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| | At the interview, the editor pointed to my glittery face and asked who I had been dressed as the night before. I smiled, “Puck.” He nodded, likely thinking I was talking hockey and not the fairy from Shakespeare’s 'A Midsummer Nights Dream'.
Despite any prejudice on my part towards a small town paper, I got the job. My boss hired me with the knowledge that I am a transgender person and that my preferred pronoun is “he.”
Because of my boss’ steadfast heralding of my correct pronoun, I have found safety and comfort in the office. On my behalf, he has had to explain to confused parents, coaches, and coworkers what exactly I am.
Out of the office, I have met raised eyebrows and confused faces. On any given day, I am read as both ‘she’ and ‘he.’
Bathrooms are a constant challenge, and I find tremendous difficulty in locker rooms.
I was recently stymied at a swim meet by the configuration of their pool room. People on their way to the poolside were forced to enter through either the men’s or women’s locker room.
I held tightly to my press credentials and stood in the hallway for so long that an attendant tapped me to ask if I needed help. I shook my head and hurried into the men’s room, assuming if people thought I was a girl in the men’s locker room it would be less of an issue than if I was thought to be a man in the women’s room.
I passed in and out unnoticed.
On the sidelines, I feel an immense amount of pressure to prove that despite my ‘fay’ presentation, I am not to be shoved in a trashcan— I am writing. I wield my notebook as if a shield. I laugh to myself when I notice that my interview subject is checking obtrusively for a bulge in my crotch. But mostly, I am consistently impressed with the fact that I have not been driven out of town.
Recently, I unearthed a journal of mine from elementary school and found a passage of musings regarding the idea of sports reporting. At the Observer I lamented writing about politics or real estate when I thought I could do much better covering the Jets or the Knicks. In high school, I read and re-read work by Gay Talese. And every day, the scores and scores of sports antidotes I grew up with sift through my mind, potential is what gets you fired…
As a trans/genderqueer person, no part of me thought sports journalism was a career option. As a recent New York Timesarticle about Outsports.com highlights, gay people and their participation in sports are an ‘enduring taboo.’
I am grateful for this opportunity and for the people here who are able to hold the seeming paradox of gender bending and organized sport in the same hand.
Day to day, I choose not to tone down my personality as exuded through my gender presentation—recently a friend of mine dubbed me the Johnny Weir of sports writing. While I often feel pressured to only dress in ball cap and jock strap, I am still glittery—wearing my gender as my own. |
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My gender identity demands a space where the flamboyant and the athletic meet—I am an androgynous trans/genderqueer sports reporter for the Mt. Desert Islander in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a sports beat that sends me onto high school sidelines, into national marathons, and inside the coverage of international championships. I am the only ‘out’ transgender sports reporter at a weekly newspaper in the United States that I know of.
By Emerson Whitney
http://www.outsports.com |
My interview for this sports-writing job came the morning after I served as emcee for a transgender celebration in Portland, Maine. For the event, I covered myself in glitter…and chose not to fully remove it for the interview. My partner nodded at my decision saying, “If a couple flakes of glitter are an issue, honey, you don’t want this job.”
Honestly, part of me thought sabotage. Nobody up here is going to hire me for anything, I thought. And part of me didn’t care. While I wholeheartedly wanted—needed—a job, I wasn’t sure about this one. Some of my reticence was the idea of living rurally. I was withdrawing from a whirlwind departure from New York City, where layoffs swept the two offices I inhabited: the New York Observer andRadar Magazine. I lost both my writing jobs and went traveling. My partner and I landed in Maine after some back-to-the-land soul searching and were starting to run out of money. So I sent my resume to several publications on a whim, not expecting to hear back. But I got a call from a newspaper needing to quickly fill the position of ‘sports and maritime’ writer for their nationally recognized publication (“New England’s best weekly newspaper”).
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