Louisville’s Transgender Students: Henry Brousseau and the Question of Pronouns

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Atherton High School is moving toward adopting an anti-discrimination policy that addresses a question: How should schools treat students whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth?

But countless transgender students attend Louisville schools that aren’t Atherton—and questions remain. The restroom question that Atherton is addressing is just one.

All this week, we’re going to look at what it means to be a transgender student in Louisville—through the eyes of some of those students.

Brousseau came out at school before coming out to his parents. That led to a next step.

“They [the school] did make me tell my parents before they would be allowed to call me Henry instead of Hannah,” Brousseau says.

For transgender students, pronouns— him and her—are a big deal. And what kids and teachers know about a particular student before they come out can make it difficult to “pass” as the opposite sex assigned at birth.

This is what Brousseau experienced. For him, it was tough after coming out freshman year because many of the kids and teachers at Collegiate had already known Brousseau since kindergarten.