SUZANNE DOWNING: Meet The 19-Year-Old Activist Leading The Charge Against Sex Changes For Minors

A 19-year-old girl from California is leading the national discussion about one of the most pressing issues of our time: The wrongful gender transitioning of children.

Chloe Cole stopped by Anchorage on a recent summer day to give her side of the transitioning story.

She visited at the invitation of Alaska Family Council to tell Alaskans an aspect of the transitioning racket that the mainstream media, the public education regime, and medical establishment don’t want us to hear.

Chloe was boyish as a child and had undiagnosed autism. My guess, having listened to her speak, is that she has genius-level IQ. She identified more with boys than with girls, was more like her dad than her mom, and she was unusually headstrong.

So when she learned online about how she could avoid going through female puberty by taking puberty blockers, testosterone, and other hormone-bending medications, and later undergoing the knife, she insisted that is what she wanted to do.

Her parents complied with the advice of doctors, who told them that without the transitioning procedure Chloe would probably kill herself. What parent wants that? Between their headstrong daughter and the doctors eager to perform these gender transitions, Chloe became, by all outward appearance at least, a boy. By the time she was 15, the doctors had chopped off her breasts.

Then she matured, and at 16 started having deep-seated regrets. She regretted that she would never be able to be a mother. Although she looked like a boy, she knew in her heart she would never actually be a boy. She couldn’t date girls, because she wasn’t attracted to girls. The boys who wanted to date her were gay, and she wasn’t attracted to them either. Older men seemed unnaturally interested in her.

Chloe, by 17, had bravely begun the process of “detransitioning.”

Today, she speaks boldly to all who will hear: The transitioning of children is a threat to our society because it is targeting our future. Children cannot reasonably give consent to such drastic procedures. Parents must defend childhood and let kids be kids.

Her story reinforces the uneasy sense that transgenderism is much like a cult, and that during the Covid pandemic, when children stayed home and were glued to their computers, our young people were exposed to websites where transgendered adults reached out to them and welcomed them into the “community.” This alone time with computers during the lockdowns may be a reason that there’s been such a sudden increase in transgendered youth.

That online community is a place, as Chloe describes it, that appears to be filled with love and happiness, where a child’s insecurities about their bodies or fears about going through puberty can be addressed by kindly community members who tell them how they can actually choose to be a boy or can opt into being a girl. It’s so reaffirming to a child who is suffering from gender dysphoria.

Websites like the Trevor Project specialize in this grooming and encouragement to curious children, and even have “escape” instructions that allow a child to quickly close the site, should a parent come into the room.

Chloe encountered this transgender online community and it embraced her in all her confusion and self-perceived imperfections. With her prepubescent years flying by, she was a victim of the cult of transgenderism.

It’s a cult that you can get into, but woe to the person who decides to leave.

Chloe describes how when she decided to return to girlhood, the community members told her that she “should have known better” and that her transgendering was her own choice, not their concern. She was 16, and she was now shunned.

Today, she travels with security as she testifies across the country in legislatures and in the committees of Congress. As it turns out, the transgender fringe is as unhinged as any other cult fringe. What makes it different from a traditional cult is that there is no charismatic leader, but otherwise, it contains many of the elements of a closed and secret religious faction.

Evidence continues to build that gender dysphoria is highest among youth of European descent, especially among girls with exceptionally high intelligence combined with a history of mental health challenges. That is Chloe – female, brilliant, and also had mental health issues as a child.

With more poise and composure than most adults can muster, Chloe is on a mission to save the children of America from the doctors who would mutilate them. She speaks honestly about her experience, and does not back down to the tyranny of the transgender agenda that now defines the Left. She will not be bullied.

Wherever she goes, whether it’s Washington, D.C., Alaska, Minnesota, or Mississippi, Chloe says she hears from a lot of middle-aged women who tell her that they, too, once were tomboys and they know if they’d been given a choice as a child to transition, they would have done so in a heartbeat, without realizing what they would have given up in life. These grandmothers are some of Chloe’s biggest supporters.

The courage of Chloe Cole is an inspiration to young and old in America. By choosing to not bury her gifts or diminish her own bone-chilling life story, she advocates for letting children be children.

Still a teen with a full life ahead, she endures daily insults, slings, and arrows that come from taking a stand against a cult. That is courage by any measure.

Suzanne Downing is publisher of Must Read Alaska.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.