Shiloh has known since he was four: he may have been born with a vulva but he's really a boy

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's first biological child has embarked on hormone treatment to block the development of female sexual characteristics according to a report by AFP. Shiloh is 11 but has known since he was four that the gender assigned to him at birth is not the one he identifies with.

Now, with puberty just around the corner, Shiloh's family has announced that the child will begin hormonal treatment to become the gender with which he identifies.

The family is also reportedly open to the possibility that Shiloh may undergo sex-change surgery in the future.

Shiloh has been very clear about his feelings from a very young age. And his parents have always publicly supported his transsexuality. In a 2010 interview with Vanity Fair, Angelina Jolie explained that Shiloh liked to dress as a boy and that this wasn't a problem for her or Brad.

Image via GETTY

'She likes tracksuits, she likes [regular] suits. So it’s a suit with a tie and a jacket and slacks, or a tracksuit. She likes to dress like a boy. She wants to be a boy. So we had to cut her hair. She likes to wear boys’ everything. She thinks she’s one of the brothers. Neither Brad nor I want to tell her how to act or feel. She has to find her own place,' said Jolie.

In 2008, Brad Pitt talked about the child during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, telling her that Shiloh only responded to the name John or Peter. Shiloh was born on 27 May in 2006 in Swakopmund, Namibia. His parents reserved the entire wing of a hospital and programmed the cesarean so that Shiloh could have Namibian – and not US – nationality.