'My gender was changed as a baby and kept secret for 22 years' - Sophie Ottaway

Doctors removed her penis and testicles and told her mother and father they should keep it a secret from Sophie and raise their son as a girl.

Sophie found out by accident on a visit to a GP surgery at the age of 22 that she wasn’t a girl and had originally been born a boy.

Now 37, Sophie, who appeared in a two part interview with Mark Dolan on GB News explained her decision to go public.

She said: "I think we're just reaching sort of the peak of the debate around sort of childhood gender affirming care and all that kind of thing. And it felt like David Reimer had a lot to offer years ago. David Reimer sadly isn't around anymore, but my experience is probably very similar to his."

David Reimer was born an identical twin boy in 1965. At the age of 8 months, David and his brother each had a circumcision which went badly wrong leaving David with little to no penis.

At the advice of psychologist John Money at Johns Hopkins University, David’s parents agreed to have him “sex reassigned” and made into a girl via surgical, hormonal, and psychological treatments.

Despite her ordeal, Sophie understands her parents decision to follow doctors' advice.

She told Dolan: "It would have been nice to have had choice. And part of the argument that I've got at the moment is, is informed consent.

"Do anything you want as long as it’s consent from an individual that is of age and of the right mind to be able to make that. You have to look at intent with anything. Do you know people do questionable things all the time.

"But if they mean well and they do. I mean I've spent 37 years of my life with them and and they've never done anything that's made me hurt. You know, you've got is that's a long time. I I mean, he's, he's a lovely bloke, as is my mum."

Sophie has refused further surgery to reinstate her original gender and is enraged with the NHS and her treatment.

She said: “I've disengaged completely with the National Health Service and the last I heard, I had a 25 centimetre mass that may or may not be the remnants of an old vaginal reconstruction that was put in my 2-day-old body.

“I decided I don't want to go down that route of progressing with those people. So I've used some alternative therapists to try and shrink this mass. I'm dead before I go anywhere near those services again.”

Sophie has spoken of her concern at young children now having easy access to puberty blockers.

She added: “I never want to take anything away from a child. I just think that looking at the new private sector gender clinics that are opening up on the market post Tavistock where we had two year mental health sort of investigations with the children before we got started.

I'm very worried now that children are going to be able to get their hands on puberty blockers very quickly.”

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW ABOVE