Chloe Cole Struggles With Gender Dysphoria to This Day

Detransitioner Chloe Cole told GOP Rep. Gary Click that she was not misdiagnosed with gender dysphoria and continues to struggle.

by Evan Urquhart

In an interview for Detransition Awareness Day, detransition activist Chloe Cole spoke with Republican Representative Gary Click about her story. An aspect of Chloe Cole’s detransition that seems new, or at least more clear than ever before, is that the young woman’s struggle against gender dysphoria is ongoing. This revelation comes despite Cole’s advocacy against gender affirming care, which is the only treatment known to reduce or eliminate gender dysphoria for people who experience it. Cole’s attorneys have claimed she ought to have been treated with therapy for her mental health struggles and possible autism.

In the interview, Click asks Cole to tell him about the “co-morbidities” she may have had, naming eating disorders and autism as common co-morbidities trans youth may have. Cole briefly described some of the similar struggles she had had, then said, “I don’t necessarily think that it was a misdiagnosis, I mean, I still struggle with distress relating to my birth sex to this day, but I think the problem was the course of treatment that they took.”

A common misunderstanding about politically active detransitioners like Cole is that they were misdiagnosed, or that they’ve found more effective means of dealing with their gender dysphoria after detransitioning. This seems not to be the case in many of their stories, now including Cole’s. In a recent profile of Elisa Shupe, who retransitioned to live as a woman after being a detransition activist for many years, Shupe described having her story shaped by anti-trans activists, who sometimes went as far as writing op-eds for her and instructing her to place them under her own name.