A 16-YEAR-OLD Queenslander who believes she is trapped in the body of a girl tried to get rid of her breasts by starving herself and wearing two bras.

Brisbane-based Family Court judge Michael Kent has given the girl permission to get testosterone injections to trigger male puberty.

She has been taking puberty blockers for the past year and been wearing a boy’s uniform at her coeducational high school for two years.

After suffering years of torment, she continues to “bind” her breasts by wearing two tight bras, and she finds it difficult to look at herself in the mirror.

The court was told that most of her friends are boys and her hobbies are drawing, kayaking, martial arts and gaming.

She will begin fortnightly testosterone therapy immediately, with the dosage increasing every six months. Her voice will deepen immediately and she will grow facial and body hair.

In less than two years, she can apply to have sex reassignment surgery and a mastectomy.

Justice Kent said if the teen was denied the testosterone jabs, there was a danger she may try to buy them on the black market.

During counselling, the girl told her therapist: “I had the mentality of a dude ... not the mentality of a girl.”

During puberty she confessed to being suicidal, believing she could not continue to live trapped in a female body. When she was younger she played with dolls but would pretend her doll was a boy.

The Family Court does not allow second-stage gender-changing hormones until puberty, and only about 25 per cent of children who show gender confusion go on to become transgender teens.

Parents of teen and pre-teen children used to have to go to the court for approval for the first stage of a sex reassignment process, the puberty blockers, but now they only need to go to court for the second stage.



More than 10 cases have gone before the court in the past two years, with children as young as 11 getting permission to take puberty blockers.



In one case, a 14-year-old with a rare XY genotype was allowed to have two testicles removed from her abdomen.