Professional surfer Keala Kennelly was sipping her morning cappuccino at home in Hawaii on October 13 when she received a text from a friend. The message said that the World Surf League, organizer of competitive surfing’s Championship Tour, was planning to hold a 2025 competition in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

Kennelly, who came out as gay two decades ago, was outraged. UAE laws .

“I felt sick to my stomach,” Kennelly told şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř. “How can WSL expect an LGBTQ+ athlete to travel and compete in a country where their very existence is illegal?”

Kennelly, one of the most decorated women’s surfers ever, wrote a scathing note about the WSL’s decision and . She wrote that hosting events in countries that have documented human rights violations should be unacceptable. She expressed concern for Australian surfer , a two-time world champion, who is openly gay and is slated to compete in the WSL 2025 Championship Tour.

“I decided to make the post to raise awareness, hoping that using my social media platform would outrage people like hearing the news outraged me,” Kennelly said. “I also wanted to show support for Tyler so she knows she is not alone and that she has people backing her.”

Kennelly wasn’t the only person from the surfing community to comment on the decision. While Wright did not comment, her wife, Lilli Wright, . “Tyler has competed on this tour for over 14 years and has had the pride flag on her jersey since 2020,” Lilli wrote. “Even after winning 2 world titles she is still not valued enough by the WSL to be considered when they sold this event.”

Lilli penned her note under a photo of Tyler Ěýjogging down the beach with a surfboard underarm, next to a pinned post of the couple’s striking wedding portraits from 2022. “WSL have the duty of care to their athletes to not put them in potentially life threatening circumstances like this,” she added.

şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř reached out to the WSL for comment, but we did not receive a response.

The Abu Dhabi leg of the Championship Tour will take place February 14-16, 2025 at the Surf Abu Dhabi artificial wave pool on Al Hudayriat Island, a stretch of sand just south of the city where officials have constructed a BMX park, road cycling track, and water park, among other attractions. According to the WSL’s press release, the surfing venue features groundbreaking wave-making technology from the Kelly Slater Wave Company and is home to the world’s largest and longest human-made wave.

The WSL is not alone in staging events in the UAE—nor is it the only league to receive criticism for doing so. Every February, the world’s best cyclists line up for the UAE Tour, the opening event of the sport’s UCI WorldTour, the highest category of competition. Since 2009, auto racing league Formula One has staged the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at a state-of-the-art auto track. Abu Dhabi hosts some of the best tennis players of the year in an event called World League, and even the National Basketball Association stages an exhibition event in the UAE, called the Emirates NBA Cup. The UAE hosts other major international events for beach volleyball, soccer, and sailing.

Critics have called this practice “sportswashing”—when repressive countries attract international sports to seem more in line with Western ideals. The New York Times of holding sporting events like NBA preseason games in Abu Dhabi, citing Ben Freeman of the Quincy Institute: “When you think of the U.A.E., they want you thinking about tennis. They would love for you to think about the N.B.A. [. . .] much rather have you thinking about that than all the bad things that are also part of their reputation.”

In her Instagram post, Kennelly specifically called out the UAE’s track record on human rights, specifically for LGBTQ+ people and women. “Emirati women live under male guardianship,” she wrote. “Honor Killings can go unpunished, as the victim’s family can pardon the murderer.”

According to , an advocacy and research group based in New York City, authorities in the UAE can also arrest people for a variety of vaguely defined “flagrant indecent acts” including “public displays of affection, gender nonconforming expressions, and campaigns promoting the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.”

On October 16, the Queer Surf Club, an international organization that coordinates meet-ups for like-minded surfers, to urge the WSL to remove Abu Dhabi from its World Championship tour calendar.

“The WSL have chosen to support a government that criminalizes LGBTQIA+ people and discriminates against women, and in doing so are choosing to place their athletes, support teams, and spectators at risk,” reads the opening paragraph to the petition.

More than two-dozen organizations, ranging from London Surf Film Fest to Surf Queer Mexico to Trans Cyclist Collective, have taken up the cause, promoting it on their own social networks.

Kennelly told şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř that she would “Absolutely not” travel to Abu Dhabi. “Some of the comments on my post said things like “get over it, just don’t do gay things while you are there,’ she said. “But even if I traveled there without my wife, I look like a lesbian. I have short hair, I don’t dress in feminine clothes. Even if I wasn’t physically harmed I can’t imagine how badly I would be treated in a place like that.”

Kennelly retired from WSL competition in 2007, and she’s doubtful that Wright or other current competitors will speak up against the UAE event. Article 14.04 of the specifically prohibits athletes from making comments that cast the league, WSL management, judges, or its sponsors in a negative light. This rule extends to a surfer’s social media.

Lilli Wright declined to comment to şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř when contacted. “I definitely think it is a very important discussion to be had,” she wrote in response to a request for an interview. “But at this stage I’m not comfortable saying anything further.”

But she also wrote candidly about how uncomfortable she feels at the thought of Tyler competing in a place like Abu Dhabi, while at the same time recognizing how disadvantageous, career-wise, it would be for her to skip the event. “I see how hard my wife works every day on her career and it’s unreasonable to expect her to just not go,” she wrote. “Her life is worth more than one event, but I can’t not acknowledge that missing this event would put her career at a huge disadvantage.”

Lilli ended her post by circling back to her frustration with the WSL: “At the end of the day, WSL had absolutely no business selling this event to this location expecting their only openly queer athlete to go along quietly.”

The post Pro Surfing Is Headed to Abu Dhabi. LGBTQ+ Athletes Are Outraged. appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

In the last few years, women’s sports have been a highly visible arena for the broader cultural and political debate over the rights and inclusion of transgender people. As transgender athletes come out, pursue gender-affirming medical care like hormone therapies,Ěýand try to compete in the division that aligns with their gender identity, many sports’ governing bodies have developed policies restricting participation on the basis of sex assigned at birth or other biological markers. Sometimes, these policies amount to competing in the women’s category.

Even though proponents of bans often argue using the language of biology—men have more testosterone, women are less muscular—there’s actually very little scientific research into how hormone therapies commonly used in transition-related care affect athletic performance.ĚýMost of these bans are based on the assumption that the physical traits resulting from boys’ testosterone-saturated puberty, like increased muscle mass, strength, and height, are retained by someone assigned male at birth when they choose to transition.

But a Ěýpublished in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, which compared athletic performance between cis- and transgender men and women, suggests it’s a lot more complicated than that. “Trans women are not biological men,” Yannis Pitsiladis, one of the study’s authors, .Ěý

The only measurement in this study in which transgender women categorically outperformed cisgender women was grip strength, which can be an indicator of overall strength. But the trans women who were surveyed had lower lung capacity, VO2 max (a measure of how efficiently oxygen is transported throughout the body, a marker of endurance capacity), and jump height.

This suggests that a transgender woman competing at, say, volleyball or long-distance running, could actually be at a disadvantage compared to her cisgender counterparts. This is likely because once someone assigned male at birth starts hormone replacement therapy, their strength and muscle mass relative to their frame declines, leaving them to “carry this big skeleton with a smaller engine,” as Pitsiladis puts it.

These findings are in line with real-world performances. The few trans athletes out there have been competitive without being head-and-shoulders superior to their cisgender peers. Transgender gravel cyclist Austin Killips won a couple of races in 2023—and finished somewhere in the top ten in a few others—which led the Union Cycliste Internationale, the sport’s governing body, to institute a sweeping ban of transgender women racing in the women’s category. Laurel Hubbard, a transgender weight lifter from New Zealand, qualified for the Tokyo Olympics but in her event.

More than anything, this study highlights just how little we actually know about how transition-related medical care affects an athlete’s body and performance. It’s not a definitive piece of research by itself—the sample size is very small, with only 23 trans women, 21 cisgender women, 19 cisgender men, and 12 trans men. All of the transgender athletes included were at least one year into hormone replacement therapy, but the researchers suggest collecting long-term data, following athletes over the course of their transition, to confirm that the measured differences are caused by gender-affirming care.

“This fear that trans women aren’t really women, that they’re men who are invading women’s sports, and that trans women will carry all of their male athleticism, their athletic capabilities, into women’s sports—neither of those things are true,” Joanna Harper, who researches transgender athletes at Oregon Health and Science University and was not involved with the study, told the New York Times.Ěý

The International Olympic Committee, who funded the study, has gone through several different iterations of their gender inclusion policy. They presently defer to the rules of the international governing bodies of respective sports, after replacing fairly strict guidelines that required medical examinations and a cap on women’s testosterone levels in 2021.

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On August 19, in a hotel lobby in Budapest, Hungary, professional runner Nikki Hiltz opened a text from their mother to find a quote often attributed to Anaïs Nin: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Hiltz’s mother had sent an inspirational quote before every race since Hiltz ran for the University of Arkansas. But Nin’s words still felt special to the 29-year-old middle-distance runner, U.S. national champion, and American record holder—and so did the day.

In just a few hours, Hiltz would compete in the 1,500-meter semifinal at the World Athletics Championships. Sitting in the lobby beside partner and fellow runner Emma Gee, they began to tear up. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” Hiltz said as Gee hugged them close. But Hiltz knew exactly why.

March of 2021 was the last time Hiltz had remained tight in a bud. That month they came out as transgender and nonbinary and began using they/them pronouns. (Hiltz continues to compete in the women’s category.) Two years later, in June 2023, they became the U.S. national champion in the 1,500-meter race and, just 13 days after that, ran a 4:16:35 mile at the Monaco Diamond League, an American record. “The year 2021 was when I made the decision that I couldn’t hide anymore,” Hiltz says. “But maybe there was a two-year delay in the blossom.”

In Budapest, Hiltz took the starting line clad in red, white, and blue. Beside them, some of the best athletes in the world blew out nervous air, shook their legs, and stared stoically forward. When the camera landed on Hiltz, they waved and blew a kiss, a tattooed arm catching the sun. During the final lap of the race, Hiltz fell behind, finishing in 4:00:84—their second-fastest 1,500-meter, but not good enough to advance to the final.

“I’m still pretty proud of myself,” Hiltz says. Before the World Championships, they’d decided on a goal much bigger than a podium finish. “I wanted to go to the World Champs, compete, and be that representation,” Hiltz says. “There’s nothing like sports. Look at us athletes. We’re ambassadors for our countries. We love each other, we root for each other, and we’re from all over the world.”

The power of representation isn’t lost on Hiltz, especially as a trans person in 2023. This year, a slew of anti-trans legislation was pushed around the U.S., each new bill landing like a gut punch to the LGBTQ+ community. By May of 2023, at least 520 anti-LGBTQ+ bills had been introduced in state legislatures, according to the advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.

Despite the menacing sociopolitical atmosphere, Hiltz has persevered—and is far from alone in doing so. In July of 2023, Quinn, a mononymous 27-year-old Canadian soccer player, became the first out transgender and nonbinary athlete to play in the FIFA World Cup. It was not the first time Quinn made history on the world stage. In summer 2021, they became the first out, trans-nonbinary athlete to compete in the Olympics, and the first to win a gold medal.

After the World Cup, Quinn helped launch the See Them, Be Them initiative, providing mentorship for teen girls and gender-diverse youth. The goal: to inspire young athletes, especially at an age when 82 percent of Canadian girls drop out of soccer. “We need more opportunities for girls and gender-
diverse soccer players to see their future in the sport,” Quinn wrote.

Both Quinn and Hiltz are careful to point out that their experiences do not represent those of all trans folks. “I compete as the sex I was assigned at birth, but I don’t want to be the poster child for every trans person,” says Hiltz. “If you are a trans woman, and you want to compete in the women’s category, I am so going to support you.”

Whether or not transgender women should be allowed to compete in the women’s category has become a cultural flash point. In 2023, a 27-year-old cyclist named Austin Killips became the target of anti-trans ire. On April 30, she became the first trans woman cyclist to win a professional stage race sanctioned by the UCI, road cycling’s international governing body. Killips’s win spurred criticism from media outlets and social media warriors alike. In response, the UCI banned trans women who transitioned after puberty from competing in the women’s category at any UCI-sanctioned event.

To a policy that effectively ended her career, Killips responded with broader concern. “I won’t be able to sleep at night if I’m not fighting for the next woman who deserves a shot at everything this sport has given me,” she wrote in her Substack newsletter, Estro Junkie. When şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř spoke with Killips in late June, she quoted a passage from Simone Weil reminding her “to respond to criticism in a way consistent with the world you want to see,” Killips said. “You can’t impart harm and expect it to resolve a conflict.”

The prospect of that future world remains uncertain. For Killips, Hiltz, and Quinn, it’s impossible to know what the policy landscape will look like in the coming years. What they do know is that sports provided a sense of belonging from an early age. They want other kids to feel that, too.

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I participated in my first paid photoshoot as a professional mountain biker eight years ago, and was thrilled when I signed my first global contract with Pivot Cycles in 2021. It felt like a childhood dream realized to be able to have a career in action sports. My career as an athlete is a little complicated, though. As a trans woman, bike racing has always felt like a lose-lose proposition for me. If I do well, I risk getting called a cheater, or even worse, becoming a Fox News headline. If I do poorly, my sponsorship feels like tokenization rather than something earned. Even before transitioning in 2020, seeing the hate directed at trans women athletes made me feel like competitive sports was a dead end for me. I decided to risk life and limb in the high-risk sport of , where instead of competing against each other, we test our skills riding the biggest and hardest things we can find.

As my career picked up traction in the freeride space, I gained sponsorships and invites to women-centered jump jams, including as a digger at Red Bull Formation. I was regularly asked if I wanted to race by fellow female riders. But it always felt like an impossible tightrope to walk, where I felt I needed to justify my sponsorship, but not elicit transphobic hate and backlash. This always stung, because I felt my skill as a strong technical rider actually applied better to racing.

On July 8, I finally lined up for my first race, the Sturdy Dirty, an all-women’s enduro hosted annually in North Bend, Washington. I went because the event organizers and a number of pro cyclists encouraged me to compete. Lining up for that race was the scariest thing I’ve done on a bike. I was venturing into the very place I swore to avoid for my own mental health and safety.Ěý

Contrary to the popularĚý˛Ô˛ą°ů°ů˛ąłŮľ±±ą±đ around trans women in sports, I did not dominate. In fact, I DNFed on my first stage with a mechanical issue. If I had finished the race, I probably wouldn’t have even podiumed. In the field was an Olympian, a teenage phenom, and several other extremely quick pros who have dedicated their careers to going as fast as possible—all athletes who I admire and respect the hell out of.Ěý

Less than a week later, who did not medically transition before the age of 12 from competing in the women’s category, relegating them to a renamed “Men/Open” category. In light of the rule change, USA Cycling announced it will “revise its elite competition eligibility accordingly.” The UCI’s decision immediately and unceremoniously ended the careers of the handful of trans women in elite racing. The organization’s reasoning relies on dated and cherry-picked science around male puberty that largely reinforces sexist ideas about female athletes.

When we hear the phrase, “protect women’s sports,” we must dig deeper and explore what exactly we are protecting. Most importantly, why do women’s sports need protecting? The answer has very little to do with trans women, and a lot to do with the systemic barriers that have created the performance gap between men and women in athletics.ĚýĚý

First, we have to start with a simple truth: men’s sports have a multi-generational headstart on women’s sports. Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in education programs or activities that receive federal funding, just turned 50 last year. But major men’s sports leagues like the NHL and MLB are more than 100 years old. Have you ever watched men’s sports of yesteryear? The players are significantly slower and sloppier compared to today’s standards. By all metrics, female athletes are playing a game of catch-up with male athletes. And while we’re busy getting stronger, faster, and more skilled with a fraction of the support men’s athletics gets, the world has decided the performance gap is innate, and we are inferior.Ěý

From ill-fitting gear, to lack of data on injury prevention, to inadequate maternity leave, there is a long list of challenges facing female athletes. But for the purpose of this piece, I’ll focus on three issues: youth development, pay, and safety.Ěý

The same weekend after the UCI rule change, USA Cycling hosted its mountain bike national championship. Kat Sweet, who runs Sweetlines, a youth mountain bike program in Washington state, told me boys ages 11 to 14 were permitted to race on the professional course, while girls in the same age group were forced to ride a much easier course. By age 14, girls are twice as likely to drop out of sports than boys, . One of the reasons is a lower quality experience compared to boys. While boys are encouraged to progress at an early age, girls are held back. Think about how being consigned to easy terrain would impact a young woman’s long-term performance, as well as her drive to stay in the sport.Ěý

This brings us to pay. At elite levels, being a full-time professional athlete is often reserved exclusively for men, while many brands support women and other underrepresented athletes as “ambassadors,” offering product-only support or meager stipends.Ěý

In aĚý of elite racers, one female competitor had this to say:

The top maybe three women probably do get paid equally to their male equals, but to actually make a living as a woman, you have to be a consistent top five racer. Whereas in the men’s field, I’d estimate that about a top 30 racer can make a living off of racing.

The numbers back this up, with the data collected from the Pinkbike survey showing just 1.4 percent of women cyclists earn over $100,000 per year, 10 times less than the amount of men that do. The competitive implications are drastic. Men’s cycling has a robust field of full-time athletes. These riders can focus on one goal, and one goal only: being the absolute best. On the women’s side, only a small fraction of competitive cyclists are full-time athletes. The rest have to work odd jobs just to make ends meet. They’re expected to perform at an elite level with a weekend warrior schedule.Ěý

An even more important part of performance is the question of whether athletes feel safe showing up for races. On multiple occasions, I’ve heard my friends tearfully disclose repulsive comments, unwanted groping, and even sexual assaults they’ve endured while at bike events. Harassment runs rampant through cycling, and the sport’s governing bodies have failed to step up to the plate in a proactive manner. to promptly report sexual misconduct to the U.S. Center for SafeSport. But the responsibility still largely falls on those being harassed to speak out. How can you come forward when the harasser is a big-name male athlete, a coach, or an employee of the brand that sponsors you?

As a trans woman, I am tired of being the scapegoat for governing bodies who claim that my community is the real threat to women’s sports. In reality, they are wasting resources on a contrived issue, while failing to address the very real problems facing women’s athletics. They mask their transphobia and sexism with a hollow claim of support for cisgender women.Ěý

In mountain biking, across downhill, cross-country, and enduro competitions, just one trans woman has ever stood on a world cup podium— at the downhill World Cup in Leogang, Austria, in 2019. And she didn’t even win. Austin Killips, who recently won a road event that sparked calls for the rule change, has a UCI world ranking in the 400s—hardly a dominant ranking. While there are isolated examples of trans women finding success in individual races and events, the data just doesn’t suggest that we are dominating.

Banning the handful of trans women that exist in cycling does nothing to address the challenges all women face, and instead perpetuates the very misogyny that justifies the inequalities that currently exist in sports. It’s time that industry leaders start investing in discussions about how to close the performance gap between men and women, rather than ban an already marginalized group from competing.

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Quince Mountain told his story to producer Ann Marie Awad for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

My wife Blair always talks about how the wilderness doesn’t care about you. There’s a thunderstorm, it’s not there to make you afraid or even an animal who’s chasing you. It’s not personal.

That was kind of nice when I was a person who grew up suffering, often in very deliberate ways, because of classmates and other kids who were pretty awful to me.

I found solace in the indifference of the wilderness. But I think what I had to learn to do later was connect with other people and trust other people.

My friends call me Q. I live in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. I’m a dog musher and an outdoor educator who works online. I think of it as edutainment, I guess, and I get the privilege along with my wife, Blair Braverman, and our 25 sled dogs, of sharing the story of our journeys and the people we meet on Patreon and Twitter and other social media. It’s a lot of fun.

This is gonna sound funny, but I didn’t set out to be a professional dog sledder or go in the Iditarod or anything like that. It just kind of happened. I just fell in love with Blair, and it was something she had done.

Dog mushing is something that turns adults into children. If you think about sledding, you see people sled down a hill, how fun that is. The dogs are just pulling you. I dare you to get on the runners of a dog sled with a decent team on a bluebird day and not fall in love with it.

I’ve always loved animals, too. Some of that I think comes from a person who grew up with social difficulties with people. People know I’m trans; I’m very, uh, public as a trans person. But I’m also not neurotypical. So, I had a lot of social difficulties and a lot of sensory difficulties as a kid. It was just easier to understand the intentions of the animals around me.

It’s such a collaboration. When I’m out at night with the dogs, crossing a mountain range or something, people will say, “Well, how can you do that? How can you be out there by yourself?” But I’m not by myself. I’m with 14 of my best friends.

There was this moment at this dog led race near Kotzebue, Alaska. I wasn’t actually in this race, my wife was, and she didn’t need my support. I just sort of had a few days off, and I ended up renting a snow machine or a snowmobile with a photographer, Katie Olinsky. Katie and I took this snow machine and we followed a little bit behind the race, and we went to this town called Noorvik. There’s no road. You don’t take a car there. You can fly there, you can take a snowmobile there. You can take a dog sled there.

We went across the street to check out the checkpoint in this community building. And of course they had put out this beautiful spread of food. There’s moose stew and chili and coffee, and all this stuff. Just feeding the mushers. I saw, in one corner of the building, there were some people working on some kind of carpentry project with some wood. There’s a woman there, and she just starts wailing, crying. The saddest sound.

It’s kind of awkward because we’re outsiders. We don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not gonna pretend it’s not happening. So I just wanted to say, “Hey, do you care to share what’s happening?” She had lost a grandson, I believe. They were getting ready to have this service. That’s what people had been building in the corner, the carpenters were working on a casket for this young man.

Then there’s a knock at the door, and it’s like a hunter who lives in the village. They had shot a moose, but it was not the season to do that, so I was kind of curious about it. It’s not really my business, but somebody just mentioned to me, “Oh, well Fish and Game authorizes us to go get these animals, because there’s a food shortage.”

I thought, There’s a food shortage, and these people had been entertaining the mushers, feeding everybody, building a casket, planning for a funeral, all these things. And the mushers didn’t even know it. I just thought, Wow, that is a community that can hold so much.

The race goes in a loop and then comes back through this community a few days later. So they said, “Well, come on your way back, we’re gonna give you some stew meat.” And I said, “No thanks. We don’t need that. We’ll be okay. I appreciate the offer.” But they weren’t taking no for an answer.

A couple days later we’re riding back, and go through this village at three o’clock in the morning. Just crawling through slowly on our snow machine, not to make any noise, and we’re not gonna stop. It’s three o’clock in the morning, you know? But sure enough, this woman runs out of the community center and brings Katie and I this cooler of stew meat and just insists that we have some of it. And I thought, This is what this is about.

This isn’t about times or days. I don’t remember who came in what place in the race. Actually, my wife had a top five finish. It was amazing, but that’s not the point.

As a trans person, I’ve gone down to the Wisconsin State Capitol, and I’ve been to these debates about trans inclusion in sports and so on. It was just a half hour of somebody reading the high jump records from New Mexico from last year, and when this person went through transition, look how much better their scores got, and what’s that gonna do for the sport? I’m like, This is so missing the point. Sports for most people isn’t about a college scholarship or becoming a professional anything like that. It’s about the connections we make. I wish we could begin to have this conversation, not in terms of competitive advantage, but in terms of belonging.

I happen to be in a sport that men and women can be in and it doesn’t matter. So it doesn’t matter in that sense that I’m trans, nobody’s checking my gender card. Being able to be a part of something competitive at an elite level without having to worry that being trans will disqualify me has given me the perspective about how important it is that people are able to participate in the sports that they’re working on, that they care about, in the communities where they belong, being who they are.

I think here’s what I want to tell trans people and trans young people. Trans people, people who don’t fit in in all kinds of ways, and who doubt their own validity, and try to figure out where they belong, and maybe feel like they landed in a spaceship in their family and in a community, and no one’s like them, or a few people are, and they’re trying to find their way…people like us have been here for hundreds of years, thousands of years. We’ve been here for millennia in human history, and somehow a lot of us have found ways to survive. We’ve found ways to find each other. So I want you to be able to find your people that you can trust, whether they’re adults, they’re other kids, whoever.

If you feel that love and openness from people, move toward that. And you’ll be able to get through this. I don’t know how, but there’s gonna be a way, it’s gonna open up. It’s not gonna come from politicians, or your school principal, or your teacher, or me, or anyone else. It’s just gonna be a journey that you find and it’s gonna be a really cool one, and I hope you stick around for it.

I want to hear about it.

Quince Mountain is an outdoor educator and dog musher living in Wisconsin. He is one half of the BraverMountain mushing team with his wife, Blair Braverman. Quince is the first openly trans person to compete in the Iditarod and on the reality TV show Naked and Afraid. Learn more about Quince at .

You can followĚýThe Daily RallyĚýonĚý,Ěý, or wherever you like to listen. and to be featured on the show.

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If you follow track and field news closely, it’s hard to miss all the national titles Nikki Hiltz has been collecting: Indoor 1500-Meter National Champion, Outdoor 1500-Meter National Champion, and perhaps the most unexpected title of all, American record holder in the mile (4:16.35) at the Monaco Diamond League. Nikki went into the race feeling good about their fitness, but they were shocked about breaking this decade-old record.

Women’s Running caught up with Nikki Hiltz, a professional runner, Lululemon ambassador, and LGBTQ activist, after their recent wins and several break-through performances.Ěý

Women’s Running: First, congratulations on setting a new American record in the mile! What did it feel like to break the American record in the mile by Mary Slaney, set in 1985? Was the race in Monaco your best race ever?

Nikki Hiltz: Thank you! It’s definitely a surreal feeling to be the American record holder. As for whether this is my best race ever, I would say it’s definitely one of my top performances. On the other hand, my favorite races are the ones I win! Although I set the American record, I still only got sixth place, which just shows how incredibly deep the international field in this event is.

WR: How are you feeling with a tidal wave of congratulations pouring in from around the world after you set the new American record? Have you been able to rest?Ěý

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NH: The outpouring of support and congratulations from people around the world has been heartwarming. While it can be emotionally draining to some extent to sift through some ignorance and transphobia, the love and encouragement I’ve been receiving are definitely outweighing the negative. All the messages are incredibly uplifting. They give me great motivation leading into the world championships. As far as finding time to rest, I’ve been really enjoying my phone-free runs lately. I’ve been able to get away from all the noises to rest and recharge.ĚýĚý

WR: How has living in Flagstaff been helping with your training?

NH: I moved to Flagstaff in March of 2022. It took me a while to fully adapt to altitude. Around one year in, I had one of the best strength workouts. It was then I realized that I had finally fully adapted to the altitude. A part of me feels at home here, because I spent a good amount of my childhood going to Lake Tahoe (over 6,000 feet in elevation). This feels like the right move, as if I was meant to be here.

WR: Tell us about your coach Mike Smith’s Double Threshold workout and his training group.

NH: It’s a training method made popular by Norwegian runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen. The idea is that you run two workouts in one day, get 10 to 12 miles at your threshold pace, and nothing faster. For example, six miles at threshold in the morning, and four miles in the evening.Ěý

My weakness has always been the third lap. I have good speed and a great kick. With the Double T (threshold), I can handle the faster pace for longer. Training at 7,000 ft altitude is also a tremendous boost.

I train with a small group, mostly with Northern Arizona University’s men’s and women’s team. Most of my training partners are 5K and 10K runners. They make me stronger. şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř of running, they’re also supportive friends who bring great energy to practice. I have never felt stronger.

Recently, Woody Kincaid won the 10k race at the national championship. He made me realize that our training is clicking and gave me the confidence that I might be next.

RELATED:

WR: Speaking of confidence: How does setting a new American record boost your confidence in racing against the best runners in the upcoming World Championship in Budapest?Ěý

NH: Breaking the long-standing American record certainly boosts my confidence heading into the World Championship in Budapest. It shows that my fitness is peaking at just the right time. I was feeling confident in my tactics and my ability to race after the U.S. Championships. After setting the record in Monaco, I’m also now confident in my ability to run a fast race.Ěý

When competing at the highest level among the best in the world, there are two things you need to get through the rounds: your ability to handle a fast pace, and your ability to race well. I’m feeling positive about both attributes and my chance at the World Championship.

WR: Heading into the World Championships, do you have a plan for how to run the heats and advance to the finals? Or do you go into the qualifying round with a specific pace in mind?Ěý

NH: I usually go into round one and the semi-final at championships more nervous than I am at the final. Getting to the final is the hard part. Racing the final is the fun part because there’s nothing to lose. This year might be one of the hardest World finals to make just because there’re so many incredible women in the 1500 meter running so well right now. I’ve also been doing this long enough to know that anything can happen in championship racing. This fact used to really scare me but now I think it’s also exciting!Ěý

WR: You’ve been a vocal advocate for greater inclusion of non-binary and trans athletes. You dedicated your championship win to the LGBTQ+ community. How does living so fully into who you are factor into your performance?

NH: When I first came out about my sexuality, the weight came off and I was able to PR (personal record). But with my gender identity, it was an opposite experience. I was vulnerable and scared. That criticism weighed me down. I wasn’t sure how people were going to react to me being non-binary.Ěý

Now that enough time has gone by, I’m very comfortable with who I am. More people know what nonbinary means and are respectful of it. I used to hate who I was. Now I can’t be more proud to be part of the trans community. I feel so loved and supported.

RELATED:

WR: How is your partnership with Lululemon going? How do you decide what to wear on race day?

NH: I love working with Lululemon. Our partnership just reached a year. Lululemon sponsors other track athletes including Colleen Quigley, Hunter Woodhall, and Tara Davis. It’s quite a wide range that speaks to what the company is—it is all about community and diversity, it is about giving people voices. The pressure of winning is off. My favorite part is working with the product team, to create new things and to give feedback.Ěý

Lululemon sends me both men’s and women’s clothing. The best way to explain my gender is fluidity. Depending on the day, I want to wear something that makes me feel powerful. I pick and choose based on what I feel that day and how I want to present my identity.Ěý

In running, we like to say, “look good, feel good, run good.” It’s important to have options for race day so we can feel good about whatever we wear. We should not have any rules on what clothing we can wear. I love some recent racing kits Lululemon sent me. They’re buttery soft and feel so great!

WR: How is your Pride 5K planning coming along?

NH: We’re back on schedule. It’s on October 7th this year. The fall is a great time for me to organize a race because, as a professional runner, I’m the busiest in the summer. Setting the race in October also sends a signal that pride is year-round. My partner Emma is the more organized one between us. It’s been super fun to work on this passion project with my partner.

This year, the Pride 5K will have both a virtual component and in-person group runs. We are working with Lululemon to have these runs hosted in some stores. They’ve been great partners.

WR: How do you balance so many of your pursuits?Ěý

NH: Having a purpose is how I balance everything. In 2019, I accomplished one of my biggest goals—I made it to the world team. Yet I felt a little empty afterwards, like, “this is it?” I was not clear on my purpose then. In 2021, when I was coming out with my gender identity with a lot of fear, it was my queer community that made me feel loved and accepted. I leaned on my community to find my way and my purpose. Starting the Pride 5K was the manifestation of my purpose—to give my community a stronger voice.

I have become a better athlete and a better person because of my community. I definitely have a lot on my plate, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

WR: You wrote: “There’s a lot of things I could probably attribute my recent successes to, but I think the most powerful tool I have is my joy. Queer people can thrive when we make a space for them, love them, and embrace them for who they are…Your love allowed me to run free last night and break a 38-year-old American record. That’s powerful stuff.”

Powerful indeed, when there has been so much hostility toward the trans community. How do you manage to hold onto your joy so consistently What advice would you give to others on holding onto hope and joy?Ěý

NH: The anti-trans legislation, as well as the hostility and discrimination the trans community faces, is extremely disheartening. As an openly-out trans person, what keeps me going is my community.Ěý

When I think about historic trans trailblazers, I think of Marsha P. Johnson. She was a Black trans woman who fought for trans and gay people’s rights during the 60s and 70s. She is famously credited with throwing the first brick at the Stonewall Riots in 1969. She was an activist for her community during one of the darkest times for queer people. She was known for her infectious smile and laugh and iconic flower crowns. Her joy always shone bright.Ěý

I always think, if Marsha could do all that for her community back in the 60s, I can show up for mine now. I owe it to her and our community to not only continue to advocate for trans rights and inclusion, but also to never forget to lean into my joy while doing so.

My advice to others facing hopelessness would be to seek out and find a supportive community, whether it’s within LGBTQ+ circles or beyond. Surround yourself with the people who lift you up and make you feel valued. When I can focus on the positive support I receive from allies, friends, family, and community, that is when I can thrive.ĚýĚý

WR: What’s your favorite snack?ĚýĚý

NH: Chocolate chip cookies!

WR: What’s your favorite thing to do other than running?Ěý

NH: It’s a tie between playing with my dog or playing the guitar.

WR: On a perfect Sunday with no plans at all, what would you spend your time doing?Ěý

NH: Every Sunday is my perfect Sunday! Sunday is the one day in the week I take completely off of training. I usually wake up, take my dog for a walk, then head to the farmers market in Flagstaff with my partner Emma. Then we relax for the rest of the day.Ěý

WR: What’s the legacy you want to leave behind?

NH: The recent wins are so fresh in my mind. I want to prove that queer joy is powerful. Queer people can thrive when the world embraces them for who they are. I want to pave a path for us to live authentically as ourselves, so when the next person comes, it becomes so much easier.

The post Nikki Hiltz on Their American Record, Queer Joy, and Chocolate Chip Cookies appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

In late May 2017, McKayla Bower was ski-touring alone on the Pacific Crest Trail when she started to feel a little spooked. She paused to assess the stability of the Sierra snowpack, which was at a record high, and didn’t like what she saw—dense, heavy snow sitting atop a layer of powdery facets.

As Bower turned to retreat, the ground fell out from under her. The avalanche ran several hundred feet down a slope toward a 20-foot drop, carrying Bower with it. The next thing she knew, she was lying dazed on the ground. The impact had snapped her ski pole, but miraculously she had no serious injuries.

“I had this feeling of, I did everything right and this still happens?” Bower says. “You never know when the thing that is going to wipe you out might happen.”

The brush with mortality made Bower think harder about her long-postponed decision to come out as transgender, which she did shortly after returning from the trek. “The thing that felt like the real risk was coming out and losing all my friends,” she says. “But I don’t think I lost a single one.”

Bower, now 31, says that going public with her identity—and then starting hormone therapy—was the best decision of her life, empowering her to undertake even bigger adventures. This fall she’ll embark on her most ambitious journey yet, an east-to-west solo sailboat circumnavigation of the globe beginning in Panama City. The number of successful solo trips around the world is thought to be in the low hundreds, fewer than the number of people who have gone to space, though there’s no comprehensive record. If Bower succeeds, she’ll be the first known LGBTQ+ person to have completed the voyage alone.

“My biggest hope is that tons of people will learn about this and feel more confident,” Bower says. “I want people to see what happens when they are authentic and real.”

Bower is setting sail at a time when trans issues continue to be hotly debated across the United States. The American Civil Liberties Union has identified 491 anti-LGBTQ+ bills at various levels of government, and Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently signed a bill banning trans people from using school bathrooms that don’t match the gender shown on their birth certificates.

“The right has turned transgender people into a villain, a bogeyman,” says trans sailor and activist Sabreena Lachlainn, who called off her own planned solo circumnavigation in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. For her part, Bower says that most of what she’s heard has been supportive, but that some of the usual hate has already come her way. “One comment I got on Reddit said my energy would be better spent killing myself,” she says. Lachlainn, who knows the politics of all this as well as anybody, says, “I want to hug McKayla at the finish line, because her journey is so important for our community.”

Meanwhile, the realm of sports and adventure has also become contested terrain for trans athletes. Last year, swimming’s international governing body from competing in women’s events. In February, after the World Surf League announced that trans women surfers could compete if they maintained sufficiently low testosterone levels, surfing star said that she’d refuse to participate in WSL events if it upheld the policy. In March, World Athletics, which governs track and field, on trans athletes competing in elite women’s races.

To reach Panama from her home in Washington’s San Juan Islands, Bower will have to sail her 30-foot-long 1977 San Juan Class custom cutter rig, Swirl, for roughly 5,000 miles. To prepare, she spent $35,000 retrofitting the ł§·Éľ±°ů±ô’s interior, doing the carpentry and fiberglass work herself. She plans to sail on a meager budget, funding the trip with earnings from various jobs, including a stint at a bookstore, along with a few sponsorships from private businesses, personal donations, and the $400 a month she receives from her Patreon account.

From Panama City, which is nine degrees north of the equator, she’ll set a westerly course toward French Polynesia. “The easiest circumnavigation you can do is around ten degrees north or south of the equator, because that’s where the trade winds are,” Bower says. From there she’ll head for Indonesia, cross the South Indian Ocean to Mauritius, sail to South Africa, traverse the Atlantic to the Caribbean, and, finally, head back to Panama. She estimates that the total length of her voyage—including the trips from the Pacific Northwest to Panama and back—will be somewhere between 35,000 and 40,000 miles. She expects the circumnavigation to take 15 to 17 months.

A lot can go wrong during such a long journey. Climate change has intensified storms and made them harder to predict, and Bower will be racing to beat hurricane season when she reaches the Caribbean. Solo sailing is rife with tragedy: Guo Chan, an accomplished Chinese sailor, vanished in 2016 while trying to set a new speed record for a solo crossing of the Pacific. Susie Goodall made international headlines in 2018 when she was rescued after a storm in the Southern Ocean severely damaged her boat during the nonstop Golden Globe race around the world. While attempting a solo journey from California to Hawaii in 2020, Paralympic rower Angela Madsen died in the central Pacific while performing routine maintenance on her boat.

To prepare, Bower has sailed approximately 5,000 miles over the past three years, much of it in the mercurial waters of the San Juans, where hazards can include large trees known as deadheads that lurk below the surface. “McKayla’s been doing her homework,” says Karl Krüger, an adventurer who lives at anchor in the San Juans, leads boat charters, and traveled 420 miles of the Northwest Passage on a solo stand-up paddleboard journey in 2022. “She’s been working at it, and she’s been spending time alone on that boat, sailing around these waters that can certainly dish it up.”

There isn’t much prep work Bower can do for her biggest concern: the way she’ll be welcomed—or not—in countries openly hostile to LGBTQ+ people. While some governments have adopted more progressive laws in recent years, the Human Dignity Trust, a London-based charity that provides legal assistance to LGBTQ+ activists, maintains an online map of countries with restrictive policies. It reports nearly 70 governments around the world that “criminalise [LGBTQ+ people,] fuelling stigma, legitimising prejudice and encouraging violence.” During her circumnavigation, Bower will stop to resupply for food and water, forcing her to deal with customs and immigration. “Jakarta scares me, as a visibly queer person,” Bower says. In 2022, Indonesia passed a new criminal code that includes an adultery ban, which according to Human Rights Watch could be used as an excuse to step up harassment of LGBTQ+ people in a place where gay marriage is illegal.

Bower says that her route leaves her no choice but to stop in Indonesia. “My other option would be Malaysia, which is worse,” she says. As of late April, she was still trying to figure out the best place for reprovisioning in the Caribbean. “Most Caribbean countries don’t have very friendly queer legislation,” she says.

Her parents share her concerns. “I am at least as nervous about how she will be accepted as she does this journey and interacts with people around the world as I am about the physical risk,” says her father, Jay Bower, who works as an environmental engineer in Washington. “I don’t know which is more harrowing.”

But Bower says she plans to “fly under the radar” as much as feasible during the global voyage. “While I am very publicly out in the U.S., I am not showing up in other countries flying my rainbow flag,” she says. And she refuses to dwell on potential hassles and dangers. “An unfortunate part of being in this queer and trans community is that we almost have to accept that there are places in the world that kind of hate us,” she says. “And I refuse to let that be something that stops me from going on a trip like this. We can’t let our fears control us, right?”

Daniel White () is the author of , a memoir about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

The post As a Trans Woman Sailing Around the World, Storms Are the Least of Her Worries appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

In an Instagram post on June 24, SKI posted a link to an article, The piece is part of our company-wide effort at şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř to celebrate Pride Month, which honors the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan, a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the US, and to support this community in our work the remaining 11 months of the year as well.

Unfortunately, the overwhelming response to this post was a comment feed full of mean-spirited, hateful, and bigoted rhetoric. We had to delete many comments that included slurs or threats. And while I believe these comments represent just a tiny but very vocal minority in the ski space, it was painful to read.

As disheartening and infuriating as those comments were, the reality for LGBTQ+-identifying people is worse. In 2023, lawmakers in 46 states have introduced more than 650 anti-LGBTQ+ bills. Forty-five percent of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, according to a 2022 survey by the Trevor Project. LGBTQ youth who live in a community accepting of LGBTQ+ people reported significantly lower rates of attempting suicide than those who do not.

The most recent Human Rights Campaign Foundation survey from 2018 found that 46 percent of LGBTQ+ workers reported being closeted at work because they feared not being accepted.

In April, the LGBTQ+ Institute at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights that said 100 percent of those surveyed reported stigmatization in their lives: slurs and jokes, poor service in restaurants and hotels, or feeling unwelcome at a place of worship or religious organization because of their identity.

We must recognize that LGBTQ+ people face stressors like these simply for being who they are—stressors I, a straight, cisgender person, don’t have to deal with, not at work, not at the grocery store, or when I’m out to eat, and not when I’m skiing.

The article SKI published, written by Miles Griffis, includes suggestions for ways mountain communities can help combat some of the above stressors, like building year-round programming (not just parties) for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer locals; giving back to the LGBTQ+ community financially; and more ways beyond Pride Month parades and Gay Ski Week festivities. Ultimately, Griffis is calling for allyship.

Allies have the power and the opportunity to stand up for the equal and fair treatment of people different than themselves. Given that LGBTQ+ people make up 11 percent of the ski community, according to Snowsports Industries of America’s (SIA) annual report, allies are critical in creating a welcoming and inclusive space vital to the longevity of our sport. Gen Z adults, the oldest now turning 25, are set to be part of the most diverse generation, with one in five identifying as LGBTQ+. If we cannot create a safe, welcoming space for this generation, we will soon lose a large portion of our skier population.

And after wading through the swamp of nearly 1,500 comments on SKI’s Instagram post, it’s clear that the ski community needs that allyship to come on strong, deliberate, and fast.

So what does that look like for allies as individuals? Beyond Gay Ski Week and Pride Month, how do I show up as an ally to the LGBTG+ ski community all year?

Recently, , and to answer it, they completed a four-year project to investigate how LGBTQ+ individuals determine whether someone is an ally. They found that, according to LGBTQ+-identified people, good allies have three characteristics: being accepting, taking action, and having humility (e.g., “They are a good listener; they are open to correction; they are willing to learn”).

To translate this to our ski community, I reached out to some of our LBGTQ+ contributors, athletes, gear testers, and photographers to hear firsthand how exactly allies can show up for them on the slopes, in the parking lot, at apres, on the chairlift, in the backcountry (OK, you get it, this is an all-the-time thing).

Here is what they have to say:

SKI: What does being accepting of LGBTQ+ people look like in the ski community? How, specifically, can we make people feel they belong?

Miles Griffis, he/him/his, SKI contributor: We need communities to provide queer events and meet-ups year-round and allies to make this happen. Most importantly, we need businesses, town councils, and communities to stand by and support LGBTQ+ people when they host these events, especially when they receive hate and threats from homophobic groups.

Jordan Berde, she/her/hers, ski buyer at evo: ​â¶Ä‹As a queer person and Ski Buyer at evo, the LGBTQIA+ community is always on my mind when making my buys. Are we offering men’s and women’s skis in extended sizes suitable for trans/queer skiers and skiers of various shapes and sizes? Does that unisex ski come in a gender-neutral graphic that appeals to everyone? Being inclusive of one group may benefit other marginalized groups as well. By curating assortments for all humans, rather than breaking our categories into men’s and women’s, we can make customers feel more welcome online and in stores when shopping on our ski walls. At evo, we’ve done away with gendered ski walls. Skis are merchandised together based on length, width, and discipline. Skis know no gender—skis are for humans, period.

Stephen Shelesky, he/him/his, outdoor photographer: In small, generally rural ski communities, visibility is still super important to creating a more inclusive atmosphere. Aspen, for example, has several businesses that display Pride flags on their windows year-round. This says our community is accepted and safe in the given business. From my experience, in Wyoming, I often have to “read the room” and constantly adjust myself in a way that will make me feel most safe in that environment. A simple display of pride can help to eliminate this.

Alex Showerman, she/her/hers, professional athlete: It starts with policy. Does your state or local community have anti-discrimination protections in place? Does it have policies that make going to the bathroom inaccessible for gender non-conforming folks? The reality is I won’t go to a place if I don’t think I will feel safe. So learn about your state and local policies and become an advocate for policies that protect LGBTQ + and other marginalized groups. Write letters to the editor, to your town council, to your governor. Show up for any local hearings about policies that will affect marginalized groups. Get uncomfortable and use your voice to create change.

Hank Stowers, he/she/they, professional skier and co-founder of Open Slopes: The first real step toward acceptance for queer and trans people in the ski community is to understand that the “community” isn’t a place or a lifestyle but the people who are there with you, sharing the experience. Those people’s lives don’t stop happening when we aren’t skiing, and we live in a world where systemic, interpersonal, and intersectional oppression of LGBTQ+ people is measurably present. A vibrant and healthy community only exists when all its members are safe, so accepting someone as a member of your community requires that you share responsibility in ensuring their safety, on and off-hill.

When sympathetic people talk about supporting any underrepresented community, they often aim to make them feel like they belong. That requires kindness—the kindness of trusting us when we say that language is potent and we know ourselves well enough to define ourselves. The kindness of critically examining what you have learned about us, where you learned it from, and the motives of your informants. The kindness of advocating for our inclusion where we are not present. That’s what we need from allies to feel like we belong.

SKI: What actions can allies take to support our LGBTQ+ fellow skiers?

MG: Allies can help on the slopes and in town in a few ways; first, by educating themselves about the history of the discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. They’ll understand the importance of representation and see that many groups looking to silence queer and trans people are spreading harmful misinformation about them. Many guides provide allies with the correct information to combat ignorance and misinformation. We can fight ignorance and misinformation with education. Secondly, allies can help stand up for queer and trans people if they hear others using anti-LGBTQ+ slurs or discriminating against our community.

JB: As a queer person, I always notice when a store/establishment has a pride flag hung year-round or an “all are welcome here” sticker. You feel welcome and invited in, and that’s a feeling all queer folks should have year-round, not just in June. Advocate for single-person/all-gender bathrooms at resorts, bars, and stores. Advocate for hiring more queer/non-binary employees at the establishments you frequent. Representation matters! Plan/host pride-themed events where the proceeds give back to local/national LGBTQIA+ nonprofits. These events don’t have to take place in June, either! Host a queer ski day once a month during the ski season. Call in instead of calling out your friends and strangers when they make inappropriate jokes or comments.

SS: Many ski towns now have LGBTQ+ organizations and groups working to foster community in these places further. Allies can help by using their resources, whether financial or social reach, to help amplify these groups. I have seen JH Pride in Jackson Hole grow over the past few years, and I know the impact has run deep in creating a more inclusive community.

AS: Support and organize pride events. Encourage businesses to display Pride flags and signs that signal they are a safe space. Ask them to mark on Google maps they are LGBTQ friendly, and ask that they have gender neutral bathrooms. These are all things I look for to feel safe in a community. On a personal level, speak up when you see homophobia both in person and online. This can be as simple as correcting somebody when they misgender a community member or chiming in when you see trolls on internet comment sections.

HS: Rainbow flags and stickered skis look nice, but the main prerequisite for allyship is that you are committed to learning about whatever oppressed group you aim to support. Start by researching us. Look up the history of Pride. Read peer-reviewed studies about dysmorphia in transgender youth. Google precolonial gender expressions. Find out if any queer community groups operate in your area and what challenges they have faced. If you take that seriously, you will find that the issues which require your action are in plain sight. Are resort owners donating profits from your season pass purchase to transphobic political candidates? Is the hospital that fixed your torn ACL failing to provide gender-affirming patient care? Or is your backcountry partner regurgitating propaganda that dehumanizes and vilifies LGBTQ+ people? If straight and cis allies were a little less eager to chime in on the theatrics of visibility and a little more focused on disrupting the systems of power poised against us, we’d be on the right track.

SKI: What examples can you give of an ally showing humility? How can allies demonstrate we are always willing to listen and learn?

MG: Many of the comments on my article boiled down to “Nobody cares that you’re gay” and minimized the discrimination and hate many queer and trans people face daily without being aware of how often society centers heterosexuality in advertising, films, and other media. Allies can show humility by educating themselves on queer issues so we can combat misinformation together.

JB: Ask for pronouns and use inclusive, non-gendered language. White cis men dominate the outdoor community, and gendered greetings (“Hey, guys!”) can be female-minimizing and resurface harmful memories in some. It’s a simple action, but the positive effect of these one-liner greetings can be immensely powerful. Try these: Hey folks! Hey crew! Hey team! Hey pals! Sharing your own pronouns and creating space for others to share theirs shows an immediate and concerted effort to learn and listen. Educate yourself and others on policies in your home state/city that could negatively impact the LGBTQIA+ community.

SS: Speak up when you hear or see something. Toxic language is still heard around the ski resort and failing to call it out enables the behavior.

AS: One of the biggest misconceptions I hear is how the outdoor community is so welcoming. This is often from straight cis white folks. Just because a space feels inclusive to you, doesn’t mean it feels inclusive to everybody. One way to check how inclusive a community is is to stop and look around you. Really pay attention to what you see. Does everybody look like you? Everybody dress like you? Does everybody talk like you? Then ask yourself why that is and what you can do to change that for the better.

HS: Humility is scary because it’s often conflated with shame and smallness. Queer people are not asking you to feel ashamed or insignificant. We are asking you to humble yourself in the face of what you have not experienced and to defer to the voice of the oppressed as the expert of our own oppression. This goes for all allies, to all oppressed people. It’s counterproductive for you to dwell on shame or guilt, and it’s hubris to believe that you know anyone’s experiences better than they do. Humility is hearing hurt people and accepting that, however uncomfortable it makes you, their pain is as real. Humility is acting with humanity and a willingness to share in fixing the problem.

Sierra Shafer is the Editor-in-Chief of SKI.

The post Skiing Needs LGBTQ+ Allies. Here’s How To Be One. appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Mikah Meyer told his story to producer Stepfanie Aguilar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was like, How do I communicate in a photo that I’m gay? Should I throw glitter in every picture, or do I hike with a unicorn floaty? And ultimately the best option I came up with was to take pictures with a rainbow flag in front of America’s most iconic National Park Service sites. If I stood in front of Delicate Arch with a giant rainbow flag, that would very quickly communicate, Here is somebody who loves the outdoors, and who is also gay.

If I had to pick one title for myself, it would be storyteller, because whether it’s speaking engagements, or creating social media content, or doing advocacy work, the one uniting thread between everything I do is storytelling.

I’ve also called myself a full-time adventurer, or I tell people I do everything Rick Steves does, I’m just one thousandth as famous.

My dad was a minister. In fact, he was an award-winning minister at the largest Lutheran campus ministry in America. So for me, coming out was a whole lot of nightly praying to God to fix me, to change me, to let me be anything but what deep in my heart, I knew I was.

When I was 19, he passed away from esophageal cancer. A few days after his funeral, I took my first ever independent road trip, and it was such a healing experience for me that I made it a goal that I would do one road trip every year for the rest of my life around the time of his passing, April 29th, as a way to honor the retirement that he never got because he passed away at 58.

So I’d been doing these annual road trips for over a decade, when I knew that I really wanted to do something epic at age 30. What I ended up deciding to do was to try to set a world record by visiting all of our 400-plus National Park Service sites. There had only been two dozen people in the history of our country that had visited all of our National Park Service sites, so I could both become the youngest person to do so, and the only person to ever do so in one continuous trip, which would set two world records.

So I was 30 years old when I started the journey to visit all of America’s National Park Service sites. And I finished three years later when I was 33. It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

About a year into my National Parks journey, I was sitting in the front seat of my Ram ProMaster cargo van that I was living in. I opened up Instagram, and I got a new message and I pulled it open and I started reading and it said: “Hi. I am 15 years old. I go to a private Baptist school in Texas, and I’m not out of the closet to anyone, but I read about your journey and I looked you up. And I just want to thank you because now I know when I grow up I can be ordinary.” Then the message continued and he said, “Then I found your Instagram, and I see you’re setting world records. And now I know when I grow up I can also be extraordinary.”

I just started wiping the tears from my smartphone. I realized that, I had spent the first part of my Parks journey hiding the fact that I was gay, actively working to despite being out of the closet for almost 10 years, doing everything I could to keep the outdoors community, to keep the media, from knowing I was gay because I was sure that if I didn’t fit the mold of every other outdoorsy guy, that nobody would support my project. Nobody would help crowdfund, I’d get no sponsorships. And so it was this moment where I sort of broke down because I was not helping this kid at all. I was just adding to the problem by hiding myself and hiding this part of me to try to fit in and make everyone else more comfortable.

So many queer people, we fled the rural towns we came from. We fled these outdoor spaces that we enjoyed because we felt like we weren’t safe unless we were in a neighborhood in an urban center, or we couldn’t be ourselves in these places because of the culture. I realized that the problem with outdoors culture was not the danger or the toughness of the trails or the adventures, the problem with outdoors culture was straight people making queer people feel like they couldn’t be who they were in these spaces.

So at that point, I basically was like, OK, I know that I need to now be out on this Parks journey, and I need to do it for this kid, and I need to do it for ten-year-old Mikah who grew up in Nebraska. My window to the outside world was watching the Travel Channel. And I never saw any openly gay person out living this gnarly life, so I never thought it was possible. And in that moment I realized I now could be that person that all these people needed to see so that they could have an easier time being themselves.

The idea was, How can I use this platform that I’ve built as a result of this trip? How can I use my profession and how can I use my privilege as a cisgender gay white man one step away from the apex of privilege to help those people?

The concept that I came up with is called the şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Safe Space Program. Essentially it’s a symbol that gives individuals the agency and the ability to make our outdoor and rural spaces more welcoming by wearing the symbol as a pin or a sticker or apparel or anywhere on their body, so that when queer people meet them in outdoor and rural spaces, they can see an ally, and we can start to hopefully change this perception that outdoors and rural people aren’t welcoming. And if they are unwelcoming, hopefully we can start to slowly show that there are allies, and pressure the homophobes into becoming allies.

The şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Safe Space tree was really intentionally designed. In one portion of the tree, it’s the rainbow flag. And in other parts it’s the bi flag and the trans flag. They were specifically placed to make sure that they were the longest, strongest branches of the tree, to recognize the way that those communities have been left out of inclusion even within our own queer conversation.

Instead of being those rainbow colors, the trunk is made up of all different skin tones to show that all of these different queer identities come in every race around the world. And for everyone who doesn’t identify with one of those flags, the entire tree is made up only of triangles, which is a traditional symbol within the queer community.

People wouldn’t know I’m gay unless I share that. And in the same way, I don’t know if you’re an ally unless you share that. So the şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Safe Space symbol is a way to give people the ability to communicate that they are something that is unseen otherwise and needs to be communicated for others to know.

It’s so important that we have visibility, both of queer people and allies, in the outdoors, because we’ve spent our whole lives hiding who we are, so for many of us, the only way to be proud of who we are and own who we are is to be visible and is to share this part of ourselves.

Mikah Meyer is a storyteller, singer, and record-setting adventurer. You can find more information about him and order your own şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Safe Space tree pin at . Or, follow his adventures on Instagram .

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