CV NEWS FEED// The Los Angeles Times has published an article on detransitioner and activist Chloe Cole, labeling the 19-year-old girl “a right-wing icon” and sparking pushback from pro-life and pro-woman conservative activists on social media.
Cole went through “gender-affirming care” starting at age 12. She received a double mastectomy at age 15. Realizing she regretted the move, she decided to live the rest of her life as a girl and eventually shared her experience with the public.
In McKenzie Mays’ article, “How young Californian Chloe Cole emerged as a leader of the ‘detransition’ movement — and a right-wing icon,” the author called into question Cole’s motives and integrity. Pro-woman activists have decried the article as a “hit piece,” and Mays received so much pushback that she limited comments on her X account to only people she authorizes to reply.
“Wokal Distance,” an X account a fellow at Center for Renewing America operates, broke down what critics called the smear tactics Mays used in her article.
He highlighted one paragraph where Mays said, “Most of Cole’s critics don’t deny her personal story in the same way that she discredits the experiences of hundreds of thousands of transgender youths. But as her profile rises, they question her motives.”
Wokal Distance responded: “Chloe is not discrediting the experiences of youth who struggle with gender, she is saying the opposite: that she (Chloe) UNDERSTANDS their experience because she had the same sorts of experiences with gender dysphoria.”
He then pointed out that although Mays accuses Cole of only speaking about her experience for money, Mays never questions whether Cole’s surgeon had a financial motivation: “The article questions @ChoooCole’s motives, but not the motives of the surgeon who gets paid to perform the gender surgeries” and remarks that the author treated the surgeon who removed Chloe’s breasts “like a neutral and respectable expert.”
He added, “The article makes no mention of Chloe’s extensive medical bills,” or “the fact that insurance won’t cover many aspects of the care she needs.”
Next, Wokal Distance said that Mays accused Cole of speaking out just to receive attention.
Wokal Distance highlighted that Mays wrote, “She also lost her online community of LGBTQ+ supporters. So she found a new one” and described how her supporters “cheer when she announces she’s suing, and gasp in disgust when she talks about her surgery.”
Wokal Distance responded, “It is suggested that Chloe is not doing her activism out of a sense of deep conviction, but rather out of a combination of grifting to get money and for attention seeking and validation seeking.”
Wokal Distance concludes his thread by saying that “woke activists” “want control over who is listened to, who is taken seriously, who is believed, who has social standing, and who has the moral authority to speak on social issues,” and as a result, “they are willing to smear @ChoooCole to get what they want.”
Cole herself weighed in on the article through her own X account: “This article is insane. They heavily insinuate that by speaking about my own personal experience, it will literally kill children. This is the same rhetoric that almost killed President Trump. I already fear for my life every time I step on a stage, thanks for heating up the rhetoric, LA Times.”
She added, “This only fills me with more conviction and more determination btw. There is not a single thing on this earth that would stop me from speaking out against the mutilation of our children.”
