Trust the Process: A Journal of Trans Exploration Through Arsenal Football Club

 This weekend I realized just how important sharing is for me to feel joy. That's part of my trans ontology: "to be queer is always to become queer with many" (Nuñez, 2021). In my experience, I feel like I am re-born when I share who I am with people who can see me as I want them to see me. My non-binary journey of being many people ("to be non-binary is to become as many") relies on me finding affirming to share myself with. I need to share myself to feel like myself because gender is always collective. I realized the importance of sharing this weekend when I briefly shut away someone I share a lot of my life with. I felt pain grieving the opportunity to share my everyday with them and, when I finally changed my mind and appreciated what sharing gives me in my life, I felt so much joy literally come back to my body.  Giving is always receiving, sharing establishes reciprocity.  My experience of being an Arsenal changed drastically when I began sharing it with m...

 Arsenal beat Norwich 5-0 on Boxing Day. I really needed that. When I first came out as non-binary, my mum was the only person who knew during Christmas three years ago. My family has always been 'queer inclusive', but what it really means is that I won't be homeless for being queer (which I'm really grateful for!), but it will always be expected for me to 'act normal', like a member of the family. There's not much effort done to see me or affirm me (it's the neoliberal and individualistic model of gender! But my gender is collective and it feels like there's no space for that with my family). This year, as a non-binary woman, only my grandma knows. Christmas is always isolating and saddening for me. I was in a big emotional pit over the last few days. Luckily, I turned it around yesterday as I leaned into an abundance mindset, leaving my struggle with scarcity (of affection, of recognition, of connection) behind. It was a difficult journey, but I am...

Arsenal has done well lately and it all seems to be aligning for a glowing and blossoming team in the next few years as this batch of youth players finds its place in the team.  Sometimes I feel like the only thing that could stop them is their masculine egos—will they bounce back when their in-form egos are punctured by a series of defeats? Or will they lose themselves? So far, they've kept bouncing back. I wonder what seeing this, having this worry, says about me. Maybe it is a question that emerges in me: when who I am is invalidated by others, will I let myself be defeated by that? Now that I'm in places where I don't feel very safe, I've opted to hide who I am trying to protect myself. But maybe that's not what I ought to do. Perhaps my fears, projected onto Arsenal, are about how capable I feel of bouncing back, how sure I feel of myself. I feel quite sure, my voice has been really loud lately!  Maybe I should expose myself one day in order to confront that fe...

 Lately, Arsenal has done well and so have I. Arsenal seems to mirror my gender exploration journey sometimes. I flew away from my anchor partner almost two weeks ago. I was (and still am) scared—I came out to them in September and that marked a re-birth for me. I'd only known life as a trans non-binary woman with her and a few other trans siblings. Coming back home and re-learning life without them is scary. Being in my house in Mexico, a place where I learned to suppress myself so much for years, is tricky to navigate too when I feel just so loud, so much here. Fortunately , I haven't struggled that much. I have found some outlets and refuges where I can feel like myself and, unsurprisingly, Arsenal has been at the heart of it. The most significant one has been perhaps in Costa Rica. I went to Costa Rica and felt like I found myself. In a perfect alignment of events that felt like destiny, I ended up on a 'date' with a trans sibling on my last day there. It was my fir...

It was during our latest game, a 3-2 defeat away against Manchester United, that I realized (part of) what Arsenal does for me and my queerness. I want to share those realizations which inspired me to start this blog: December 2 2021 I realized that following Arsenal is a way of narrativizing myself. I am always looking for ‘the narrative’—Pépé’s redemption, Aubameyang’s leadership, Nuno’s learning journey, Ramsdale proving he deserves support, and so on. The way I watch the game is always in communication with the team and the players' ‘point to prove’. Arsenal must become its ‘true self’, be where it belongs. But I know there is nothing to prove, they are always already who they are: extremely talented players with an enormous future, especially this young team that has been put together. They always speak about the ‘Arsenal DNA’ as if it is a way of playing, but I don’t think so. I think the Arsenal DNA is about becoming , developing, and flourishing while aiming for the high...

Hello! My name is Max, I'm a 21-year old trans non-binary woman (they/she pronouns), a college student... and a BIG Arsenal fan.  Unfortunately, I don't have a nice typical story about how I fell in love with Arsenal. Many people I know have stories such as ' when I was 7 years old I watched a game with my dad and Thierry Henry scored the goal that made me fall in love with football!', but I don't. I simply do not remember how or when I began supporting Arsenal.  All I know is that, by the summer prior to the 2014/2015 campaign, when I was 14, there was no going back. I remember eagerly following the transfer rumours of Alexis Sánchez and David Ospina coming to the club, laughing at Wenger's (sexy?) beach pictures in Brazil, and watching the unveiling event for the new Puma kit that summer, but I can remember nothing about my love for the club before then. I think I was excited when we won the FA Cup earlier that year, but my memory is too weak to say in any cer...