JOSEPH BEISTE
☆ FULL NAME: Joseph "Joey" Jackson Beiste ☆ GENDER: Cisman ☆ PRONOUNS: He/Him ☆ AGE: 26 (September 7th, 1998) ☆ TYPE: Adopted sibling; solo ☆ HOMETOWN: Chicago, Illinois ☆ JOB: Professional Swimmer ☆ SCHOOL: Freshman, majoring in Music Theory and Composition; minoring in Music History ☆ SEXUALITY: Heterosexual ☆ FACECLAIM: Tanner Buchanan
ABOUT JOSEPH
tw: suicide attempt, trauma, anxiety, panic attacks
Even at only two years old and not fully sure what was going on, Joey was very excited to join his new family. He was going to get a dad and three older siblings and this was all very amazing for him. Joey was an energetic young boy, always running about and wanting to play with all his family. But the person he was definitely the closest to was his eldest sibling, his sister Jax. She was eleven years older than him, so he looked up to her and she always liked to play cars and read to him, and she came up with the nickname JJ for him, which he loved.
So you can imagine his reaction when he found his big sister unconscious on the floor after an attempt to take her own life. Jax had been acting very different since her friend Angel stopped coming to play and Joey didn't understand why, even when his dad tried to explain to him. And now when he looks back on it, it all makes sense. He wasn't fully sure how to use a phone but by some superhuman adrenaline and inner strength, Joey picked up the phone and called his dad to come home because Jax wasn't moving.
Once Jax was in hospital and recovering, Sheldon sat down to talk to his son and tried his best to explain to a six year old that his sister tried to end her own life. With all the trauma it had caused him and not really knowing what to say to express his feelings on everything, Joey ended up going mute. Sheldon tried to take him to a therapist to talk about it but he wouldn't, he couldn't. His dad and his siblings tried for years so get him to talk, any methods they could think of, but by the time he was nine they just decided that that's what he wanted and helped him to adapt, all learning ASL to help him communicate better and he always had his notepad with him. Joey continued to attend therapy though, due to the fact that he started having frequent panic attacks, that he still has to this day.
So the years passed by and Joey continued to stay mute, trying his best to get a good education, but he wasn't smart at all and barely passed most of his classes. It made him worry that everyone in the family would be mad at him if he wasn't as smart as them, but his dad sat him down for another one of their deep conversations and told him that it didn't matter what was in his head, but what was in his heart.
But Joey did have two main loves - music and swimming. For his swimming, he'd always been quick, agile and had good stamina, and there was nothing he loved more than being one with the water. He entered many competitions from a young age and won a lot of trophies which he was really proud of. As for music, it was his main way of communicating with Jax and letting her know that he still loved her and she shouldn't take any blame for anything. Joey learnt to play the piano and would often write little tunes he would leave for Jax to find and finish off, a little game they would play together. But when she moved to New York he was devastated. And as his siblings continued to grow up, he felt the pressure of being the youngest and being left out.
However one weekend when he was fourteen, Jax invited him to come and stay with her in New York. He was so excited and felt like such a grown up for it to just be the two of them together for a whole weekend. One afternoon they had gone out for a walk, Jax showing him all the tourist spots, when Joey stepped out onto the road in front of a cab. With her quick reflexes, Jax managed to get him out of the way unharmed, herself just a little scratched up. They were both very shook, but even more so when Joey opened his mouth and said "I'm sorry Jaxy, I love you." His first words in eight years. It took him a bit to get back to talking normal, but with the help of his dad, siblings and therapist, Joey eventually started to talk again.
To this day though, he's still very quiet, and prefers to not talk at all when communicating with his loved ones and people that know him well. He still struggles with his panic attacks and anxiety, but is a sweet and sensitive soul, although still not the smartest tool in the shed. But that is something he's trying to disprove.
Becoming a professional swimmer was always the first thing on Joey's mind for a career choice. It was his passion and his strength, and his dad always said to play to his strengths. He trained hard, and it all paid off when he made the Tokyo 2020 squad and won a bronze medal in the men's 400m freestyle and at Paris 2024, where he won the silver in the same event. But now he has decided to take a break and try and go and get a college education before the time LA 2028 rolls around, where he's going for gold!
It was easy to choose what to study at college, music. His other passion. He loves everything and anything about it and if composing music is something he can fall back on once he retires from swimming then why not get started now? Joey enjoys playing piano and guitar but hates singing and people hearing his voice for so long, even though his dad always assured him he had a beautiful voice.
He was very nervous to start at PSU sure, but with his siblings nearby and his dad only a short drive away, Joey knew that they would be there if he needed him. Sometimes he will dive back into his shell, but in this short time, he feels that the college is becoming his home away from home and he now feels more "human" than ever.
FAMILY BACKGROUND
Sheldon Beiste did not have an easy life growing up as a closeted transgender man in Milwaukee. He always felt like a misfit and wrong somehow, but that didn’t stop him working towards his life goals. After suffering a bad ACL injury in college, Sheldon’s dreams of (then) being the first female quarterback for the Green Bay Packers went up in smoke, but that didn’t deter him. Instead he changed his college major and became a football coach, starting with his home team of the Milwaukee Badgers and gradually building a reputation as a tough, no-nonsense kind of a coach. His success with the Badgers lead to more and more opportunities and eventually he coached the Chicago Bears to their 1986 Superbowl win. He settled as the Bears coach in Illinois for a little while and met his first husband, finding himself pregnant, deciding a little stability would be the right thing to do for his family.
After divorcing his first husband, Sheldon had a couple of other boyfriends but never really settled with another man, far more concerned with his children and their wellbeing than he was with his own romantic life. Being a dad was by far a greater achievement than any football tournament, and after two consecutive Superbowl wins with the 49ers in San Fransico, Sheldon retired from coaching to focus on his family instead. It was a few years later that Sheldon realised that all these weird and uncomfortable thoughts and feelings about his body weren’t normal insecurities that women had, and finally admitted to himself to that he was, in fact, a transgender man.
He didn’t care about anyone’s opinions on his gender other than his children, and thankfully they loved him just the same as “dad” as they had as “mom”. Sheldon did experience some initial backlash in terms of his career, but eventually landed himself a sports correspondent job on CNN. That involved into his own sports radio talk show The Beiste Is Loose, before eventually turning into a late night talk show host for The Late Late Show. He still talks about football as much as he can, but he enjoys sharing his homespun sayings with his guests and being “the friendliest face in late night television”.