{"id":3541,"date":"2017-03-15T05:05:27","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T15:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/workable-level.flywheelsites.com\/?p=3541"},"modified":"2017-03-15T22:03:53","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T08:03:53","slug":"former-kcc-student-reflects-on-transgender-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/15\/former-kcc-student-reflects-on-transgender-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Former KCC Student Reflects on Transgender Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"
BY KAYLA VALERA<\/a> | STAFF WRITER<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Since the age of 4, Camila Nutt, who was named\u00a0Ryan, knew that despite her biological gender being male, she identified as a female.<\/p>\n

Growing up, she endured bullying, disparaging comments and judgment\u00a0from fellow students and teachers and from a sibling\u00a0at home. She still lives with her mother who is extremely\u00a0supportive of her. And although her father eventually accepted her\u00a0for the way she was before he passed away in 2011, he believed that his child’s\u00a0demeanor\u00a0was only a phase that she\u00a0would grow out of. Being a masculine man himself, he didn’t understand why his child would stray from the conventions of being\u00a0a boy.<\/p>\n

Before she even came out as a\u00a0transgender, Nutt had to confront bullies throughout every stage of her life. These\u00a0battles that she faced never deterred her from being her true self and has even shaped her to be the strong\u00a0individual that refuses to be a\u00a0victim.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been fighting all my life,\u201d says Nutt, a 22-year-old who is in her fourth-year\u00a0at U.H. M\u0101noa studying intercultural constituency\u00a0relations.<\/p>\n

Growing up in Waimea on the island of Hawai\u02bbi, Nutt recalls that \u201cthere was no peace\u201d when it came to some of the transphobic people that she grew up around.\u00a0In school, the bullying was only worsened when students picked on her high-pitched voice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe place that I grew up was really conservative,\u201d Nutt said. \u201cYou either know your place and how to behave or you get whacked.\u201d<\/p>\n

After moving to Niu Valley, O\u02bbahu, in 2008, Nutt remembers that the adversity continued up until her high school years at Kalani High School. At the time she suspected that she must be gay, since she was only attracted to men. However, Kaleo Gagne, who was a\u00a0hairdresser at her salon and is gay himself, enlightened Nutt on the distinction between being gay versus identifying as a transgender.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe cleared it up for me and told me, \u2018You\u2019re actually transgender if you\u2019ve been feeling [uncomfortable] since you were small,\u2019\u201d Nutt said. \u201cHe said that I should never confuse [being transgender]\u00a0with just being gay because that\u2019s what people want [LGBTQ people] to do. But there\u2019s a clear difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Embracing this new knowledge, Nutt manifested her femininity through the makeup and accessories that she wore at school. Even though doing so allowed her to express herself, it also\u00a0spurred mistreatment from her classmates as well as her teachers.<\/p>\n

Upon asking a teacher for tutoring help, Nutt remembers that the teacher told her that she \u201cdoesn\u2019t help people like her.\u201d Nutt didn\u2019t stand for it and threw a desk at her teacher. She felt as though she was a “big target” to everybody \u2013 teachers and students alike.<\/p>\n

The high school administration didn’t help much either. Instead of addressing the cause of the issue, they would simply bring undue attention to Nutt by threatening her tormentors\u00a0to stop otherwise they’d call the cops. While Nutt wanted the harassment to stop altogether, she would have rather stood her ground to these high school bullies so that they knew they couldn’t intimidate her.<\/p>\n

Once Nutt made the transition from high school to college at KCC in 2013, things started to fall into place. Using part of her graduation money, she bought a whole new wardrobe for herself consisting of women’s\u00a0clothing and even went by the name Camila.<\/p>\n

This came about when a professor took attendance and called her by her birth name. When she later explained to her teacher how she would rather be addressed as a woman, the teacher then asked what she\u2019d like to be called. Not having given much thought to a female name for herself, she supplied the name Camila, since her aunty\u2019s name on her dad\u2019s side was Kami, and her friend was also named Camille, which she thought sounded pretty. So she created Camila, her own spin on those two names.<\/p>\n

Despite the name Camila coming organically to her, she doesn’t feel completely bound to that name. With something as drastic as\u00a0legally changing her name, Nutt believes that she would rather wait for\u00a0a name that comes to her that\u00a0is more meaningful. Because of this, her legal name is still Ryan. In the meantime Nutt will settle for politely correcting others.<\/p>\n

While college gave her a platform to show her true self, prejudice started to rear itself into her college life at vulnerable moments, like using the bathroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cGuys would walk in [the bathroom], walk right out, check if they\u2019re in the right bathroom, then come back in and shake their head at me,\u201d Nutt said. \u201cOr, they would do the sexual route because they think I\u2019m in there to do business, like that stigma of all trannies being prostitutes. [They\u2019d] give me a nod, agreeing to something that I didn\u2019t even offer. … I was sexually harassed so many times on campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was only after a year into college when Nutt\u2019s KCC psychology professor,\u00a0Philippe\u00a0<\/strong>Gross, explained that it\u2019s OK\u00a0to use the women\u2019s bathroom at this school as a transwoman.<\/p>\n

“It is critical\u00a0to ensure that transgender individuals are able to function in every aspects of life in ways that are consistent with their gender identity,” Gross wrote in an email. “I cannot think of any valid reasons to deprive [Camila]\u00a0of her dignity by forcing her to use a restroom that is not consistent with how she feels.”<\/p>\n

Though most girls gave her \u201cstink eye\u201d for being in the women’s bathroom, Nutt was relieved to know she was entitled to use the bathroom that she preferred. Her friends would also support her at these times and even suggested that they\u2019d wait outside of the bathroom if anyone gave her trouble.<\/p>\n

Nutt is even more concerned with President Donald Trump’s decisions that have further ostracized the\u00a0LGBTQ community. His decision to roll back the federal government’s protections of transgender students has increased\u00a0tension between transphobic people\u00a0and the LGBTQ community. Nutt said she can imagine a scenario where girls in the women’s bathroom might gang up against her and force her out due to her being a transwoman.\u00a0However, she\u00a0isn’t scared of such an encounter and said she is willing to stand her ground.<\/p>\n

Despite\u00a0these fears, Nutt has noticed that when she returns to her\u00a0hometown of\u00a0Waimea, the people she grew up around have been more accepting of her as of late, understanding that she is the same person on the inside before she identified as a transwoman.<\/p>\n

Ever since she was in high school, Nutt\u00a0has been wanting to get a gender reassignment surgery but hasn’t had the means to cover for the nearly $20,000 procedure. Until then she plans on working hard in school to receive her master’s\u00a0degree and finding a job. Recently, she has started taking hormone injections and testosterone blocking pills\u00a0as a first step\u00a0for\u00a0her transition.<\/p>\n

Nutt feels that her progress truly lies in her own perception of her self-worth, because at the end of the day, it’s important that you love yourself.<\/p>\n

“I feel proud of myself,” she said. “At the beginning of my transition, I was in a bad mental state and would hook up with guys to verify how beautiful I was. Now I know I’m beautiful and I’m glad that I grew out of that phase.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY KAYLA VALERA | STAFF WRITER Since the age of 4, Camila Nutt, who was named\u00a0Ryan, knew that despite her biological gender being male, she identified as a female. Growing up, she endured bullying, disparaging comments and judgment\u00a0from fellow students and teachers and from a sibling\u00a0at home. She still lives with her mother who is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":3546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campusfeatures","category-features","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kapionews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}