Iwas always very masculine when I was growing up telling my mum I didn’t want to wear dresses, but I didn’t have the words to explain what I felt until I was 11. That year I came out as a trans boy to my family, who were shocked and confused at first but gave me unwavering support. A few months later I told my school, in a letter to my form teacher. The very first thing that happened was he went to the headteacher who immediately called my mum, asking her if she knew I was trans and if she was OK with it. I wasn’t included in the conversation at all. I can remember crying to my form teacher about how much it meant to me to change my name on the register, but the headteacher said I might upset the younger pupils – by now I was in my final year of primary school. I had always loved sport and won all the awards for football, rugby, tennis and I was always one of the boys. But when I came out, everybody rejected me and I didn’t feel confident playing sport any more. When I started secondary school I was allowed to use the disabled toilet but the lock on the door didn’t work and it didn’t feel safe. I was badly bullied and my mental health plummeted so I stopped attending and was home schooled for a year. Now I’ve joined a 14-16-year-olds GCSE equivalent group at my local college. I’d hoped things would be different there but people still laugh and make up rumours about me. My secondary school counsellor always said to me she’d deal with my bullies “by the book”, but that really meant she was worried about red flags for Ofsted rather than reassuring me that it wasn’t OK to abuse me just because I’m trans. Transphobic bullying is rampant and I think 100% this guidance only fuels that fire. If I’d been able to exist in my school as a trans kid from the beginning, nobody would have complained because I wasn’t asking for anything special. The only reason other kids saw the difference was because it was pointed out to them. It’s inexcusable to say a child needs to have permission to experiment with their name or wardrobe. Cis kids do that all the time without their parents being informed. The politicians behind this guidance don’t know what it is to be trans, they’ve never listened to a trans voice so they don’t know what damage it will cause.