At Disney’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, anti-trans advocates faced a setback as their proposed measure failed to pass, marking the climax of Disney’s most significant and contentious proxy contest to date.
Today, amidst a plethora of proposals from both conservative and liberal factions, Chloe Cole, a 19-year-old prominent in her advocacy against “gender-affirming care” for minors, took the floor. She implored Walt Disney Co. shareholders to endorse a proposition demanding the company cover expenses for individuals opting to detransition.
“Disney funds gender transition but overlooks detransitioning care,” Ms. Cole articulated during the meeting, alleging gender-based discrimination under federal regulations.
“Disney is akin to Ursula, silencing thousands of little Ariels worldwide, promising unattainable dreams,” Ms. Cole asserted passionately. “Legal battles are imminent, sir,” Ms. Cole said addressing the board.
The board swiftly nullified all proposals, including Ms. Cole’s, citing particular interest on the part of the proponents in its rejection of the National Legal and Policy Center’s proposal.
In a phone call with The Epoch Times, Paul Chesser, director of the Corporate Integrity Project at The National Legal and Policy Center said that Ms. Cole was limited to two minutes to present their proposal.
“Most of the votes went to large institutional shareholders that are holding it on behalf of other people and their retirement funds. Blackrock and Vanguard and Fidelity. They have the majority of the votes so they usually align with the company on various shareholder motions.” Mr. Chesser told The Epoch Times there is no recourse to challenge the vote.
“It’s only a matter of time before some employee comes back and says ‘Look you deceived me, your policies deceived me, your health insurers, care providers who run through your insurance, you all deceived me that I can change from being a woman to a man or a man to a woman and now I’m permanently mutilated.’
“They set up this whole discrimination paradigm, you can’t discriminate against all these micro categories under LGBTQIA and racial considerations, so you gotta cover every single micro category under whatever gender identity or, well here’s one you’re not covering,” Mr. Chesser said speaking on the lack of protection for detransitioners.
“The left has had all kinds of proposals similar to ours. They are always constantly saying there’s a pay gap, women get paid less than men, minorities get paid less than whites and they have all these proposals.”
Their approach in addressing the shareholders was two-fold: “Speak up for the detransitioners and illustrate and ridicule their own discrimination paradigm they have established.”
These debates unfolded against the backdrop of a broader struggle within Disney concerning the board’s composition. CEO Bob Iger quashed activist investor Nelson Peltz’s bid, putting an end to a protracted battle over the company’s direction.
Ms. Cole recognized for her activism as a detransitioner, has traversed multiple states, underwritten by Do No Harm, to share her narrative of transitioning and subsequent disillusionment with the medical system.
She previously testified before Congress about her experience of undergoing a double mastectomy following a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. During her testimony, she shared her challenges with puberty and recalled confiding in her parents about feeling like a boy. “I didn’t need to be lied to. I needed compassion. I needed to be loved. I needed to be given therapy that helped me work through my issues, not affirmed my delusion that transforming into a boy, it would solve all my problems.”
Detransition and experiences of regret following medical treatment, although statistically uncommon, have received significant attention in recent political discourse, impacting legislative efforts related to transgender individuals.
While Florida lawmakers recently failed to pass legislation mandating coverage for detransition treatments, similar endeavors have been made in other states. However, Ms. Cole remains among the few to have pursued legal action against a medical provider, filing a lawsuit against her former doctors and insurance provider for medical malpractice.
Over 20 states have enacted laws to prohibit “gender-affirming care” for minors, with five states considering it a felony to transition minors medically. In June 2023 a federal judge in Florida temporarily blocked the state’s efforts after Florida’s medical licensing boards embraced prohibitions on “gender-affirming care” for minors, a stance further reinforced by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who recently endorsed a comparable ban ratified by the state legislature.
Outlined in their lawsuit against the state of Florida, four families asserted that these bans infringed upon their constitutional right to equal protection, as well as impinged upon parents’ authority to determine medical interventions for their offspring.
Similarly, several other states including Ohio have filed lawsuits opposing a ban on “gender-affirming care” for minors.
