Finding Cee Cee: Surviving school through a transgender transition

Editor's note: This story was first published at RGJ.com in March 2015.

Shanna Ott sits in a silent room, watching the front doorway from her plush armchair, waiting.

The winter is warm and the door open, letting the late sunlight stretch across the laminate floor. Scar, the family's pit bull, curls on the couch, perking up when he hears who's coming.

A 9-year-old girl walks in, giving her mother the usual greeting on the way to her bedroom. But a smile wraps her face as she walks from doorway to doorway.

"Cee Cee," says Ott, beckoning her daughter back. "So, what happened today?"

Squeezing into the armchair, Cee Cee picks at the jelly beans in her mother's hand and gushes over a boy she found out waited for her at the school dance.

"Shut. Up," replies Ott, asking about the boy as they gossip, giggling.

Ott pauses.

"Easy with the boys now, you hear," adds Ott, repeating what any mother would say to her fourth-grader.

But the words weigh heavier on Ott, as they often do. She can't escape the fear of what faces her daughter.

"OK," replies Cee Cee, smiling behind fingertips pressed against her lips, the purple polish starting to chip away.

Cee Cee may be a girl, but her body is that of a boy's.

It's simple enough to say, but the family's six-year struggle to this realization – and acceptance – was anything but. And it has come at great costs to the family.

"Transgender. I didn't even know that word six years ago," Ott says.

The family has guarded Cee Cee's transgender identity all these years. But there's only one way to end fear of the unknown, which has led to the segregation and discrimination of transgender students in Washoe County public schools, violating federal law and putting schools at risk of costly lawsuits.

And that's to share Cee Cee's story, says Ott, explaining her family's reason for coming forward as the Washoe County School District attempts to quash longstanding practices.

"People are just scared," says Ott, thinking of what's resulted for Cee Cee and all the transgender children she's come to know. "They're just people."

Ott has since become a self-taught expert on transgender, a condition only recognized three years ago as "gender dysphoria" by the American Psychiatric Association. The organization previously labeled it a disorder for people to adamantly believe they are the opposite gender of their anatomy.

The stats are always on Ott's mind.

Forty-one percent of transgender people attempt suicide, according to a national survey by the University of California, Los Angeles and American Foundation for Suicide Prevention in 2014. The rate rises to 50 percent for transgender people harassed in school or openly known to be transgender.

At Cee Cee's Washoe County elementary school, only the principal knows she's anatomically a boy. All of the students and staff know her as a girl and nothing else. She's careful to keep it that way.

"She keeps everyone at an arm's length," says Ott, well aware Cee Cee has no close friends.

The principal's compliance was a coincidence, a luck of the draw.

Other transgender students in Washoe County School District haven't been so lucky. Neither was Cee Cee at her previous school.

Washoe students have been forced to use private bathrooms, interrogated for proof of their identified gender and not addressed by their name aligned with that gender.

The inconsistency results from the district leaving principals to their own devices when faced with transgender students. Principals' resulting choices have put the district at risk for litigation and loss of funding for breaking the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in schools.

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READ OUR OTHER STORY SHOWING CEE CEE IS NOT ALONE AND MEET SOME OF RENO'S OTHER TRANSGENDER CHILDREN.

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The district already paid out a $451,000 settlement in a federal lawsuit alleging it broke that law, setting a national precedent.

But practices are changing, officials contend. The Washoe School Board adopted a regulation in February telling staff how they must treat transgender students, which probably number about 200 in a district of 63,000 students. National statistics estimate that 0.3 percent of the general population is transgender.

Washoe's regulation is the first of its kind among Nevada school districts, extending the treatment granted to Cee Cee at her school to all of Washoe's transgender students.

The district's progress prompted Cee Cee and her family to reveal what's long been kept quiet, shared with only a few friends and family.

"You can have a very bad backlash," Ott said of the harassment, homelessness and alienation that leads to a transgender suicide rate nine times the national average. "I think that people are scared."

"If you just say 'I'm transgender,' and get it out there, then people can come to you with the questions," said Ott. "And that's what we hope to accomplish, just take the worry away."

Still sitting in the chair together, Ott asks Cee Cee what to remember if someone finds out she's transgender and tries to harm her.

"The principal's on my side," answers Cee Cee, legs curled beneath a teal skirt dotted with butterflies.

"And what do you say?"

"Talk to the palm," says Cee Cee, raising her right hand as if someone's face was there.

But Ott knows it's more serious than that, remembering the scars of what is still a recent memory.

Cee Cee was born Connor, the youngest of three children with an older sister and brother.

By age 3, Connor was getting into mom's lipstick and wearing a wig he found in the house, says Ott, who was recently divorced at the time and sharing custody. This continued for a couple of years. McKaylynn, Connor's older sister by four years, remembers coming home one day to see that Connor had emptied her entire closet on the floor.

"That's a little weird. What's going on?" says Ott, recalling her thoughts at the time.

She chose not to fight Connor's fondness for everything feminine while at home. "With a 4-year-old, you pick your battles. Maybe he's gay. Whatever."

When the family talks about those early days, they use "he" instead of "she," "Connor" instead of "Cee Cee." It's what many transgender families do, realizing they have a new child, according to Mary Minten, one of only a few Reno therapists serving transgender people and their families.

Ott has a daughter in Cee Cee, but she lost the son she birthed, named and raised.

"You have these expectations. Every parent does," says Ott, who remembers mourning the loss of Connor and questioning herself. "What did I do wrong?"

By age 5, the behaviors continued and Ott fought them. She dressed Connor in boys clothes for school. He resisted so much that Ott switched to afternoon kindergarten just so there'd be enough time to dress Connor.

"When she was Connor, it was horrible," recalls McKaylynn. "He kicked, screamed, fought."

"I was sad," says Cee Cee, remembering those days as she leafs through a book of photos, previously framed and hanged.

Kindergarten photos show a boy with a short Mohawk.

Baby photos depict a bald baby boy.

"You were a fat baby," Ott says.

"Now, I'm a skinny person," Cee Cee replies.

Midway through kindergarten, Ott became worried for Connor's health. He refused to wash his genitals, wouldn't touch them. He hated his penis.

Ott brought Connor to the doctor.

"He went in sparkly shoes and a sun dress," Ott clearly remembers.

The doctor asked Connor what was wrong.

"I don't want my penis. I want you to cut it off," he replied.

The doctor told Connor to leave it alone for now.

"The doctor finally gave us a name, and it's transgender," says Ott, who got some advice of her own.

"Let her be. It's better for her. Trying to keep Connor will cause more problems than it's worth," the doctor said.

But Connor continued kindergarten a boy. That changed over summer break.

"The first time we took her to the store and bought her girl clothes, she smiled from ear to ear," Ott remembers. "It was the most pink, frilly, sequin thing I have ever seen in my life, but it made her happy. And that changed everything."

Ott put Connor's clothes in the garage.

"It was just – she smiled," says Ott, not realizing until then that Connor was unhappy. She could see it in all the photos leading up to that point. "He just fake smiled."

Nine months later, the boxes in the garage were gone, given away.

But the real torments had yet to turn up.

Ott home-schooled Cee Cee from first through second grade, which was simple enough.

During this time though, Cee Cee's father gave up all custody. Ott's mother and other family cut her out.

"Everyone dropped off the face of the planet," Ott says.

About 57 percent of transgender individuals alienated by family members have attempted suicide, according to the UCLA survey. Alienation is common, as is homelessness, depression and doctors refusing service, according to Katherine Loudon, the school district's counseling administrator. Older children refusing to repress their gender identity are kicked out of their home and labeled unaccompanied youth by the school system.

"They're so vulnerable," Loudon said.

Cee Cee went to a charter school for third grade. Ott explained to staff that her daughter is transgender, and they agreed to keep her condition confidential.

Halfway through the school year, Cee Cee's health deteriorated.

"She stopped eating. She stopped drinking," says Ott.

The school required that Cee Cee use a private bathroom, something Ott didn't know. The other students would tease Cee Cee for it then run into the girls' bathroom because she couldn't follow.

Cee Cee stopped eating and drinking at school to avoid the bathroom. She continued the behavior at home, fearing she'd need to use the bathroom at school the next morning.

"It was a big, vicious cycle," says Ott, who brought her daughter to the doctor. "Her eyes had gotten really sunken in."

The doctor said Cee Cee would have to be admitted if it continued.

Cee Cee's bathroom arrangements aren't rare for local transgender students, said family therapist Mary Minten. Neither are the dangerous results,

"People in (Washoe) schools sometimes didn't get it," Minten said.

Ott went to the school, bringing Brock Maylath, the president and co-founder of Reno's Transgender Allies Group. At the time, his group was lobbying the school district to adopt a policy protecting transgender students from discrimination and segregation into private bathrooms.

Ott's family and Maylath talked school staff into letting Cee Cee use the girls bathroom.

"They really try to make you feel like it's fine (to use a separate bathroom), when it's not," Ott says. "My kid doesn't have a medical problem."

Learning of these instances led the school district to adopt its transgender regulations last month, according to Loudon. Schools were handling these students in all kinds of ways.

"It kept coming up. Everyone had the best of intentions," but some school leaders made the wrong decisions, Loudon said.

"Some people work on fear of just not knowing," adds district counseling specialist Keeli Killian, aware of the misconception that transgender is a choice or rooted in sexual perversion.

"We know the children, and they're the ones in danger," Loudon said.

The district has been a slow learner, says Maylath, who lobbied officials for a year to adopt regulations protecting transgender students, without response.

"The path to the courthouse has been clearly marked," he told the Washoe School Board at its May 27, 2014 meeting, reminding the elected leaders of Derek Henkle.

The former Galena High School student was outed as gay by classmates and lassoed in the school parking lot. The students threatened to drag Henkle behind their truck, according to Henkle's federal lawsuit filed in 2000 and accusing the district of sex discrimination.

Henkle transferred to another school, where the principal told Henkle to not reveal his sexuality. Physical assaults continued. The district settled before trial for $451,000, getting national attention.

"It is not too late to act," Maylath told the school board in May.

Before Maylath could exit the building that day, a member of the district's legal counsel was in his ear, assuring him a regulation was in the works.

"We're trying to do the right thing," Loudon said in an interview soon after the school board adopted the regulation last month. "This is not something that's easy for families."

It's also a question of doing the legal thing. Title IX, a Nixon-era federal law, prohibits schools that receive federal funds from engaging in sex discrimination or harassment of students. Henkle sued for violation of this law, but questions have long surrounded its extension to transgender students.

There's no question about it, according to a memo sent from the U.S. Department of Education to school districts in April 2014.

"The actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of the parties does not change a school's obligations," reads the memo from the department's Office for Civil Rights, asserting that it accepts such complaints of transgender discrimination for investigation.

The district's new regulation takes away a principal's discretion, following the lead of Los Angeles Unified School District, which adopted similar standards more than a decade ago.

Washoe's regulation requires that "students have the right to be addressed by the names and pronouns that correspond to their gender identity." Failure to do so would be considered a violation of the district's policy prohibiting bullying, harassment and discrimination.

Students must have access to the restroom of their identified gender. They can "not be forced to use the restroom corresponding to their…biological sex at birth, nor an alternative restroom."

"We're learning as we go along," Loudon says.

However, the state may be going in the opposite direction.

Two state lawmakers filed a bill Tuesday that would require bathrooms and locker rooms "only be used by persons of that biological sex" in Nevada public schools. Assembly Bill 375 goes on to explicitly ban transgender students from bathrooms aligned to their asserted gender, forcing them to use a unisex restroom or faculty restroom, as Cee Cee was made to do.

It remains to be seen if the bill — filed by Sen. Scott Hammond, R-Las Vegas, and Rep. Victoria Dooling, R-Las Vegas — will gain any traction in the Legislature. The bill's requirements fly in the face of Title IX, as interpreted by numerous courts throughout the country and the U.S. Department of Education, setting the state up for potential federal lawsuits and loss of federal education funding if passed.

Nevada can learn much from Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest school district of about 700,000 students, which instituted a transgender regulation almost identical to Washoe's in 2004 after a preschool-aged child attempted a penis removal with scissors.

Judy Chiasson, Los Angeles' director of equity and diversity, has heard all the fears. The main concern: Predatory students will take advantage of the regulation to get inside the opposite sex's bathroom and locker rooms.

"We've never ever, ever, ever had any of those fears realized," Chiasson said. The district has not received one report of sexual misconduct by transgender students in all the years. "If anything, the transgender student is going to be the victim."

For that reason, transgender students tend to be modest, she said.

"They also don't want to betray their identity," Chiasson said.

Cee Cee spent days dreading an upcoming choir concert, knowing she'd have to change clothes at school.

Nothing is being hidden, Ott asserted. The family is not ashamed. Cee Cee is not abnormal. She's just a girl.

"This is who she is," Ott said. "Why do we have to prove she's a girl? No one's telling you to prove your gender."

Washoe's new regulation says schools can't demand proof of gender identity or legal name changes for students claiming to be transgender.

The student also chooses who is told of their transgender identity. Staff in the know can't disclose the information to classmates, parents or staff without that student's permission.

"Only a small number of adults are aware and no one else," said district counseling specialist Killian, noting that ideally only the principal knows. Teachers are given the student's chosen name and sexual orientation. "It's very private."

Everyone else is none the wiser, which has proven true in Los Angeles, finding that most students transition in elementary school.

"You don't know who's transgender," Chiasson said. "You accept them for how they present themselves."

Following up on its new regulation, Washoe is amending its sex education curriculum to define transgender for the first time, doing so in the eighth grade, according to Kathryn Weber-Karp, district coordinator for Sexuality Health And Responsibility Education.

The curriculum change must first pass the district's sex education advisory board and be adopted by the school board.

For decades, students have been taught the meaning of heterosexual in fourth grade, learning the definition of homosexual and bisexual in sixth grade during lessons on HIV. Tuesday's bill filed in the Legislature, AB 375, would prohibit such lessons for sixth-graders.

"We do not say any one gender is correct. We just give definitions," Weber-Karp said. "Students need to get medically correct information to make informed decisions."

Teachers are told to use terms like partner – instead of boyfriend or girlfriend – so students don't feel abnormal for being uncommon, as was the unintended consequence of bathroom segregations.

While time will tell if Washoe's changes are accepted or contested, Chiasson has witnessed a decade of encouraging results in Los Angeles schools.

"It has just been absolutely seamless with the students," said Chiasson, noting students' overwhelming acceptance of classmates transitioning to a new gender. "Outside the school, that's where there are a lot of fears." With adults.

Schools can't shield students from that.

Years ago, Cee Cee's grandmother cut off communication with Ott and her children.

On the other hand, Cee Cee's older sister and brother drop friends who become critical after finding out about Connor from family photos. McKaylynn supports her sister.

"I don't care, as long as she's alive, happy," McKaylynn says.

But the family knows puberty is around the corner, a dangerous time for any transgender person. Ott is afraid for what would happen to Cee Cee – or what she'd do to herself – when her body betrays her identity.

Her voice will deepen. She'll sprout body hair, develop an Adam's apple. She has already hurt herself trying to conceal her penis to fit into skinny jeans.

The only alternative: pills that stall puberty.

"I can make her life a whole lot easier with one pill. It buys us more time," Ott says.

The pills won't change Cee Cee, like female hormones, which would make her sterile. Ott doesn't want Cee Cee set on a one-way road to gender-reassignment surgery, not until she's old enough to make that decision.

As a therapist, Minten advises transgender youth to use puberty blockers, describing the medication as an "offramp" kept open in case adolescents revert back to their anatomical gender.

"We don't know of any harms that come from delaying puberty," Minten said.

But surgery and hormone replacement are permanent.

Cee Cee says she wants surgery to make her body female.

She's sure-willed, unapologetic.

She's also forgiving.

After three years of silence, Cee Cee called her grandmother shortly before her most recent birthday.

Come the big day, grandma arrived bearing gifts. A pink shirt and pair of skorts, which are shorts sewn into a skirt.

That's not to say Cee Cee isn't scared. She wants to let others know, at least a friend.

For days, Cee Cee itched to tell a school friend that she's transgender, getting the nerve after that friend learned the meaning of transgender and seemed accepting.

But Cee Cee kept quiet.

"I'm not sure if she found out, she'd want to be my friend anymore," says Cee Cee, looking down at the floor in front of her and her mother, squeezed together in the armchair.

Cee Cee leans a little forward. Waves of straight brown hair skim past her shoulders. Her bangs stay back in a single braid, held in place by a metallic hairclip put there by her mother this morning.

Cee Cee soon after asks to do her homework.

"Your homework can wait," jokes Ott, asking Cee Cee when she'll get the results of a recent test, screening her for the Gifted and Talented Education program.

"Not until April," says Cee Cee, disappearing into her room with some math worksheets.

Alone, Ott says what's constantly on her mind.

"My biggest hope is for her to find someone who loves her for who she is."