Rebekah Bruesehoff answered the back door of her home like the 12-year-old girl she is: softly, with a little nod and a quiet mumble somewhere between “hi” and “hello.” Then she floated away, dancing sideways toward the kitchen and her mother and the warmth of the house.

She wore black leggings and a pink fleece with a fluffy pink hood, her wispy blond hair tied in a loose ponytail. She did not especially want to be here. A flu last week had left her tired. A night of science homework lay ahead.

On nights like this she wishes things were simpler. She wishes she could be just another girl instead of the girl she is, the famous one, the girl whose YouTube video got 9.3 million hits, the girl whom a British newspaper calls the youngest transgender activist in the world.

“Do you get tired talking about this sometimes?” said Rebekah’s mother, Jamie Bruesehoff, 36.

“Yeah,” Rebekah said. “It can get hard talking about when I wasn’t myself. Other times I just want to be a normal kid. I just want to go to school. I have to do all that homework.”

This Friday, the state of New Jersey began to do its part to help Rebekah be the person she is and always was. That’s when the state Department of Health began posting a form on its website allowing transgender, non-binary and intersex people to change their birth certificates from the gender they were assigned at birth to the gender they live.

The move comes as the result of a law signed in June by Gov. Phil Murphy. It is named the “Babs Siperstein Law” for the transgender advocate who pushed for it, and who in 2009 became the first openly transgender member of the Democratic National Committee. The law previously passed the legislature twice, but then-Gov. Chris Christie vetoed it both times.

This time, Rebekah Bruesehoff joined other transgender people to lobby for the bill.

“She probably was the most impactful” person to testify on the issue, said Aaron Potenza, a spokesman for Garden State Equality, which advocates for the state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. “She is so young, and she was able to speak from the heart. She’s really, really smart. And she’s adorable too.”

Rebekah, whose life as a girl belies her male genitalia, will change the gender on her birth certificate from “M” to "F.” Nonbinary people, whose gender is neither exclusively female nor male, and intersex people, whose bodies do not fit traditional gender definitions, will be able to mark “X.”

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In the past, people hoping to change the gender on their birth certificates were required to obtain a letter from a therapist attesting to the fact that they experience gender dysphoria, historically defined as the distress arising when a person’s gender assigned at birth does not match that individual’s gender identity. They also were required to produce proof of surgery to change their anatomy.

But what intelligent society requires people who know who they are to prove it with surgery?

“Kids aren’t getting surgery. That’s not a thing,” Jamie Bruesehoff said. “She may never have surgery. That’s entirely up to her, and that’s an adult decision we’re not going to think about now.”

Besides, being transgender doesn’t necessarily cause a person distress. What causes distress is a transgender person trying to live a happy life surrounded by people who bully them, discriminate against them or, in the worst possible cases, murder them.

“The world isn’t a very safe place for trans people,” Bruesehoff said.

Accidental activist

Rebekah Bruesehoff became an internationally famous transgender activist by accident. It was 2017, and Rebekah and her mother traveled from their home in Vernon, Sussex County, to Jersey City to protest the Trump administration’s decision to rescind rules protecting transgender youth in schools.

About 200 people attended the protest, Jamie said. She took pictures of Rebekah holding a sign, which read, “I’m the SCARY transgender person the MEDIA warned you about.”

Rebekah was looking extra cute, with a big smile and her blond hair dyed purple. Jamie posted the photos to social media thinking a few people, mostly family members and friends, might see them.

Millions of people saw the pictures. Activists in the LGBT community reposted them, seeing in Rebekah a symbol that their movement is kind, friendly and beyond rebuke.

“I love Rebekah Bruesehoff so much!!” a woman identified as Jenna from Pennsylvania said on Twitter. “She is so inspiring!”

People who oppose rights for transgender people saw the pictures too, and were frightened by them. One conservative person who posts on Twitter under the handle “Church of Britain” wrote that “Just because my father dresses me in female clothing dies (sic) not mean I consent to permanent irreversible mutilation if (sic) my genitalia.”

The post is incorrect in two respects. The decision to dress as a girl is entirely Rebekah’s, she and her parents said; and she has not yet considered any surgery.

Mean Tweets were the least of the family’s problems. Some people contacted the Bruesehoffs to issue death threats against the entire family, Jamie said. Someone called the state's child welfare agency to allege that Jamie and her husband Christopher, a pastor at a local Lutheran church in Vernon, were giving Rebekah hormones and forcing their son to be a girl.

The accusation was ludicrous, the family said. Regardless, workers with the Child Protection and Permanency agency were required to visit the home.

“It was really scary,” Jamie Bruesehoff said. “Nobody wants someone knocking at your door trying to decide if you’re abusing your kid or not.”

This is the kind of treatment that makes psychologists and social scientists worry. More than 41 percent of transgender adults have attempted suicide, a rate nine times higher than the national average, according to the American Institute for Suicide Prevention.

But trans children who receive support from their families and friends can buck the trend. For example, transgender children who can live openly as transgendered by using their chosen names experience 71 percent fewer symptoms of severe depression, and report 65 percent fewer thoughts of suicide, according to research published last year by Stephen Russell, chair of the human development and family sciences department at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Before I transitioned I couldn’t be myself. It didn’t feel right. I felt lost,” said Rebekah, who publicly transitioned from being a boy to a girl at age 8. “When I transitioned I learned that others didn’t have all the supportive family members and school that I had.”

The life of a famous pre-teen activist isn’t always so difficult. Last summer Rebekah gave a speech to 31,000 people inside NRG Stadium in Houston for a youth gathering by the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

“I wasn’t that nervous,” she said. “I knew they would be very supportive no matter if I messed up.”

Likewise, the momentous event of changing Rebekah’s birth certificate will be no big deal. On Friday morning, Jamie planned to search the state health department’s website for the required form. She will pay $6. She will print it, fill it out, and place it in an envelope. She will walk to the end of her driveway, place the envelope inside her mailbox, and flick up the little metal flag.

From there, the employees of our government will do their part to help Rebekah Bruesehoff live the life she was meant to live.