NCLR Report Part 2

I haven't had a chance to really talk about how much this report that the NCLR and It takes a team wrote up. I have the link in the last post, and once again I want to thank Pat and Helen for all their work and advocacy to create this.
Why is this important? This is important because as a transgender athlete no matter where you are in the spectrum of transitioning and coming out, sports currently are not conducive to our identities and do not support differences in gender identities and presentations. There are many talented and passionate athletes that can not and will not reach their full potential because of the barriers innately in place because of current sport doctorine. When I came out in college I was terrified not so much of being out but of losing my opportunity to compete and be an athlete. There were no guidelines, or resources for me at all. This report is an excellent resource for athletes, coaches, teammates, athletic director, and competitors. It allows for a safer environment for trans-athletes to come out, compete, and be themselves fully. The stress will still be there, the fear will probably still be there, because I don't think it is possible to come out and begin living as that person without fear and stress. But Now we can come out knowing there are people there to help us, there are reccommended guidelines, and there are resources to help.
There are athletes that hide who they are until the.y finally can't take it anymore and leave the sports or worse because sports don't allow us to be who we are. We are not able to compete at our fullest, because we have to deal with the stress of either hiding who we are to everyone else, including ourselves sometimes. Or we are who we are and we are dealing with the discrimination, hate, and misunderstanding of everyone. We are often times not competing to the best of our abilities since as everyone knows ya can't be at the top of your game if you are being pulled in a thousand different directions. This report allows us some relief, something to refer people to, something to use as a guide so it isn't up to us solely.
I hope that more and more people are able to find themselves in a place to be able to come out and be more comfortable to be who they are so that we are not seen as taboos anymore.

Trans athletes rights

This is the report the NCLR, and it takes a team, and the women's sports foundation created. It helps make competitive sports more accessible and inclusive to transgender athletes. This is an amazing document that can really change a lot of lives and help all of trans athletes be ourselves and still be able to compete!!!
http://nclrights.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/groundbreaking-report-urges-high-school-and-college-athletics-to-establish-standard-national-policies-for-transgender-student-athletes/

Taking gender away from athlete

I was having a discussion with some people most of whom are on the trans-spectrum and I was asked how can I compete as woman and not have that innately bother me and destroy my self-image anymore. I never really thought of it as that. For me I am not a female athlete, I am just an athlete, a thrower. I never really thought of myself as a female or a male thrower only as a thrower. When I enter that circle it is the only time I can be completely gender-free and be completely free of the gender stigmatizations. While I may compete in the female division, most of us aren't there trying to prove our femininism or our status as a woman we are trying to be great athletes. I have had to prove my "femaleness" at meets but even with that the circle and the competition are my forms of heaven. I am free to be what I want to be, I control everything in that space, I can be me without any worry of what is "it".
For me sports were always my way of getting away. I had trouble dealing with my identity because I didn't know what was "wrong" with me until I was much older and until then I felt alone, helpless and completely lost and disgusted with what I saw myself as. No matter what the sport I was competing in I was able to escape during those moments, because I could be seen as an athlete and nothing else. I am an athlete, and when i am seen as such I feel whole. Being an athlete is gender-less to me, it is my way is stepping away from the constraints of being male or female or being lost in translation somewhere in between. An athlete is so much more then male or female it is character description, a sign of passion, a way of life, a religon, a cult it is so much more than male or female.
An Athlete is an athlete simply put and for me that is freedom.

Turmoil

So the last few months has been crazy. I have been dealing with a lot of inner and outer turmoil all around my identity. I am still at this PT clinic, I still hate my job. I love you my patients and working with them but working with my boss is what I imagine working for Stalin would be like. I need to take control of this, grab a bull by the balls and stand up for myself and leave this job. I just afraid to be jobless no matter the time period. My job has been really testing me psychologically, being called she all day long, having it over emphasized so that the patients have no doubt "what I am", being called a cold hard person and told I need to let go. Well what am I supposed to let go of when I can't be myself in this environment? I am tired of being told I eat too much, I am athlete we eat!
My inner turmoil I feel like has in-part been fueled by how hard work has drained me, and in part due to how much pain my body has been experiencing recently. I have been fighting a lot with myself on what to do with the rest of my life. I have been doing a lot of thinking about transitioning and I have started therapy which has helped a lot. I have been struggling with the fear of leaving everything (at least that is what it feels like) behind and transition which I am more and more wanting and needing. I started to realize that I have been putting my life on hold for 6-8 meets a year, that I am miserable every other day of the year. But I am also torn because I really want to be a trans activist a trans-athlete activist, but at the same time I am wondering if I may make a bigger impact as a transitioned man competing in the men's field. It is scary though sports is my safe place. I also started to realize that I am driving 2 hours once a week to go to Therapy, I don't know if I would be willing to do that if there wasn't something that needs to change.
I want to make it last my dreams in track, but I am wondering if it is really starting to hurt me both physically and mentally.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

I think this poem says it all

My recent vacation

I recently went on vacation to Provincetown, Ma; the cape's version of gay town USA. I went there with my fiance and my best friend and her wife, it was great except for a whole week I was a lesbian. I thought being in ptown I would more accepted for myself, but it was harder for me to be a man there than it was anywhere else other than work. It was really unnerving. I would go out and only be seen as a woman, a butch dyke out in Ptown. I thought this place was friendly but I really never felt it. At one point I was getting ready to drop about 300$ in MG Leather and the owner was feeling my arms and grabbed my ass thinking I was some hot dyke, but the minute I said I was not a dyke I am a trans guy I got instantly treated like a disgusting It. First of all don't touch me I have a personal bubble stay the fuck in it. Second of all why am I hot as a dyke but the minute I am something else I am disgusting? I walked out after she said she could tell a tranny from a mile a way. Well this tranny walked the fuck out of that. It was like that every where I went. It was really hard. I don't talk generally when I am out in public, and I bound every day all day and so I was really hurt by this. I thought I passed better as long as I didn't talk than I apparently do. I had a lot trouble dealing with this. I never identified as a lesbian, it never worked for me. I am not expecting people to know my sexuality and quite frankly it isn't their business unless I am sleeping with you. I just wish that I passed better.

how do you know

How do you know it is time to put up the gloves and just transition? How the hell do you figure it out. Is it when it is all you can think about, or when is consumes all your thoughts. How do people know? How do people decide when it is time to just do it?