At that age, I refused to wear any colour other than blue. I pleaded to have my hair cut short, properly short, like the boys. My parents would not let it be shorter than a bob. I am sparing you the photograph. It was truly dreadful.
From about the age of three, I was unmistakably a tomboy. I asked for toy soldiers and a football shirt for Christmas (Chelsea- Blue is the colour!). I was the only girl invited to a friend’s football party. I was the only girl who turned up dressed as a prince to a ‘princes and princesses’ party.
I read and wrote obsessively. I gravitated towards The Lord of the Rings, spy novels, all the familiar ‘boy’ stories. In every story, in every game, I imagined myself as a male protagonist. His name was always Theo, the boy version of my own.
If someone had told me then that it was possible to actually BE a boy, that there were drugs I could take to transform myself and my body, I would have seized the opportunity. And deeply regretted it later.
As I moved through my teenage years, I began to realise something crucial. I was perfectly capable of loving all of these things while still being a girl. I had despised the words ‘girl’ and ‘woman’ because I had bundled them together with every restrictive feminine stereotype I had encountered.
Today, I would have almost certainly been described as having ‘gender incongruence’ or ‘dysphoria’. And on that basis, I might have been offered medical interventions that risk infertility and amount to chemical castration. Then when I’d been brainwashed enough, I might have been pushed towards a double mastectomy or cross-sex hormones. The Pathways trial MUST BE STOPPED. #StopTheTrial
Mick Hartley 
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