Nine-Year-Old Declares Transgender Identity

http://www.kolotv.com/home/headlines/Nine-Year-Old-Transgender-Declares-Identity-268764841.html

RENO, Nev. -- Hundreds of LGBT supporters marched through downtown Reno Saturday afternoon for northern Nevada's Pride Parade, where for one nine-year-old, it was a place to express who she really is.

"I really like sleepovers and make up parties and tea parties," Cee Cee Ott, 9, said.

It wasn't always like that for Ott. Cee Cee was born Conrad.

"We didn't see the transgender come out until she was about three. It didn't really start hitting that she wanted to wear her sister's clothes, she wanted to wear wigs," said Shanna Ott, her parent.

It became a struggle for Cee Cee to wake up every day as someone she knew she wasn't.

"I wanted to be a girl at that time, but I couldn't because at the time I was a boy, so I had to be there and dress up like a boy," she said. "It was miserable."

After kindergarten, her parents homeschooled her until they could decide what they needed to do to make her feel safe.

"There's not very many people who support people like that," Cee Cee said.

"Our society is to have a binary gender system where people are either male or female and when people don't fit in those boxes, it makes things a little more complicated and unfortunately, unsafe," said Nicole Ott, her parent. "She went to a psychiatrist for over a year and partly that was because we wanted to make sure that it was something that she was really comfortable with."

However, now with a strong support system, Cee Cee is confident that she can be just a regular nine year old girl. She aspires to be a transgender reassignment surgeon one day to help those in the same shoes.

"I can help people so they can stand out better and they don't have to worry about hiding things," she said.

"We want our children to be happy and to be themselves and that's all we care about," said Nicole Ott. "We're not trying to make anyone be anything other than allowing them the space to figure out who they are and what they want from the world."

Cee Cee starts public school again in the fall, but this time, feeling comfortable in her own skin.

I am happy that there is more stuff on transgender coming out and that it gives resources to parents with trans kids, but I feel so weird about kids being outed in the papers and such. Even when I came out as an adult, I didn't realize the full implications of being seen as transgender in your day to day life, and having people be able to find out easily. It can be incredibly draining, challenging, and sometime unsafe. It's not an issue for me anymore, but if I was outed as a kid someone could just google my name and find the news article - bam. No option of being stealth at all.

Quote from: birkin on July 29, 2014, 02:51:47 PM
if I was outed as a kid someone could just google my name and find the news article - bam. No option of being stealth at all.

Well, unfortunately, that's the way it goes with the scumbags in the media. They don't give a damn about the aftermath. They just want to sell their papers, zines, etc. Not to mention TV ratings and web hits.

Pieces of trash, the whole lot of them.

How do you all feel about the parents that put the child's story out there? 

I have children and if this came up with them I would keep it in house and let them tell who they want to tell when they get older.  Just my opinion on it.  I definitely wouldn't be contacting the media about it.

Quote from: Lara the Lover and the Fighter on July 29, 2014, 03:54:16 PM
I have children and if this came up with them I would keep it in house and let them tell who they want to tell when they get older.  Just my opinion on it. 

I agree. There's no need to turn your offspring into some "poster child" for the sake of "the movement" or worse, just to get yourself 15 minutes of fame at the expense of your kid. Keep it in house, as you said. If he or she wants to tell his or her friends, other family members. Fine. Otherwise, you are just asking for trouble later on.