Just call me a man already and get it over with

I'm angry.

I hate writing when I'm angry. I think it makes me too emotional, too attached to copy and most importantly makes my brain move too fast having ideas pop up and die before I can even get them down on the page.

But, I'm sick of being told how my life is and who I am without my own input. It was the same way over the last decade when sport organizations around the world sought to "solve" the issue of transgender men and women playing sports and who they should compete alongside. Working groups were convened, data collected and new policies were put out. Yet, time after time it would prove true that trans people were almost never in these rooms during consultations. Our lived experience, what our bodies need and what it is like to forcibly remake your own body so you can live was cast aside for the comfort of cisgender administrators and some athletes.

Olympic sport bodies have largely fallen in line with the new IOC party line that "sex assigned at birth" is how athletes should be categorized, and that "open" gender competition should be offered should transgender athletes not feel comfortable competing in events that don't match their current sex.

Professional sports in the United States has largely stayed out of this eligibility mess because let's face it, trans people in the U.S. face too much systemic barriers to become professional athletes. There's only been a handful of transgender Olympic athletes, and all but one competed in events for their birth sex and have delayed hormone replacement therapy to continue their athletic careers. As someone who delayed HRT for over a year for personal medical reasons I can tell you that doing so is absolute hell.

This matters because the WNBA continues to be in an endless news cycle about transfeminine athletes. I'm not going to recount all the details of how we got here, but in the last few days two sports opinion writers felt emboldened to talk about how they wished they could write columns about, and offer support for each other. Now two people do not make an industry, but the support that these men are receiving online is disheartening in the sense that it appears there are more people in the sportswriting industry that share the same views. I would not be surprised if we see similar columns come out in the next few days or weeks.

There's never been a trans woman who played in the WNBA. There may never be one. But, there is an entire media ecosystem now devoted to the idea that the specter of trans women taking over women's sports is just one misguided policy away. And that the brave heroes pointing this out against the "outrage mob" are the ones saving women's sports.

What I did for my transition is private. Full stop. Very few people on earth are entitled to that information. I don't go around asking other people make their private medical history public. But, because I am a competitive rower I always knew there would be a chance that I'd have to share my hormone panels or other private medical information with sport administrators to continue playing.

I don't like it, but I've accepted it. But unfortunately there is an entire movement to convince the general public what transitioning entails and how my medical history endangers women in sports, bathrooms and other private spaces. And very few people that want to "engage this issue" in good faith ever ask trans people what transitioning is like or entails.

When I began medically transitioning, my body radically changed. My center of gravity shifted, my skin felt entirely different, fat redistributed all over my body and I lost a shoe size. That's because the way hormones interact with your body happens on a cellular level. When I tell people that many trans women lose height from HRT they are astonished. When I mention its because our ligaments change due to the hormone readjustment they usually say something along the lines of "now that you mention this, it makes sense, but never in a million years would I have considered thinking about this."

This applies to sports, considerably. I've talked about how transitioning completely redid how I need to perform a rowing stroke and how the muscle memory I had built up when I was a collegiate and club rower was now misaligned. It took me quite a bit of time to feel stable in a boat again because I need to relearn how to do a sport that had been second nature for quite some time.

Even mentioning that to my club mates was a shock to them at first! They just thought I was rusty. But again, cisgender people who never have to live with a lifetime of feeling slightly off about your entire existence have never had to think about this.

Also, the mental toll of waiting to transition is immense. I think that may be one of the few parts that people understand theoretically, but they apply it to the notion that trans women that finally self actualize want to just start being female athletes without undergoing anything. While I did want people to accept me in society as a woman (and for the most part many did when I socially transitioned before medically transitioning), never in a million years did I think I could just show up and change my sporting categories. I was on medication rewriting my endocrine system! I needed time for that to change.

Trans people have always thought there needs to be a grace period after starting hormones before someone would be allowed to compete. The issue has always been that once we reach that grace level, administrators have put arbitrary limits on how our bodies need to be working in order to gain access to the field of play. What my hormone levels are and how they interact with my body in a healthy way is a conversation between me and my doctor, not anyone else. I don't owe it to the public to tell you my testosterone levels (very little by the way) or how my body metabolizes the hormones that I take. If I were to stop HRT my body would not produce testosterone or estrogen and I would have severe health complications. That's something I don't think anyone can understand, and if I were to explain to you about why that is it would require divulging personal medical information.

So, no I am not a biological male. I don't know what that would entail, but certainly it is not what my body's endocrine function is right now. Even just saying that is telling you more about my personal history that anyone is entitled to, but I am mad. I'm furious even. This phrase is offensive to myself on a deep level, yes, but it is also inaccurate in a way that is harmful. Same with using the phrase "trans-identified male" which media outlets across the pond seem to be adopting en masse.

I'm sick of people hiding behind poorly written columns wanting to disparage me and my sisters and then getting offended when someone calls them out on it. The issue with sports has always been it is a way for people to legally define trans women as women in society and men on a field of play in an effort to further erode our rights and access to public goods in a way where we are just living our lives. Marking our documents with a sex that does not match who we live as is a human rights violation and that's what people are doing on sporting forms.

If you believe I am a man just say it. Stop calling me a "biological male" or a "trans-identified male" and just be honest for once. You don't want to protect or promote women's sports, you just think trans women are men if they want to participate alongside cisgender women. That's what these columns boil down to. They are transphobic, they are rooted in the belief that no matter what we do for transitioning it will never fully make us women and for that we should not have access to spaces that the general public uses without a second thought. You can tell me how valid you think I am until the cows come home, but you are calling me a man. I just hope that you never have to experience someone defining who you are, and using chosen language for how you exist all without your consent or input. It really is awful and draining. But clearly the world needs another column where you justify doing just that with little editorial oversight.