QUESTION

How do you deal with gender dysphoria when competing on a team that is strictly your AGAB? My teammates try their best but sometimes I feel so detached and separate from them.

Answer

"This makes so much sense, feeling detached or separated from your team.

I would feel that way, too, and one of the things that I think is really important when we think about these feelings is actually not dismissing them — not trying to be like, "Everything is fine! Everybody is supportive!"

We can still feel detached, alone, separated. So I actually feel like the first thing is actually making sure you're validating yourself. Telling yourself, 'Gosh, this makes a lot of sense, this is hard, I feel lonely and so on.'

The other thing I think about is how much gender boxes get inside of our heads and how much we internalize other people's expectations of our gender. So when i was competing on the women's team but knew that I wasn't a woman, I had to figure out how I didn't internalize women's team, women's suit, people referring to us as 'ladies.'

And that was really important to me because I couldn't stop what other people did, I couldn't stop people from gendering me a certain way based on how I looked or what suit I wore or what lane I was swimming in. But I could control how I internalized those words.

So instead of calling it a "women's suit," I called it my 'swimsuit.' Instead of saying this was "women's swimming," I said, 'This is the swimming that I'm currently doing.' Learning to adjust your internal monologue so that it's nice and also affirming of your gender is key when a space doesn't do that."

Schuyler Bailar
He/Him

is the 1st trans D1 NCAA men’s athlete, a bestselling author and an advocate for trans inclusion.