A BOY NAMED SOPHIE

She was born a male but because of a rare birth defect doctors pushed for immediate surgery to change her gender. They warned her parents that the procedure must remain a secret – even from their daughter. Now 37, Sophie Ottaway talks about how she accidentally found out the truth and the years it took for her to come to terms with it

- JESSAMY CALKIN

When Sophie Ottaway was a teenager she often had to go to the doctor. All she knew was that she had been born with medical complications, that her ovaries were damaged and had been removed, and from the age of 11 she had to take hormones.

But when she was 22, she went for a routine appointment for tonsillitis. Sophie hated medical appointments, so her mother always liked to accompany her on visits to the doctor. On this occasion her regular GP was on holiday and she saw a locum at the practice she went to near Hull in England.

The locum’s computer screen was directly in Sophie’s eyeline and on it were her medical notes. “Sophie Ottaway,” it began. “46XY chromosome. Prolapsed bowels through abdominal defect – bladder reconstruction, testes and phallus removed, vaginal construction . . .”

She had been born a boy.

“It was on the screen in bold font,” Sophie says. “I could read it from where I was sitting. And I looked at Mum and saw that she had clocked it, and then she clocked that I’d seen it. I never wanted to cause a scene in those days so I didn’t say anything, and Mum didn’t say anything – and we finished the consultation, I got my antibiotics and left. But then I hit the roof.