Story By: Alex Cope, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News

These transgender twins have told how they were taken to psychologists to “to cure them of homosexuality” as teenagers by their mum.

Twins Gabriela and Emma Espinosa made the revelations during an interview with the La Disidencia YouTube channel managed by the El Espectador newspaper in Colombia.

The pair of twins, who were born as boys, revealed that when they were growing up they wrongly thought they were gay, with Gabriela saying: “When we were fourteen my mum felt we were gay. We then thought we were gay. We had no f*cking idea what being a trans woman was.”

Every night they would dress in women’s clothes such as their sister’s “headbands, earrings, anything that represented femininity” before going to sleep.

Gabriela says the girls’ aunts found it “strange that we spent so long in the bathroom and told us we were very feminine”.

She added: “My sister and mother were very worried about us and took us to uncountable psychological appointments and therapies.”

Emma said: “However, it wasn’t to help us recognise who we were.”

Gabriela said: “It was so that the psychologists would ‘cure’ us of homosexuality as if we were damaged.”

Emma added: “Like John Smith, the pastor who swore he could cure homosexuality and ended up getting married to another man.”

The twins said their family on their father’s side would sit and pray with them “for hours” so that God would “cure them of homosexuality”, adding “luckily nothing worked”.

The pair say they were “openly gay” at school and that they were then accepted as gay at home on the condition that they did not wear women’s clothes.

Gabriela says that when she was 21, in 2015, she realised she was a trans woman and joined support groups for trans people in Colombia. She began making calls to find out about hormone treatments, with her twin accompanying her to the appointments before deciding she wanted to be a woman too.

The pair underwent hormone treatment together and then had their testicles removed to ensure their oestrogen was higher than their testosterone.

Emma says “being trans united us even more and saved our lives”.

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