Seven years ago, when she was 13, Chloe Cole started taking testosterone and puberty blockers. Two years later, she had a double mastectomy. Looking back now, at the age of 20, Cole says she believes it was the absence of a spiritual faith that led her down the path of transgenderism.
Faith is “that piece of my puzzle that had been missing for a very long time,” Cole told The Daily Signal at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week in Oxon Hill, Md., just outside Washington, D.C.
As a girl, Cole said, she experienced “confusion around my identity and around the world and around male and female, and my purpose as a woman,” adding that she believed this confusion “ultimately came from a lack of faith.”
“It came from a lack of objective reality and morality, and I needed that objective, hard sense of that solid background, that solid foundation that Christ has now given me,” she said.
After detransitioning at 16, Cole began sharing her story and speaking out against the harms of transgender ideology and medical practices on minors. She has testified before Congress and remains a leading voice on gender ideology issues, often speaking on the issue at large policy conferences, such as CPAC or Turning Point USA.
“I’m incredibly grateful to God for everything, every gift that He’s given to me in my life, and especially having given me the ability to fight back and transform the pain that not only I went through, but also my entire family went through with me, and the pain that many of my friends who have also been through this … have as well,” Cole said.
A study reported by the National Library of Medicine tracked 2,772 adolescents from about age 11 to age 26 to assess the young people’s view of their gender identity. Initial assessment of the group found that during “early adolescence, 11% of participants reported gender non-contentedness,” according to the study. By the age of about 26, only about 4% of those in the study said they were discontent with their biological gender.
Cole, like others fighting against the gender ideology’s influence on children, argues that young people should not be allowed to make life-altering decisions about their bodies before they reach adulthood.
While her advocacy work is “not always easy,” Cole said, “it’s worth it.”
“This is a battle worth fighting,” Cole said. “And I think that everybody has a place in it. I started when I was barely 17 years old, and I think that anybody can speak on this issue and speak in favor of the defense of our children and of reality.”