Chloe Cole: Transition Surgery Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life | Stories of Us

I'm biologically female but at the age of 12 I decided that I wanted to transition to a male identity I was celebrated with every step of my transition I got closer to realizing that I'm just never going to be a man my name is Chloe Cole and this is my story my childhood started off fairly normal I mean I had both parents in the house and I've got four older siblings growing up I would play a lot of dress up I would play with dolls and video games and Legos you know I was a bit of a tomboy and I'm also on the Spectrum so from pretty early age I did kind of struggle to get along with my peers and especially my female peers I never really fit in with I found that I liked being with the boys more and that I that I felt more at ease with them as I got older I started to wonder like what was separating me from the other girls and why I was different from them and I couldn't really figure it out I started to struggle with with this and my body image as well in the media and online I would see this specific body type like hourglass and pear-shaped women who are very very curvy and you know at a young age I didn't I didn't really look like that I was I was a little more on the athletic side I had bigger shoulders and I did hips and a little bit of muscle and I liked having my hair short and I started to feel like I don't really look like other girls and I felt like something was wrong with me because of that and I started to wonder like what good am I if I don't feel pretty maybe I'd just be better off as a boy using social media from a young age taught me to value my looks and very superficial parts of myself above all the platform I mainly used was Instagram which is very image oriented it's trying to make fantasy into reality I would often hear from other other women and girls growing up like being a woman is so hard and it's just so terrible like once you hit puberty you start like growing breasts and getting this uncomfortable attention then you start getting periods and then you're able to get pregnant and give birth and it's just such a such a painful and scary process and then one day down the road you go through menopause and it just all sucks and nobody ever talked about the good things that really come with any of that so I was already dissociated from other women and even just the idea of being a woman and I I didn't want to grow from a girl into a woman I wanted a way out and I learned that apparently there was I started seeing content of people identified as lesbian gay bisexual and especially transgender or as some other gender identity and I learned that I didn't have to be a girl that that I could I could choose myself and so I started to cut my hair short and wear my boys clothing and I started using a binder which is a compression of ice that um it's for the purpose of flattening the chest in women eventually I came out to my parents I decided that I would write in a letter that I wanted to be referred to by a new name and as my parents son they weren't really sure what exactly to do from that point on and they saw it as a psychiatric issue and they wanted to get to the bottom of it so I started seeing a therapists almost immediately I was just affirmed and that was pretty much the only course of treatment they took the problem was though there wasn't really any questioning at all of how certain factors of my life would play into this into the development of my gender dysphoria I remember after I got the diagnosis regenerative dysphoria I tried talking to my parents about getting on hormones and I I said that I really wanted to to start medicalization they pushed back on it they told me that it's not going to fix my problems and that I should wait and I just felt like they they couldn't understand the medical professionals actually had told them that transitioning was the only way that my dysphoria would resolve and if I wasn't allowed to transition that I would be at risk of suicide they told my parents that you know children already know their gender identity by a certain age so they know what's best for themselves I was 15 years old at the time that I underwent the removal of my breasts when I initially woke up from the surgery I was actually quite happy you know I I went home and it felt like it was just a big step in the right direction and I was up until just a few months after the surgery I was completely sure in my decision to do so I was celebrated I mean the people in this community said they're proud of me and it was like nothing that I'd ever really experienced before it was like I really felt supported I hope that in transitioning I would become more whole that I'd become my real self and I genuinely believed that I was a boy with every step of my transition I got closer to realizing that I'm just never going to be a man I think reality really started to set in once I was in the post-op period And I had to do my bandages and dressings and look down at these what was left in my chest and it was really quite traumatizing it was a very gruesome period of healing I have suffered from some complications from the surgery and it's ongoing to this day I started to get worse emotionally in the in the months afterward I started to realize that I actually miss looking like a girl looking pretty and sometimes I would secretly like buy makeup or dresses and just wear it in the comfort of my room or when nobody was in the house I had a lot of Shame around this because you know I had been on testosterone for so long that I no longer looked like a woman my facial features were very Square my my hair was short I had a visible Adam's apple and now my breasts were gone so I really felt quite trapped the biggest Catalyst leading to my detransition I think was a psychology class that I took in my junior year there was a lesson on Child Development and maternity and the role that physical affection from a mother and breastfeeding play in a child's later emotional social and cognitive development I I realized what I really had taken for myself and potentially my my future children I felt a lot of a lot of guilt a lot of regret and I can no longer have my breasts I'll never have the chance to breastfeed my children or bond with them in that way and I don't know if I'll ever be able to conceive a child even and if I can I don't know if I'll carry safely to turn pretty soon after I realized that I actually regretted every single step in my transition and that I wish that none of it ever happened they act like the science is all settled that it's been here for decades and it's completely safe but we really don't know that we really don't know any of this I started talking about my transition regret on my personal social media I was pretty shocked because almost immediately I was met with hatred by other transgender people who I was friends with online they would tell me that just by talking about my experience I was harming the entire community of people and I didn't want to do that and I didn't I certainly didn't want to deal with the backlash that I was getting so I gave into the mobs pressure and I I didn't stop speaking about it I find that there's really one big narrative being pushed about transition and especially children transitioning they say like oh it's better the younger you go and there's a lower regret rate and people who do Transition usually do it because of pressure to do so or because of because they're being abused or oppressed but that's not true I started to speak to other people online who have the transitioned or desisted or they're they regret or question their transition and there's a lot of them and the number of them it's growing day by day and this is a very real thing that's happening you know over the course of the next few months I started to realize what was going on that it happens more more often than people realize and that I was being silenced I started to become more vocal about my experience and I was no longer fearful of the mob I'm thankful for the few doctors that are speaking out against this practice of transitioning children most of them are afraid to lose their jobs I feel a need to speak out and tell my sad story and I hope that I can give people clear perspective on this and you know I've managed to make new friends and I've kind of rekindled my relationship with my family and I feel like their support is really the thing that's helping me the most [Music] thank you for watching this video to keep preview videos free please consider making your tax deductible donation