A girl who underwent hormone therapy and a double mastectomy after she became convinced she was really a boy has told her story of why she was wrong.
‘Kate’, not her real name, first became uncomfortable in her female body aged 12.
She transitioned in her late teens but soon realised she had made a mistake.
Stereotype
As she progressed through school, Kate increasingly found she didn’t match a typical “girlie stereotype”, and would “lie in bed and wonder what was wrong” with her.
After investigating her feelings online, she became convinced she was transgender.
It felt easier to say: ‘I’m not fitting in with girls because I was born in the wrong body.’
In 2012, when she was still in her teens, her GP referred her to a gender clinic after which she began taking testosterone. Three years later, she had a double mastectomy.
‘Fraud’
“At first, it felt like the answer to my problems. But after a year or so, the old feelings of not fitting in began to plague me again. I still felt like a fraud.
“After around 18 months, I began to realise I’d been changing my gender for all the wrong reasons – it wasn’t because I wanted to be a boy, it was because I felt uncomfortable with my female body.”
“The more I thought about it, it wasn’t about wanting to be a boy”, she added, “I just didn’t like what it meant to be a woman.
“I hated that we were expected to settle down and have kids. It felt easier to say: ‘I’m not fitting in with girls because I was born in the wrong body.”
‘I am free’
Now 24, Kate has ‘detransitioned’ and is now living as a woman.
“Despite my scars, for the first time in years I am free from this obsession of trying to be someone I’m not”, adding: “Fortunately, the process hasn’t affected my fertility.”
At Kate’s request, we have not used her real name.