Here are transcriptions of testimony from three young women who transitioned from female to male and are now detransitioning.

Chloe Cole (@ChoooCole on X) testified before the Tennessee legislature

My name is Chloe Cole, and I’m detransitioning, a former trans child from rural California. From the time I was seventeen, I’ve been travelling and giving my cautionary tale to legislatures across the country. I have dedicated my early adulthood to make sure that no child in America, and the rest of the world, will be harmed by gender ideology, and specifically, cross-sex interventions like the double mastectomy and cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers that defined my childhood. I’m extremely grateful to have the opportunity to have a part in Tennessee’s Age Restriction Bill last year, however the country has acted too slowly. Thousands have already been harmed. Half the country is continuing to harm our children and young men and women. The number of people like me, who are now realizing they made a mistake, is growing and I’m excited to finally be able to advocate for my own demographic—the detransitioners.

I’m nineteen years old. I shouldn’t have to worry about this. At thirteen, I had a healthy body. Now, I live in complete uncertainty surrounding my health. I don’t know what’s to come for me. I don’t know how much harm these procedures have done to my body. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to have kids. When I got my blood testing done, I was given the male averages for hormones, instead of the female averages like I requested. Doctors look at my mastectomy, look at the complications; surgeons had taken skin grafts from my areolas that now leak clear fluid and sometimes blood. I have to wear bandages every single day to keep it from staining my shirt and my bedding. Doctors look at me and they just shrug. The experiment is never ending. I’m terrified. It’s miserable to look down at my chest every day in confusion and uncertainty. Nobody deserves this.

California, my home state, is not safe for me; they make it clear every time I walk into the doctor’s office. All I know is gender affirmation, but I’m tired of being told there’s no way out for me, I’m tired of being told that “I’m just on a gender journey.” I’m done.

My friends and I are creating community to advocate for ourselves and we deserve some real answers. We need to be able to come to Tennessee and get real medical care, instead of the ideologically-driven pseudo-science in California. Let’s provide options. I’m grateful that you all have taken the courageous step to halt these harmful interventions and the next step will be restoration. As it is right now, there is no gate-keeping the transition. The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) files1 that were released yesterday have proven that. I’m extremely grateful to the early detransitioners who have carved a path forward, and I’m working to continue that effort and we need your legislative help.

Morgan Keller (@in-detransit on X) testified before the Ohio Government Oversight Committee for Health Bill 68

My name is Morgan Keller, I’m twenty-six years old and was trans-identified for five years. In March of this year, after trying to ignore the doubt and regret that began to build around my transition, I woke up one morning with the realization that my trans identity was never about becoming my most genuine self, or living my life authentically; instead, it was a desperate, last-ditch attempt to become someone else—to escape my unidentified trauma and body and mental health issues.

When I started exploring gender ideology, my life was in shambles. I was in an emotionally-manipulative lesbian relationship; I was isolating myself in an apartment and drinking regularly. I wasn’t attending my classes or socializing normally. I had become captivated by the idea that my female body was fundamentally wrong, and seduced by the prospect that there was something I could do about it. When I sought out help for my complicated feelings towards my female sex, I was affirmed, which is to say, I was put on life-altering cross-sex hormones with minimal questioning or treatment of my underlying issues.

At 21, a licensed practitioner in the state of Ohio wrote me a prescription for medically-unnecessary synthetic testosterone, and just one month after my 22nd birthday, I went under the knife for a double mastectomy based on the recommendation letter from a therapist who still holds an active license in the state. I sat with these practitioners for hours, describing how uncomfortable I was in my body, how disconnected I felt from myself, how hard it was to walk through the world as a masculine woman. The nurse practitioner who prescribed me testosterone, told me that I would transition beautifully, and that no one would ever be able to tell that I was born as a female. After a lifetime of body image issues and increasing desperation to become anybody but myself, that was like music to my ears. I don’t believe that not transitioning was ever considered by my practitioners. I feel like once I walked into that gender clinic, medicalization was the only option. I needed the practitioners that I trusted to help me make peace with my body, not affirm my delusions that hormones and cosmetic mastectomy might help me feel better. I needed them to just say, “No.”

This week is the first anniversary of my first testosterone shot. I was told that this experimental medicalization would save my life. My parents were made to believe that this was the only way to keep their daughter alive, healthy, and happy. No practitioner bothered to dig deeper with me about why I felt so disconnected from my female body, and why I thought giving myself an endocrine imbalance, amputating my healthy breasts, and masquerading as a member of the opposite sex, was such an appealing treatment plan. I can say with 100% certainty that this new medication only gave me new health problems and mental distress. I will never, ever legitimize these experimental treatments as anything based on love or care for an individual.

Under the euphemistic guise of lifesaving, gender-affirming care, practitioners in our state have become enablers with their prescription pads. At its highest point, my testosterone levels were eleven times the maximum range for the female body. Is this really the standard of care we want for our Ohioans?

When I realized my medicalization was nothing more than a very elaborate placebo, endorsed by multiple medical professionals, I made the immediate decision to detransition. It was all over. I quit testosterone cold turkey and endured four of the most brutal months of my entire life. I had no energy, I didn’t shower for almost two weeks, I would cry upwards of ten times a day, shocked by what I’d been allowed to do to my body in such a vulnerable state with an undeveloped brain. I would lay in bed all day, sitting with the realization that I would never be able to breast feed children that I didn’t ever know I wanted at the time I got my mastectomy. I didn’t know if those feelings would ever go away, so I started to make plans to commit suicide. My family was so worried, that my parents made me go home so they could make sure I was eating, bathing, and sleeping. I sent a letter to my prescribing practitioner, detailing how much regret I felt, and all of the things I wished were different about the treatment I received, and she never replied.

I had been working with the same therapist for seven years by the time I called her with my realizations about the issues underlying my decision to transition. I sent her lists of everything that should have been treated instead of getting hormones and a mastectomy, and I will never forget hearing her tell me, “I failed you.” She told me that this was such a new field of psychology, that modern medicine is still at the forefront of learning how to treat gender dysphoria. But isn’t that funny? The current narrative says that this medicalization is “settled science.” I couldn’t give informed consent at twenty-one, so why are we pretending that children can do that?

With this Bill, we can ensure that children in Ohio are protected from ever waking up and finding themselves in my position. I wish I never opened the Pandora’s box of gender ideology; I wish I’d been told “No” by the practitioners who I trusted. I wish I could say that I’m the exception to the rule, but everyone in this room knows that that is false. I come to you wearing the scars of this medical scandal, asking you to please vote in support of Health Bill 68, to protect Ohio’s children. Thank you for listening.

Katie Lennon (Anderson), (@Katie1080 on X) testified in Concord, New Hampshire, in favor of Parental Rights Bill SB272. She transitioned at 18.

Like many children and teens today, I identified myself as transgender for years, and when I started to feel confused and ashamed about my developing body, I asked everyone in my life to call me by a new name and use male pronouns to refer to me. So, in other words, I went through a social transition from female to male. Everyone in my life immediately affirmed my new identity, either out of full support for it, or just to stay neutral and not cause any issues. But the constant affirmation, both active and passive, solidified me in my transgender identity. No one meant to lock me into an identity that would later leave me broken, ashamed, and more confused than before. They were really all just being nice.

But the social transition eventually wasn’t enough, and I soon felt I needed to take testosterone. And when that wasn’t enough, I had a double mastectomy. And when that still wasn’t enough, I had a total hysterectomy, including the removal of my uterus, cervix, fallopian tubes and both ovaries. There’s no point of contentment during a gender transition. We get fleeting moments of euphoria, but ultimately, one step leads straight into the next, and I thought that in the end, I could really become a man, but all I became was a mutilated and abused version of my old self.

Social transition is a big deal and we’re lying when we say any of this is reversible. This is a big decision with lifelong consequences, and New Hampshire doesn’t even require that parents be involved. If the roles of mother and father don’t include authority for the emotional, social, and physical future of their children, the roles no longer mean anything.

Like me, transgender-identifying youth have a high risk for depression. The Trevor project, which is an LGBT advocacy group, reports that 45% of LGBT teens have seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year. More than half of that number is transgender-identifying youth. Teachers and school administrators are mandated reporters, and if a child is suspected of being four times more likely to attempt suicide than the other students his age, his parents have a right to know. And SB272 will ensure that parents are notified if their children are identifying with a high-risk community, and will allow the parents to decide the next best step for their child. Please vote in support of SB272.

1. public.substack.com/p/the-wpath-files