Peter Solarz
blake kathryn
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
NASA
Sade Olutola
JBB: An Artblog!
Andulka
todays bird
hello vonnie
Mike Driver
Origami Around
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ellievsbear
dirt enthusiast
Keni
noise dept.
Three Goblin Art
Not today Justin
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@irisedelsmid
Thesis Deadline is getting closer, but I have help: Bep is reorganizing my desk:) . Also 1/2 the reason I've been absent from insta, the other half is absence of a working smartphone ;) . #whateverBepIsBuilding #coolestBirdEver #buildstuff for #philipsresearch. #dingenbouwen #lachduif #barbarydove #streptopeliaRisoria #bepdeduif (bij Philips Research High Tech Campus HTC 34)
Lange Jan van de Efteling in PNG, doorzichtige achtergrond. Voor Bas ter Bogt <3 #LangeJan #efteling
My first day back on my board after a long injury got rewarded with a visit from my friend Adrian from #Singapore =D. He just arrived back from skating on his #1166longboard from Amsterdam to Berlin in 7days. (Wow!) Although I skated 4100 km in 2016, that was still much less compared to this longboard-boss. And now he's on a world tour:) Follow his inspiring stories at @world_on_board ! He knows Rotterdam is way better than Amsterdam so we took a selfie at this iconic image haha. Great surprise, life is good! #longboard #skatelife #worldtour #longboarding #Rotterdam #rotterdamCentraal #gbomb (at Station Rotterdam Centraal)
Bath-programming-session. #work Still can't longboard with my knee anyway ^^ What's your view for today? #heatwave I'm building a really cool educational object that teaches people/ kids something about mechanics <3 #arduino #womenintech More to come! #programminglife #womeninstem #bathprogramming #electricalengineering #programmingview
Hahaha I'm on tv, @openrotterdam , promoting #longboarding and #tech! They captured a day of my life, which, off course, contains a lot of laughing and longboarding as always♥ ( inside ànd outside) (Link to original dutch full vid in bio) On my #longboard to the @rdmrotterdam, the awesome company @genuin.engineering and @hogeschoolrotterdam. #buildstuff #dingenbouwen #longboarding #longboardgirl #womenintech #skateeverywhere #IPOrotterdam #rdmrotterdam #rotterdam #rotterdamharbour (at RDM Rotterdam)
Inside-out-architecture <3 This has always been one of my favourite architectural buildings. . The aim was to design a building turned insideout. The project was rewarded to #RichardRogers, #RenzoPiano and #GianfrancoFranchuni after winning the fírst French architecture designcompetition where international architects where allowed to participate. #CentreGeorgePompidou. . Got there by coincidence, I had to do a @robbertvanhaaften in front of it off course. . Pictures from our #longboarding trip in Paris in January. #losboardgirls #longboard #skateboard #citylongboarding (at Centre Pompidou)
Celebrations at this riveted structure! . Paris is quite nice to longboard, many cycling roads and mainly asphalt. And you see way more if you travel by #longboard, just a bit of walking with your board at some places. [Link to routes below] (at Avenue Gustave-Eiffel)
What Does it Mean to be a Trans Competitor?
My name is Calleigh Alice. I am a professional women’s distance skateboarder. I am also a transgender female.
I transitioned over 3 years ago. Something that helped me cope with transitioning my gender was skateboarding. I’ll never forget my first distance ride. I had just come out to my parents, officially, the night before, so things were tense the next morning. My father said, “You’ll never really be more than just a dude in a dress” and I didn’t have an argument to retort. I bottled up my anger and took my longboard out for the day. It was Veteran’s Day. I skateboarded all the way to Boston and back, totaling 64 miles in seven hours. GPS wasn’t something I had because I didn’t even have a cell phone. I just trusted my instincts. I had no supplies, no money. I just went.
From that point on, I chronicled all my distance skates. I did some crazy stuff. It was the only thing that took me away from the changing hormonal structure in my body, and the losses I faced in friends and family. I was alone, more alone than I had ever been, and skateboarding just really made me feel like it wasn’t so bad.
After posting on the internet about my skates, I connected with quite a few people in a distance skateboarding scene. I didn’t know there were people out there competing in something I did as a way to get through my every day life. They would always reach out to me and say, “You gotta come out to this!” and these events would be all over the country. I had no money, I was living in an apartment with no heat and no electricity for months. I had no car, and I took out loans on credit without a way to pay them back. I worked, but it hardly covered any costs of my bills or food. I would steal food at my job just to make it through the day. There was no way I could consider going around the country to compete in distance skateboarding.
At the time I was skateboarding to work every day, about 7.5 miles each way. On that route, there was this downhill section I loved going down. It would start off moderately fast, then come at you like a roller coaster directly into a left hand turn at 90 degrees. It was so fast and fun and I would just hit it, no helmet, no pads, every day in my work clothes. I did get hit by a motorcycle once, but pain is nothing new to me. I survived, as I do. But the point of the hill was that I found so much joy in going down it that I thought I was the best. There was this local downhill race I caught wind of in Harvard, MA, and I entered to compete.
The Central Mass 6 Skate Festival was my very first event. And the first time I competed in anything as a woman. However, I was so early in my transition, and I had no idea what the skate scene was like, so I entered in the “open” category, which is welcome to all genders. There was a women’s category, but I was so afraid of what they would say if I entered. The event was just about 30 miles from my house, and since I was too broke to afford a hotel or anything close to the event, I had to skate there. The event spanned 3 days, so I skated there day 1 and 2, but didn’t go day three.
Day 1 I tried to make friends but it was a skateboard mini ramp competition I wasn’t competing in. I followed around a few people I met through Snapchat, but I felt weird and sat under a tree for the day. I felt like I didn’t fit in at all, but I was really excited to race. I got a ride back to my house from my roommate at the time. Day 2 was race day. Another 30 mile skate at 5am to make it for check in, and I was good to go. I showed up to check in and a few people said to me things like, “I’ve seen you post on the internet” or “we’re Facebook friends,” or something similar. I didn’t know what to expect for the race, but it felt good knowing that there were people who already knew I was trans, and not just some large man in short shorts wearing a bra, even if essentially that’s all I was anyways.
So I raced. I lost. I moved on. It was my first time. Afterwards, a girl I had met the day prior said, “Why didn’t you just do women’s?” and I told her I was afraid the girls would raise questions. She said, “Well if they did, I’d have your back.”
And that was a girl I had only met for a second. And then even later on a girl I let borrow my wheels came back from the hospital and said something similar. And suddenly I didn’t feel so weird anymore. And that girl who went to the hospital is now my biggest US competitor, and I love her to pieces. I have forged friendships with women in skateboarding, and women in skateboarding have generally always welcomed me.
I’m not sure if it’s the lack of participants that makes the women want to accept me, or just because they truly accept me as the woman I am. I always feel a weirdness in groups of women who were born female. It’s like I don’t belong, but they won’t object. It’s a feeling I don’t know if I’ll ever stop feeling. Regardless, I have never outrightly heard anyone say that I should not be allowed to compete.
However, downhill skateboarding and long distance skateboarding are two very different things.
Long distance skateboarding is something that requires physical ability, endurance, and strength. All things that have been brought into question about men’s versus women’s sports. So when I signed up for my very first long distance skateboarding event, 6 months later, issues arose. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to fly all the way to Miami, Florida, to be told that I wasn’t woman enough for the women’s club, so I reached out to the organizers of the event and explained my situation.
We agreed that, after they deliberated, we would use the NCAA rules that are already established about trans women in sports. An overview of those rules and how they came to be is available HERE but in short the rules are as follows:
1. A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who has received a medical exception for treatment with testosterone for diagnosed Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for purposes of NCAA competition may compete on a men’s team, but is no longer eligible to compete on a women’s team without changing that team status to a mixed team.
2. A trans female (MTF) student-athlete being treated with testosterone suppression medication for Gender Identity Disorder or gender dysphoria and/or Transsexualism, for the purposes of NCAA competition may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.
Any transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatment related to gender transition may participate in sex-separated sports activities in accordance with his or her assigned birth gender.
• A trans male (FTM) student-athlete who is not taking testosterone related to gender transition may participate on a men’s or women’s team.
• A trans female (MTF) transgender student-athlete who is not taking hormone treatments related to gender transition may not compete on a women’s team.
The purpose of me saying this is that before I came along, this was never a thing. There had never been a transgender athlete coming to compete against the girls, and they wanted to be sure the women weren’t unfairly competed against. I agreed, and I personally found the rules to be very modest. At the time of entering, I had been on HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) for about 2 years, and presenting as a woman in my life for about 1.5 years. It would be safe to say that on any given day I would typically have LESS testosterone than any other female.
So anyways, the Ultraskate happened. I competed and got second place with 172 miles over 24 hours. I held first place until 18 hours had passed and I was dying without nutrition. 172 miles was modest for women at the time. Since then, women have been getting over 200 without issue. It’s safe to say that after I entered the scene, the women in the distance skateboarding world started competing tougher.
But it wasn’t all roses for me at the event. After the Ultraskate I was told that I shouldn’t be allowed to compete with the women because I have a “man’s body.” To be fair, I am a bigger girl. I weighed 180lbs at the time at 5′9″. I have big feet. I had inches of size over every other woman competing. I was told that I should be given my own competition, the “trans” category. And I found that to be insulting, because in a sport that has less than 2,000 competitors worldwide, I am still the only transgender one.
Of course, there is the civil side of it all, where yes, trans women deserve to be treated as women, because gender and sex are two different things, gender is a social construct, yadda yadda yadda… but when it comes to brass tax I was genuinely a bigger, stronger athlete, so I understood the qualms of it all.
But what these people didn’t understand is how hard I work for my size. I didn’t just get these muscles because I was born in a man’s body. I didn’t get to gain the ability to skate for 24 hours at a distance of 172 miles because of my man’s body. I BEAT men at that competition. A significant amount of them, too! And I lost to a woman (A 56 year old woman, mind you!) There was no evidence to suggest that I was any better off competitively because of how I was born. But just because there wasn’t some other 210 pound 6ft tall lady kicking down the speedway for 24 hours, doesn’t mean there aren’t women bigger than I. So overall, I found the argument to be a bit foolish. And I didn’t let it stop me.
From there I went to Bend, Oregon and competed in a 5k and 10k race. I placed 3rd in the 5k and 2nd in the 10k for women. I shared the podium for both races with two women who were beastly skaters. Girls I was truly impressed by. Girls who, just a day prior, had again treated me as if I was cheating my way onto the podium. But the truth came out on race day, when they proved to be a challenge. I had no male body advantage. They trained, and so did I. We shared the podium as fierce competitors and mutually respected each other’s accomplishments. It was that specific race where any doubt of me being a woman was removed, or so it felt. Because the women’s distance community is so small, these were women I would have to see again and again and again. So for them to consistently reject me on a basis of having an advantage, then to beat me? That would just be ridiculous. I was happy it didn’t continue.
I raced in Atlanta, Georgia on a 188 mile course over 3 days. I placed 18 out of 19, with two DNF participants. Yet, I collected a trophy. Why? Because I was the only woman. I got a first place women’s trophy and I damn well earned it. For me, a transgender lady in Southern USA collecting a women’s trophy was one of the proudest moments of my life, even if I did have a poor performance. Every time I get up on that podium, it’s one small step for me, and one LEAP for trans girls everywhere.
After Georgia it was San Diego, in a marathon sprint. I raced again against a girl who did have qualms against me as a racer. Her and I never really became good friends, likely because of that reason, but we became respected competitors. I placed second against her. What I learned after this race was that the only time I ever placed first was when I had no competition. I had no advantage. I worked just as hard, if not harder to be where I was, just as they do. I never walked into a race confident that I could win, only that I would put my best effort into it. All I asked was to be accepted, and I always was, by race organizers who have done backflips to get me in the scene.
Ultraskate 2017 was my biggest challenge. This was not only against myself, but against women I competed against last year, and a whole new group of women from an entirely different continent. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know how they would react. I had no idea if they knew I was trans. I didn’t know if they had transgender people as prominently in society as they are in America. Would they accept me? I had been training all year, getting on the podium at all of these races, doing my own personal skateboarding rides, training at the gym, all for this moment. I was going up against the current world record holder at 221 miles. That was 49 miles more than I had done the previous year, but I felt ready. And so was she.
At this point in my life I was over the whole “Will I be accepted?” nonsense. I knew the race organizers, I knew the competitors, I had been well acquainted with the scene. So I got competitive. I avoided conversation with the women I was out for blood against. I wanted to win. I wanted so badly to break the world record and bask in the glory of it.
Long story short, I didn’t break the world record, and I placed second against the world record holder. After the race she approached me and gave me a handshake, but between the two of us you could tell we were not friends. It was during the first lap where we had started off the line together, that we began speaking. I had headphones in, and she had an accent, but the conversation turned hostile rather quick and set the tone for the entire race. She said, “If you are going to race as a woman, you must pee as a woman does.” She said this because she determined that there is a significant advantage to me having male genitalia during this race. The men often, in draft lines during the race, split off, pee against the wall or just on the ground, and return to their line. The women are at a disadvantage because naturally they don’t have the genitalia that can be removed from garments and sprayed on the track, therefore they must stop and use the restroom to continue.
I found her tone with me to be exceptionally rude, because nobody had ever spoken to me so bluntly, or assumed what was in my pants. For all she knew I had gotten it removed! In any case, I didn’t directly disagree with her. I personally wouldn’t pee on the track anyways because it’s not my prerogative to go waving my genitalia around during a race (or even if it wasn’t a race). I peed twice during the 24 hour period of the race. I did it off the track, on the grass, squatting down. Mostly to humble her, because to be fair I can pretty much piss in my own mouth if I want. But I am interested in fairness and I have no problem in doing everything I can to make sure nobody feels cheated.
This year I have a whole other beast to battle. I have roller derby, I have more downhill, and I have training to come back and steal that world record. I think I have solidified myself as a staple competitor in the distance scene, and I would like to see more competition in the future. But it was not easy. It’s been an extremely difficult year of proving myself worthy. And in addition, I hope I’ve paved the way for more transgender people to feel comfortable competing. Nobody should be scared to be themselves, and I truly believe that. I will continue to push my board as far and as hard as I can until everybody understands that you are who you are, and nobody can tell you otherwise.
To sum up being the first competitive transgender distance skater? Rewarding. I am enthusiastically proud of myself and all of my accomplishments. And I share them with every single transgender woman out there just trying to be accepted. Whether it’s an art show, a sporting event, a big job promotion, getting equal rights through politics, or fighting for a world record, every woman should know that they are valid. I hope I’ve done my part to make them realize that. And I will continue to do so :)
Respect Girl!! Last year I made a "Chicks and X" challenge, I wanted to make sure anyone feels welcome in our sport. And I hope you do too, because you are! I am very happy to hear you could compete as a woman, and that you did so very well :). Hope skate with you some day in the future! With love, Iris Edelsmid, a fellow human distance skateboarder from the Netherlands. <3
"Is that a super happy mineworker with a huge balloon on a longboard?". . Love those unknown people laughing and smiling due to doing something which is so easy to do:) . #electionnight #longboardballoon #balloonsmakepeoplehappy #hugeballoon #Longboarding #longboarding #skatergirl #rotterdam #dutchstreets (at Bergselaan, Rotterdam)
We need more women in skateboarding... 3 Jobs but nr1 woman in total self propelled distance skateboarding in 2016, awesome! . 4100 km of pushing through the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Hungary. That's 3 times less than the #Singapore hero Adrian but still far more than I could imagine to skate. . A new longboard for 2017 is needed :) I use #Endomundo for tracking. #2016 #tortoiseandthehare #challenge #longboardgirl #dutchdistanceskaters #badassery #ldp #distanceskater #paristrucks #longdistancepushing #distancelongboarding #skatergirl #girlsthatskate #longboarding #longboardlife #girlpower #womenintech #distanceskating #womenempowerment #sports
Wohoooh! 90km through the beautiful (and very #muddy) roads of #Zealand and the imposing waterdefense. Current count '2016: 3880km <3 . #longdistancelongboarding #ldp #longboard #girlscanskate #longboardgirl #loaded #dutchlongboarders #deltawerken #zeeland #longboarddream (at Delta Works)
What to do with old #bearings.?? Decorate your anti-Christmas piece with it. . I'm realy not into the the commercial thing called Christmas, but I am into longboards, blocks and a fun day with (somebody else's) family. . #gezellig #kerststukje #bearingporn #bearing #greenwheels #stopchristmasmusic #stopcommercialchristmas
Love how that #longboard sneaks into this moment where we've been working towards for so long. Dear friends, some of you know how long it took, but yesterday we finally #signed! Now back to build more stuff <3 . . #ScienceTower #rotterdam #contract #productengineer #skateeverywhere #buildstuff #handtekening #Dingenbouwen
It's that time of the year again... The time that random people ask you wether you're not feeling #cold in that dress with bare legs and arms. . But no you're not, because you're skating your ass off to get though these wheel-catching leaves. . And let's not forget the #trash that always companies the leaves in this particular neighbourhood. (#spangen #Rotterdam) #autumnphotography #autumn #longboardgirl #longboard #skatefashion #zwerfafval #leaves (at Mathenesserweg)
"le Rue de Belgique, ne c'est pas egalité" . I was soooo happy to reach #France-> The roads in #Belgium where a hilarious DISASTER. No need to hit the brakes #downhill, with our heavy backpacks the roads 'd slow you down pretty fast. . . #longdistanceboarding #backpacklongboarding #womenskate #longboardgirl #longboarddream #VivaLaFrance #distancelongboard #longboard #longboardinglifestyle #longboarden #backpack #edelsmid
This is our tame laughing-pigeon #Bep. . And the ultimate #partyPineapple I build for @d_bunt, who's "favorite animal" is a pineapple. . Bep is the cutest #pigeon ever, she'll change your opinion on pigeons when u meet her. . #partyananas #buildstuff #pigeon #ananas #pineapple #tinkering #knutselen #pigeonclub #discoball #discopineapple
Yay! I am officially a #professional #longboarder now <3 hahaha ! Doing some to-the-max #producttesting on the #Pearltectbracelet using my #Longboard for the #vibration on the streets of #Rotterdam. . . #testingstuff #loosecargo #rattletest #producttester #rotterdamskyline #professionallongboarder #dutchlongboarders #productdesign #testing #wink #cityskyline (at St Job's haven)
