Detransitioner Chloe Cole urges Congress to ban gender ‘transition’ procedures for minors during heated Senate hearing
Caroline MolloyChloe Cole, a 21-year-old detransitioner, urged Congress during an emotional June 3 hearing to ban gender “transition” procedures for children, alleging that doctors lied to her family and left her with irreversible physical and emotional harm.
Cole — who began “transitioning” at age 12 before undergoing a double mastectomy at 15 and detransitioning at 16 — testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing titled “Protecting Our Children: Exposing the Dangers of Irreversible Gender Transition Procedures on Minors.” The hearing featured witnesses on both sides of the national debate over whether minors should be able to receive puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-trait surgeries for gender dysphoria.
Cole told senators she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria as a child after struggling with her body and identity. She argued that doctors treated her healthy female body as the problem and subjected her to “sex experimentation procedures” as a child rather than helping her work through her distress.
“To any normal adult, my middle school insecurities would seem par for the course,” she said, “but to my physicians, clearly they meant that I needed a scalpel to my breasts.”
Cole said her parents — who “never once believed that I was a boy” — were told by doctors that traits such as having short hair or wanting to become an athlete were signs that she “actually was their son” and faced a serious risk of suicide if she did not “transition.”
According to Cole, doctors gave her parents a false choice: Allow their daughter to “transition” or “bury her.”
