Nineteen-year-old Chloe Cole brought a strong (and heartbreaking) message to Congress Thursday, saying that the so-called “gender-affirming” care she received “ruined” her childhood and has caused lasting negative consequences which she will live with forever. President Biden, along with his transgender Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, has forcefully advocated that such care be given to minors even when the long-term effects of surgeries and hormone treatments are largely unknown.
What is known, however, is that 15-year-olds who aren’t old enough for a cigarette, a tattoo, a beer, or a driver’s license should not be allowed to opt to disfigure their bodies simply because they’re having complicated adolescent feelings.
Speaking before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, Cole was harshly critical of the medical establishment and the toll their advice has taken on her life:
I used to believe that I was born in the wrong body. And the adults in my life, whom I trusted, affirmed my belief, and this caused me lifelong, irreversible harm.
I speak to you today as a victim of one of the biggest medical scandals in the history of the United States of America.
I speak to you in the hope that you will have the courage to bring the scandal to an end and ensure that other vulnerable teenagers, children and young adults, don’t go through what I went through.
Watch the courageous young woman push back against the monolithic message from progressives and the lamestream media who think we should all just blindly accept the concept that teenagers can swap their genders as easily as they switch outfits:
She simply tells it like it is:
“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,” said Cole, who told lawmakers Thursday that she felt uncomfortable during puberty and told her parents at that age that she wanted to transition and become a boy. “We need to stop telling children that puberty is an option. That they can choose what kind of puberty they will go through just [like] they can choose what clothes to wear or music to listen to.”
Puberty is not an illness, she said–it’s a natural stage of life:
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.
I can only imagine the heads of the Democrats in the room exploding as she nuked their latest extremist obsession regarding gender.
Cole started hormone therapy at 13 years old and had a double mastectomy at 15.
This is madness. Anyone who advocates for this kind of stuff is simply macabre. She also said that her parents were coerced using the latest progressive line, “Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living transgender son?”
“My childhood was ruined, along with thousands of detransitioners that I know through our networks,” she said. And, despite the fact that many advocates of gender-affirming care claim that much of it is reversible, Cole exposed the idiocy of such arguments:
“It’s caused permanent changes to my body. My voice will forever be deeper, my jawline sharper, my nose longer,” she added. “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 has also experienced “menopausal hot flashes,” “joint pains” and must live with immense scars on her chest from the double mastectomy.
Were these “life-saving” surgeries that were supposed to improve her life approved by medical professionals who should have known better? Evidently, but they lost the plot:
“I was cancer free, of course. I was perfectly healthy. There was nothing wrong with my still developing body or my breasts,” Cole said. “After my breasts were taken away from me, the tissue was incinerated before I was able to legally drive.”
“I had a huge part of my future womanhood taken from me. I will never be able to breastfeed,” she went on before pointing out that the surgery meant to prevent her from committing suicide nearly drove her to take her own life. [All bold emphasis mine.]
As RedState‘s Jeff Charles has reported, Cole is not the only one speaking out. Several other detransitioners–most of them female, interestingly-are also telling their stories and, in some cases suing the doctors and hospitals who mutilated them. Prisha Mosley, Kayla Lovdahl (who also goes by the pseudonym Layla Jane), and Cole all have active lawsuits as of this writing. Attorney Harmeet Dhillon and her Center for American Liberty have been critical in advocating for these poor souls–including Chloe Cole and Layla Jane. She’s a hero.
The “gender-affirming” care movement for minors is an outrage, and it must be stopped. Young lives are being ruined. Any teen who didn’t go through a phase or two is an outlier, but should they be made to pay for those phases for the rest of their lives? As I’ve written, I was once way into the Grateful Dead–what if I’d asked to have their lyrics tattooed all over my face? Of course, I would never have gotten a job, my reggae-loving wife would have had no interest in me, and I’d pay for that ludicrous decision till the end of my days. But guess what? I wouldn’t have been allowed to do it at 15 years old.
And yet minors today are allowed to do far more extreme procedures in the name of progressive extremism. Good for Cole for speaking out, and I’m guessing a lot more voices will soon join the chorus as the devastating results continue to pour in.
Watch her full statement, but be prepared to be outraged:
At RedState, we’re going to keep reporting on the damages that gender-affirming care wreaks on our youth, and we don’t care what the progressives and the media tell us we should think because we’re not buying it.
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More of this madness:
Doctors Mutilated Her Breasts When She Was Just 13. Now She’s Suing.