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Hockey team entirely made up of trans and nonbinary people compete across US

They are creating a space that allows people to be themselves while participating in a sport they love.

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Hockey team made up of trans and nonbinary people

Many people played sports growing up and some continue to play as adults on recreational teams in their cities. Usually teams are split between girls and boys, even as adults but there's one team out there creating a safe space for transgender players. Team Trans is a hockey team made up of hundreds of people and they play competitively in LGBTQ tournaments across the country.

According to one of the players, Team Trans is an international collective of players that identify as trans or nonbinary. Recently there has been more and more legislation surrounding trans rights and issues, including the ability for trans youth and adults to play sports.

But with Team Trans, the members are able to create a safe environment for trans and nonbinary people to compete in a sport that they enjoy. There's no one telling them who can and can't play on their team based on someone else's opinion. They make the rules and they're having fun.


When the team sat down with Good Morning America, some of the members discussed the importance of Team Trans and how it changed their lives.

"I actually stopped playing hockey when I began my transition. The first time I stepped back on the ice was in Las Vegas with Team Trans and it reignited my love for the sport," Keira Wiele tells GMA. "It was a life changing experience for me and continues to be a life changing experience for me."

"We're doing this for joy. We're doing this to have fun. That's it. That's all it is," Sarah Antaya says. "We just want to exist and we want to do all of these fun things in our amazing world that all of us want to do."

You can watch the entire interview below:

When I prepared to become a parent for the first time in 2005, I was staunchly committed to raising my tiny new human in the most gender-neutral of ways.

We had opted to not learn his biological sex prior to his arrival, and registered for green and yellow baby items, avoiding the stereotypical pink and blue at all costs. We declared that he would have access to all the colors, toys, and activities regardless of where they fell among societal gender norms. 12 years later, that child is an articulate, sensitive man-cub who is on the cusp of navigating gender and sexuality for himself for the first time. (Godspeed, kiddo).

My second child, however, has been different. I raised both my kids gender-neutral, but Nova has embraced that in its full meaning, shunning gendered pronouns and styles in favor of being just, well, Nova.


I’ve done a lot of growing and learning and evolving myself in both my parenting and politics along the way. In the past few years, what I've begun to realize is that, in many circumstances, these attempts at gender-neutral parenting may not be quite enough. In fact, I’ve been catapulted from gender-neutral parenting and have landed on a call to action to break down the gender binary altogether.

In the first few years of life, Nova was just Nova.

Gender wasn’t exactly high on my list of concerns when it came to raising them. At 5 years old, my kid already has lived and lost more than many folks do in their lifetimes.

Photo by Ashlee Dean Wells.

From a complicated pregnancy and surviving the death of their identical twin, to arriving 16 weeks premature and weighing only 1 pound, it’s fair to say that Nova has been fighting an uphill battle from the start. They continue to slay every obstacle in their path, but still, as a person living with special needs and permanent disabilities, there is a lot of autonomy they are forced to relinquish on a daily basis. I didn't want to make gender another choice that Nova didn't get to make for themselves.

Initially we used she/her pronouns, and I put a dress on them every so often, but their gender still wasn’t a "thing." We navigated our life and appointments, clothing, toys, and activities in our typical neutral way while defaulting to “girl” here and there. Around their 3rd birthday, however, along with an explosion of language and autonomy, came clear preferences that required more attention. They requested a new haircut that involved the word “bald” and refused to wear a dress “ever again.” Along with an even more androgynous appearance, new conversations and trends in responses from our greater world began to emerge.

Seeing people react to and interact with Nova has taught me a lot about gender in the wider world.

In medical, social, and educational settings, I began to notice how differently people treated Nova when they assumed they were a boy versus when they assumed they were a girl. When Nova was assumed a boy, they were called “strong, brave, smart, funny.” When Nova was assumed a girl, they were called “sweet, delicate, cute, kind.” Different dialogue ensued, different opportunities were presented, there were different responses to behavior, and it was both fascinating and unsettling at the same time.

It wasn’t just adults though. Among children, Nova was often asked by other youth if they were a boy or a girl, to which Nova would (and still will) respond, “I’m a Nova!” or “I’m a human!” When given this response, often, people of any age turn to me or another parent and ask again, “Is Nova a boy or a girl?” To which we default back to Nova.

What surprised me is how frustrated and confused people are by Nova's desire to be recognized free of gender.

I have watched adult humans grow visibility annoyed and have had multiple people tell me that they simply don’t know how to talk to Nova without first knowing their gender.

Photo by Ashlee Dean Wells.

It has been proven repeatedly that we treat even infants differently based on our assumptions of their gender, but it’s baffling that the gender binary, norms, and expectations have such a stronghold on so many of us that we literally cannot communicate without their constructs.

Why is this?

I don’t have all the answers, and whatever they are, the answers are admittedly controversial and complex. What I do know, however, is that my household is one with a foundation of respect. The arbitrary concepts of gender are still beyond Nova’s grasp, but with so much in their life out of their control, this seems like such an obvious and simple way we can choose to honor who they are. As they grow, develop, and mature, we will continue to respect the ways in which they evolve and identify regardless of who they grow to be.

Over the past few months, there has been a natural progression of language in our home to refer to Nova with the non-binary/neutral pronouns, they/them, because language matters. Because by choosing or using female pronouns for them based on their genitalia and nothing else, we ARE gendering Nova and contributing to the binary ways in which others see and respond to them, even if our goal is to remain gender neutral.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know where we go from here.

However, I do know that Nova has broken down the binary for me in such a simple way that I can’t pull myself back to it. In doing so, I’m not calling for a total elimination of gender, but rather an acknowledgment that neutrality may not be enough if our thinking is still rooted in a patriarchal binary that not everyone fits into.

Society may not yet be post-gender, but our home can easily be.

This story originally appeared in ravishly and is reprinted here with permission.

A new video takes a hard look at a tricky topic: gender.

The video, titled "Gender Is Over," is by Gender Proud — a transgender-owned New York-based media company dedicated to capturing the trans and gender-nonconforming experience — takes a look at the intersection between gender identity, expression, and everything in between.

All GIFs via Gender Proud/YouTube.


The video stars Tyler Ford, Meredith Talusan, and Jacob Tobia. Tyler identifies as agender, which quite literally means "without gender"; Meredith is a trans woman; and Jacob is genderqueer and gender-nonconforming.

Gender goes beyond male and female, boy and girl, man and woman. It's all of that and so much more.

Many people — probably most — identify as either male or female. Those people, whether they're transgender or cisgender (non-trans), are what we'd call "binary-identified." No matter what it says on their birth certificates or driver's licenses, their genders are legitimate. Can we all agree there? Good.

Then there are others — in this video, there's Tyler and Jacob — who identify as something else entirely. In Tyler's case, that's no gender at all; in Jacob's case, it's a mix of male, female, everything in between, and beyond. These people identify outside of the male-female gender binary. Much like their binary-identified counterparts, no matter what it says on their birth certificates or driver's licenses, their genders are legitimate.

If this is in any way confusing, we've covered this topic before, breaking down some of the terms associated with nonbinary genders. You can find that here.

Sometimes people confuse gender expression with gender identity, but they're actually two separate things.

Just as having a feminine presentation doesn't necessarily make you a woman, having a masculine presentation doesn't necessarily make you a man. Gender expression is what you look and act like in comparison to social gender norms.

Gender identity, on the other hand, is what determines whether you're a man, woman, both, neither, or something else entirely.

Having a gender identity that differs from the sex you were assigned at birth is what makes someone transgender. Landing on one's true identity can be a tricky, time-consuming process. Tyler, for example, identified as a cisgender woman and then a transgender man before coming to the conclusion that they are agender.

"Gender is an ongoing process," Meredith wrote in an email, and she's absolutely right.

Understanding yourself, who you are, and what makes you you isn't something that everyone knows right away. That's why while there are stories of transgender children who come out to their parents at 4 or 5 years old, there are also some that reach that level of personal understanding later in life.

What's important is coming to understand who you are — even if it's a lengthy process.

Too often, gender used is used a weapon. That needs to stop.

One of the concepts touched on in the short video is patriarchy. Patriarchy is a system of society in which men hold the power. For most of recorded history, we've lived under a patriarchy, whether implicit or explicit.

Gender shouldn't be what determines power or worth in society, and that's why all of us — men, women, boys, girls, and others — should push back on its role in our lives. How do we do that? It starts by acknowledging that there are gaps in how men are treated in the workplace, in education, in parenting, and elsewhere compared to women and nonbinary-gendered individuals. Just about anything that can be labeled as sexism or misogyny has its roots in the patriarchy.

Of course, none of this is to say that an ideal world would have women and nonbinary individuals as somehow superior to men, but rather, an ideal world would be one without gender-based power structures at all.

The fight for a just society means taking aim at a wide variety of issues.

Last month, Tyler, Jacob, and Meredith participated in a speakers' series at Brooklyn's William Vale Hotel devoted to addressing gender-based oppression. The series, put on by Gender Proud, continues later this month with a discussion about prison reform and the "ban the box" movement.

Watch "Gender Is Over!" below.