February 4, 2023

Irreversible

By: Brian Almon

Last Thursday, Chloe Cole came to Idaho. Over the course of 24 hours, she spoke to a packed church in Caldwell, visited lawmakers, shared her story at IFF’s Capitol Clarity, was interviewed by KBOI’s Nate Shelman, and recorded a podcast with Wayne Hoffman. If you didn’t know her story, and simply met her on the street for an impromptu conversation, you would think she was just another young woman of Generation Z. Indeed, outside of the generation-specific lexicon she might well be a girl from any era.

Idaho Freedom Foundation brought Chloe to Boise last week to speak to lawmakers, parents, and fellow young people. She has been on with Glenn Beck, Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, and many more platforms. Despite her young age she is an eloquent and engaging speaker, but her personality is not just for show. After spending time with her last week, I and the rest of the IFF staff found her to be as kind and humble away from the camera as she is in front of it.

You know her story by now. As a preteen she started using social media, and was soon bombarded with messages undermining femininity and promoting LGBTQ+ ideas. She began to identify as a boy named Leo, binding her chest and taking puberty blockers. She graduated to testosterone treatments and finally had a double mastectomy as a high school sophomore.

She began to regret her decision, especially after learning about the psychology behind breastfeeding, how it forms a bond between mother and baby. Despite disdaining the idea of motherhood as a young teenager. Chloe began to realize the magnitude of her decision, the permanence. At an age when she would not have been allowed to sign a contract, get a tattoo, or join the military, Chloe Cole had irreversibly altered herself, literally cutting herself off from any possibility of someday nurturing a child.

Thousands of teenagers across the country are going through the same process Chloe did, often after being algorithmically pointed toward LGBTQ+ content on social media. For Chloe, it was Instagram. For others it is YouTube or TikTok. Once the algorithm learns that you’re a teenager it starts presenting you with trans influencers who seem so happy to have taken hormones and gotten surgery so as to “live out their true selves”. Social media is designed to make being non-binary look exciting while normal is boring.

Chloe also mentioned that a lot of people she knew who identified as trans were on the autism spectrum, including herself. This makes sense to me. Being a teenager is already an awkward time, and being neurodivergent compounds those feelings. You feel like you’re not normal, that there’s something wrong with your body, that nobody else understands what you’re experiencing. Then you go online and find a whole community of people who get you in the way your friends and family don’t.

It seems like a lovely thing, but in reality it is a cult. People who study cults explain that in the initial stages, cult members love bomb their prospective initiate. They overwhelm them with expressions of love and acceptance, making the initiate feel like she has finally found her real home. The flip side is that if anyone leaves the cult, they are condemned with as much hate as they were welcomed with love. Leaving the cult is portrayed as betraying everyone in the family. And this is exactly what Chloe experienced when she stopped identifying as transgender.

Podcaster Darryl Cooper of Martyr Made sees a similarity between Jonestown and the transgender cult. He wrote on Twitter this week:

When I was working on my Jonestown series, it occurred to me that the internet might facilitate cults of unprecedented proportions, that rather than 1,000 people committing mass suicide, it could be millions. It’s increasingly clear that that’s exactly what the trans movement is.

It bears every hallmark of a cult: isolates from former relationships, demands total identity transformation, irreversible acts to display one’s commitment, intolerance of heresy, severe penalties for leaving the group… It’s not suicide, but removal of genitals is one step away.

It seems clear at this point that gender dysphoria is contagious in the same way Tourette’s has been observed spreading to young girls via Tik Tok. More experienced members initiate new acolytes – look up what they mean by “cracking the egg” for more on that.

I think I’m right about this, and that a Jonestown-style cult has infiltrated all major media corporations, the education system, and has even cowed most politicians.

Martyr Made on Twitter

Most people find puberty to be awkward and strange. In previous eras, children would grow out of these feelings and accept themselves as adult human beings. That is the definition of growing up. The internet changed everything. There was on old post on 4chan that explained the power of the internet in creating communities based on awkward fetishes. In the old days, if you had a strange predilection as a teenager, you either grew out of it on your own or well-meaning friends and family told you to shape up. Now, you go online and find a whole community of people who share your predilection. You become convinced that this is a legitimate thing, and you demand power and representation in society, as well as actively recruit for your cause.

I have heard numerous stories of people drawn to the idea of puberty blockers simply out of fear of growing up. Puberty is a scary time for children, as their bodies start changing and behaving differently than they ever did. Drugs that halt puberty do more than prevent cosmetic changes, however. Bones do not develop properly, and can make people much more prone to severe injuries than they should be. Brain development slows down too, leading to adults whose minds are literally arrested in a prepubescent state.

Puberty is a natural part of development, and interfering with it leads to a host of unintended consequences. But doctors and activists don’t tell that to the children who are pushed into making these decisions.

When I attended Boise Pride Fest last year I saw a lot of people who were hurt and broken. Many were likely shunned by the popular kids in school, so they have found strength in a community that celebrates what sets them apart rather than opposing it. They reject any suggestion that there is anything harmful about their lifestyle, directing their aggression toward parents that don’t accept them, society that doesn’t validate them, and the God who had the audacity to create them.

When I was in school in the 1990s, many of the teen girls who felt like they didn’t fit in to the normal high school social system presented themselves as goth: they died their hair black, wore black nail polish, and adorned themselves with heavy metal and satanic paraphernalia. They seemed to delight in shocking the older generations. Most eventually grew out of this phase with little permanent harm. Unfortunately the transgender phase causes irreversible damage.

Abigail Shrier’s book of the same name is required reading for all parents today. The author interviews dozens of trans-identifying people and their families. A familiar refrain emerged: preteen girl gets a mobile phone and goes on social media, finds herself immersed in LGBTQ+ ideas. She tells her parents she wants to be a boy, or non-binary, and they take her to a counselor or psychologist to figure out what is happening. The counselor tells the parents to follow their daughter’s wishes – call her by a boy name, cut her hair short, buy her boy clothing, allow her to bind her chest – lest she commit suicide.

This is the gun that the transgender lobby holds to the heads of shell-shocked parents: Transition your child or they will die. Chloe Cole says her counselor told her parents the same thing, though she says she never had any inclination toward suicide. The truth doesn’t matter so much as the approved script. The goal of the medical system is to push children into transition, no matter what. They take advantage of children with real issues – issues with fitting in, issues with identity, issues with self esteem – and push them to life-altering choices.

And they get paid, too. Last year Matt Walsh exposed how Vanderbilt University’s transgender clinic made big bucks on trans surgeries and the inevitable follow-ups:

Transgenderism is big business because it creates patients for life. First there are the puberty blockers, then there are the hormones, then the surgeries, then the follow-ups for life. Of course, most patients don’t pay directly, rather they are subsidized by insurance companies and even government funds.

Today the fetish of transgenderism is not only amplified by social media, but protected and endorsed at every level of government. Texas father Jeff Younger went on Timcast Friday night to share his harrowing story. His wife wanted to transition their then-two year old son into being a girl, and he refused to allow it. They divorced, and Mr. Younger got a Texas court to stop any medical transition without both parents’ consent. The former Mrs. Younger took the boy to California, where homosexual State Representative Scott Weiner has been working very hard to allow as much grooming as possible, and a Texas court refused to stop her.

Seeing a mother with a trans toddler is like seeing a pet owner who says her dog is vegan. You know who is calling the shots there. Having a trans child is a mark of prestige for social climbers in certain classes.

I believe there is something else going on here at a higher level. There is a common thread in the stories we hear about artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and transgenderism – a desire to supersede God and nature:

• God created the mind of man, but we will create a superior AI
• God created the natural world, but we will create a better world in the Metaverse
• God created us male and female, but with drugs and surgery we can be whatever we want

It is the same hubris that has tempted mankind since the dawn of time: “You will be like God.”

I appreciate what Chloe Cole is doing in sharing her story across the country. It is one thing to debate this issue in theory, but to see a young woman who went through it herself and has come back from the brink to warn others is much more impactful. The fruits of her activism are twofold: Education for parents and motivation for lawmakers.

I have heard many stories of parents who were caught completely off guard by what happened to their son or daughter, and only realized too late how pernicious social media and the medical industry has become. Yet the time of ignorance is over. Watch Chloe share her story. Listen to Jeff Younger’s sad tale. Read Abigail Shrier’s book. Learn to recognize the monster that is coming for your children.

Tell your lawmakers to protect our children. Here in Idaho, Rep. Bruce Skaug of Nampa has introduced a bill to ban transgender surgeries for minors. You would think it would be common sense, but this bill is attracting opposition from Democrats as well as from the medical industry. Remember that St. Luke’s, right here in Boise, provides puberty blockers, hormones, and even surgery for minors who claim to be transgender. They stand to lose, financially and ideologically, if Rep. Skaug’s bill passes the legislature. We must do whatever we can to help it pass. Keep an eye on the House State Affairs Committee for House Bill 71 and be ready to share your own testimony in support of this important bill.

“Good government throughout Western Civilization has a legitimate purpose, and that is to restrain evil,” said Rep. Skaug on Thursday. He is absolutely correct. Our laws must protect children from the irreversible damage being promoted by the transgender cult. But laws are not enough. At Valley Church in Caldwell last Wednesday, Chloe Cole said, “Several states have started to ban transitioning children, but this is not something that can be caused by legislation alone. We need to show love to our children that are struggling with gender issues.”

Stay connected to your children. They need to know that their family loves them, that the awkwardness of puberty will pass naturally in time, and that activists on social media do not have their best interests at heart. Speaking with Wayne Hoffman last Thursday, Chloe said the best things for children are the “three H’s: hugs, hikes, and hobbies.” If children are plugged into real life then they are not likely to be seduced by the transgender cult. We as parents must take a proactive role in raising our children, or else social media, pop culture, and the schools will do it for us. Let’s make sure no more children go through the same trauma as Chloe Cole.