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How a Few Stories of Regret Fuel the Push to Restrict Gender Transition Care


When Missouri lawmakers took up bills to ban transition care for minors, Chloe Cole, an activist from California, traveled to Jefferson City to offer her story as Exhibit A.

After living as a transgender boy for years and getting a mastectomy at 15, Ms. Cole says she felt stifled by a male identity and distraught by her body’s changes. She decided to detransition, returning to her female identity.

She also decided to speak out. She has told her story in Florida, and in Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee and Utah. Republican lawmakers typically listen attentively, sometimes in tears. In March, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida relayed Ms. Cole’s story in his State of the State address, while she received a standing ovation.

Before long, Ms. Shupe, a 59-year-old Army veteran, was enmeshed in what she calls a “spider web” of activists opposing transgender rights.

“I had no limits on how far I would go to please people and help them win,” she said. “At every turn, I had people heaping praise on me, which motivated me to do more and more.”

But last year, she reaffirmed her female identity and returned to living as a woman. She renounced her work with conservative groups and, this year, gave hundreds of her emails with her former allies to The Times and other news outlets.

It later helped her petition an Oregon court to restore her birth sex and name on legal documents. The petition argued that she was not transgender, but suffered from a sexual perversion that caused “confusion” about her gender.

In one exchange with an alliance lawyer, Gary McCaleb, Ms. Shupe urged him to embrace a fringe theory that asserts that transgender women are actually men sexually aroused by imagining themselves as women.

Mr. McCaleb expressed worry about appearing bigoted, but then he asked Ms. Shupe to help present the idea in a palatable way, “because I suspect that it is indeed a fundamental contributor to this blight upon our human souls.”

Mr. McCaleb referred comment to an alliance spokesman, who did not answer questions about the email or the group’s work with Ms. Shupe.

Ms. Shupe also worked closely with Walt Heyer, 82, an activist who runs a website for people who regret transitioning and has connected some to conservative activists.

Ms. Cole and Ms. Hein are among the few activists who transitioned as minors, making their testimony particularly potent. They often speak in graphic detail about the changes to their bodies and their realization that they may never have children.

“I’m far too young to feel like I am a broken woman, but it’s hard to look in the mirror,” Ms. Cole told a Florida House committee in February.

Ms. Hein did not respond to requests for comment.

Asked about the group’s numbers, two other activists, Mr. Burleigh and Ms. Cattinson, said they believed they represented many people who have not gone public. “One person who regrets their transition, or has suffered severe damage to her health because of it, is one too many,” Ms. Cattinson said.

But interviews with others who have detransitioned suggest these activists’ views do not represent the full range of circumstances that drive people to detransition.

One, Darius Chirila, 26, said he had detransitioned not because his identity changed but because of side effects from hormones, uncertainty about taking them indefinitely, and discomfort with being visibly transgender in the South. He is considering transitioning again.

Matthew Donovan, 36, a sociology student at Columbia University, said they detransitioned partly because of community rejection and economic insecurity, and partly because they realized it was possible to be nonbinary, which fit better.

And Carey Callahan, 41, who detransitioned about nine years ago and opposes anti-transgender-rights policies, said the politicization of detransitioning had made it harder to improve care. She criticized conservative groups that view her life as “grist” for their political goals.

“I feel pretty awful that this has been turned into taking more health care away from people,” she said. “This has always been an issue of incomplete health care.”

Kirsten Noyes contributed research.



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