In the quiet suburbs of Marin County, California, Erin Friday’s world shattered one ordinary afternoon in late 2020. As a lifelong Democrat and successful attorney, Erin had always prided herself on being open-minded and supportive.
But when her 13-year-old daughterâonce a “girly girl” who loved pink dresses, sparkles, and fairy talesâsuddenly declared she was a boy, everything changed. “It started in seventh grade,” Erin later recounted in a 2023 interview with The Daily Signal.
A comprehensive sex-education class at her public school had introduced the concept of “gender identity” through handouts listing dozens of options and diagrams like the “genderbread person,” suggesting a child could have a female body but a male brain. The seed was planted.
Soon, Erin’s daughterâlet’s call her P. for privacyâwas using a male name and pronouns at school, without her parents’ knowledge. Teachers had quietly “socially transitioned” her, creating a secret double life that pitted P. against her family.
The pressure mounted quickly. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, P. spent hours online, diving into transgender-themed videos and forums filled with stories of teens “saved” by puberty blockers and hormones. “She was depressed, barely eating, and convinced her body was the enemy,” Erin shared in a 2024 Daily Wire podcast.
School counselors urged immediate affirmation, warning of suicide risks if they didn’t comply. An affirming psychologist echoed the alarm: Use male pronouns or risk a “dead daughter.” Erin and her husband felt corneredâtrapped in an echo chamber of one-sided advice from educators, doctors, and social media.
Pre-2022 Twitter (now X) amplified this relentlessly, with pro-transition content dominating feeds while dissenting voices on risks or alternatives were shadow-banned or labeled “hate speech.”
Studies later showed platforms like Twitter suppressed terms like “detransition,” limiting visibility to just a fraction of users.
Then, on October 27, 2022, Elon finalized his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. What followed was a seismic shift. Elon, a self-described “free speech absolutist,” began dismantling the platform’s strict content moderation. He relaxed rules on “hateful conduct,” including protections against misgendering, and rolled back shadow-bans on gender-critical discussions.
No longer throttled, stories of regret and recovery flooded users’ timelines. Elon himself amplified the conversation, reposting detransitioner content and vowing in 2023 to “lobby to criminalize” irreversible youth transitions he called a “terrible lie.” In a 2025 Joe Rogan Experience episode, he claimed X’s changes had contributed to a “dip in trans-identifying kids” by exposing the “woke mind virus.”
For Erin, scrolling late one night in early 2023, this pivot was a lifeline. Her feed, once a monolith of âaffirmationâ, now surfaced raw testimonies from detransitioners. The post that stopped her in her tracks was from Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old from California’s Central Valley who had gone public just months earlier.
Chloe’s journey mirrored P.’s in haunting ways: At 12, she too felt trapped in her body, influenced by online peers and a sense of not fitting in. By 13, Chloe started puberty blockers; at 14, testosterone deepened her voice and squared her jaw; at 15, in June 2020, she underwent a double mastectomy, waking up “numb and bandaged, staring at a concave chest where breasts used to be.” “I was mutilated for life,” Chloe wrote in her October 2022 blog post, viewed millions of times post-Elon. She detransitioned at 17 after a profound realizationâtriggered by psychedelics and a turn to Christianityâthat her dysphoria stemmed from undiagnosed autism, anxiety, and the isolation of pandemic lockdowns, not an innate “wrong body.”
âShe woke up numb and bandaged, staring at a concave chest where breasts used to be. âI was mutilated for life,â Chloe Cole wrote.â â Chloe Cole, describing her double mastectomy at age 15
Chloe’s thread linked European studies, including the 2024 Cass Review, showing 80-90% of gender-dysphoric youth resolve naturally without intervention if given time and therapy. “The rush to affirm is a medical scandal,” Chloe testified to Congress in July 2023, her words echoing across X with Elon’s boosts. Erin devoured it all at 2 a.m., tears streaming. “It was like sunlight breaking through fog,” she told Fox News Digital in October 2023. The next morning, she canceled P.’s blocker appointment. No hormones. No surgery. Instead, they pulled P. from the California school system, where secret transitions were policy, and sought trauma-informed therapy exploring root causes like puberty anxiety and peer influence.
âI read Chloeâs story and the studies at 2 a.m. The next morning I canceled the blocker appointment.â â Erin Friday, California mother
It wasn’t easy. P. ran away multiple times, consumed by the “gender cult” narrative that non-affirmation meant parental hate. The school even reported Erin to Child Protective Services, unfounded but terrifying. “Everyone was against usâteachers, doctors, even friends,” Erin reflected in a 2024 Megyn Kelly Show appearance. But Erin persisted, filling their home with books like Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage and Maria Keffler’s Desist, Detrans, and Detox. She connected with Our Duty, the international parent network she now co-leads, where thousands share similar battles against “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria”âa social contagion surging 4,000% in U.S. clinics over a decade.
By mid-2022âabout 18 months inâP. began to outgrow the gender distress. The dysphoria lifted as her hormones naturally balanced. She outgrew the phase, rediscovering her love for art and girlhood joys. Today, at 17, P. is thriving: hiking with friends, laughing freely, her body whole and unscarred. “Mom gave me space to just be me,” she confided, crediting the “real stories” on X for her clarity. No regret. No lost fertility. Just a California teenage girl, unbroken.
Erin’s victory isn’t isolated. Chloe Cole reports “almost daily” messages from parents thanking X for surfacing her story.
Letâs be clear, the visibility exploded after Elon Musk acquired Twitter. It never would have happened if he did not buy the platform, and countless lives of children would have been harmed.
âElon didnât do it on purpose for us, but by freeing the bird he gave parents the full picture and the information we needed to protect our kids.â â Erin Friday, Daily Wire, March 2024
The new X, allowed Chloeâs posts to gain millions of impressions. Elon’s platform, which many thought was flawed and chaotic, became a beacon: a space where suppressed truths could breathe. “Elon didn’t do it for us,” Erin told the Daily Wire in March 2024, “but by freeing the bird, he gave parents the full picture.”
WHAT'S UP đ by Gail Alfar 