Self-Transphobia and Transitioning in Public: A VGC Story

Pixel art done by @moawko if you want to give a follow ^_^

Introduction

Hi everyone! My name is Maura, but you might know me by my Twitter handle, @KillerQueenVGC. If you don’t know who I am, I am a VGC player from New Jersey. I’ve been playing Pokémon since Red and Blue were released in the United States in 1998 and have been playing competitively since 2013, soon before X and Y were released. I went to my first VGC event in December 2014 and started taking VGC seriously in the 15–16 season. I also happen to be a transgender woman.
While, in comparison to a lot of other trans people, I do lead a decent life, being trans is not easy by any stretch. Before I came out, I heard constant negative things about trans people, especially after Caitlyn Jenner came out. Coworkers were constantly talking about how trans women are perverts and how “people like that” are what is wrong with this country. This is the environment I grew up in. Yes, I live in the Northeast, one of the most liberal parts of the country, but I live in suburban New Jersey, which is a very conservative pocket of my region. This environment leads to me a topic that is not discussed often enough and it is very crucial to understand for anyone struggling with their identity. This concept is called self-transphobia (This also can be applied to self-homophobia).

What is Self-Transphobia?

Self, or internalized, transphobia refers to when someone who is transgender hates that part of themselves or are ashamed of it, whether they are consciously aware of these thoughts or not. Many people easily accept their identity and are able to express themselves appropriately from a young age. Many others fight the signs that their brain tries to send them and repress any feelings that might cause them to doubt that they are cisgender (someone who is not transgender). I was part of the latter group.

How Has This Affected my Life?

I was raised a Catholic boy in central New Jersey, where I was constantly taught that being gay was wrong (As a child, no one even acknowledged that being transgender was even a thing. There was no conversation about this). At a young age, I was always interested in “girl things”, being caught several times by my parents playing with my sister’s toys. From then on, my parents constantly tried to push me towards more masculine activities while I also had the constant fear of going to Hell.
As I grew older and reached college, the feelings of misalignment intensified. However, due to how I was raised, I buried these feelings in things like lifting weights and just generally being an asshole to people around me in an effort to overcompensate for my feminine feelings. I spent years convincing myself that it couldn’t be me. That I wasn’t trans and I could beat it. By Spring 2015, I was seeing a gender therapist doing everything I could to convince myself I was male.
October 1, 2015 is one of the most significant days of my life, having started Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). However, just because I began my transition did not mean I moved on from my self-transphobia. I continued to play VGC and live my day to day life under my birth name and presented myself as male. I transitioned in secret, with only a select few people knowing that I was transitioning. I continued to transition in secret until May 2016, when I decided to contact my local TO, and one of my favorite people, Jen Badamo, about the process of changing my name for events.
I knew that I was going to have to come out soon, but even after Jen’s amazing support, I was still apprehensive about coming out due to my experiences at home. Soon before I came out, during the peak of Caitlyn Jenner’s popularity, I dealt with a lot of negative comments at home and at work. I constantly heard comments about how trans women are weird and perverts and that trans people are “what is wrong with this country.” Between these experiences and those of my childhood, I was still terrified to come out.

The VGC Community

The day I began to be looked at differently was May 16, 2016. This was six days before the final Premier Challenge of the 15–16 VGC Season. It was one of the most terrifying moments of my life as I did not know what to expect. Given the past twenty-eight years of life experience, I braced myself for the worst. I fully expected to be shunned and an outsider in the VGC community. I posted a TwitLonger coming out to the community and had an anxiety attack as I waited for responses. The amount of kindness, love, and support I received from the community was unlike anything I had ever seen. I gained hundreds of followers seemingly overnight after I came out, going from about 100 followers in May 2016 (I was on Twitter for about a year at this point) to nearly 400 as I’m writing this article today. This actually contributed a lot to my self-transphobia, as I knew that the only reason people knew I exist is because I’m the “trans player” and I didn’t feel like I deserved the attention.
This was especially difficult for me because, as I was receiving this warm welcome from nearly the entire community, I was doing the complete opposite to myself. I constantly told myself awful things that I would never say to anyone else, like how I’m not really a woman and that I felt like a man playing dress up. I was so insecure that I went to 2016 Nationals in a wig and proceeded to bomb the event (2–4 drop) when I needed Top 64 to get my Worlds invite. I put being a woman on a pedestal and, in my head, if I couldn’t pass as a cisgender female, it wasn’t worth transitioning.
The 16–17 season came along and it was an extremely difficult year for me. Between working at trying to “pass” and having lackluster performances at Regionals, it was not my year for Pokémon. In addition to this, my family still refers to me by my birth name, I had a coworker verbally abuse me in the restroom, and I often found myself not fitting in. This was largely due to two factors: I’m shy and I felt like I was inferior to everyone because I’m trans. I often went home from events in tears and put a ton of pressure on myself, thinking that the only way people would ever respect me is if I have a breakout season, which obviously didn’t happen.

Conclusion

Despite my constant belittling myself, I have made a bunch of friends over the past year. I don’t want to rattle off names because it distracts from the purpose of this article. I went from a relatively unknown player to someone that everyone in the community was at least aware of. I still deal with self-transphobia to an extent, but every day I try to work a little harder at not letting my “transness” (Is this even a word?) define who I am as a player or a person. It is a part of who I am, but it is important to not worry about things like “passing” or meeting some mystical standard of femininity. The purpose of me writing this article is for the trans people out there (whether you play Pokémon or not) who are still afraid to be yourselves. Basically, I want you to not be like me. Don’t find reasons not to be yourself. Life is too short to try to live up to other people’s expectations. Be your best self every day and don’t stress about what other people think of you. All of those negative things you think that others will think about you will become what you think about yourself if you aren’t careful.

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VGC Scrub | Possible Future TCG Scrub| Top 16 '17 Indianapolis Challenge | 0/400

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