Check It Out: Canary in a coal mine

By Joan Janzen

The cartoon pictured two caged canaries in a coal mine. One canary said to the other, “If you really want to mess them up, lay down and have a nap.”

Dating back to 1911, it was a coal mining tradition to use canaries in coal mines to detect carbon monoxide and other toxic gases before they hurt humans. When 18-year-old Chloe Cole was being interviewed on Viva Frei Live, she described herself as “the canary in the coal mine.”

The young woman has stepped out to tell her story, even though she receives much opposition. “I try to leave my parents out of it because I get a lot of hate online, and I don’t want them to be harassed like I am,” she said.

She shares what she learned in her own personal life in order to let the older generation know what is really going on with the younger generation. Chloe noted the advent of social media has changed the way children grow up.

Chloe grew up in a very supportive family and described her childhood as pretty normal. She loved playing with dolls, wearing dresses, but having so many brothers rubbed off on her because she also liked playing video games and playing with toy trucks. “They used to call it being a tomboy, and there’s nothing wrong with it,” she said. “I wish I had known that when I started puberty early at the age of nine.”

She was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of seven, received medication at age ten, and was later diagnosed with autism. Prior to middle school, she moved to a different neighbourhood and turned to the internet to make friends. While online, she said the algorithm kept bombarding her with imagery and soft porn. She said she was experiencing “woke ideology” before she even knew there was such a thing. “I was hearing from 12-19-year-olds, and I noticed how closely knit these people seemed. That’s something I really wanted for myself,” she said.

About six months later, she wrote her parents a letter saying she was now their son. Her parents felt at a loss and sought out a professional child psychologist, who diagnosed their child with gender dysphoria on the first visit. Her parents were told adolescents are at high risk of committing suicide, and if they didn’t affirm their kid, it would get worse.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of questions about other factors that played a part,” she said. “They allowed me to do whatever I wanted without questioning me.” At age 13, she got a prescription for blockers and testosterone and began experiencing extreme hot flashes.

When she was 13, she had been groped in class, and because she didn’t want that to happen again, she began binding her chest. “It’s kind of brutal, and it actually caused some damage to my ribs that I still have today,” she explained. But she hadn’t told anybody about the groping incident because she didn’t think the school would have done anything.

After two years of wearing the super tight chest device in extremely hot California weather, she spoke to a therapist about wanting a double mastectomy. “About six months later, I got the operation,” she said. She was 15 years old, and the operation was covered by insurance.

Not only did they remove all her breast tissue, but they removed her nipples and placed them in a more masculine position. “It’s already a major operation and takes quite a toll on the body, but I can’t describe the healing process because of the nipple,” Chloe said. “It still hasn’t healed; it’s very upsetting.”

The emotional turmoil she experienced got progressively worse, and she assumed it was part of the recovery process. “But it wasn’t,” she said. Her school performance and attendance was at an all-time low, and she ended up dropping out several times.

About eleven months after her surgery, she attended a child psychology class where she learned about the bond between mother and baby during breastfeeding. “I had never thought about it, but during those lessons, I realized my ability to breastfeed was taken away from me, and I might not be able to have children,” Chloe said. “That was when everything fell apart.”

Chloe told her online friends about her change of heart. “It was pretty shocking to see people turn their backs on me like that. For a while, I lost all my friends online and in person. A lot of the support isn’t genuine. If you say the right thing by their standards they’ll give you support and love,” she said. “It’s hard to get any real help with this. I mostly got through with it on my own. Talking to people who are in the same situation helps. Having the support of my parents and brothers and sisters helps.”

So Chloe stayed quiet for a time and then realized it was wrong to not talk about her experience and her thoughts and feelings, which drove her to start speaking up.

“I realized I can’t be the only person who’s in this situation. And I’m not; I’m really not! Somebody has to speak up, and I don’t know who else will, so I’m kind of taking the responsibility upon myself,” she declared.

Chloe flashes her 100-watt smile and continues to say, “It’s always kind of been my thing to go against the grain. I know that not everybody is going to support what I do. I don’t care about that; I just want to get things done. I’m just going to continue talking about my experience, and I hope that it changes things.”

This canary in the coal mine is a courageous soul.