we need positive queer visibility in sports
it's important: long story below
I am a teenager in competitive swimming. I was assigned female at birth, but more importantly was raised and socialized as female. I have swum since i was a baby, and on competitive teams since i was 8 (that's third grade! whole lotta years ago).
my chill club team (not a traditional USA swimming club, but a local club) didn't emphasise gender or gender divisions in meets. there would be one meet a year where one swam solely with their gender, and that was it. i was the best swimmer in my age group multiple years, beating out guys and girls alike.
since entering high school and advancing in competition levels, things have changed. in my league and area, girls and boys not only swim on separate teams, but swim in different seasons. the boys are (as is traditional) a winter sport. girls swim in the fall. (side note, this means my season runs from august to february with the two teams combined.)
as someone assigned the gender "female," my freshman year i joined the girls swim team. however, that spring/summer i had started to realise that i wasn't a girl (whole other discussion). i hadn't had the guts to tell my parents yet, and they were still blissfully unaware of their queer kiddo.
so anyway, I joined the swim team. it was made up of about 60% girls i knew from my other swim team (chill club), and the other 40% all swum for other fancier clubs. basically, no one was a beginner (which isn't super relevant tbh). the first day we did a typical name circle, but no one asked for pronouns. because why would they? girls team, and in my experience, swimming is not a very queer sport. i don't know a lot of openly lgbt swimmers, especially not my age.
at the end of the second week of preseason (august, school started early september) we had a team potluck in one of the captains backyards. i knew most of the people there at that point, but i was socially aware enough to know that most of the people on that team would not want to be close friends with me at all.
swimming is really a girls's girls sport at my school, and while some people are nice and welcoming, most were not the genre of person i wanted to be friends with (read: no nerdy girlies). except for one person.
he, like me, was a genderqueer athlete on a gendered team. he noticed me sitting on the ground alone (i was very anxious) and sat down, and we spent that whole potluck getting to know each other. we were incredibly similar, despite our age gap (freshman and senior) and race differences (sprinter vs distance).
that changed the whole trajectory of my season experience.
instead of being lonely, on the edges of a team that didn't really accept me for who i fully was, i had a buddy (and his junior friend who i also got to know well) and we could relate to the experience of being low-key a boy on a girls swim team.
especially in the space of swimming, sports really care about gender (what they're too afraid to say is they think women/people with more estrogen are weaker than men/those with more testosterone). think about the trans swimming news.
lia thomas was severely discriminated against for being trans in the media and in her records. schyler bailar also faced a swim life where he regularly heard slurs. there are others.
swimming is something that makes me happy. swimming helps with my sensory issues, hyperactivity, and competitive drive. swimming is a place where i can't be myself.
if i was given the choice between going to the olympics as a team USA woman or never competing again and getting to go on T and getting top surgery, i'd pick option T every time.
i don't want to pick option T.
i want to transition while i'm still in my prime in high school, while i'm making sectional cuts, while i'm fast. in my dreams, I'm in my senior year, leading my team to a big win over another team. but i'm not wearing the one-piece i've worn since i was a baby. i'm wearing jammers and i have scars on my chest.
right now, i have had to accept that i will never swim on a boys team in high school. i have accepted that i'll wear the girls suit, that no one will call me "they" on the deck, that i'll be remembered as one of the girls.
but why do i have to?
