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Harrison Browne talks trans inclusion in sport at MAC

First openly transgender athlete in North American pro hockey takes part in Trans Awareness Month at Ryerson
By: Will Sloan
November 17, 2017
Harrison Browne

Photo: Harrison Browne is the first openly transgender athlete in North American professional hockey. He visited Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre on November 13. Photo by Alex D’Addese.

In October 2016, Harrison Browne made history. While a player for the National Women’s Hockey League on the championship Buffalo Beauts team, he became the first openly transgender athlete in North American professional hockey—and the first to see his chosen name and pronouns on the score sheets.

Browne, who identifies as female-to-male transgender, visited Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre on November 13 as part of Trans Awareness Month, delivering a keynote address on trans inclusion in sport. Browne’s achievements go beyond the ice: he helped form the first transgender policy in professional sports, and has become a highly visible spokesperson for trans issues.

“When you win a championship, you have your name etched onto a trophy,” said Browne in his speech. “But winning for me meant more than just a game or a season. Winning for me meant that Harrison was going to live on in sports forever—not just the individual Harrison, being me, but everything that I stood for as a transgendered athlete.”

Browne told the audience about his years in the closet, appearing as a gay woman on the ice while living as a transgender man in his personal life. He found that inconvenient rules too often forced him to choose between his passion and his identity. “I was attending college on a scholarship. The only reason why I had that scholarship was to play on the women’s ice hockey team. The NCAA says you can identify as transgender while participating, but you have to follow a few rules, and one of those rules for trans men playing on the women’s side is you can’t undergo hormone therapy—meaning I could not take testosterone or I would violate rules, and in turn lose my scholarship.”

The burden of living a double life eventually became too great: “The more that I was being misgendered, the less fulfilling my sport would become.” But after sending an email to the league’s front office asking to have his name changed on the roster, “Right off the jump, the league had my back. By that point there was no turning back: my identity was out for everybody.”

Browne’s identity was widely accepted, and he was voted by fans into the NWHL All-Star Game. Now a role model for transgender athletes, Browne called for sport leagues to take a more proactive approach to transgender policy. “This league did create a policy, and that is amazing, but shouldn’t it have been in place before?

“By being open myself, I’m hoping that trans policies are going to become the norm, because I can guarantee that somebody has come before me and decided not to play the sport that they loved because they didn’t feel included. … Sports teach so many life lessons, and the more that the sporting community can be progressive, the more that this can leak over into society.”

Following the keynote, Browne participated in a panel discussion on trans inclusion in sport with Barb Besharat (community organizer, athlete, and advocate for inclusive sport policy) and Chris Spiess (shelter support worker, mental health counsellor, and martial artist), moderated by Christine Hsu (educator and inclusive policy advocate). All shared their experiences of discrimination and harassment, and suggested new ways to approach the traditionally patriarchal sphere of athletics.

“Sport is inherently tied to misogyny, patriarchy and sexism,” said Besharat. “That’s the entire reason organized sport exists: to ‘create men out of boys.’ If any of you are taking any kind of sport academically here, I would recommend looking into that history. … That leads to some of my challenges doing this professionally: this belief that there is an inherent difference between men and women.” Besharat advocated for an intersectional understanding of athletics: “The differences that we see within sport between people who participate in women’s sport and the people who participate in men’s sport all comes from so many different places.”

“You hear a lot of people speak about, ‘I’m an ally, I’m an ally,’” said Spiess. “Being an ally is not an identity; being an ally is an action. It’s something you need to do over and over and over again. Being an ally means not having the person that’s facing discrimination have to be the one to call it out all the time.”

In his introductory remarks, athletics director Ivan Joseph noted that Ryerson’s athletics mission statement (external link)  champions “a spirit of belonging, pride and excellence,” and pointed out that “belonging” is mentioned first deliberately. “You show up here and you’re a part of this team,” said Joseph. “No rites of passage, no hazing.”

Organized by Positive Space at Ryerson, the panel was one of a series of events being held on campus as part of Trans Awareness Month. For more information, go here.

Trans Inclusion in Sport

Photo: From left: Harrison Browne, Chris Spiess, Barb Besharat, and moderator Christine Hsu took part in a panel discussion on trans inclusion in sport. Photo by Alex D’Addese.

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