The first time I met Chloe Cole, she commented on the Kappa Kappa Gamma key pin attached to my shirt. “I like your brooch,” she told me. “When I identified as a boy, one of the things I missed most about being a girl was wearing jewelry.”
I first met Chloe Cole at a meet-and-greet at Hillsdale College. Her dynamic energy filled the room, and she spoke to every student individually as if they were old friends. For years, I had followed Cole’s story, moved by her account of suffering from gender dysphoria, undergoing a double mastectomy at the age of 15, and ultimately detransitioning to become an anti-transgender ideology activist. I admired her courage and bravery. In many ways, she is a hero to me.
Her earnestness struck me. Cole dressed beautifully, wearing a polka-dot print top and a delicate pearl necklace. She appeared very feminine and relaxed, with a soft and almost ethereal glow about her.
Four years after her detransition at age 20, Cole is on a journey of re-embracing her femininity and re-discovering her style as a part of her God-given identity of being a woman. At the height of her gender dysphoria, however, Cole wanted nothing more than to present and be affirmed by those around her as male.
“I could change the way that I viewed reality, the way that people viewed and referred to me as, the way that I looked, and the way that my body functioned, but none of it was real. And eventually, that realization— it was just so crushing to me, because it was pretty much the foundation of my entire adolescent life,” she said.
During her “boy years,” Cole recalled dressing as masculine as possible.
