Transgender people face a particular set of challenges when it comes to spaces where people exercise and compete. Here, eight athletes tell BuzzFeed Life about their experiences with fitness, movement, and competition.
The yogi
"Every time I practice yoga I am choosing to be happy and healthy." —Sparkle Thornton
Sparkle Thornton, 33, is a yoga instructor and massage therapist who lives in the Bay Area. Originally from Asheville, North Carolina, she started practicing yoga when she was 19 and became an instructor at age 25. This March she’s leading Yogay, a yoga retreat in California for queer and transgender people. Thornton shares how her yoga practice helped her realize that she wanted to transition, and how, almost 15 years since she started, yoga continues to be her source of emotional well-being and self-care.
When I started practicing yoga it started to really come up that I wanted to transition. Of course it was in there all along, the desire was there. I didn’t have the words for it but I knew that I wanted to grow up and be female when I was 5 years old. Yoga has this way of stirring things up, like whatever has been buried and whatever the things are that we are trying to ignore. For me that was that I was trans. It helped me to feel comfortable in my body. I really think yoga is why I’m still alive and why I’m happy and thriving now.
For me [practicing yoga] has always been mental health. I feel so much more able to face the world when I’ve practiced yoga. I don’t really trust myself to make good decisions until after I’ve done yoga. If I’m really worried about something or feeling impatient it’s probably because I haven’t practiced. It keeps my state of mind open and aware of what might be unfolding that I don’t have control over. So for me it feels like necessity. If I don’t do it, I suffer.
Danh Duong Photography / Via 500px.com
The running CrossFitter
"I am actively in search of my body’s limits and I don’t think I’ve found them yet." —Niki Brown
Originally from Iowa, Niki Brown, 30, is a web developer who lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He grew up running track and cross country and playing soccer. He’s still a runner — a half-marathoner and, since last year, a marathoner. He also competes in local CrossFit competitions. He tells BuzzFeed Life about how his transition impacted his mental toughness and his connection to his body.
I definitely think transitioning has made me stronger mentally. Some of the stuff I’ve had to deal with — people not handling it well, family members not talking to me — I have to get past it, deal with it, get stronger. I think that translates to the mental toughness of [running a marathon]: "OK, I have to be running for four hours and when your knee hurts saying nope, turn it off. Keep going."
My whole life I felt disconnected from my body, so working out helps with that.
I don’t even know if I have the words to accurately describe it. ... It’s difficult to put into words. I am still getting used to being connected to my body in that way.
Ben Pender-Cudlip
The MMA fighter
"My strengths right now are my determination and my will." —Fallon Fox
Fallon Fox, 39, is the first professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter to come out as transgender. Initially interested in learning martial arts for self-protection, she started training Brazilian jiujitsu in late 2007, picked up Muy Thai a couple years later, and less than a year after that started training in MMA, in which opponents fight using a variety of styles from Brazilian jiujitsu and Muy Thai to wrestling, judo, and kickboxing. She will be featured in Game Face , a documentary about LGBTQ athletes, set to be released this year. She talks about getting inspired to learn MMA by watching other women fighters, what happened when UFC host Joe Rogan made public comments about her gender identity, and how professional competition can be more inclusive of transgender fighters.
The thing that inspired me the most was other female fighters, these older style fighters before women’s MMA became popular. I was blown away because women were actually fighting. They were letting women fight. I’d never seen that intensity, that assertiveness, that skill. ... I felt I needed that for my own assertiveness. I felt I was lacking that for my own self-protection.
[It would help trans people if] promotions [the organizations that produce MMA matches] hire trans fighters. Or they can punish their employees and fighters who say transphobic comments and slurs. That would help us out the most, promoting the perception of reality that we are who we say we are. I suppose it should be looked at like this. [When MMA celebrities] say transphobic comments, they kind of set the pace for the kind of negativity that fans might have. They stir it up. They light the fire under it. When [UFC host] Joe Rogan said those comments, the fans would come to me online or while I'm fighting and say they heard it from Joe Rogan. That affected me in the beginning. It affected me a lot. I wasn’t used to that. I had to get used to having names yelled at me while I was trying to do my job.
Rhys Harper / Via Facebook: transcendinggenderproject
The track star turned weightlifter
“I was a strong female, but not where I wanted to be, where I imagined myself being.” —Jordan Davis
Jordan Davis, 24, is a nursing student from Oklahoma City. He started taking testosterone in August 2014, but even before starting his medical transition, Davis says he always identified with guys and was almost always assumed by strangers to be a boy. In high school he was a state champion sprinter, but nowadays he’s more of a bodybuilder. He starts every morning with about a 20-minute high-intensity interval circuit of pull-up variations and pushups, and then, five days per week, spends about two hours lifting in the gym. He speaks here about how his transition has helped him feel more comfortable while working out, as well as how it's impacted the way he thinks and feels about his body.
When you run track [on the girls’ team] the uniforms you have to wear are just totally not me. I was real uncomfortable; it felt like something I was forced to do. As soon as the race was over I would go put my clothes back on. I never really liked my body even though I was pretty cut up. Now my fat has redistributed, so it’s like my upper body is really big and I’m a lot more solid up top than I used to be, so it’s a lot more comfortable for me now that I am on T [testosterone].
I used to feel real self-conscious. I kind of still do because I’m still not as big as I want to be. I’m getting there…I have to kind of remind myself that most of the guys at the gym are cis male, so I’m like a 16-year old compared to them. I have to remind myself of that and look at where I came from. I keep my headphones in and focus on myself instead of looking around. It’s easier if you do it like that. [It’s better to] think about the goals that you’re trying to reach and not worry about people around you.
instagram.com / Via Instagram: @jord23nbre
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