Being trans wasn’t a choice for Quinn. Fighting for a better world is

For Quinn, the athlete, this has been a trying time. Injuries have cost them nearly three months of soccer for the NWSL’s Seattle OL Reign. The ongoing dispute over pay and working conditions between Canada’s women’s soccer team and Canada Soccer, which saw Quinn testify on Parliament Hill alongside three teammates, has been difficult, and remains largely unresolved. Quinn also sits on the athletes’ commission for the Canadian Olympic Committee with a focus on safe sport, where the question of a national inquiry into Canadian sport is an ongoing fight, too. Quinn, for their part, favours an inquiry, if only to restore confidence in the system.

Then there is Quinn, the person. The Toronto native was playing on the women’s soccer team at Duke University, in North Carolina, when HB2, the so-called Bathroom Bill, was introduced. (The section about limiting bathrooms to the gender of your birth was later repealed.) They became the first openly trans, non-binary athlete to win an Olympic medal, when Canada won gold in women’s soccer in Tokyo. (Quinn’s preferred pronouns are they and them.) Next year will be their 10th year with the national team.

And in the past two years, trans athletes and people have become targets on a massive scale. In the United States over 350 bills governing trans people have been passed, some in sports, and some not. In Canada, New Brunswick is wrapped in a fight over the first bill to meaningfully revisit LGBTQ rights in Canada in decades, and anti-LGBTQ protests have popped up across Canada, often overlapping with people who were opposed to things like vaccine mandates and masks.

The push has been organized, ugly, and vicious, and has produced ugliness in all sorts of places, with the grown man bullying the short-haired nine-year-old in Kelowna a recent example. As Quinn says, “I think when you start policing bodies, it’s going to impact everyone.”

And Quinn, one of the most visible and notable trans people in the country since coming out in 2020, has watched all this with genuine trepidation, and determination.

“I think it is a scary time, for me,” says Quinn in an interview from Seattle, a week before Canada leaves for the World Cup. “I think I do have a lot of points of privilege when entering this conversation, so I have to be mindful of that. But I think the reality is, it’s scary. I’m someone who’s gone through parts of medical transition, and I think trying to navigate the United States right now, which is where I live, it’s a difficult one, for sure, in day-to-day life. I’m lucky enough to be in an environment in Seattle that’s pretty liberal and accepting and easy to operate in, but I don’t think that’s the case for all of the U.S. right now.

“The most vulnerable populations are trans kids, trans people of colour, they’ve been weaponized for political gain. I think it’s as simple as that. And this has been a really targeted and diligent approach to create this narrative.”

To talk about this is to shoulder responsibility. When Quinn first transitioned there was some ignorance in the soccer world — not on the national team, they say — and, when going to the bathroom, Quinn received what they call, “some horrible, I guess, feedback or hate, as you like to say.”

“I think you manage to build up a … I like to call it a shield,” Quinn says. “And I think there’s a lot of different ways in which you can build that up. I think you have to have resilience in those situations, and that can be built in a variety of different ways.

“And I think for me, in my journey and coming out, that was built on gathering community and feeling less isolated in my own experience, because when you understand that someone else is going through the same things, you definitely feel less isolated. I also think my support system is huge and there’s a lot of people who advocate for me on a day-to-day basis, whether that’s correcting someone who uses the wrong pronouns, whether it’s someone just coming to the bathroom with me.”

Community, and advocacy. Quinn is talking as part of a partnership with GE Appliances, and usually corporate stuff is a sideline, but partnering with an openly trans athlete when the United States is seeing unhinged boycotts of companies that do the same does matter. This campaign will select eight girls’ and gender-diverse soccer players to do post-World Cup mentorship with Quinn; it’s called See Them, Be Them.

Quinn talks a lot about leaving things better for the next generation. It’s a huge focus for Canada’s women’s team, which desperately wants to win the World Cup, but also about fighting for competitive equality with the men; it’s a huge focus with safe sport; it’s a huge focus for trans people.

“Yeah, I mean, I think I’m carrying around a lot,” Quinn says. “(But) I think it’s a position that I that I actively put myself in.”

Being trans wasn’t a choice; fighting for a better world is, though. Quinn is optimistic largely because of the next generation: how it understands trans issues, and is so much more fluent and welcoming. Quinn, hopefully, sees the whole field, and is playing the long game.

“The progression of trans rights in society isn’t linear right now, (but) I think at the end of the day, it’s something that’s going to persevere, and is going to come out on top,” they say. “And I think you’re seeing that with the visibility of trans people in society. I think with that visibility, although it’s bringing pushback, I think, if we’re looking years down the road, it’s going to lead to more acceptance.”

It’s a good part of sports, hope.

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