Teenager's hopes to change gender

The minimum age for gender re-assignment therapy is 16 years old

A 15-year-old girl from Somerset is waiting until she is old enough to undergo surgery to change gender.

The girl who identifies as a boy hopes to begin testosterone treatment when she is 16.

She says even if she doesn't have full surgery her greatest wish is to live her life as a man and be accepted that way by the rest of the world.

So far only people close to her know about her situation as she gets through this important stage in her life.

Wrong body

The girl, who doesn't want to be identified, says she has instinctively felt she was in the wrong body since she was six years old.

"I just didn't feel like I fitted in with other girls, because I had an older sister and I saw all the things that she did and it just didn't fit in with how I felt.

"I sort of copied things because I didn't know how to act as a girl and I didn't know what to do so I took guidance from her for a few years."

At the moment, she likes to be called a boy's name she has given herself.

She also dresses like boy and her inner circle of friends and family treat her as male.

"I can't just see myself as female, I don't think life would be worth living if I had to live it as a female. I've seen pictures of me and even looking at myself in the mirror as a female and I don't think it's me, I think it's someone else."

She said as she was growing up, she would learn how to be more feminine and copy her sister, when it came to how to behave like a girl, but she felt as if she was going through the motions.

"It was sort of seeing my sister doing all these girlie things, I'd sort of copy it in a way because I didn't know how to act as a girl and I didn't know what to do, so I sort of took guidance from her for a few years."

Hormone therapy

She is now 15 and is considering life-changing questions of gender re-assignment surgery.

The first step would be to apply for testosterone treatment which imitates male puberty.

"In the UK you cannot get hormones until you are 16 years old but when I am 16 I do hope to get testosterone and maybe start the process of becoming a man."

As for the rest of the surgery, she is still undecided whether or not to go through with it, because it is such a big step and would be a long process.

"I'm reading a lot about it and thinking a lot about it but it's not a decision I can make right now, I need to choose what I want and it might be later in life after I've gone through my hormone therapy and psychiatry to try and decide."

College life

She says she has got some support, from her friends and a few of the teachers who know about her situation but most importantly her mother.

"We've always been quite close so it's quite a hard thing for her to go through because she's always seen me as her daughter but I'm not. It hasn't broken us apart at all but it hasn't made us closer, I think we're still where we were."

She has also spoken to others who have gone through surgery.

"I just think that things will get clearer for me in the future and things will be provided and I will speak to people. I like speaking to other transgender people, who have gone through what I'm going through and who can tell me what the advantages and disadvantages are."

In the meantime her immediate future is beginning college life in the next 12 months.

"What's more important than any surgery is that people see me as I see myself, and I look forward to that really, being with a lot of people with not all of them knowing.

"I love being in a room of people who know me as a boy but don't actually know that I was actually born a girl, and I think if I go to college that's actually what I'll get, so I look forward to that."