Chloe Cole Knows She’s Lying About Sterilization

Plus, Elon Musk also pushes the sterilization line.

by Evan Urquhart

If her story is to be believed (after all the time she’s spent in the spotlight it still has yet to be fact-checked by a mainstream news outlet), Chloe Cole started puberty blockers at the age of 13, followed by testosterone therapy and a chest masculinization surgery as a teenager, followed by a subsequent detransition in her later teens. If treating gender dysphoria in youth requires sterilization, Cole ought to be sterile. However, neither essays written under her name nor the lawsuit she’s brought against the doctors who once treated her make that claim. If Cole wasn’t sterilized why, then, is she claiming that gender-affirming treatments for minors are sterilizing in a recent op-ed for the Orange County Register?

screenshot from the Orange County Register

The charge that gender-affirming care sterilizes minors is a lie, and it’s one that is being repeated widely with little pushback. In reality, puberty blockers are not sterilizing, full stop. Cross-sex hormones are not sterilizing, full stop. There has been speculation that the combination of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones might lead to a permanent reduction in fertility for some patients, particularly transfemmes, for whom there is less information available. Young people and their families are extensively counseled about the risks to fertility and fertility preservation alternatives when they consider medical steps like puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

There are, of course, surgical interventions some trans people need that are sterilizing. (It almost shouldn’t need to be said, but chest surgery is not one of them.)

Among those pushing the lie that gender-affirming care is sterilizing is Twitter owner Elon Musk, who tweeted it just last week. Musk tweeted his opposition to California’s AB 957 which would direct family court judges to take into account parents’ support of their children’s gender identity as a factor in custody disputes.

screenshot from TMZ

This, again, is a lie. Musk is claiming that the only possible way for a parent to support a trans child involves sterilization, when in truth this would rarely if ever be the case. Supporting a trans child more typically includes allowing them to dress as they wish and calling them by a name and using pronouns that they prefer. Much more rarely it might include exploring medical options for a child experiencing severe distress, and only rarely would those options include a significant risk to fertility, much less actual sterilization.

As usual, opponents of gender-affirming care can’t stick to the facts, because the fact is that most gender-affirmation is purely cosmetic (a matter of haircuts, not surgery), and even the medical treatments aren’t sterilizing most of the time. Elon Musk may not know this (the guy, frankly, sounds like a total kook). Chloe Cole does. Cole wasn’t sterilized, despite claiming to have commenced gender-affirming care at 13. Gender-affirming care is not typically sterilizing, and risks to fertility should be weighed against the medical benefits of treatment for the individual patient, as they would with any other sort of medical care.