Non-binary athletes

[Trigger alert: explicit description of some symptoms of the menstrual period.]

We need a category for non-binary athletes to race in, if they wish to (of course, without forcing anyone to be outed). We need it now — we’ve been waiting too long already. 

Three days ago, the bleeding from my uterus was so abundant and uncomfortable that it felt like my whole belly was gushing out of my body. 

Yesterday & today I was running on the trails at a pace that hasn’t been so fast and almost effortless in a very ling time — maybe years.   

My recently heightened athletic performance is not new to me: I went through something similar three or four years ago, so even now it’s probably due simply to decreased stress and renewed energy, which could also explain why I’m looking so much younger (people keep telling me that I look like a person in their twenties). 

But some might think it’s due to HRT.

I refuse to compete in the “male” category for my next race. I’m not a male. I still have breasts; I have a uterus that every 3-4 weeks regularly makes itself uncomfortably noticed and I loose a lot of blood for several days; my fat distribution is still much closer to that of a “biological” female; and for at least 25 years (since my female puberty) my body has been conditioned as a female body. 

HRT doesn’t automatically make me a “male”, all of a sudden, after 25 years of having been a “biological” female adult, especially not with the micro-dosing that I am doing. HRT is tricky and hard on the body: taking testosterone doesn’t all of a sudden turn a female body into a male one. The “battle of the giants” between different hormones, and maybe even a mismatch between the additional hormones with the given organs/genes, is real and draining. 

I will probably never be able to compete fairly in a “male” category. But it might get to the point where it could be unfair for me to compete against other females, too. That point hasn’t been reached, yet, but it might come soon enough. 

Either way, a non-binary category is what is needed here, for fairness towards everyone & every body.