Wearing pigtails, a pleated skirt and a furry heart-shaped purse, Chloe Cole bounced up the steps of the California Capitol this spring, leaned into a microphone and insisted that transgender children don’t exist. For the dainty 19-year-old, to erase transgender children is to erase a part of her past. Cole has said publicly and in court documents that she first began questioning her gender identity when she was 12.
She left a letter on the dining room table telling her family that she was a boy. She wanted a new name, like Ky or Chi, and a more comfortable life. With the blessing of her parents, who sought the advice of physicians and mental health experts, the self-described socially awkward kid from the Central Valley received routine injections to suppress her puberty and boost testosterone.
She was glad when her voice got deeper and her jawline became more defined. In 2020, at age 15, she underwent a double mastectomy in pursuit of her most authentic self. But now, Cole identifies as a woman and says she regrets those decisions.
And she’s making a career out of that regret — traveling the country as a leader of the controversial “detransition” movement and emerging as a right-wing icon. “We’ve finally been given the megaphone to help individuals out of their mistakes, to help other people from falling into the same trauma and hardships that we have endured,” Cole said at a rally in Sacramento in March where she called for a ban on the same medical treatme.