50 years ago it was illegal to be gay in Britain, now Britain has one of the biggest LGBTQ+ community’s in the world, along with the recent legalising of same-sex marriage in over 25 countries. With the help of celebrity’s like Caitlyn Jenner, Ellen DeGeneres and Laverne Cox, society as a whole has become a lot more accepting towards LGBTQ+ members. Particularly Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox who are both transgender and both went through their transiting in the public eye and now help others go through their own experience. Caitlyn Jenner shocked the world when she was on the cover of Vanity Fair in 2015 and told the world that she was transiting. She inspired hundreds to have the confidence to come out as transgender and made a much wider audience aware of the transgender community.
I wanted to know how one family handle a member of their family going through their transition, from the decisions to the end result.
Rebekah Bruesehoff was close to ending her life at 7 years old, a year later she came out as transgender. Rebekah, formally Ben, always felt anxious in school when she was put with all boys and even when she had to play a male character in school plays. Rebbekah’s mother, Jamie Bruesehoff noticed that her daughter didn’t feel comfortable: "She didn't enjoy anything, she had anxiety, was really distressed and depression came with that”. Rebekah always preferred more pinks than blues and more glitter objects along with girl toys. Just before Rebbekah’s 8th birthday, Rebekah was at crisis point and her parents realised that in her heart Rebekah was a girl in a boy’s body. Once the family had realised this, she started the process into becoming her true self.
In terms of the medical process, Rebekah takes tablets known as puberty blockers. The puberty blockers mean that the male hormones in her body will be ceased from developing, therefore meaning that her voice will not drop, facial hair will be prevented from developing along with other male puberty features. She will also begin cross hormones meaning that she will have female hormones meaning that during puberty Rebekah will go through female puberty as much as possible. In terms of surgery, legally Rebekah cannot have any until she is 18.
On March 1st, 2017, Jamie Bruesehoff posted this photo of Rebekah at a local rally for LGTBQ+ rights. This photo went viral in less than a day and caused a lot of discussing about Rebekah and the entire topic of transgender rights. At first all of the responses were positive however, the more popular the post became the more it invited negative opinions. Some even went as far to call it ‘child abuse’: one person said it was “encouraging mental illness”. However, the Bruesehoff made all of the attention positive as it made a much wider audience more aware of the transgender community and of Rebekah’s personal story, Jamie said that the photo going viral was “was really empowering”.
Stories like Rebekah’s have empowered a much bigger audience along with other personal stories from the documentary ‘I am Jazz’ which shares a very similar story to Rebekah’s, to Caitlyn Jenner feeling confident enough to come out at the age of 65. All of these inspiring stories have had a very big impact on the world and society as a whole and with more people aware of the transgender community and with President Trump making harmful changes towards the transgender community, more and more people are standing with the Transgender community in their fight to get their rights back; rights given by Barack Obama and stolen back by Trump. With people like Rebekah letting their stories be heard and making more people aware, it gives society a sense of hope.
