Chloe Cole was 15 years old when she agreed to let a “gender-affirming” surgeon remove her healthy breasts—a life-altering decision she now deeply regrets.
Her “brutal” transition to male from female was anything but the romanticized “gender journey” that transgender activists and medical professionals had portrayed, she told The Epoch Times.
“It’s a little creepy to call it that,” she said.
Cole, who is now 18, feels more like she’s just awoken from “a nightmare,” and she’s disappointed with the medical and school system that fast-tracked her to gender transition surgery.
“I was convinced that it would make me happy, that it would make me whole as a person,” she said.
Although she feels “let down” by most of the adults in her life, she doesn’t blame her parents for following the advice of school staff and medical professionals, who “affirmed” her desire for social transitioning, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery.
Most of the medical professionals did nothing to question or dissuade her or her parents, she said.
“They effectively guilted my parents into allowing them to do this. They gave them the whole, ‘Either, you’ll have a dead daughter or a live son,’ thing. They cited suicide rates,” she said. “There is just so much complacency on the part of educators—all the adults basically. I’m really upset over it. I feel a little bit angry. I wasn’t really allowed to just grow.”
Her parents, though skeptical, trusted the medical professionals and eventually consented to their daughter’s desire for medical interventions, including surgery, which was covered by their health insurance policy.
Read More: Ex-transgender Teen Recounts ‘Horrifying’ Experience of Transition, Surgery
