#used to go almost every day each summer for years. but then puberty and dysphoria struck
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the swimsuit I got at the fleamarket today makes me wanna go swimming again. haven't been since summer 2018...
#i used to be SO OBSESSED with swimming and pretending to be a mermaid or fish or seal doing tricks and such#my mother always had a hard time getting me out of the public pool at the end of the day lmao#used to go almost every day each summer for years. but then puberty and dysphoria struck#and general body issues and other traumatic stressful shit idk. life just happened#BUT I WANNA GO SWIMMING MORE OFTEN AGAIN!!!!!! I MISS IT!!!!!!!!!!
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[Image description: a young person holds a mobile phone with a blue case and a paper on the other. the paper has a drawing of an umbrella colored with the trans pride flag. we can only see their upper body. they are looking down and to the left of the image. they're smiling without showing their teeth, and look relaxed. they're wearing a black, loose hoodie and some shorts can be seen at the bottom of the picture. they're also using black nail polish. on the background there is a door and a star wars poster. the other image is a close up of the paper. end ID]
🌈ʜᴇ/ᴛʜᴇʏ🌈
happy trans day of visability to all my fellow trans*!! here is me and my project for peace's day... i personally love it. it's on spanish, but i'll translate it for y'all.
the text on the left says "cada persona que conoces está luchando una batalla de la que no sabes nada. sé amable. siempre", which is the translation of that quote that goes like "every person you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. be kind. always".
the one on the right says "¿qué sentido hay en pelear? ¿por qué insistimos en sabotearnos mutuamente? Todos caminamos por el mismo sendero embarrado, todos nos dirigimos al mismo final." its translation is something like "what's the point on fighting? why do we insist on sabotage each other? we all walk the same muddy path, we are all headed for the same end."
and above the umbrella there's words like "odio", "acoso", "ignorancia" & "discriminación", which mean "hatred", "harassment", "ignorance", and "discrimination".
yeah i'm very subtle.
i've decided to share my story with the world. but i got kinda carried away. it's not s fairy tale, so don't read it if you're sensitive to themes like bullying, mental health issues, and toxic people.
——————————————————————
it's been... one ride of a journey, to say the least. i've said a few times that i started to question my gender around summer. but that's not quite true.
growing up, i never was fond of... anything that i associated with femenine, really. this included, but wasn't limited to, any color that wasn't blue (pink and purple get a special mention, i despised them), flowers, clothes too loose or too tight, shorts if they weren't from some sport, etc. i think you get the idea.
this collided with me being afab (aka a girl for everyone including myself) & neurodivergent. i wanted nothing to do with those things. but society wanted me to love them.
5 yo me said she didn't like Monster High. 5 yo female classmate said i was a weirdo. 7 yo me loved football. 7 yo male classmate said i couldn't play because i was a girl. 9 yo me hyperfixated on minecraft. 9 yo pretty much every classmate called me a geek.
so i stoped trying. for a while, i loved pink, wanted to have rapunzel's hair, watched disney channel, etc. but i already was the weirdo. i remember being three and friends with all of them. i remember playful fights for the toy rocket and reading books with the only other boy who could read, to ourselves, each other, and the whole class. but people grow up, and they change. so yeah, i was bullied. always the last one to be chosen, left alone on the bus rides, on my own at the playground.
and you'll be thinking "that sucks, but pao, how is it related to you being trans?"
you'll see, i didn't have many friends. i was kinda alone until i turned 7. then two new kids came to my class. let's call them eva and john. i made friends with them asap. i loved them so much!! they were my first friends since kindergarden. so i allowed myself to let go. i was already hated by most of my peers. why wouldn't i be myself with those who didn't despise me? (i was 7 when i thought this. 7 years old, and i thought that out of 20 people, 18 hated me. and then people wonder why i've got self-steem issues lmao. i'm tryna make the point that bullying in primary school isn't just some mean kids calling you names. i'm currently in high school and it still has its mark on me. but that's for another moment.)
so yeah. i went "wild". eva has adhd too (noice, right? i mean she has her diagnosis becaise she's primarly hyperactive, while i'm primarly inattentive, but we understood each other way quickier than with neurotypicals– even if i didn't know why yet), and john was kinda shy & corpulent (he wasn't fat, but he didn't look slim either), just like me. so we became friends. and i slowly opened up a little, while still playing my role of "the freak kid". i knew i was seen as that AND as the smart kid. double pressure, double bullying. but i had my small circle. it evolved until my current friend group, in which, god bless, there's a trans girl!! (eva's still on it– she's my best friend and i would die for her, no doubts. john can go fuck himself, the goddamned fascist).
but it ain't that easy. it never is. i'm 14 and afab. shit happens. y'all get it.
my first period happened while i was on a school trip (bad), on a hotel with no pads avaliable (very bad), on another country so i couldn't call my mum unless i had wifi because politics & stuff– and i did not have wifi (really bad). cue a lot of dysphoria (even if i didn't know it was that) + not being able to contact anyone. add the fact that i was the second one to have it, and it was some kind of taboo– it meant the other girls wouldn't leave me alone, and the result is clear: one of my worst panic attacks ever, on a tiny bathroom of some shitty hotel room.
from there it went downhill. my body started to become femenine, and the football short didn't make my hips smaller. my face, my oh so alarged face, suddenly became rounder. puberty hit me not only physically, but emotionally. and if that wasn't enough, we, as a class, were entering what's called here "the turkey age", a.k.a. teenagerhood, where looks become even more important. it didn't take long until i hated my body.
[WARNING: from here, this gets hard. mentions of eating disorders, depressive episodes/thoughts, toxic enviroments, homophobia/transphobia (both internalized and external), anxiety attacks, and thoughts of self-harm]
i thought "it's big, it shouldn't be big, it's fat. besides i don't want it to grow so fast. i want to make it stop growing. how? well, i grow up by eating. no eating=no growing".
yeah. eating disorder. when i think about it, i want to laugh. because it only took a few comments and "jokes" for me to be so angry at myself when i should be mad with them. i'm big. always have been, very likely always will. i've been told that i could make a very good rugby player. i probably would. i shared my cantine table with people (😔). and they wouldn't shut up. "[deadname], the rest wants to eat too!", "look at [deadname], she's gonna eat it all!". things like that. i stoped eating. i would pick up the smallest amount of food i could, even if my stomach was begging me to please eat something. eventually, my mum found out. and she helped me to grow out of it. i sometimes releapse, but never for that long. because i went on a whole year like that. and it sucked.
so, last year. socially anxious neurodivergent girl with several doubts on her sexuality gets to eight grade.
i play basketball. since i was little. i used to enjoy it a lot. we weren't a team– we were a family. loved 'em so much, 1000/10 one of the best things of my life. BOOM. now you're old enough & good enough to be on the "good" team. in the good time there's the cool kids. i am not a cool kid. oops. i was left behind, they all laughed at my back, no one cared about me (except one girl, but she was in the group and was scared to act until almost the end of the year. love her for that tho). i felt like shit. i was too scared to go to train. the sight of a ball scared me, because i couldn't help but think everyone was talking shit about me. we went to a national championship and when they went out to the city, they didn't tell me, then sent a pic of them having fun to the groupchat & delated it saying "oops it was for the other group". i had several breakdowns on my room that night. it was such a bad experience i can't even hear the name of the city without tearing up.
not to count that a new girl decided to make my life a living hell. now i know how to deal with her, but then i didn't, and i ended up curled up on the bathroom floor crying.
all while i discovered my own identity. i was so scared of being non-straight i hated myself for it.
it was a tough year and there were times where i would wish i'd never existed. it was too much for me to deal with, and i was just miserable. but i got out of it. remember the trans girl i mentioned? she's closeted, and she told me just this october. but even before that, she was my friend. she bought a new life to it all, a fresh one. i owe her a lot, including accepting myself as i am.
she is here, despite everything.
i am here, despite everything.
you are all here, despite everything.
some of us aren't here. they are the ones we remember. each one of us has our history. i shared mine with you all. it is not an easy road. you know that. it's hard, and it's tough, and it's difficult, and it's unfair.
but we are here, despite everything. the ones who made it, the ones who didn't, the ones who are halfway through it, and the ones who are to come.
we are here. we are trans. and we won't be erased.
#long post#my face#my selfie#tw homophobia#tw: queerphobia#tw: transphobia#tw: homophobia#tw queerphobia#tw transfobia#tw transphobia#transphobia tw#esting disorder#tw eating disorder#tw anxiety#tw anxious#tw panic attack#tw bullying#tw low self esteem#tw toxic enviroment#pao says shit#pao's fountain of dumbassery#pao speaks#pao's proud#trans day of visibility#tdov2020#tdov selfie#tdov#nonbinary#agender flux#libra fluid
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Okaaay
So. I promise this’ll end up somewhere a heck ton different to where it’ll initially look but yes I just need a long vent okay and honestly this whole first section is probably useful to loads of people so it’s not going to be abridged by me (though if anyone wants to add a tl;dr if this somehow get’s reblogged, go ahead). There’s probably gonna be more of these covering... different things, some of which will be related.
Anywho.
When I was in year 5, I had my first period. I lost 1/8 of my bodyweight in a week and the blood kept coming for another week after that. I was maybe 10, but probably 9. I had already grown intensely uncomfortable with the idea of being expected to be a woman when I grew up. I think I was born with a clock inside me, because exactly a month later, I had my second period. I lost 1/10 of my bodyweight, not having regained the weight from the previous month enough to support that. I tipped into being dangerously underweight at that point and didn’t have another period for a couple of months.
I complained to my mother about how it was too painful and how much blood I had lost and how much blood there was everywhere and OH MY GOODNESS why did it have to hurt so much, what were those great big clumps - And... and her fucking response was to tell me “it’ll hurt less once you get pregnant”. Ah yes. The solution to a 10 year old being in pain. Encouraging them to give your grandchildren already. A++ parenting. And whenever I asked, I’d always be told some variant of “it’ll hurt less the more children you have.”
That summer, my brother had been spending a month in Germany with my mother’s penpal from school, to help pick up enough to be able to do well in GCSEs. All fair and good there. Except that the youngest child of the family he was staying with, let’s call him Mike, had been to Ecuador to help with anti-poverty work for a month before that. Mike had been sick while there, but he had recovered after a day, and it was a week before he came back to Germany. My brother woke up a few days after arriving and started violently vomiting. My mother’s penpal is a pharmacist, so she rushed to her practice and grabbed as many things that would help and not cause complications together as possible, from her own pocket, and started giving him the doses of each. My brother started having violent diarrhoea too, and this had blood in it.
He was taken to hospital, and spent the rest of the month abroad there instead. Every day he lost 6L of fluid in excess just from the mixture of blood and diarrhoea, before the additional sweating he was going through. The hospital diagnosed him with a bleeding disorder, which isn’t haemophilia, but I shall call “haemophilia” for reasons of what it actually is being pretty rare and haemophilia being really similar and far more common, and honestly haemophiliacs need more recognition than peeps with my condition do based purely on numbers and i’m happy for any recognition of bleeding disorders because of me to go there (especially as most of the time my bleeding disorder is covered under the same hospital departments...). He was sent home after this and we had to keep him essentially quarantined for another 2 months. The hospital told my parents to get me and my other brother checked up for “haemophilia” as soon as possible. We did not receive that check up then, but instead nearly two years later. We were advised to get hepatitis injections too, after it was seen what hepatitis C could do to us, and to get those as soon after we were diagnosed as possible... and I’m pretty sure I still haven’t had my Hep shots.
Note that my monster periods starting happened after I was recommended to be checked out for bleeding issues and yet I was still just told “it’ll be fine if you have a ton of kids” by my mother. And may I point out that the idea of anyone putting anything up there in me makes me physically feel ill, and my imagination kind of glitches and physically won’t let me imagine any version of myself being pregnant or giving birth or anything like that and oh goodness did I try to force myself to manage it when I didn’t realise that even just not having kids was a valid option for people...
The hospital (which does have a proper name, but, again, rare disorder, I’m not naming it) eventually had to nag my mother to take me and my other brother up there for checks.
I remember when I started secondary school, and there was an assembly where “all” the boys and all the “girls” had to be split off for basically crap sex ed classes, and the teacher who did the “girls” one basically said that “oh your first one doesn’t hurt” and “on your first one this teeny tiny pad will do” and just, trust me, on my first period I’d have bled through the starter pads that were given out within about 5 minutes if I were lucky. Both a comment on menorrhagia and on the tininess of these pads. In a moment of disgust I took the first opportunity to get them out of my sight (by burying them at the bottom of my PE kit) and utterly forgot about them being given out for about 5 years.
I hated being in that room so much on so many levels. First, because it was a girls’ assembly, second, because the teacher kept handing out things for girls, which I just flat out refused to believe would be useful to me (because I’m a stubborn lil git when I want to be, but also because most of them would genuinely have been), and third, because she flat out lied. At least, from my view. I thought that losing 1/8 of your body weight on your first period was normal. Bear in mind as well that the puberty related info I had from my periods was entirely contained by giving me a book on puberty and walking out the room. I flicked through it once, realised I’d grow breasts, started crying, and threw it in a corner. I had no further interaction with that book (beyond actually closing it) for about 3 years.
When in class, one of my friends said that their teacher in a different subject had said that during periods you only lose about 3 teaspoons of blood, I refused to believe that a period that light was even possible.
And... all the girls seemed to be able to keep doing everything through the whole month. They didn’t seem to have to curl up into balls and spend their break times curled up down the back end of the school just praying the pain would pass.
When I finally got to the hospital, a year and a half after I was meant to, they did the blood test, I was super proud of how strong and manly I��d been that I didn’t faint at losing a ton of blood to the needle and my brother did, and this is yet another mini-installment in signs of gender dysphoria that small me didn’t register right here. And they said they’d call up about stuff after too - but before we left, the doctor said I should go on the contraceptive pill. It should probably horrify you to know that I knew what rape was when I was five, but I didn’t know what contraceptives were until I was twelve. But either way, I heard my mother refuse, and I wondered what it was, so I asked, and she explained that it gave you female hormones to make you not have children and that it was very bad because then you might not ever have children. I disagreed. It was very bad because it was female hormones. But even so, I was glad at the time that she’d said no.
Every single appointment - that is, twice a year - I got a call. Every single time I was asked if I wanted to go on the pill. I said no. I came up with lame excuses every time but I knew deep down it was always because I didn’t want to have any female hormones. My periods awfulness would vary. Initially it was always losing huge chunks of my weight, but more and more it’s manifested as me not being able to swallow anything at all bitter, and throwing up anything i’ve eaten if I try, and in having to pass enormous clumps through down there.
They started out smaller, like the size of the top joint of my thumb. It’s a sign of significant medical issues once you have a lump larger than a nickle / about a pound coin. I jumped from teeny tiny lumps to lumps about twice a diagnosable size. I had not been taught that lumps that size were not normal, and so I didn’t think it was anything significant when I was asked about it... plus, I knew they’d only suggest putting me on the Pill again...
My periods have always been pretty regular, as long as they’re not disrupted by intense stress (although I learned I could sleep less and make the periods less frequent, and that has to have been one of the worst decisions in terms of my grades I’ve ever made...), such that through the whole of biology in year 11 the worst stage of clumping would always be within the same half hour span on a Tuesday morning, during double biology. I used to deliberately hyperventilate, because when I was on the edge of fainting, I couldn’t feel it anymore. I couldn’t feel that disgusting lump making me acutely aware of an organ I do not want and did not ask for. I love biology. I hated having to miss periods of it for - hah - periods, every single month, but it was better than the alternative.
When I was 15, I started getting intense shooting pains through both sides, about the length of my hand below my ribs. When I went to the GP, I was questioned for what felt like hours, - with my mother STILL IN THE ROOM - if I had had sex with any boys, and whether I was pregnant. It made me feel genuinely ill to have the suggestion that I could ever be pregnant. And! Me! Having sex with someone putting their penis in me? No!
Turns out, once that questioning had stopped, I had ovarian cysts. On both sides. I’m almost guaranteed to be infertile - and I was told such at the time - because both of my ovaries had had it, and I’d had it on and off, and it had worsened over ovulation... and they were causing me enough pain that when they flaired up, I’d tense up, my back would curl defensively whether I wanted it or not, and I couldn’t get myself to move or talk. Those are not healthy ovaries. Honestly, it came as a relief to hear. I love the idea of having children, I really do, but to hear I wouldn’t be giving birth! Fucking great feeling, my dudes.
I hated going in the bathroom so much... I’d refuse to go. There were concert days, at least one each term where I’d have to leave the house at 8am and only get home at 10pm and I wouldn’t have gone to the loo in all that time because I hated the loo that much. It was relatively common to have to leave the house at 8am and get back at 6pm, or anything up to 8pm, and to have not gone to the loo in all that time. Anything more than about 4 hours gap regularly is bad for your health. The only time I would go to the loo in school was to get changed for PE on my own if I couldn’t deal with being with the girls (which happened a lot) or to deal with period matter.
During one lesson in year 9, double history, I felt the pad stick to the chair, and I didn’t dare budge an inch from where I was for the entire hour and a half. I procrastinated until I was the very last person sitting down from class still, and when I stood up, the pad ripped, and within a few seconds, the whole of the insides of both my legs were covered in blood. I knew I had to go to the loo to clear it up and replace the pad, but I still didn’t want to.
I started having clumps comparable to the size of the whole of the palm of my hand.
When I finally spoke about this to the doctor (and came up with yet more dumb excuses for why I didn’t want to be on the pill), they finally got me booked for an ultrasound. The forms stating what the procedure is say, by default, that you have to have instruments stuffed up your there so that they can see what’s going on internally, and I started presumably visibly panicking, judging by the fact that they immediately started discussing alternatives. You can have an external one through the front if you’ve not used a tampon or had vaginal sex, so if you’ve not done either of those, and you have period issues (especially to the same extent as me!), and the thought of anything up there also makes you panic, it’s probably best to continue to avoid them.
When I went up to the hospital, first i was super uncomfy because you have to drink a litre of water an hour before the ultrasound is done, and I knew that I’d have to go to the toilet there... but second, because the nurse doing it needs to have a lot of skin exposed. I get why. I also get why they picked a small, non-threatening looking woman to do it, but that also didn’t really help the discomfort. Nor did having to go into gynecology...
Anyway, normal period lining thickness is around 14mm thick at peak (obviously there’s a variation around that that’s perfectly healthy that’s a few mm wide). Mine was 34mm thick halfway through to ovulation. Which would explain how I basically manage to have a baby bump every month... And again, the nurse said I wouldn’t be getting pregnant. Embryos are not going to fare great in terms of getting enough nutrients there.
I liked the idea that my body was trying to provide for some stupidly manly baby. Only stupidly manly babies who could obliterate a uterus from the inside were welcome. Yep. It’s best not to question how I think sometimes but honestly I think I’ve made it sound as close to rational as I can there.
I had a panic attack over the phone call a year ago. I so wanted to say why I really didn’t want to go on the pill! And I was so scared that it was the only way to end the size of the clumping.
In July I managed to produce a whole collection of huge clumps, one the size of my whole thumb, one that was the length from my middle finger tip to the butt of my palm, and several others, all of which were very safely in menorrhagia territory... In September I managed to produce a clump the size of my fist...
I knew I didn’t want to have to deal with that any longer. But I’d also finally accepted I wanted nothing to do with me being feminine, and I knew what I had to say. And I started out the phonecall, literally last week, saying what I’d need to say as a numbered list and everything, setting it out. It still took me about 5 minutes from saying I had a third point and being prompted to say it that I finally got out my reasoning. I was asked what the issue was. I said again that it was female hormones and I didn’t want them. And again. And again. And again. And again. And then finally they got it.
I finally had an alternative suggested (which I still need to go and get sorted out because oh boy am I disorganised). And they said that the appointment was already longer than it technically should be, and that they really needed a good section of time to talk about how my gender interacted with my “haemophilia” and so they said they’d book my an appointment, not say what the appointment was about on the letter, but that that appointment would be about gender, and would be in my Easter holidays.
I think I practically died of excitement at having something gender-affirming to do officially that’d maybe be a first step in transitioning.
And then I checked my email this morning.
The letter has arrived at my parents’ house. My mother opened it. And she scanned it and sent it to me.
Her thoughts weren’t to scribble out her address and put mine and mail it along like a sensible human being with a basic comprehension of what boundaries are. NOPE, not my mother, not the woman who’d recommend that a 10 year old become pregnant. Of course not. No, she had to go and open confidential medical letters. And she didn’t even have any shame about that! Just straight up emailing me about having done so, and showing me proof that she had done so!
I’m so bloody relieved that the hospital were truthful about that, and that it wasn’t specific at all and just listed the hospital department I have to go to for it (which actually is the haemophilia department). That would have been a fricking awful way to be outed. Can you imagine that? Parents who told a 12 year old that if he turned out to be a lesbian, they’d kick him out the house. As a 12 year old. Who said to not even talk to trans people, let alone make friends with them. Who nearly broke off contact with their kids’ godparents’ son because he came out as pansexual. Who rant about how “society’s gone too far” and that “you can’t just choose” and that TERFs are completely and utterly right about everything for a full week after a single comment is made. Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever more concisely said why it’s taken me so long to actually admit that yep, I’m trans, and also to try coming out to any family members. Can you imagine? Finding out from having precisely 0% of a concept of privacy? My mother was horrified enough when my brother mentioned he was getting his tubes cut and that he and his wife are planning to adopt kids instead. Can you imagine her reaction?
I really really need to be able to safely permanently move out, if only so that my mother doesn’t think it’s okay to look through my medical letters.
Also yes that whole first bit was there because I never feel like I’ve vented enough about it ever and it’s fucking awful and it needs a lot of venting. ... but also to give a scope of the medical neglect from my parents and the level of reproductive control in their house, and to give some context to the stupid lengths they’ll go to to avoid having to deal that some people would really rather not have anything to do with what would make them fertile.
Hopefully now all that is vented I’ll actually be able to focus on what I’m meant to be doing. Which is working out where I’m gonna go for my year abroad. Which, incidentally, I’m going to be Out for, whether my parents approve or not. Also hopefully me actually posting this gives some people a reassurance that yes it’s fine to hate your periods, they suck, and honestly I feel bad for everyone on their periods no matter how much lighter they are than mine, and even if they aren’t a dysphoria inducing nightmare. All periods suck.
#periods#trans#transphobia#menorrhagia#haemophilia#tw:gore#gore#seriously gore#body horror#tbh yes i do think that my parents' behaviour probably falls under abuse#cpd#dysphoria#seriously i hope i can focus more#this has been bugging me all day
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My Experience as a Transgender Woman in the Ultimate Community
My name is Ashleigh Buch, and I am a transgender woman who plays ultimate for the up and coming women’s club team, Kansas City Wicked. I am writing this piece with the hope of adding my voice to a very small minority of ultimate athletes who are trans or non-binary, and to increase awareness of our experiences as players. My journey as a trans female ultimate player is one that has been fraught with difficulty and heartbreak and, at one time, took me away from the sport, but it is also one that has seen me grow into a strong and confident woman who is unashamed to be her true self.
While ultimate is a large part of my life, I am also a Mandarin-Chinese linguist in the Air Force. I have served in the Air Force for eight and a half years. I am extremely passionate about fighting for trans rights and trans representation across all fields, but my focus has primarily been on the military. It was that fight for my right to exist in the military that ultimately gave me the courage to return to the sport as myself.
Beginnings
Like many, I began playing ultimate in college, and I joined Iowa State Ultimate Club (ISUC) during my junior year of school. I had played the sport a little bit after a few summer cross country practices, and I quickly fell in love with it, but I had absolutely no technical skills, and I could barely throw a disc. The two things I did have going for me were that I could run fast and run almost nonstop.
I was nervous about joining the team for many reasons, but at its heart, it was because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to be my true self. I also knew from my previous experiences with team sports that I was going to end up on the periphery. In the past, I was closed off from everyone because if someone were to discover the real me, I was afraid that I would face negative treatment from those in my life. Not opening up and forming real relationships with my teammates was the only way I knew how to protect myself.
While I learned a lot about ultimate and improved my game immensely during my time playing for ISUC, so many of my fears came to the forefront of my experience. It was an incredibly dysphoric experience trying to keep up this image of somebody I wasn’t. I tried desperately to put forth a masculine presentation, but I failed miserably. I was pretty sure most everyone on the men’s and women’s team at ISU either thought I was gay or just super metrosexual.
Having to hide behind a mask not only hurt my heart, but looking back on it, it stunted my growth as a player. Because I was so distant and often struggled with being around my teammates, it became difficult for me to ask for help regarding different parts of my game or understanding more advanced aspects of the sport. Unless we were at practice or a tournament, I rarely, if ever, spent time with my teammates. It was a suffocating and lonely experience.
Paralleling many of my experiences as a child and teenage athlete, I found myself desperately wanting to be a part of the women’s team at ISU, Woman Scorned. I fit in with many of the women so much more naturally than I did with any of the men. While there wasn’t a shortage of great players on ISUC, I found myself admiring and respecting the games of many of the women much more. When you are surrounded by incredible players like Rachel Derscheid, Melissa Gibbs, Taiwo Misra, Magon Liu, Sarah Hoistad, Jasmine Draper, and so many more, it is easy to be star struck.
They played each game with so much passion, and they fostered an incredibly empowering and supportive environment where they could be themselves unabashedly, something I deeply desired. I loved how they talked to each other on the field from the sideline and encouraged each other on the field. The cold reality was that I would never be a part of that team, and I struggled with that almost daily. It hurt my heart and further increased my dysphoria.
I know it sounds like I am coming down hard on the men’s team, but it is more that I didn’t fit in with those guys and the culture of the team. I am still friends with most of them, but if you were to ask them how I fit in with the team, they would almost certainly tell you that I was this incredibly quiet and shy individual who was almost always closed off from them. Looking back, I think that if I had come out about being trans while playing for the team, I have no doubt they would have supported me. At the time though, the thought of that terrified me. Because of the negative way in which society views and treats trans people, closing myself off was the safe thing to do.
Joining a Women’s Team
A few years later, I quit ultimate because I was in the midst of my transition, and I faced some bullying at the local summer league. This spring, I made the decision to return to the sport. Only this time, I was going to return to the sport as my genuine self, as the woman that I am. I didn’t want the fact that I am trans to be a hindrance to living my life any longer. Because of my proximity of Kansas City and what seemed like a team with great chemistry, I decided to reach out to Wicked to gauge their interest in letting me participate in their upcoming open tryouts.
I ended up sending a super awkward message to their Facebook page basically regaling them with my life story. Thankfully, the person in charge of their page is Steph Rupp, one of the most amazing people I have ever met and who is now one of my dearest friends. She was totally cool about it all, and after talking it over with the captains, she let me know that I would be welcomed with open arms.
Over the following weeks, I fought an internal battle of deciding whether I should try out. Indecision and fear almost overcame me the day of the first try out when I was about 40 miles away from Omaha on the road to Kansas City. I was at the point of turning around, but I made the decision to press on. The thought of returning to the sport as myself and being surrounded by so many incredible female ultimate players was something I deeply desired. Despite my fear, the decision to try out was the right decision. After a good showing at the invite-only tryouts, I was notified that I made the team, and I was overcome with emotion. It was something that I thought would never be possible, yet there was the confirmation right there. I was officially part of Wicked.
I struggled a lot throughout this past season. It was filled with many ups and downs, and there were a lot of tears. I am pretty sure I cried at every other practice, every power weekend, and most tournaments. Estrogen-based puberty is no joke. I struggled mightily with my confidence to the point where I was afraid to throw anything other than a quick dump or a quick give and go.
I was so afraid of letting my team down, and I was afraid that if I happened to do anything well, it would be because I was trans and not because I was a good player. It wasn’t until toward the end of the season did I break free of my funk. After a few in-depth conversations with my frisbee role models, Clare Frantz, Steph Rupp, and Amanda “Coffee” Borders, they helped me get out of my head, and I finally began to blossom as a player. The culture of our team is one of empowerment and support of each other through all the ups and downs.
Common Misconceptions
Many of the misconceptions and questions of fairness surrounding trans female athletes scared me about opening up about my experience as a trans woman playing for Wicked. So often as a trans woman, my identity is boiled down to one part of my identity, the fact that I was designated male at birth. Because of that designation, there are a lot of assumptions made about me such as having an innate biological advantage over my cisgender female counterparts. Not only is that an unfair assumption about me, but it is also insulting to all of the incredible cisgender female athletes out there who will accomplish more than I can ever dream of. I was afraid that anything that I was to achieve in ultimate would be credited to me being trans rather than to the all of the hard work and effort I put into growing as a player. More importantly, I am afraid that people will downplay Wicked’s accomplishment because of my trans status. We are some of the hardest working individuals you will ever meet, and if anybody took anything away from what we have accomplished because I am trans, it would tear my heart out.
One of the common misconceptions about transgender female athletes when it comes to women’s sports is that we are doing it so that we can dominate the sport in a way that we couldn’t in the men’s division. It pains my heart to hear that so often repeated. Aside from the extensive changes your body undergoes with hormone replacement therapy (HRT), the overwhelming majority of trans female athletes simply want to compete in an environment where they fit, somewhere where they don’t have to be somebody other than themselves. Team sports are a communal environment, and if you don’t fit for whatever reason, they can become a lonely place.
Another aspect to the question of fairness for trans athletes is how HRT affects the body. My athletic capabilities underwent a dramatic change. I dropped to nonexistent levels of testosterone while my estrogen was cycled in a way that matched those of an average cisgender woman. I went from having what now seems like endless energy that I used to balance a busy schedule with a heavy workout load to being constantly tired.
Despite the same level of exertion, after HRT, my strength decreased sharply and my running pace slowed. It became difficult to not only put on muscle mass, but to maintain any previous muscle mass. While at the same time, that lovely hormone, estrogen, made it easy to put on fat and in turn gain weight. That is exactly what happened. My body began changing rapidly and it never looked back. I basically went from being perceived as a high-level male athlete to being a high-level female athlete.
Finding a Home
Transitioning and playing for Wicked are the two best experiences of my life. Everything that I had desired in my life and in sports fell into place. I had reached the point where my mental, emotional, and physical health were finally at peace with one another, and for the first time in my life, I began to live. My participation on Wicked opened a new aspect to my being. I had finally found a place where I could be myself and play a sport I loved. I was surrounded by and lifted up by some of the most incredible people I have ever met, a group of women who supported one another. While these women are not Scorned, they are Wicked, and they make my heart sing. My journey is most certainly not over, but for now, I am home. #wickedlove
Ashleigh Buch can be reached at [email protected], on Instagram at ashleigh.kathryn, or on Twitter @AshKatRyn. Interested to learn more about her fight for trans acceptance in the military? Check out articles about her in the Omaha World Herald and on the Offutt Air Force Base news page.
The post My Experience as a Transgender Woman in the Ultimate Community appeared first on Skyd Magazine.
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