Wrestling turned me cis, then it turned me trans

polygon.com:

With WrestleMania 39 set to kick off on April 1, and Polygon contributor Abraham Josephine Riesman’s new book Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America set to enter the ring on March 28, we’re spending the week grappling with pro wrestling — and everything it’s shaped.

My bullies all loved pro wrestling.

It was the spring of 1999, we were 13-year-old kids at a public school in the Chicago suburbs, and, every day at recess, they would harass me. Though I long ago wiped my memory clean of any specific insults, the overall theme could be summed up as, “Look at this faggot.”

I was a defective boy: I sang in the hallways, wore flared jeans, had platonic friendships with girls, and always leapt at the chance to play a woman in a class skit.

They were real boys: burly, cackling, anti-intellectual, and always ready to identify a homo.

I loved midcentury musical theater and weird British comic books.

They loved the World Wrestling Federation.

While they tormented me each day, the faces and slogans of their favorite wrestlers leered at me from their T-shirts: “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock, The Undertaker. There’s a special little humiliation in being gay-bashed by someone wearing a jersey that — in the words of WWF squad D-Generation X — invites you to “SUCK IT.”

I didn’t exactly have a political objection to the WWF at that age. It was simply what the boys who hated me liked, and that was enough to repel me.

Then, something strange happened: my sole male friend, Jonathan, caught an episode of the WWF’s weekly flagship show, Raw Is War, while channel-surfing. He was blown away by what he saw and immediately demanded that I watch it with him. I trusted Jonathan — he wasn’t a bully. So I gave it a shot.