Speaker 1: Chloe Cole was twelve years old when she decided she
Speaker 1: was transgender. A year later, at thirteen, she went on
Speaker 1: puberty blockers and testosterone. At fifteen, she had major surgery,
Speaker 1: getting a double misectomy. Only a year later, at sixteen,
Speaker 1: she realized she had made a horrible mistake. Now she's eighteen,
Speaker 1: she's de transitioned, and she's speaking out, trying to protect
Speaker 1: children from being put through what she went through, and
Speaker 1: she joins me on this episode to discuss her personal
Speaker 1: journey and why adults are pushing young people to transition.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for this can't missinterview with Chloe Cole. Chloe,
Speaker 1: it's an honor to have you on the show. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to tell you upfront that I really respect
Speaker 1: what you're doing and just trying to bring awareness. I
Speaker 1: know that it is scary. It's hard to stand up
Speaker 1: against the mob, so just want to thank you for
Speaker 1: your courage in doing so.
Speaker 2: And thank you for having me. Lisa.
Speaker 1: What's that been like to stand up against the mob
Speaker 1: with this.
Speaker 3: I never really expected to be doing anything like this
Speaker 3: in my life. I mean throughout most of my childhood
Speaker 3: and teenhood, I was like a really shy kid, and
Speaker 3: I was kind of like on the artistic side, so
Speaker 3: I mostly just like kept myself and I thought that
Speaker 3: I would pursue I would pursue a career in something
Speaker 3: artistic related, which I probably will down the road. I
Speaker 3: never thought that I would ever be doing something like
Speaker 3: public facing or public speaking. It's been quite the adjustment
Speaker 3: over the past year, but I found that I actually
Speaker 3: really enjoy doing it. I get a lot more support
Speaker 3: than I do backlash, and.
Speaker 2: That's really nice.
Speaker 3: But I get my fair share of hate just for
Speaker 3: talking about my experience having conditioned as a kid and
Speaker 3: what it's been like going through that as a kid
Speaker 3: and coming back from it.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad to hear you're getting more support than hate.
Speaker 4: That's comforting. I'm glad to hear that. You know.
Speaker 1: Before we get into your story specifically, I wanted to
Speaker 1: ask you, why do you think there is such a
Speaker 1: push right now to encourage young people to transition.
Speaker 3: The narrative right now is that the younger you start transitioning,
Speaker 3: the better, because when you start a kid on puberty
Speaker 3: blockers and hormones and cross sex hormones, then if there
Speaker 3: is fork, they won't have the undesired secondary sex characteristics
Speaker 3: that would usually pop up during puberty, and therefore that
Speaker 3: won't cause them any further dysphoria or discomfort with their body.
Speaker 3: But that narrative isn't really taken account just how difficult
Speaker 3: it really is to transition as a minor, and how
Speaker 3: dangerous these treatments are the younger you are and while
Speaker 3: you're developing.
Speaker 4: How dangerous are these treatments.
Speaker 3: They call it life saving care, but it's really life
Speaker 3: threatening if anything, and it's absolutely not care. I mean,
Speaker 3: they say that things like puberty blockers and cross sex
Speaker 3: hormones are reversible, but none of the treatments that I
Speaker 3: have been on, which I've had, I've had my puberty blocks,
Speaker 3: I've been onto stosterone, and I underwent in double misseectomy.
Speaker 3: None of them were safe and absolutely none of them
Speaker 3: were verse. I'll never be able to get that lost
Speaker 3: growth or my breast back ever. And on top of that,
Speaker 3: I'm experiencing very serious complications from all three.
Speaker 4: What are those complications?
Speaker 3: While while I was on the blockers, because I was
Speaker 3: already a few years into pure be, it basically put
Speaker 3: me into a chemically induced state of menopause, and so
Speaker 3: I was very lethargic, and I had a reduced appetite,
Speaker 3: and I was kind of depressed throughout the day because
Speaker 3: I didn't really have much energy. And on top of that,
Speaker 3: I was I was experiencing menopausal symptoms hot flashes and
Speaker 3: itching all over my body while I was thirteen, and
Speaker 3: that's something that normally I would have not experienced until
Speaker 3: I hit maybe my fifties and sixties, as I actually
Speaker 3: went into a natural menopause, But the disosterone. I haven't
Speaker 3: gotten a fertility test, but it's very likely that I
Speaker 3: might have impacted my fertility in some way because my
Speaker 3: hips were not expanding and developing as they should have
Speaker 3: been through my puberty.
Speaker 2: I don't know what effect could have had.
Speaker 3: On things like the quality of my eggs or the
Speaker 3: overall health of my reproductive system, but I was told
Speaker 3: that it might cause atrophy in my vaginal area and
Speaker 3: my fertility. Granted, I was told this when I was
Speaker 3: only thirteen years old, and I didn't really know what
Speaker 3: any of that meant. I wasn't even sexually active yet,
Speaker 3: and I was I didn't even know what things like
Speaker 3: ovulation or the four stages of the menstrual cycle where
Speaker 3: I only knew that there was a period and somehow
Speaker 3: I could get pregnant after it started. I didn't really
Speaker 3: fully understand how things like that worked because I was
Speaker 3: a kid, and because I didn't have I wasn't far
Speaker 3: enough and to my education to have any comprehensive education
Speaker 3: on things like that.
Speaker 2: I was really young.
Speaker 3: And it also I wasn't informed that that atrophy would
Speaker 3: actually spread to the rest of my reproductive system and
Speaker 3: even organs in the pelvic area that are outside of
Speaker 3: that system, which it ended up affecting my urinary tract
Speaker 3: as well. After a while, I started to exp experience
Speaker 3: a lot of urinary attract infections and then eventually I
Speaker 3: start getting blood and even tissue in my urine, which
Speaker 3: has since stopped. I still do have some issues with
Speaker 3: the urinary tract, like not being able to fully empty
Speaker 3: my bladder and the misseectomy, I think is where some
Speaker 3: of the worst complications come from. I mean, all will
Speaker 3: never be able to breastfeed obviously, now that the tissue
Speaker 3: is gone from my body, I'm not going to be
Speaker 3: able to grow it back by any means. And they
Speaker 3: severed my areolas and the stalk of the nipples, so
Speaker 3: I'm never going to be able to breastfeed. I've also
Speaker 3: had some nerve damage because of that, and luckily it's
Speaker 3: not too bad, but I've lost pretty much all of
Speaker 3: the erogenous sensation that I would have had in there.
Speaker 3: So I've had a large part of myself as an
Speaker 3: adult woman, a large part of my sexuality, of myself
Speaker 3: as an aspiring mother, taken from me. And now the
Speaker 3: skin graphs that they use and the surgery are leaking
Speaker 3: fluid every day, every moment, and I have no idea
Speaker 3: what the flute is. I can't really do anything about
Speaker 3: it because I've tried to go to my surch to
Speaker 3: try and figure out what it is, and he gave
Speaker 3: me advice that actually made it worse, and he was
Speaker 3: very dismissive of my concerns and all these complications that
Speaker 3: I've had. I haven't gotten any help from my doctors since.
Speaker 1: My heart breaks hearing you know, talk about that and
Speaker 1: just laying out what you went through because you were
Speaker 1: a baby. I mean, I'm thirty eight years old, so
Speaker 1: a twelve year old in my eyes as a child.
Speaker 1: As a baby, you were thirteen when they put you
Speaker 1: on puberty blockers, fifteen when you underwent a double misseectomy.
Speaker 1: Nobody at that age thinks about the future in this way.
Speaker 1: Nobody at the age can comprehend a major surgery like that.
Speaker 4: Do you feel like these adults preyed on you?
Speaker 2: This is absolutely a form of preying on me.
Speaker 3: They gave me a fraudulent treatment which was eatrogenic and
Speaker 3: cause more issues down the line, and failed to treat
Speaker 3: my original diagnosis. And it was under the guise of
Speaker 3: life saving care, gender affirming care that this would resolve
Speaker 3: my generous for you and help me to become my
Speaker 3: true self as a man.
Speaker 2: But that never happened.
Speaker 3: And while I truly did believe that I was a man,
Speaker 3: nothing that I could have ever done to my body,
Speaker 3: no matter what injections I took, no matter what drugs
Speaker 3: I was on, no matter what parts of my body
Speaker 3: I had taken off or stitchback on, nothing would have
Speaker 3: made me a man, because that's something that's determined at
Speaker 3: the moment of conception.
Speaker 1: And it's an emotional blackmail, is what I'm hearing. Because
Speaker 1: they go to parents and they tell them that you know,
Speaker 1: you're otherwise going to commit suicide if they don't go
Speaker 1: along with this, and then they go to kids and say,
Speaker 1: you're not who you were born to be.
Speaker 4: You're not right.
Speaker 1: You have to change yourself in such a substantial way
Speaker 1: to undergo surgery. I mean, so it's an emotional blackmail,
Speaker 1: is what it is.
Speaker 2: That is exactly what they told my parents.
Speaker 4: What do your parents think of this? Now? You know?
Speaker 4: Where are they on all of this?
Speaker 3: They feel like they've been duped by the doctors as
Speaker 3: much as I have. I feel like I really feel
Speaker 3: like they were, even if they didn't experience it directly,
Speaker 3: they were just as hurt through this tree. It was
Speaker 3: really hard for them to watch me try and become
Speaker 3: somebody that I wasn't and just get worse over time.
Speaker 2: And they were correct at the start.
Speaker 3: They thought that this was just a result of distress
Speaker 3: I had from things that weren't necessarily related to my sex,
Speaker 3: especially because of my difficulties growing up with school and
Speaker 3: interacting with my peers and making friends and not really
Speaker 3: fitting in with other kids my age, especially the girls.
Speaker 3: They thought of it as a mental health issue and
Speaker 3: that by sending me to a therapist that it would
Speaker 3: be worked on and that this issue would resolve. But
Speaker 3: the doctors never did that. They never went into any
Speaker 3: of the underlying causes behind my gener dys for you,
Speaker 3: and instead they just affirmed this false identity. I had
Speaker 3: this idea, this delusion I had that I wasn't my parents' daughter,
Speaker 3: I was actually their son.
Speaker 1: You'd mentioned the mental health aspect of this isn't what
Speaker 1: you think is going on with a lot of these
Speaker 1: young people who you know are just facing confusion and
Speaker 1: trying to figure themselves out.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely where it comes from. There is kind of
Speaker 3: a social contagion aspect to it. None of my peers
Speaker 3: were transgender at the time that I started transitioning, and
Speaker 3: I didn't learn about this from school or in class.
Speaker 3: I never heard about things like gender sexuality in the
Speaker 3: classroom ever, and I graduated just last year. It was
Speaker 3: entirely from social media that I learned about this from.
Speaker 2: I was using the Internet.
Speaker 3: A lot because, like I said, I didn't really get
Speaker 3: along with my peers, and I didn't feel like I
Speaker 3: had much in the way of the community, and I
Speaker 3: wasn't particularly close to any of my family members, probably
Speaker 3: due to my age difference between me and the rest
Speaker 3: of my siblings. But I also wasn't like any evolved
Speaker 3: in any sports or clubs at school, and so I
Speaker 3: didn't really feel like I had anywhere to turn, and
Speaker 3: I was also being bullied. I decided that I would
Speaker 3: take to the Internet and just find my community on there,
Speaker 3: and the screen certainly was a lot more engaging than
Speaker 3: what I had going on in real life in my
Speaker 3: classes with my peers and elsewhere. It didn't help that
Speaker 3: my school district was handing out lap pops to kids
Speaker 3: at the youngest grade levels possible, and as soon as
Speaker 3: they hit fifth grade they get to take them home.
Speaker 3: Throughout most of my school years, they were not using
Speaker 3: any firewall protections or any programs to like block off
Speaker 3: things like social media programs, so you could access just
Speaker 3: about any app or service you wanted. I then got
Speaker 3: my first phone when I was eleven, and of course,
Speaker 3: because all my peers had one, they were all using
Speaker 3: social media. That was the first place I went to
Speaker 3: because I wanted to see what I was missing out on,
Speaker 3: and I ended up browsing a lot of communities around
Speaker 3: like the video games and cartoons that I really liked,
Speaker 3: and that was how I discovered the transgender community. I
Speaker 3: noticed that a lot of these other young people who
Speaker 3: identified as transgender were very much like me. They had
Speaker 3: a lot of the same interests, like the shows I watched,
Speaker 3: and their feelings around themselves and their body image, and
Speaker 3: just how they related to other people, especially their same sex.
Speaker 3: I really felt like I related to it, their struggles,
Speaker 3: their their upbringings, and so I started to feel like
Speaker 3: a sense of belonging, even though I wasn't really interacting
Speaker 3: with anybody directly in the community at the time, I
Speaker 3: was mostly just browsing these communities. I finally felt like
Speaker 3: I had an explanation for why I felt so different
Speaker 3: from other kids my age, and I really clung on
Speaker 3: to this explanation. I thought that the reason why I
Speaker 3: didn't fit in with other kids.
Speaker 2: Why I was so awkward, why I was so boyish, why.
Speaker 3: I felt like I didn't even look like a girl,
Speaker 3: was because I actually had the brain of a boy,
Speaker 3: and it was just destiny for me to become one.
Speaker 3: That's kind of a straight pape line for these kids
Speaker 3: who don't necessarily conform to things like gender roles, traditional
Speaker 3: gender roles, or don't really have much of a community,
Speaker 3: aren't really close with their family or their parents, whose
Speaker 3: parents don't really bring them to church or raise them
Speaker 3: with like a strict belief system and don't really make
Speaker 3: them grow up playing like sports or playing an instrument,
Speaker 3: or fostering them encouraging them to build up thrown hobbies
Speaker 3: as a means of building themselves when they lack. When
Speaker 3: a kid lacks that sort of structure, they'll still search
Speaker 3: for it in some other way and they'll cling onto
Speaker 3: whatever they can find.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick commercial break more with
Speaker 1: Chloe Coal on the other side, it sounds like, you know,
Speaker 1: young people just searching for for acceptance, you know, searching
Speaker 1: for you know, as we all do when you're young
Speaker 1: and trying to figure yourself out and you're trying to
Speaker 1: figure life out and you're dealing with hormonal changes and
Speaker 1: all these different things that happen as a young person.
Speaker 1: You know, you had mentioned, you know, going on social media.
Speaker 1: How big of a role do you think social media
Speaker 1: plays in this increased you know, transitions that are happening
Speaker 1: in the United States. What role does social media have
Speaker 1: in all of this?
Speaker 3: I mean, that's how a lot of kids are finding
Speaker 3: out about this. It's very easy to find these communities.
Speaker 3: I didn't find. It wasn't directly presented to me as
Speaker 3: soon as I started social media. It started for me
Speaker 3: in communities, in fan bases around video games, shows, anime,
Speaker 3: and musicians.
Speaker 2: That I liked.
Speaker 3: A lot of the users in those communities there is
Speaker 3: a big overlot between being in those communities and identifying
Speaker 3: as like as gay or bisexual, or transgender or non binary.
Speaker 3: I think part of that is a lot of the
Speaker 3: users in these communities are just kind of offbeat kids
Speaker 3: who don't really have, like I said, much of a
Speaker 3: community in real life or a connection with their own family,
Speaker 3: and they don't really feel like they have anybody to
Speaker 3: bond with over these these series of media or these
Speaker 3: these musicians or these interests that they have.
Speaker 2: And these communities tend to.
Speaker 3: Be very liberal because of that, and so it leads
Speaker 3: to acceptance of questioning, acceptance of just about anything from
Speaker 3: sexuality to different lifestyles to.
Speaker 2: The way that you identify.
Speaker 1: You look at the timeline you know for you, So
Speaker 1: you make this decision at twelve that I think I'm
Speaker 1: a boy, thirteen puberty blockers, fifteen double miasectomy, regret it
Speaker 1: a year later. I mean that is a very quick timeline.
Speaker 1: Were there no professionals, no doctors, no one that was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, Hey, maybe we should just take a
Speaker 1: pause on this. You should think this through, Chloe, You're
Speaker 1: so young. Were there any experts that were trying to
Speaker 1: slow this down for you?
Speaker 3: I had one doctor and it was the first uncrinologist
Speaker 3: who had an appointment with He said that I was
Speaker 3: just too young to be on these treatments and that
Speaker 3: he was afraid of how it might affect my brain development.
Speaker 3: But I didn't hear about this from any other doctor
Speaker 3: or any other source that I had.
Speaker 1: They call it gender affirming, obviously, you know, a term
Speaker 1: to make it sound like this is a kind thing
Speaker 1: to be doing for young people people. Why do you
Speaker 1: think they use that term specifically?
Speaker 3: They say that it's affirming the gender identity of the patient.
Speaker 3: But that's the problem. It's affirming nothing more than a delusion.
Speaker 3: It's not reality. It's not affirming anything real. It's not
Speaker 3: affirming your real gender. To be taking away parts of
Speaker 3: your body and sterilizing yourself. It really a lot of
Speaker 3: these phrases are just covering up and even sort of
Speaker 3: infantilizing what these treatments and what this path really means.
Speaker 2: It makes it easier to sell.
Speaker 1: How hard is it to transition? They put you on
Speaker 1: puberty blockers for a number of years, you know, you
Speaker 1: undergo this surgery.
Speaker 4: How hard is it to go back? How hard is
Speaker 4: it to detransition?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's difficult enough to go off of these
Speaker 3: powerful drugs and deal with the hormonal imbalances that result
Speaker 3: from it, as well as the surgeries and having had
Speaker 3: your secondary sex characteristics mutated. But as of right now,
Speaker 3: there's absolutely no standard of care for people like me
Speaker 3: who regret their transition and want to go back. I
Speaker 3: mean I had to figure out how to do it completely.
Speaker 2: On my own. I wasn't getting any guidance.
Speaker 3: At all about things like how I should stop taking testosterone,
Speaker 3: or what my options might be for my reconstruction, or
Speaker 3: the complication that I'm already having for my surgery, And
Speaker 3: I just haven't really gotten any of the appropriate care
Speaker 3: that I've needed my even psychologically. My gender specialist told
Speaker 3: me that in the midst of me talking about the
Speaker 3: pain of my transition to regret that it was just
Speaker 3: another part of my gender journey, right, and my undercinologists
Speaker 3: when I told her that I was going off of hormones,
Speaker 3: I requested that I get regular blood tests to try
Speaker 3: and figure out where I would be at in terms
Speaker 3: of like my body producing its own natural hormones and
Speaker 3: how my homone levels are in comparison to where they
Speaker 3: should be at When I got the results back every time,
Speaker 3: I was given the guidelines for a teenage boy. So
Speaker 3: absolutely all around, I just didn't get any of the
Speaker 3: help that I needed. There's no codes for patients like me.
Speaker 3: They have absolutely no standards of care in place for
Speaker 3: dtrunsitioners at all.
Speaker 1: So they lead you down this path and then they
Speaker 1: abandon you when you decide to no longer go on.
Speaker 3: It just about yeah, I mean, there is no discussion
Speaker 3: of what it might look like if I were to
Speaker 3: regret this and to decide to stop taking these treatments.
Speaker 3: I didn't even know what the word dtrenition was until
Speaker 3: after I stopped transitioning. I had never heard it before.
Speaker 1: Quick commercial break more in D transitioning. You know, there's
Speaker 1: so much money in this. I saw one report saying
Speaker 1: that the industry surrounding transgender surgery is expected to reach
Speaker 1: five billion by the end of the decade. How much
Speaker 1: of this push do you believe is financially motivated.
Speaker 3: Almost completely, actually, I mean it's financially motivated as well
Speaker 3: as ideolog ideologically motivated, I think, and that's another reason
Speaker 3: of why people are pushing this on children younger and younger.
Speaker 3: It basically guarantees them to life of being a patient
Speaker 3: and a slave to the pharmaceutical industry by interfering with
Speaker 3: their puberty. The younger you do it, and once their
Speaker 3: sex hormones are either compromised or removed, they're not able
Speaker 3: to produce their own sex hormones anymore naturally, and so
Speaker 3: they have to be reliant on exogenists hormones of either
Speaker 3: sex to live basically, otherwise they'll be in an artificially
Speaker 3: induced state of meenopause for the rest of your life.
Speaker 3: At a very young age, there's pretty much a guarantee
Speaker 3: at least one of the treatments that you'll be on
Speaker 3: that you'll have some sort of complication from them, and
Speaker 3: it will either require surgical or pharmaceutical intervention. These complications
Speaker 3: and these medications just keep piling up, and you become
Speaker 3: very profitable.
Speaker 1: What would you tell young people who are feeling lost
Speaker 1: right now and potentially considering going down the road that
Speaker 1: you went down?
Speaker 3: I think you get the nail on the head that
Speaker 3: feeling lost like this is just another part of growing up.
Speaker 3: I don't think you're really supposed to feel like you've
Speaker 3: found your path, and so maybe after your twenties, and
Speaker 3: for some people it takes even longer than that.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of people who.
Speaker 3: Are in their forties and fifties and they still don't
Speaker 3: know whether they want to be on that same career
Speaker 3: path their whole life, or whether they want to have children.
Speaker 3: Being young is just exploring yourself, is just part of it.
Speaker 3: And I think it's ridiculous to expect a child, or
Speaker 3: even most people under the age of twenty five, to
Speaker 3: be able to make a decision that will affect pretty
Speaker 3: much every single part of their life, from the way
Speaker 3: that they experience their sexuality down to basic bodily functions
Speaker 3: like orgasm, the people that you're attracted to, your romantic
Speaker 3: your platonic and familiar relationships, your fertility, the overall picture
Speaker 3: of your health, and the way that you socialize. It
Speaker 3: is a lot for somebody to take on, especially while
Speaker 3: they're so young and while they're still discovering themselves. It's
Speaker 3: not fair to expect them to push them into making
Speaker 3: a decision that will affect them for the rest of
Speaker 3: your life in every single way possible. And it takes
Speaker 3: a lot of years, a lot of experience in the
Speaker 3: world to know whether this is something that you might want.
Speaker 3: And oftentimes a desire to go down this route stems
Speaker 3: from previous traumas or comorbid issues. I mean, a lot
Speaker 3: of these patients have some sort of learning disability, many
Speaker 3: of them are autistic. Many of them have either experienced
Speaker 3: sexual abuse or trauma, or they've been abused verbally or physically,
Speaker 3: or neglected by a family member, especially in early childhood.
Speaker 4: It makes me so sad to hear.
Speaker 1: What would you tell parents who are also facing this,
Speaker 1: who might be being emotionally blackmailed right now by professionals,
Speaker 1: being told that, you know, the choice is either this
Speaker 1: or their child is going to commit suicide. You know,
Speaker 1: what would you say to parents who are being burdened
Speaker 1: by that kind of emotional black man Not.
Speaker 3: Easy hearing those things, especially from a medical professional who
Speaker 3: you think you're supposed to trust. But in this situation,
Speaker 3: you just might have to go against the advice that
Speaker 3: they're giving you and remain logical because The arguments that
Speaker 3: they're using are very much emotional blackmail. If your child
Speaker 3: is feeling suicidal, it's not because of their sex. There
Speaker 3: is some sort of underlying issue that is not being
Speaker 3: addressed that they need help with. This is a cry
Speaker 3: of help. It's a cry for help from your child.
Speaker 3: They need to know that they're loved, that they're perfect
Speaker 3: as they are, and the issue is not their body,
Speaker 3: but the way that they perceive it.
Speaker 2: A problem I.
Speaker 3: Notice with a lot of these kids is that they're
Speaker 3: very withdrawn from other children and they need socialization, but
Speaker 3: they don't. They're afraid of it. They feel as though
Speaker 3: they can't fit in with their peers. They won't be
Speaker 3: able to find the sense of community of belonging that
Speaker 3: they want. It's very important to assess that where they're
Speaker 3: learning or what's influencing them to want to become the
Speaker 3: opposite sex, and what makes them think that is possible,
Speaker 3: whether it's from school, their classes, what they're learning, or
Speaker 3: from their peers, or from social media. To address the
Speaker 3: problem directly and also making sure that you're fostering other
Speaker 3: parts of their life, the growth of say they're building
Speaker 3: their hobbies. I think that sports are really important for
Speaker 3: the sort of thing, especially as you're growing up, because
Speaker 3: you're working on something as part of a team towards
Speaker 3: a goal, and you learn things like leadership in sportsmanship,
Speaker 3: and you're also you're working on your body in a
Speaker 3: way that isn't really focused on the form and how
Speaker 3: it looks as much as the function of it. And
Speaker 3: I think that's really important, especially for kids who either
Speaker 3: have bodied image disorders or at an age where they're
Speaker 3: prone developing them, because they learn to appreciate what they
Speaker 3: have for what it.
Speaker 2: Can do and not for its appearance.
Speaker 1: Chloe, what's ahead in your future? What are your most
Speaker 1: hopeful about?
Speaker 3: Well, my goal in my activism is to stop childhood
Speaker 3: transition from being performed ever again, to address the affirmative
Speaker 3: care model and to fix it and make it so
Speaker 3: that it's not so much of a one size fits
Speaker 3: all care model for all just FOK patients, to address
Speaker 3: the underlying conditions that these patients have, to see them
Speaker 3: towards a path that isn't as invasive, to where they
Speaker 3: don't feel like they have to address a psychological issue
Speaker 3: with a highly invasive set of procedures that will affect
Speaker 3: them for life. I think once, once the fight's over
Speaker 3: and my goals are fulfilled. I've become a very family
Speaker 3: oriented person over the years, and I won't to have
Speaker 3: children on my own. But even after this issue is addressed,
Speaker 3: there's still a lot of other issues that are affecting
Speaker 3: families and especially children in the modern day.
Speaker 2: I don't have children on my own yet, but I.
Speaker 3: Have nieces and nephews and younger cousins, and I worry
Speaker 3: for them every day. I want them to grow up
Speaker 3: in a world where I feel like they'll be safe
Speaker 3: outside of activism. Like I said earlier, I've always kind
Speaker 3: of been on the artistic side. I love doing illustration.
Speaker 3: Growing up, I did a lot of character illustration and design,
Speaker 3: and in recent years I've gotten into fashion design and
Speaker 3: coordination of clothing and outfits, and it's really been a
Speaker 3: big part of my detransition. But I think that I
Speaker 3: want to make it into something bigger than that. I
Speaker 3: think I want to again into fashion design as a
Speaker 3: full time thing and eventually start my own brand one day.
Speaker 4: I love that, Chloe Cole.
Speaker 1: I'm praying that you have the most beautiful life ahead
Speaker 1: and you fulfill all your passions and hopes, and I
Speaker 1: just respect you and just appreciate your courage and speaking
Speaker 1: out and trying to protect other kids so they don't
Speaker 1: have to go through what they put you through. And
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry they did that, but I'm so proud
Speaker 1: of you for standing up and speaking out.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: That was Chloe Cole, just eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but it really just gives
Speaker 1: a human side to the suffering that so many people
Speaker 1: are going through and figuring themselves out and how easily
Speaker 1: they are being taken advantage of, particularly when we're looking
Speaker 1: at young people on this issue. So broke my heart.
Speaker 1: Really respect what she does and her voice and all
Speaker 1: of this. It's so important. I want to thank you
Speaker 1: guys at home for listening. I want to thank John
Speaker 1: Cassio and my producer for putting the show together every
Speaker 1: Monday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week.
Speaker 1: Feel free to leave us a review, give us a
Speaker 1: rating on Apple Podcast.
Speaker 4: Until next time,