Transgender children say their identity is not about 'what's between your legs'

'Something felt wrong inside. Being a boy is a bit stressful'

A young person who identifies as the opposite gender to her biological sex, with her family at home

A young transgender person has said identity is "not about what's between your legs" in one of the first interviews with users of the UK's only specialist gender development clinic.

Colin, a 16-year-old who was born biologically female but lives as a boy, is one of the 1,400 young people referred to the Tavistock Centre in London for gender identity - a referral figure that has doubled over the past 12 months.

Another interviewee first had treatment for gender dysphoria at nine years old.

The interviews come in the same week that Barack Obama said US schools would be required to allow pupils to use whichever gender toilet they identified with under a new federal law.

Colin, who is from Brighton, said he first asked his mother if he could be a boy aged three years old.

"Basically gender is what's been your ears, not what's been your legs," he told Radio Four's Today programme.

"I feel it's something really innate within you, your gender. It has no correlation to your body."

When asked whether having a disorder of some kind was now "fashionable" or "attention-seeking" behaviour among young people for a feeling which would simply have been "put up with" by previous generations, Colin said he felt much happier.

"Well, I think if I'd wanted to do something for attention then there's plenty of things that I could do for attention that would have been more easy and less emotionally and physically painful," he said.

"Logically it would seem easier to continue life as a woman. I'm happier like this than I've ever been."

His words were echoed by Poppy, a girl born as a boy called Louis who transitioned at age nine.

"Something felt wrong inside. Being a boy's a bit stressful," she said.

"I'm not sure [why] but it's weird, a weird feeling."

Research on transgender identity and gender dysphoria first began in the 1970s and started out trying to help children become comfortable with their biological sex rather than allowing them to transition.

Today young people may have access to hormone treatments to delay puberty until they know which gender they wish to live in as an adult, as well as non-hormone based treatments such as chest binding.