By Vanessa Balintec and Zoe Law
TORONTO (Reuters) -Ry Shissler, a 40-year old cartographer who swims the backstroke, was planning to compete internationally for the first time during the WorldPride celebrations that start this month in Washington, D.C.
But the trans athlete and their team, Toronto’s Purple Fins, made the difficult decision to skip the games and the Pride events in the U.S. entirely, worried about their treatment at the border and beyond.
A self-described “gender free” swim club, the Purple Fins is one of several aquatics teams with bi, non-binary or transgender athletes whose members told Reuters they are not comfortable visiting the United States right now.
“Are my rights gonna be respected? Can my teams’ rights be respected? Are we going to be assaulted and have the authorities defend us, instead of the attacker? Those are all questions we couldn’t definitively say yes to,” said Shissler, who identifies as a “trans person of unspecified gender.”
It was a tough call for the Canadian team, said Shissler, a dual U.S. and Canadian citizen who grew up in Michigan.
“We want to just be able to be ourselves and go swim and have a good time and maybe win a medal… But to say no, it’s not safe for us to go have fun? That’s really hard.”
Washington is the site of the 2025 WorldPride celebrations, a biennial flurry of cultural and sporting events, capped by a parade and, this year, a Shakira concert.
Chosen before the last presidential election, organizers hoped Washington might match New York’s 2019 celebrations that drew some four million visitors. But a cascade of policy changes by President Donald Trump and new laws in some U.S. states have put a chill on the events, say some.
The Trump administration says it is only recognizing two unchangeable sexes, male and female, has rolled back orders combating discrimination against gay and transgender people, and is working to discharge thousands of transgender troops from the U.S. military.
The White House referred questions about fears around safety and border entry to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. The agency declined to make an official available, but said in a statement beliefs about sexuality don’t make a foreign person inadmissible.
The “World LGBTQIA+ Aquatics Championship” Shissler hoped to join have drawn somewhere between 800 and 1,000 swimmers and water polo players in the past, former and current organizers recall. Not this year.
“We are definitely not seeing the numbers that we usually see, and that’s unfortunate,” said Rozalynd McCree, co-president of the board of IGLA+, which oversees the games. McCree says while IGLA+ is doing all it can to ensure participants’ safety, it can’t make any guarantees.
“The athletes who do come and the athletes who are in the United States are going to show up and speak up, and we are going to fight for our community because it’s important to us,” she said. “We won’t sit down and be quiet.”
But the current political climate, especially in the nation’s capital, has sapped some of the expected joy from would-be participants.
Stefania Bereznai, a 51-year-old who has played for the Toronto Triggerfish Water Polo team for 15 years, initially wanted to attend the IGLA+ tournament. But the U.S. has lost its appeal, said Bereznai, who identifies as non-binary.
“I don’t feel like I stand out as being non-binary. So, I don’t worry so much about my physical safety,” said Bereznai.
“But I don’t really want to go somewhere where other people aren’t feeling comfortable, and where, on some level, I’m also absorbing the fact that I’m not welcomed as my whole self.”
(Reporting by Vanessa Balintec, Zoe Law and Kyaw Soe Oo in Toronto; Additional reporting by Nathan Frandino and Ted Hesson in Washington, DC; Writing by Heather Timmons; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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