My testimony against California SB107 in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee
By Chloe Cole
On Tuesday, August 30, Chloe Cole, 18, testified before the California State Senate Judiciary Committee, opposing Senator Weiner’s bill SB 107, which makes California a “sanctuary state” for gender surgeries.
Watch her testimony or read the full transcript.
I believed that all of my insecurities and anxiety would magically disappear once I transitioned. The mental health professionals did not try to dissuade me of this delusional belief. I was fast-tracked into medical transition after I was diagnosed with dysphoria.
This wasn’t a misdiagnosis, it was mistreatment.
My name is Chloe Cole. I’m 18 and my story is not hyperbole. Starting around the age of 12, I began to believe that I was transgender. This belief was not organic. All the media I consumed as a kid showed me how stupid and vulnerable being a girl was. All the sexualized images of women gave me an unrealistic expectation of womanhood. I spent a lot of time online and quickly saw all the praise coming out as trans got on Instagram and other social media. I was a bit awkward in school and had some trouble making friends. Like many dysphoric children, I also suffer from a variety of mental health conditions, so I easily fell prey to the narrative that if I felt different and did not want to be a highly sexualized girl, that I must be a boy.
I obsessed over becoming a boy. I believed that all of my insecurities and anxiety would magically disappear once I transitioned. The mental health professionals did not try to dissuade me of this delusional belief. I was fast-tracked into medical transition after I was diagnosed with dysphoria. In California, a child can pick their gender identity and a care provider questioning that would be considered conversion therapy. This wasn’t a misdiagnosis, it was mistreatment.
My parents were told that the options were transition or suicide. They complied because they were not offered any other treatment solution for my distress. My distraught parents wanted me alive, so they listened to my doctors. I was placed on puberty blockers, testosterone after expressing my gender dysphoria to my therapist and I was approved for a double mastectomy all by the age of 15. No one explored why I did not want to be girl.
More and more kids are falling for the false promise of happiness if they transition. Gender clinics in the US are turning a blind eye to European countries, who are pumping the brakes on this experiment on youth.
Who here really believes that, as a 15-year-old, I should have had my healthy breasts removed or that it should’ve been an option? When the CDPH got less than 300 reports of people getting hospitalized as a result of vaping, San Francisco banned vape products that same year, so I know that you care about the health of children, yet you are allowing doctors all over the state to remove the healthy breasts of children.
How many more children’s bodies will be destroyed before you actually listen? What is the sweet spot? 100? 200? 1000?
SB107 will open the floodgates for confused children like me to get the gender interventions that many so regret. I am the canary in the coal mine.