I Am a Trans Barnsley Fan

Long read, sorry. I know this is a public forum, but please only read this here and don’t go sticking it on social media, however well meaning. Can’t explain why, it’s just a polite request please.

I alluded in a thread last month to my gender status. After seeing a couple more threads around this issue, I want to feel brave enough to be fully honest in here, and try to dispel some myths and help people to understand just how hard it is to be a transgender person and the long-lasting damage society’s and medicine’s lack of understanding causes.

First of all, it is extremely important to point out that there are sensible people and nut jobs in every demographic. Someone who wants you thrown in the gulag for not using their new fictional pronouns they made up, based on liking cats last night with no prior thought, is not the same as a genuine sufferer of gender dysphoria, which is often a very private struggle.

There are some very odd extreme people who spout some absolute nonsense while claiming to be trans, and this harms the rest of us because it makes us all look insane. I’ve seen posters on here mock trans people, and it’s these oddballs they’re typically mocking, but in doing so they’re also hurting us, because it belittles something we’ve had to cope with, alone, since childhood. We didn’t choose it.

This is what gender dysphoria is, with my personal examples and from a male to female perspective.

Gender dysphoria is growing up feeling like a girl, but knowing from being a toddler that something isn’t right with your body and doesn’t add up. It’s looking down and feeling confusion and an upset you can’t fully understand at that age.

It’s liking girl toys, but everyone thinking it’s weird and only ever giving you boy toys, so you start believing you’re a weirdo and try without success to only like boy toys.

It’s wanting to wear girl clothes as a kid but being told you’re not allowed, it’s weird, and please don’t say that again - so you repress it.

It’s waiting for the prayer at the end of the daily primary school assembly so you can ask God to please make you a girl, because when you’ve asked grown ups they’ve just laughed at you. God never does make you a girl, so you become the school’s youngest atheist.

It’s wanting to have long hair and makeup as a teenager, but being mocked by your peers for both, so you repress it.

It’s having more female friends than male because you have more in common, and being made fun of in school for that.

It’s experiencing all of these things, building up a backlog of trauma, and telling yourself “If I don’t want to be bullied for the rest of my life, then I have to force myself to be a manly man”. This is where the damage starts.

Your voice subconsciously changes, you start using a broader blokey deep Yorkshire accent to seem like ‘one of the lads’.

You start to associate ‘manliness’ with the teenage lads who do toxic things, so you join them, and end up in trouble with the law because you want so badly not to be mocked anymore that you become willing to do selfish and stupid things to appear ‘more manly’, which you later regret.

You create a false ‘manly’ outer shell that makes you incapable of showing real emotion, because doing so might make people suspect you again. You deal with every stress internally and start to feel overwhelmed and suicidal. When you’re depressed you lose motivation, so grades plummet and a series of failed jobs ensues because your head is mush.

Those who knew you when you were younger start to dislike this false masculine persona, and you feel just as uncomfortable as they do.

Eventually, the pressures and the mental exhaustion become so much that something has to give. The fake life becomes unsustainable and everything comes crashing down around you. When this happens, sufferers of gender dysphoria tend to do one of two things: transition or commit suicide.

I want to transition, because I have people I care about, and I don’t want to leave them. I’m not going online and insta-buying female hormones, or suddenly going out in a frilly dress. I’m going to therapy, to first and foremost help me work through a backlog of trauma longer than my left leg, which all relates to my gender, which feels as though it was assigned incorrectly.

Being able to tell my friends was one of the biggest reliefs I’d ever felt. Now I’m getting up the courage to tell family, some of whom are not going to like it. I might lose some people I care deeply about over it, but it if I do it will be because they don’t accept me, and not because I want to push them away.

Now, some things about transitioning are very scary.

The medication itself is strewn with side effects and cancer risk, particularly breast cancer.

In a given year, almost a quarter of trans people are physically assaulted for their transgender status. Almost all are verbally assaulted, and on a regular basis.

Going out becomes hard, because regardless of gender I might have to pee. I can’t go in the men’s because it’s humiliating; I can’t go in the women’s because I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. There are genuine concerns around the safety and rights of women to feel safe, and I respect that (some more individual-cubicle disabled facilities would be a good compromise btw).

Further notes:

Trans athletes is a very grey area to me. Bone and muscle density post-transition is actually lower than a cis woman’s according to various studies. Ask a trans woman to open a tight jam jar. Very difficult. But testosterone can still be above the natural range for a cis woman, and this could be an advantage. The counter argument is “Doesn’t a 6’4 woman have a natural advantage over a 4’10 woman?” And it’s a fair point. It’s very difficult to take a side on this from my perspective, and I’m not an athlete, so I stay out of it.

Cis woman is not a derogatory term. It is used simply by the trans community to differentiate in important conversations. We know you’re women, but we don’t want to be seen as inferior people, and having a prefix for us and not for you makes you ‘normal’ and us ‘abnormal and weird’. We don’t want to upset you, we just also don’t want to feel second-class.

Next time you’re at Oakwell, look around at all the manly blokes around you. Statistically, at least one or two will be suffering inside with this, but can never be themselves through fear.

 

Very brave, thought provoking, sensitively written post.
Thank you for taking the time to create and construct it.

 

Thank you so much for being brave enough to post that. I can't imagine the courage taken to do that, in this place of all places,

A work colleague many years ago committed suicide and none of his (her) colleagues knew why until afterwards. We were all stunned and shocked and I was deeply upset for some time afterwards.

If ever you want to message me about it, you can do at any time and I'll listen as long as you like.

You don't have to be alone, there's nothing wrong with you, nature just got muddled and anyone who doesn't understand and isn't willing to, they can go swivel.

And again, thank you for posting that. I've never been as proud of anyone posting as much as this.

 

If boys and girls were allowed to dress as they like, play with what they like, talk how they want , be friends with who they want with no judgement do you still think you'd feel you were in the wrong body?

I think there is a problem re things like toilets and it seems unfair to use disabled ones as well as they're specially adapted and not enough of them.

 

Well all I can say is I hope you find happiness with the choices you are making, good luck with the transition and I really hope you get the respect you deserve.

 

Well said, old mate.

 

Wow! What a personal story.
All the very best to you Gravy on your journey.
Hope you can have a successful transformation and receive the help you need.
All the best. Live and let live.

 

Very brave of you. Life is short, live it your way! We'll all be dead soon enough so never allow your happiness to be dependent on the thoughts and words of others.

 

What a lovely post, a world away from the rabid discourse on Twitter. It’s often easy to forget that there are real people involved in these struggles.

I wish you the best of luck on your journey.

 

That's a really incredible post, as informative as it is moving. I'm now starting to understand just how little I understand about this subject, and I'm grateful to you for sharing your experiences. That can't have been an easy thing to do. By the way, I hope you didn't find my post about Laurel Hubbard derogatory in any way. As a sports fan I'm just genuinely interested in people's opinions on what is bound to be a very controversial subject.

 

Although on a serious note, hope it all works out well for you!

 

Very brave to say all these personal things. All the very best to you, live life your way, nobody else's

 

Thought you were owning up to changing allegiance to Wednesday! Now that would've been embarassing!!

Great post, mate. Brave post, and one I hope would just elicit a collective shrug of 'so what?' from your fellow supporters on here. It shouldn't matter one jot. Everyone has the absolute right to be who & what they want to be.

 

You're incredibly brave for posting this, and embarking on the journey you're about to take.

Good luck with your transition, I hope some day you can finally be the person you have always been, and be looked upon without prejudice.

If nothing else, I hope your post has helped change the views of a few people.

 

That is just an amazingly brave post. You are what you are my friend, I sincerely hope and pray that you find happiness in what will be a long journey.

 

Well said. An often misunderstood and maligned experience. Keep on keeping on.

 

Got to echo what everyone else has said, well done for putting up such a brave and informative post. You've only got one life, you've got to be brave enough to live it your own way and enjoy it, good luck in the transition.

 

I bet it took you a long time to write that, and I bet that there were more than a few times you thought about hitting back or close and not bothering.

For what it's worth, if it's worth anything, it won't alter the way you are perceived by anyone on this board (I would think - and hope).

You don't have to air this publically, but I take it you have the support of your immediate family too?

Hope so - but this board is brilliant for a lot of things and support for other fans is definitely one of them too.

I hope you come out the other side a happier person, sadly most peoples experience of trans community are the shouty Twitter folk you refer to - so the more people see a balanced picture the better.

 

I can only echo and agree the sentiments of others posting before me. Good luck on your journey fellow Red.

 

That's an amazing post.