Trying to Qualify
A long time ago, I used to spend most weekends traveling from my parent's house in CT to various cities to play in Magic: The Gathering tournaments. Generally, these are tournaments called Pro Tour Qualifiers (PTQs) in which the winner gets to travel somewhere in the world to play in the Pro Tour for some large amount of money. As with anything competitive, there has always been a 'scene' of people that would regularly arrive. As lots of people would travel for these things, and as I lived two hours from Boston and two hours from New York, I got to know a lot of different people.
Eventually, I decided I was dedicating too much time and money to the game, and moved on to other things. Specifically, spending my weekend on competitive Magic got replaced with spending my weekend on lasertag, and then competitive Dance Dance Revoluion, which then got replaced with drinking and socializing with friends ("adulthood?"). Still, at no point did I ever stop liking Magic or the people who play it. Even though I stopped caring about qualifying for the Pro Tour, I would still go and socialize at the local shop on Thursday nights or even hit up the occasional PTQ.
Once I made up my mind to transition, I also made up my mind that at some point I would stop playing live Magic. Somewhere along the line Magic: Online came into existence and I was still able to play the game without worrying about people having an issue with my gender change. I maintained this for a little while - I knew that slowly and surely people would find out, but I was still at the point where the threat of rejection was enough to cripple me so I did what I always do: I didn't let myself think about it. I knew that at some point, either I would become forgotten to the people I used to play with, or I would develop enough confidence with who I am that it wouldn't make a different.
When I moved in with Anthony, I did so knowing that a lot of his friends were the people from the old Boston PTQ scene, and that I'd eventually interact with them. At some point two months ago I did, and much like with every other old group I knew, people didn't seem to have any issues with it. Based on that, I went to play at the local store three weeks ago and reconnected with a lot of people, and that two went well. With that feedback, Saturday I decided it was time to do something I hadn't done in three years and play in a PTQ.
Normally, when I go to a "new old place" after transitioning, I play the wallflower for a bit until I'm sure that people aren't uncomfortable. When I got there, I realized it wasn't just fear of rejection that had made me apprehensive about going. It was the fact that, with 164 players and some staffers in the room, the ratio of men to women there was something close to 45:1. That, combined with the fact that there were plenty of people in the room who knew me that I hadn't heard from since I transitioned, meant it was almost certainly going to have to come up at points during the day.
It did, and, to be honest, it wasn't bad at all. There were friends that I hadn't seen or heard from in years, some of whom knew I transitioned and some of whom hadn't, who seemed satisfied with the fact that I am obviously a lot happier. On the flipside, there were people who may not have had an issue with it but still didn't see me as anything other than a guy in drag. I've noticed that all-male crews that used to know me before I transitioned seem to have the most trouble making the mental adjustment that I am, for all intents and purposes, a woman. Apparently a lot of people were asking my roommate about me because they didn't feel comfortable asking me face-to-face. I don't know if that's for my sake or for theirs; frankly, I don't mind if people bring it up as long as it means they're trying to understand/tolerate it.
There were a couple of pronoun slip-ups, but I've long since accepted that those will happen with any new group. I tried to correct people just little enough that they would understand that being female means a lot to me, but not enough that I would make them feel uncomfortable if they screwed up. I've found that as time goes on, gender mistakes bother me a lot less - they still suck, but they're no longer the end of the world. Fortunately for me, they occur a lot less as well.
This post is long enough that I don't want to lose it, and the night is late enough that I would just rather go to sleep, so I'm going to end this train of thought here. I want to write more about gaming in general, and how my opinions of it/others opinions of me have/haven't changed, but that is best saved for another post. Until then!
