I know a couple of trans peeps whose experience at Uni was fundamental in that the environment was conducive to facilitating their coming out
How did you fit in (or not) at Uni? What was your experience of that environment like and was it noticably different to your previous environments?
Interesting thread, thanks
I first went to uni in 2013 prior to coming out, so my experience then was fairly normal. I then deferred and got some full time work because I realised I didn't want to study full time right after finishing 12 years of school, so after a semester of deferring I went back part time while working casually. I came out that year (2014, well right at the end of 2013) and that was difficult as I didn't have my new name recorded in the system at my main uni. However I was doing an Italian course that was actually run through another uni in my town and THAT uni allowed a preferred name for class lists and the email system, so it worked.
Went to Germany for 8 months and stayed with my exchange family from highschool as I was planning on restarting German studies when I got back to uni end of 2015 and needed to drastically improve my rather poor language skills. What better than immersion.
Came back to my main uni in 2015 and was told no possibility to have a preferred name for the dashboard, class lists or email. Something about legal reasons, which I have constantly called bullshit on as the other uni permitted it.
Had to email every course coordinator, every lecturer, of every class I was enrolled in asking them to call me Eli and he. Miscommunication between the German course coordinator and the tutor resulted in him reading out my birth name, which I refused to respond to. I went up to him after class and explained that was me but I wanted to be referred to differently. He sent me a lovely email that afternoon apologising for using the wrong name after I sent him one just reiterating what I mentioned in class and be said he would make every effort to get it right and if he didn't I should feel free to immediately correct him. It was cute because it was written in English with German sentence structure.
No such luck with my intro to philosophy course. Was deadnamed first tutorial and misgendered constantly. Emailed the lecturer, knowing my deadname appears in the email text but signed off definitively with elijah. Explained the situation. He responded with my deadname. This continued. I actually started asking he call me Matthew which is my second name because I thought maybe he incredibly believed Elijah was a unisex name. Still no luck. Stopped attending, failed tests, didn't go to exam. Failed the course. My one fail over two degrees. Found out years later if I applied early enough I could have had it wiped from my transcript for compassionate reasons. Fucking dragged my GPA to shit. Amazing how distinctions barely raise your GPA but one fail trashes it.
Changed name legally December 2015.
Enrolled into law school March 2016. New name on the system. Had one single technical incident where my deadname randomly popped up in my email instead of Elijah but that was rectified by IT.
Started hormones late 2016. Was the only transitioning student in the entire law school. Many lecturers I had guessed, because I seemed to very rapidly age over 5 years going from looking like a 14 year old boy in 2016 to a 26 year old in 2020 with a full beard.
Got a $5000 scholarship my first year of law school for being financially disadvantaged, homeless, not on student payments, maintaining a decent GPA, and being an advocate for my community. At the time I was interviewed for the scholarship I was living out of boxes between friends houses and had $2 to my name. They said they could not promise me anything but they were pretty sure I'd get the scholarship unless they found someone in a worse situation. I told them if they found someone in a worse situation I would gladly give them the scholarship rather than me because worse couldn't get much worse than where I was.
In 2018, ex justice Michael Kirby, the first openly gay justice of the High Court of Australia came and did a speech at the uni. The bulk of his speech was about how trans rights are the new social justice fight of our time and he was proud as a member of the gay community to support us. He held a small luncheon after for queer students and I sat and listened. A student behind me stuck their hand up (and because I'm not a dick I will use the pronouns they use) and declared themselves to be the single trans student at the law school. Notably, they were clearly assigned female at birth and entirely female presenting, so no one would ever think they would be trans except for slapping on some gender neutral pronouns. (I am admittedly pretty conservative on this issue and l don't think retaining your physical appearance, dress, and not having a desire to surgically transition but accessorising with some trendy gender neutral pronouns counts for very much. The absolute worst thing that would happen to this person in life is that people see them, see the way they present as completely feminine, then gender them as feminine as a natural consequence. It's a logical outcome to your decision not to dress in a gender neutral way. And frankly if being perceived constantly as your assigned gender due to your unwillingness to present differently doesn't seem to bother you, I find it hard to imagine you experience much if any dysphoria at all. I have non binary friends who I view as completely agender or bigender. They constantly alternate between masculine, feminine, and somewhere in between. It's too much of a hassle to swap pronouns depending on the day so these friends just use they and to me they are they and they are trans. But when you make no effort at all? Yeah, I just don't really buy it. Some people want the oppression points that can come with being trans. It's no big danger to that person to say they're trans and uses they/them pronouns. So people will roll their eyes and do it out of courtesy. I have to vet every. Single. Fucking. Person. I. Tell. And sometimes I fucking get it wrong and I am exposed to danger. If I take my shirt off in the wrong place I might get beaten. One lacrosse game I had to shower after and the only available showers were in the home team (not us) changeroom. And it was my worst nightmare. Open showers, no cubicles. What the fuck do I do? I absolutely need a shower, no time to drive home before work and it pissed down with rain during the game and cause I crawl around in the mud as the goalie I'm filthy. So I rushed in hoping the home team would take their time. I picked the shower head in the furthest away corner, put my dry clothes on the bench nearby, whipped my clothes off, and got under the water. A couple home team players walked in completely naked and got under some other showers. They tried talking to me but I was utterly petrified. I scrubbed down and skipped washing my hair even though it was sweaty and gross and quickly wrapped my towel around my waist, grabbed everything and headed to our changerooms toilet stall for some privacy to change. Those are the issues I face being a medically transitioned person and I resent the fact that the aforementioned group of people claim to experience even close to the amount of discrimination we do.
Funnily enough, I did accidentally leave my packer (fake dick I wear in my jocks which I have on during lace especially as it provides padding for my crotch and yeah left it in the shower so some cleaner from the club probably had a bit of a weird find. I tend to sort of make a bit of a joke about my lack of a dick with lacrosse when the reference asks if I'm wearing a cup in goals. I adamantly claim not to need one and he'll ask if im sure. Our player coach will then reassure the referee that I'm totally fine, and the ref will walk away looking unconvinced. Every season, without fail, I will get a bullseye shot nailed to my fake dick one game. Because of the padding on the goalie shorts and the packer, it doesn't hurt at all so I don't even flinch. The opposing attackers flinch and moan and then stand there stunned while I pick the ball up and just lazily throw it out. Some of them will come up to me and curiously ask how I'm not writhing around on the floor in agony. I tend to just go 'seriously I just have superbly powerful testicles and an unbreakable penis' and they still look confused. This amuses me over and over again because I know they will occasionally randomly remember that time the university goalie got nailed in the ballsack at 150kmph and he didn't even flinch. And they will die wondering, because I pass as cis they won't even consider I'm trans.
Honestly if the showers had been open in my own teams changeroom i would have happily stood there stark naked with my teammates. They are fiercely protective of me being on the men's team, incredibly proud of me for what I've achieved and have been absolutely nothing but accepting and welcoming. When I moved from the girls university team to the men's I asked the coach 'i want to play in the men's but I'm not sure I'm allowed, it that okay? I dunno if the other guys want me there' and Don messaged back saying 'we won't tell the league, they don't need to know. If any of the guys on the team have an issue with you playing they can come to me and sort it out. You're one of us now' and he is in his mid 60s. I worked my way up into the first team and earnt my spot and playing men's university sport was a huge highlight of my uni years. I played division. 2 in 2016 my first year as longpole (defence, so I could run less as I wore a binder during training and games) then 2017 I moved up to division one where don tried playing me as a dual short (attack) long pole because I am the only left handed at the club and lefties can shoot from the opposite side of the cage which opens up a whole new way to attack. But then I played an amazing game in defence and he never let me touch a short pole again. My addiction was bad this year though. I managed to keep up my performance as I would take a small bunch of codeine to stop withdrawal, play, then dose the rest after but eventually I ended up with some heroin and used before the game and the morning of. Don benched me after 10 minutes because I was so slow. Yelled at me, could not figure out what the hell was wrong with me. Got put back on in the final 5 min when someone came off hurt and continued to play abysmally. The next week I admitted to don what happened and he asked if he could help and told me to try not to do it again. 2018 I ended up replacement goalkeeper because our normal guy broke his thumb at training. I got picked because I used to be a soccer goalie as a teenager and I was the girls goalie for 2 years because that was the only position on the field you could wear shorts (lmao red flag). Did alright, swapping from womens goals where they shoot slower and place their shots to mens where they rip them into the cage at 150km/pH was intense. My drinking was terrible this year. In 2019 I decided to play soccer for the uni, and return to my roots as a prior girls state team level.player. Part of the reason was the drinking culture at the lacrosse club was truly hurting me. Sent out a few emails to the 10 uni clubs and trialed at the longest established Saturday amatuer second ranked team. I was very unfir but skill level wise fine, even though I hadn't played in nearly a decade. Got put in the starting 11 for the reserves team my first week, then made the bench of the first team after 4 months. I enjoyed playing soccer again but I still had issues with anxiety from it due to pressure from a parent as a teenager. I also was stealth (not out) at the soccer club because there was 70 guys there as opposed to the 16 from lacrosse who I knew all of, and I found it impossible to vet them all. I ended up telling maybe a handful through the year but swore them to secrecy, and came out to more of them when I left the next year and added them on social media. I made a few friends from there who were chill. Went back to lacrosse as the head soccer coach was a transphobic shithead who hated my guts since I was a walking, talking, representation of the fact that assigned female people can be every bit as good as assigned male people if they're given the shot. He thought woman's sport was boring and shit. I told him it was underfunded, under resources, and undercompetative. And I gave him that opinion with the fact that I experienced unbalanced funding and resources during my time playing as a teenager at dual gender clubs where we paid twice the fees to not ever be able to train on the main field, still have to buy our uniform, have unpaid amatuer coaches, and have them switch the lights off early on us once the boys were done every night. I was playing soccer with boys at 16 at high school when there was no senior school girls team and I wanted to play. I pointed out that because there was no girls team they were obliged to let me play with the boys (which I'd demanded my entire high school life because I played boys soccer throughout primary school perfectly fine then in highschool played a year of girls, obviously got MVP and found it so laughably easy it was a waste of my time. One year I did a state trip and the school told me if I didnt play the last 6 games of the year for the middle school girls they would not let me go on the trip. I did, and one game I scored 8 goals including by kicking the ball in with my heel without looking at the goals, and another juggling the ball for 20 metres keeping it off the other team and lobbing it over the goalie. After the game the opposition coach came up to me and asked if I every considered joining a club, because he said he would love to see me play at his. I looked at him for a moment and said 'sorry, I'm only playing this game because the school told me I had to or they'd not let me go on a state trip. I've been playing club since I was 13, I'm happy where I am.' so with no girls team the school had zero choice. I told them they couldn't argue I wasn't good enough, because the level I played at for state was clearly higher than the boys teams. Plus there is no rule about assigned female people playing with assigned male. Only the other way around. When I went to train with the guys both the coaches were immediately dubious. They waved me off and stuck me in the position to put the shittest player so they can't fuck anything up. The guys on the field were keen for me to join in since I often played indoor with them at lunch. 15 min later I scored a goal and set up 2 more and had both coaches run up to me after training asking me to join both their teams.
Testosterone didn't make me able to do this, I've always been able to compete with men. But the coach fucking hated it and treated me like shit so I left and went back to lacrosse where I wouldn't have to deal with that and their attitude toward transphobia was that you accept we have a trans guy on the team or you find a new club to play at. No third option. Back in goals, better year but uneventful. Next year did goals again because if I don't play in goals, they can't really field a team and I have such a strong commitment to helping the club because they were such a big part of my transition that I would feel awful saying no. Ended up top ranked goalkeeper for my league that year. This year we didn't field a team as due to covid our student recruitment has been shit. But I'm still planning on going on the pub crawl and catching up with all the guys cause it's been a while.
I did some gear last night so this response was longer than I intended but you did ask a really interesting question which made me think about the things that really helped with my transition at uni and I'd say the law faculty and the lacrosse club would be my two picks.
** Don still invites me round for roast dinner with his wife and son once every couple of months. I'm the only guy from lacrosse who is this privileged.
If you want I can inbox you a local online news article I was published in last year about misgendering at uni. I do not want to link it on the thread as I could be identified but it's a good read and I'm happy to privately share it.
to distract from the junk. But I try to read everything and usually do. You write a lot. I have transgender at my weed store though. Okay, so I keep on enjoying your writing. Ohh . . . how long do you think people (them) will be able to behave for??