Meet Ethan. Ethan is a huge Derby County supporter. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, he had held a season ticket at Pride Park Stadium for more than a decade. He has also volunteered on community projects with the Derby County Community Trust and provided peer mentoring to those in need. He is also on course to take his Masters degree in mental health nursing. Ethan is a valued member of the Rams community and is proud to say he is transgender.
Life has sometimes been tough for Ethan, and from an early age he struggled with his identity. He takes up his story.
“Back in the 1990s, it wasn’t really accepted and I was bullied quite a bit at school,” he admitted. “I told my parents and they were okay with me being gay, but I always knew that something didn’t feel right. The term ‘lesbian’ didn’t fit me as a person.
“I remember being 11-years-old and my brother was shaving in the mirror because he was a bit older than me, and I thought I should have been doing that. When I got to about 13, I started to put shaving foam on my face and it felt normal.
“When I was older, I developed PCOS which is a cyst on your ovaries and it can cause a lot of hair growth. At that point, I started to fit in and I said to my mum that I felt good. When I went through puberty, I could not understand why I was developing breasts and my brother wasn’t. I couldn’t understand it.
“Five or six years ago, I went to ‘Pride’ and there were a few transgender people there and they told me about the gender reassignment. That’s when I properly thought about it. Then about three years ago, I was sat in my bedroom on a Sunday morning and I just said to my partner that I wanted to be a man. I had a few conversations with friends about how I felt about things and then I talked to my partner, Maxx, and we decided to go for it.
“I went to the doctors and went through transition. I am still waiting for an appointment with the GIC because there was a two-year wait and due to COVID-19, it’s looking likely to be longer. I paid privately for testosterone, but due to a doctor being struck off at GenderGP, I missed three months’ worth of it. I was like a pre-pubescent boy going through temper tantrums and I was quite mardy a lot of the time but that was due to the lack of testosterone I was getting in my body.
“I then found a place in Harrogate, run by Dr Hammond, who does bridging hormones. I did blood tests and had a conversation about things. By this point, my voice had started to go deeper and I had facial hair, so he started to give me the injection. I’ve been on the injections for five months now.
“I can’t explain how happier I feel and I’m a million times better than I was. When I first came out and people saw me, they would say that I felt more confident and I do feel it.”
To mark Football v Transphobia week between 24th-31st March, and International Transgender Day Of Visibility today, a campaign to support LGBTQ supporters, Ethan has been encouraged to speak out about his worries, troubles and feelings in a safe space where he feels comfortable. It’s admirable, but, like many, Ethan has suffered abuse. Two people who Ethan felt close to still struggle to accept his new identity, whilst it was sad to hear he had encountered homophobic abuse at a Derby County fixture in the past.
“I sit in the South East Stand Lower now, but I used to sit in the South Stand,” he recalled. “I can remember we played Brighton & Hove Albion in the Play-Off Semi Final Second Leg in 2014 and the amount of homophobic abuse I heard was horrendous. It made me think, ‘oh god, if I came out, this is going to be bad’, so I moved because I found it really tough.
“Now, sat in the South East Lower, I am sat with a lot of elderly men who you would think stereotypically that they would be the most transphobic people but they all knew me by my old name, saw me with a shirt on with breasts, so they have gone from seeing me there and now seeing me as Ethan and not one person has said anything.
“There are two lesbians that sit a bit further forward than me and when we played against another team at Pride Park, the opposition fans shouted homophobia abuse at them, but it was nice to hear the home fans stick up for them. I know two wrongs don’t make a right, but it was nice they did that.
“If people hear homophobic language at the ground, when we can all return, I would say don’t be afraid to challenge that or say something. Imagine if that was their child, or their brother or sister that was receiving that abuse in an outside environment, you would challenge it, so why not challenge it at a football game.”
As set out in the club’s Equality Statement, Derby County take a zero tolerance approach to any form of discrimination or bullying based on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marital status or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
There are things which Ethan believes may break down those barriers and stigmas, however. At the moment, there is no openly gay footballer in the country in the men’s game.
“If one person came out, I think the floodgates would open, massively,” he said. “Think about how many men play football. They say that one in five people are gay. If you think, there are 22 people on that pitch and there are substitutes as well. At least a proportion of those people who have played over time would have been gay and they are just hiding it.
“The stigma is the only thing stopping them coming out. It’s seen as a ‘manly’ sport, even though rugby players have come out as gay, football seems to be different and I don’t know why. People need to know that it is normal to be gay.”
There have been huge strides made in recent years. Ethan believes an LGBTQ flag presence at Pride Park Stadium might help, whilst he also believes the Rainbow Laces campaign which is run each year has a huge impact.
In the long term, he’s keen to see an LGBTQ supporters group set up at Derby County where likeminded fans can get together, play football and chat in a comfortable surrounding. He’s also got a strong determination for this to happen as he recently suffered heavily with a bout of COVID-19.
At the start of this year, Ethan contracted COVID-19 and was admitted into hospital after struggling to cope. He was on ventilation and with doctors struggling to get on top of his illness, his partner was told that he may not make it. Thankfully, he’s over the worst of it now but he still struggles with ‘long COVID’. It causes chronic fatigue and doing the littlest of tasks is hard.
“I didn’t eat much for three weeks because firstly I couldn’t taste or smell it but when I was eating, I had to take my mask off to eat and I was so out of breath from doing that, I had to put the oxygen mask back on,” he explained.
“Then by the time I had a bit of energy, the food was cold, so I just left it. They then dropped my oxygen and got me moving. I couldn’t move much and every time I did, it felt like I had ran a marathon.
“When I came home, I had no muscle memory so I had to go up and down the stairs on my bum. Doing normal everyday tasks is proving difficult, even now two months on. I’m not contagious now so I can’t pass it on. I have strong anti-bodies now and I’ve been vaccinated so hopefully I’m past the worst of it now and recover fully.
“It’s made me 100% more determined to go through with what I am doing now. Being told you might die at the age of 36 is something which is devastating and it’s made me think about things a lot more.
“My driving test has been cancelled nine times and it’s due again in May. I was nervous about it last year, but now, I don’t care. I just want to get it done because I’ve been waiting so long but if I fail, it doesn’t matter because nobody has died and I’m still here.”
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Football is for everyone. By working together, we can hopefully make a difference. Ethan’s story is just one of many who are struggling with their own battles. There are always people on hand to listen and talk to. Reach out, you are not alone.
For more information regarding the Football v Transphobia week of action, please click here.
Derby County would like to say a huge thank you to Ethan for sharing his story.