didn't find it wasn't directly presented to me as
soon as I started social media. It started for me
in communities, in fan bases around video games, shows, anime,
and musicians that I liked. A lot of the users
in those communities. There is a big overlot between being
(13:25):
in those communities and identifying as like as gay or bisexual,
or transgender or non binary. I think part of that
is a lot of the users in these communities are
just kind of offbeat kids who don't really have, like
I said, much of a community in real life or
a connection with their own family, and they don't really
(13:46):
feel like they have anybody to bond with over these
these series of media or these these musicians or these
interests that they have.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
And these communities tend.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
To be very liberal because of that, and so it
leads to acceptance of questioning, acceptance of just about anything
from sexuality to different lifestyles to.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
The way that you identify.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
You look at the timeline you know for you, So
you make this decision at twelve that I think I'm
a boy, thirteen puberty blockers, fifteen double miasectomy, regret it
a year later. I mean that is a very quick
timeline were there no professionals, no doctors, no one that
was like, you know what, Hey, maybe we should just
take a pause on this. You should think this through, Chloe,
(14:30):
You're so young. Were there any experts that were trying
to slow this down for you?
Speaker 3 (14:35):
I had one doctor and it was the first uncrinologist
who had an appointment with He said that I was
just too young to be on these treatments and that
he was afraid of how it might affect my brain development.
But I didn't hear about this from any other doctor
or any other source that I had.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
They call it gender affirming, obviously, you know, a term
to make it sound like this is a kind thing
to be doing for young peop Why do you think
they use that term specifically?
Speaker 3 (15:02):
They say that it's affirming the gender identity of the patient.
But that's the problem. It's affirming nothing more than a delusion.
It's not reality. It's not affirming anything real. It's not
affirming your real gender. To be taking away parts of
your body and sterilizing yourself. It really a lot of
these phrases are just covering up and even sort of
(15:25):
infantilizing what these treatments and what this path really means
it makes it easier to sell.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
How hard is it to transition? They put you on
puberty blockers for a number of years, you know, you
undergo the surgery. How hard is it to go back?
How hard is it to de transition?
Speaker 3 (15:41):
I mean, it's difficult enough to go off of these
powerful drugs and deal with the hormonal imbalances that result
from it, as well as the surgeries and having had
your secondary sex characteristics mutated. But as of right now,
there's absolutely no standard of care for people like me
(16:02):
who regret their transition and want to go back. I
mean I had to figure out how to do it completely.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
On my own.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
I wasn't getting any guidance at all about things like
how I should stop taking testosterone, or what my options
might be for my reconstruction, or the complication that I'm
already having for my surgery, And I just haven't really
gotten any of the appropriate care that I've needed my
(16:28):
even psychologically. My gender specialist told me that in the
midst of me talking about the pain of my transition
to regret that it was just another part of my
gender journey, right, and my undercinologists when I told her
that I was going off of hormones. I requested that
I get regular blood tests to try and figure out
(16:49):
where I would be at in terms of like my
body producing its own natural hormones and how my homone
levels are in comparison to where they should be at.
When I got the result back, every time, I was
given the guidelines for a teenage boy. So absolutely all around,
I just didn't get any of the help that I needed.
There's no codes for patients like me. They have absolutely
(17:12):
no standards of care in place for dtrunsitioners at all.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
So they lead you down this path and then they
abandon you when you decide to no longer go on.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
It just about yeah, I mean, there is no discussion
of what it might look like if I were to
regret this and to decide to stop taking these treatments.
I didn't even know what the word dtrenition was until
after I stopped transitioning. I had never heard it before.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Quick commercial break more in d transitioning. You know, there's
so much money in this. I saw one report saying
that the industry surrounding transgender surgery is expected to reach
five billion by the end of the decade. How much
of this push do you believe is financially motivated.
Speaker 3 (17:53):
Almost completely, actually, I mean it's financially motivated as well
as ideolog ideologically motivated. I think that's another reason of
why people are pushing this on children younger and younger.
It basically guarantees them to life of being a patient
and a slave to the pharmaceutical industry by interfering with
their puberty. The younger you do it, and once their
(18:13):
sex hormones are either compromised or removed, they're not able
to produce their own sex hormones anymore naturally, and so
they have to be reliant on exogenists hormones of either
sex to live. Basically, otherwise they'll be in an artificially
induced state of menopause for the rest of your life.
At a very young age, there's pretty much a guarantee
(18:34):
at least one of the treatments that you'll be on
that you'll have some sort of complication from them, and
it will either require surgical or pharmaceutical intervention. These complications
and these medications just keep piling up, and you become
very profitable.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
What would you tell young people who are feeling lost
right now and potentially considering going down the road that
you went down.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I think you get the nail on the head that
feeling lost like this is just another part of growing up.
And I don't think you're really supposed to feel like
you've found your path, and so maybe after your twenties,
and for some people it takes even longer than that.
I mean, there's a lot of people who are in
their forties and fifties and they still don't know whether
(19:15):
they want to be on that same career path their
whole life, or whether they want to have children. Being
young is just exploring yourself, is just part of it.
And I think it's ridiculous to expect a child, or
even most people under the age of twenty five, to
be able to make a decision that will affect pretty
much every single part of their life, from the way
(19:37):
that they experience their sexuality down to basic bodily functions
like orgasm, the people that you're attracted to, your romantic
your platonic and familiar relationships, your fertility, the overall picture
of your health, and the way that you socialize. It
is a lot for somebody to take on, especially while
they're so young and while they're still discovering themselves. It's
(19:59):
not fair to expect them to push them into making
a decision that will affect them for the rest of
their life in every single way possible. And it takes
a lot of years, a lot of experience in the
world to know whether this is something that you might want.
And oftentimes a desire to go down this route stems
from previous traumas or comorbid issues. I mean, a lot
(20:24):
of these patients have some sort of learning disability, many
of them are autistic. Many of them have either experienced
sexual abuse or trauma, or they've been abused verbally or physically,
or neglected by a family member, especially in early childhood.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
It makes me so sad to hear. What would you
tell parents who are also facing this, who might be
being emotionally blackmailed right now by professionals, being told that,
you know, the choice is either this or their child
is going to commit suicide. You know, what would you
say to parents who are being burdened by that kind
of emotional black man Not.
Speaker 3 (21:00):
Easy hearing those things, especially from a medical professional who
you think you're supposed to trust. But in this situation,
you just might have to go against the advice that
they're giving you and remain logical because the arguments that
they're using are very much emotional blackmail. If your child
is feeling suicidal, it's not because of their sex. There
(21:22):
is some sort of underlying issue that is not being
addressed that they need help with. This is a cry
of help. It's a cry for help from your child.
They need to know that they're loved, that they're perfect
as they are, and the issue is not their body,
but the way that they perceive it. A problem I
notice with a lot of these kids is that they're
(21:43):
very withdrawn from other children and they need socialization, but
they don't. They're afraid of it. They feel as though
they can't fit in with their peers. They won't be
able to find the sense of community of belonging that
they want. It's very important to assess that where they're
learning or what's influencing them to want to become the
(22:03):
opposite sex, and what makes them think that is possible,
whether it's from school, their classes, what they're learning, or
from their peers, or from social media. To address the
problem directly and also making sure that you're fostering other
parts of their life, the growth of say they're building
their hobbies, I think that sports are really important for
(22:24):
the sort of thing, especially as you're growing up, because
you're working on something as part of a team towards
a goal, and you learn things like leadership in sportsmanship,
and you're also you're working on your body in a
way that isn't really focused on the form and how
it looks as much as the function of it. And
I think that's really important, especially for kids who either
(22:47):
have bodied image disorders or at an age where they're
prone developing them, because they learn to appreciate what they
have for what it.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Can do and not for its appearance.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Chloe, what's ahead in your future? What are you hopeful about?
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Well, my goal in my activism is to stop childhood
transition from being performed ever again. To address the affirmative
care model and to fix it and make it so
that it's not so much of a one size fits
all care model for all just FOK patients, to address
the underlying conditions that these patients have, to see them
(23:21):
towards a path that isn't as invasive, to where they
don't feel like they have to address a psychological issue
with a highly invasive set of procedures that will affect
them for life. I think once once the fight's over
and my goals are fulfilled. I've become a very family
oriented person over the years, and I won't have children
(23:44):
on my own. But even after this issue is addressed,
there's still a lot of other issues that are affecting
families and especially children in the modern day.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
I don't have children on my own yet, but.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
I have nieces and nephews and younger cousins, and I
worry for them every day. I want them to grow
up in a world where I feel like they'll be
safe outside of activism. Like I said earlier, I've always
kind of been on the artistic side. I love doing illustration.
Growing up, I did a lot of character illustration and design,
and in recent years I've gotten into fashion design and
(24:20):
coordination of clothing and outfits, and it's really been a
big part of my detransition. But I think that I
want to make it into something bigger than that. I
think I want to again into fashion design as a
full time thing and eventually start my own brand one day.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
I love that. Chloe Cole. I'm praying that you have
the most beautiful life ahead and you fulfill all your
passions and hopes, and I just respect you and just
appreciate your courage and speaking out and trying to protect
other kids so they don't have to go through what
they put you through. And I'm so sorry they did that,
but I'm so proud of you for standing up and
speaking out.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
That was Chloe Cole, just eighteen years old. I don't
know about you, but it really just gives a human
side to the suffering that so many people are going
through and figuring themselves out and how easily they are
being taken advantage of, particularly when we're looking at young
people on this issue. So broke my heart. Really respect
what she does and her voice and all of this.
It's so important. I want to thank you guys at
(25:24):
home for listening. I want to thank John Cassio and
my producer for putting the show together every Monday and Thursday,
but you can listen throughout the week. Feel free to
leave us a review, give us a rating on Apple Podcast.
Until next time,
Host
Lisa Boothe
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