When Erin Brewer was 6 years old, she and her older brother were accosted by two grown men. She was raped. Her brother was not.
Brewer called herself a boy for the next several years because, she said, she felt vulnerable as a girl. She wore her brother’s hand-me-downs, used the boys bathroom at school, and asked her friends to call her “Timothy.” At home, her mother told her she could pretend to be a boy. Only when her school counselor stepped in did she start to feel strong as a girl and accept her body.
“She did her best to help me accept myself as a girl, and I am so thankful that I lived in a time when that was the normal way that a transgender identity was treated,” the 58-year-old mother of three told The Daily Signal.
A current case before the U.S. Supreme Court could decide whether counselors like the one who helped Brewer can do the same…