I've often wondered what the, shall we say, recidivism rate is among people undergoing what we euphemistically call "gender transitions." In other words, how many people change their minds? Good numbers aren't really available; estimates can run anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent. Nothing I've found seems overly credible, partly because the denominator - the number of people who have undergone transition - despite their vocal nature, is pretty small.
It's a sad thing when these people do change their minds. They have, all too often, undergone permanent, life-changing, and irreversible medical treatments and surgeries, with sterility often being one of the results. No matter which direction the transitioner is moving in, they are forever precluded from children and a natural family.
It's a sad state these folks end up in. Now, even as I write these words, the Supreme Court is considering a case concerning a Tennesee law that bans gender-transition treatments for minors, and one detransitioner, Chloe Cole, is speaking out on her own experience.
Cole is a young woman who has sued her doctors, accusing them of pushing her to medically and surgically attempt to change her gender while she was struggling with mental illness and incapable of fully consenting as a minor. Cole underwent a double mastectomy as a teenager and took hormones and puberty blockers in an effort to appear as a male — and then realized, soon after, that she had made an irreversible mistake.
Cole has now become one of the most outspoken detransitioners who push back against gender ideology, and she will be speaking at a rally outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday while the justices hear arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, a case dealing with Tennessee’s law banning irreversible gender transition procedures for children.
Chloe's story is heartbreaking. This isn't a tattoo or a piercing; this is surgical and chemical mutilation, an irreversible procedure that renders the patient sterile and permanently scarred, mentally and physically. Not to mention the effects it has on the patient's family. As Chloe points out from her own experience:
“This case really means everything to me,” she told The Daily Wire, “because if a law like this were in place in my state while I was growing up, if this were just federally banned across the board when I was going through this, this never would have happened to me.”
“My family wouldn’t have been torn apart the way that it was,” she argued. “My mom and dad wouldn’t have been betrayed by our doctors and I wouldn’t have lost my breasts or so many of my formative years to a dangerous medical ideology.”
This is a dangerous ideology. It's a pernicious social contagion. It violates the very basic tenets of medicine, one that goes back to ancient Greece, primum non nocere (First, do no harm.)
See Related: Supreme Court to Evaluate Tennessee Ban on Trans Treatments for Minors
Justice Department to Whistleblower Exposing Trans Surgeries on Minors: 'Shut Up'
There is no Constitutional argument to be made for allowing activists to push these treatments on children. Nobody, oddly, is arguing before the Supreme Court that children should be allowed to get tattoos, buy booze or a firearm, join the military, sign a contract, or get married. Yes, they wink at the idea of parental consent in some places (not in others), but that doesn't count for much when parents are lied to and browbeaten into giving this consent.
Chloe Cole adds:
“They’re being told that the life of their child is on the line that they just don’t say yes,” she added. “I don’t blame them for being in favor of this because they’ve been lied to. They’ve had their single greatest fear as parents being leveraged against them and really no parent wants to have with their kid. Especially if they feel that they’re under threat of suicide.”
We should all listen to Chloe Cole. The Supreme Court should listen to her, too.
Adults, assuming they are mentally competent, may do as they please, and much good may it do them. If they want to have spots tattooed all over their bodies and have whiskers surgically implanted in their face so they may identify as a leopard, who cares? If they want to walk around town between two giant slices of rye bread claiming to be a ham sandwich, go for it. It's nutty - but also legal.
But stay away from the kids. Stay away, especially, from other people's kids. There's a reason we call them "minors." There's a reason we don't allow them to make permanent, life-changing decisions. That should apply to this as to anything else. End of story.
