He was getting too old for the male competitions, so he switched to the female - well, why not if all you have to do is say you're a woman now? - and of course won easily:
Surfing’s first competitive transsexual surfer Sasha Jane Lowerson has continued her dream run through the women’s division of the Western Australian longboard titles, winning the open gal’s crown easily.
In the final, Lowerson, a forty-three-year-old strawberry blonde [!] who has ridden “stupidly big Waimea” and who won the male division of the WA longboard titles in 2019 as Ryan Egan before transitioning, combo-ed one surfer, the other three gals needed nine-pluses to win.
The triumph was a sweet return for Lowerson who says she was close to killing herself a few months back, even had a few swings at it.
Depressed as hell, Lowerson gave up surfing, shaping, but once she decided to transition and the female hormones kicked in, woke up one day in February, felt a little better, called up Surfing Australia and said,
“Umm, this is me, the last time I competed in your Australian titles I was third, what are you going to do? I was pretty frank about it. We can do this two ways. We can do it together and make it amazing or we can do it terribly and it’s a circus and you guys are the only ones who are going to come out looking silly… I’d prefer to not go through that.”
Head judge Glen Elliot was super cool, says Lowerson, and told her he’d “love to see you still competing.”
Lowerson says, “To be the first trans woman competing in surfing hasn’t been an easy ride emotionally but the amount of support I’ve been showed has been phenomenal and I’m so grateful to be involved, welcomed and embraced within the longboard community in Australia.”
Inspirational.
For him, no doubt. Not so inspirational for the genuine women surfers - "gals" - he was competing against.
And here he is, showing off his moves and his, um, strawberry blonde locks:
[Photo: @sasha_jane_lowerson]
We heard from Ryan - sorry, Sasha - last November:
Sasha Jane Lowerson doesn’t identify as a transgender woman, just simply a woman with a “trans-experience”.
“I am human. I’m a woman, just like you, I don’t want to be treated any differently,” Lowerson told AAA.
But the Mandurah surfer is making a difference for all transgender people with her quest for more equality in her sport. In her former life, Lowerson was among the top longboard surfers in the country and the world but now living her full truth, as her authentic self, she said the sport that helps her feel “as free as a bird” is now caging her in like a criminal.
“I’ve been hiding in this male shell up until a year ago, for 42 years. To still be made to be that guy that I’m not, it’s shattering,” she said.
In December 2020, she began her journey to be given the right to compete as the gender with which she identifies.
“I want change for myself as an elite athlete but I also want to see fairness in community-level sport and for a better future for the next generation,” she said.
“There’s a lot of work to be done in this space, we need to get away from that old-school way of thinking.”
Oh yes. That'd be the old-school way of thinking that biological sex is real, and women's sport should be for women only.
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