When Chloe Cole was a young girl, she was persuaded, largely by the internet, that she was really a boy trapped in a girl’s body. According to Chloe, instead of helping her accept her natural, healthy body, her doctors affirmed her false belief and told her parents she would kill herself if her body was not chemically and surgically modified to look more like a boy’s. In other words, they lied, and their “gender-affirming” procedures have left Chloe irreversibly damaged.

She has since become one of the most prominent detransitioners in the world, speaking out against the evils that were inflicted on her. So the acolytes of gender ideology are trying to destroy her — just look at a recent Los Angeles Times hit piece that is a cornucopia of smears.

For example, the article suggests that Chloe is just in it for the money and the applause, even though she wasn’t getting anything but grief when she first spoke up. Sharing painful personal experiences and mistakes is, well, painful, even to a friendly audience. But though the L.A. Times doubts the motives of the young woman making thousands, the paper is unconcerned about the “gender-affirming” medical industry that rakes in billions.

Chloe is taking on that lucrative system, so it is good that she has become a skilled communicator, and if she makes some money from speaking engagements — good. Furthermore, if she sometimes seems to be having some fun — again, good; it is wonderful that, though she speaks up about her injuries, she is not defined and consumed by them.

But for gender ideologues and activists, this is very bad news. They are terrified of Chloe because she is a charismatic speaker who effectively tells a story that disproves their claims to compassion and expertise. All of the L.A. Times’ (many) appeals to authority can’t disguise the fact that Chloe’s doctors mutilated her on the superstitious belief that she had somehow been born into the “wrong” body.

The Times tries to justify this malpractice by asserting that regret and detransition are extremely rare, and that the consequences for not transitioning children are deadly. The piece repeats the same claim Chloe says her doctors made: We have to trans the kids before they kill themselves. The paper suggests what was done to Chloe was a regrettable mistake that was nonetheless the result of genuine life-saving medicine — which she is wickedly trying to end.

This is a lie, but trans activists rely on it because there is never any physical need to medically transition. Amputating the breasts of a healthy teenage girl, for example, does not address any bodily ailment. Nor is there any good evidence that such physically harmful procedures improve mental health.

Likewise, though the L.A. Times asserts that transition regret is extremely rare, the truth is that we don’t know the detransition rate. Most older studies, such as the one the article linked to, aren’t applicable to the current situation — a small sample of carefully screened Swedish adults is not comparable to the vast numbers of American teens now undergoing medical transition, often with minimal screening. Indeed, as Leor Sapir points out, Chloe herself would not meet the narrow criteria of the study the L.A. Times cited as proof that transition regret is rare, even though the L.A. Times concedes that she transitioned and regrets it.

Furthermore, many studies on transgenderism are limited and even badly flawed, with poor methodology, biased samples, and significant follow-up losses, among other problems. To the extent there is any reliable information about current rates of transition regret, some data sets, such as those from the military healthcare system, suggest high detransition rates, around 30 percent after just a few years.

The truth is that so-called “gender-affirming care” is experimental, especially for children. As the U.K.’s Cass Report concluded, there is no good evidence that transitioning children helps them, let alone that it is a necessary, life-saving treatment.

Unable to appeal to the evidence, gender ideologues have to appeal to authority — specifically that of the American medical associations that have declared in favor of transitioning children. But these endorsements are based on fraud.

The medical groups that have endorsed “gender-affirming care” did not do so after carefully and comprehensively reviewing the evidence. Rather, they relied on committees controlled by trans activists, who in turn relied on guidelines issued by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). But though WPATH offers itself as an expert medical group, and presents its guidelines as the gold standard of medical care for those who identify as transgender, it has been revealed to be medically fraudulent.

A series of scandals have destroyed WPATH’s credibility. For example, we know WPATH was pressured by Biden official Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine to remove age guidelines for medical transition procedures, and that WPATH caved. We know that WPATH claimed cross-sex hormones and transition surgeries are medically necessary in order to get these procedures covered by insurance, rather than because the evidence showed them to be necessary. And we know that WPATH commissioned a review of the evidence for transitioning children, only to interfere with and suppress it after it reached conclusions WPATH didn’t like.

The supposed medical consensus in favor of transitioning children is built on lies, and its advocates are getting desperate. They bet everything — their credibility, their livelihoods, their self-respect — on being heroes rescuing children from being trapped in the wrong bodies. But it turns out that they are the monsters, mutilating children for money, and now their former victims are finding the strength to fight back.