From Jenkem Magazine: http://www.jenkemmag.com/home/2013/03/18/is-skateboarding-ready-to-openly-embrace-a-transgender-skater/
Sam Mcguire
March 18, 2013
Is skateboarding ready to embrace an open member of the LGBT community?A few years ago I would have answered the following question with a definite no. Shit, even finding a home for this story would have proved difficult, if not impossible. For something as open minded and progressive as skateboarding it surprises people that this subject still remains taboo in so much of it.
More recently, however, as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) topics have come up on trips, in hotels, in vans – there’s a discussion, rather than a few awkward exchanges until someone changes the subject. These days, I hear more and more as people talk about a lesbian aunt, gay neighbor or transgendered friend. Which begs the question, “Does anyone really care?” And if they don’t, I think it’s time to be vocal about it and ask the opening question again. Is the skate community ready to openly embrace someone from the LGBT community?
I think so. I think it’s just waiting for someone to step up to the plate.
Welcome Hillary Thompson.
It was pouring when I pulled up to the strip mall to meet Hillary for lunch. We had talked for about year on Facebook. A few messages back and forth about things and a handful of, “shoulds,” until one day I put a date out there. She obliged and well, there we were. Meeting.
Hillary was born September 10th in Raleigh, NC, the middle child of 3. Raleigh if you haven’t been, is a mid-sized liberal city located in a southern conservative state. It was there where two life-changing things happened when she was around 4 or 5 years old.
First, she started skating. Her first board was a single kicktail with big plastic wheels and it was love at first sight. The cool kids at the end of the block were doing it, only they had wide boards, 80’s style and they could do ollie’s and kickflips. Naturally, she wanted to be cool too. “They were like, 13-14, which was old compared to me so they would go off and do cool teen stuff and I would kinda just skate around the block. But I wanted to be like them,” Hillary says, describing her eagerness to skate. Her younger brother started to skate with her shortly after.
The second big event happened around the same time and this is where society’s imposed ideas of sex, gender and sexuality started to cause some issues for Hillary. Although society defines gender by one’s anatomy at birth, some people physically born boys or girls, don’t always feel like them. “I was naive then and I just assumed, well, yeah, of course I’m just gonna grow up and be a woman, that’s how it works. That’s who I am.”
Continue reading at: http://www.jenkemmag.com/home/2013/03/18/is-skateboarding-ready-to-openly-embrace-a-transgender-skater/
