September 17, 2024 • 44 mins
Before being known as Danielle Laidley, she was a hugely successful AFL player and played 151 games for West Coast Eagles and North Melbourne football clubs, and winning premierships and going onto be the youngest senior coach ever at 36, coaching North Melbourne for 149 games across seven seasons from 2003 to 2009.
For decades, Danielle kept her gender to herself and threw herself into sporting success and became a workaholic. Eventually the pain of keeping this secret led to some dark coping mechanisms like substance abuse.
In May, 2020, a police officer took a photo of Danielle in an interview room at a St Kilda police station while wearing a wig and make-up. This photo was shared in a group chat before it was leaked to the media & the public.
Now, following her diagnosis with gender dysphoria, Danielle works extensively as an advocate for transgender people, raising awareness in a quest for acceptance of diversity.
In this chat we speak about:
- The different phases of Danielle's life & always knowing who she is
- Growing up in the hyper masculine environments of football and cricket
- How she coped with the public exposure of her transition before she had been able to speak with her family and friends about it
- How the football world has responded to Danielle's transition
- How parents can help support their kids who experience gender dysphoria
- Her beautiful relationship with a woman she's known since grade 1
- Danielle's perspective on transpeople in sport
You can find Danielle's Instagram and book - Don't look away
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Lifelun Cut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands
were never seeded. We pay our respects to their elders
past and present, Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
This episode was recorded on cameragle Land. Hi guys, and
(00:22):
welcome back to another episode of Life on Cut. I'm Laura,
I'm Brittany.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Now. Today's episode is one that has been in the
works for almost a year. We interviewed Dannielle on the
pickup last year and both of us have been saying
ever since then that we couldn't wait to get you
on the podcast. But Danielle lately played one hundred and
fifty one games for West Coast Eagles in North Melbourne
Football clubs, winning an AFL premiership with the Kangaroos in
nineteen ninety six. She became one of the youngest senior
(00:48):
coaches ever at thirty six years old, coaching North Melbourne
for one hundred and forty nine games across seven seasons
from two thousand and one to two thousand and nine.
But for the best part of five decades, Danielle harbor
a seat as a boy growing up in the blocks
of Perth. As a teenager and a young man playing AFL.
As married father of three, she knew that she was female,
(01:09):
regardless of the gender that was assigned at birth. For decades,
Danielle kept her gender to herself and threw herself into
sporting successes and also became a bit of a workaholic. Eventually,
the pain of keeping this secret led to some very
dark coping mechanisms. In May twenty a police officer took
a photo of Danielle in an interview room at Saint
Kilda Police Station while she was wearing a wig and makeup,
(01:32):
and this radically changed her life forever. This photo was
shared in a group chat before it was leaked to
the media and also to the public following her diagnosis
with gender dysphoria. Daniel works extensively as an advocate for
transgender people, raising awareness in a quest for acceptance of diversity. Danielle,
it is such a pleasure to have you as part
of the pod. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Thank you, thanks Laura, Thanks Brittany for for having me.
I'm looking forward to he we our chat.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
We kickstart with with an embarrassing story. We really love
to throw our guests under the bus, just to I
guess make people feel a little bit less alone out
in the world. Do you have one?
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yes, I do. And it goes back to about two
thousand and eleven, I think it was. I was in
Adelaide at the time and I was about to board
of a flight going back to Melbourne. So as you do,
you queue up and you scan your ticket and found
my seat, got settled and you know, everything was fine,
(02:31):
and then just before we went to take off, the
last person who boarded the plane had the same seat
number as me, and I've said, look, here's my seat number.
This is my seat. I'm not going anywhere. So then
the flight attendants come down and you know, they couldn't
work it out, and then one of them said, oh,
can I have a look at your ticket? She said,
(02:52):
you're on the wrong plane.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
How did you get through so many like.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, I bought a plane to Brisbe instead of the
Melbourne flight, And that shocked me because how did my
ticket scan? But the most embarrassing thing was the walk
of shame, like I'm holding up the whole plane and
having to get all my things walk out. It was
so embarrassing, and luckily enough, the Melbourne flight hadn't left yet,
(03:19):
and so I held that flight up as well because
obviously I'm the last person on and I got to
my seat and no one was in it. So I
was very happy in the end. But let me tell you,
I had a very red face walking off the plane.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
It's so much worse because you doubled down.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
You're like, I ain't moving, like this is my seat,
I'm here first, And then not only is it not
your seat, it's the entire wrong plane. It's the wrong
to say I'm dead.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It makes you wonder because they do so many checks
and I'm pretty sure the reason why you show them
as you enter the plane is so that they can
make sure you didn't just accidentally get onto the wrong plane.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Well you're famous, then do you think that they just like,
maybe because you're famous, didn't really look at the ticket
or something, or were just like can you go?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Well, I wouldn't say famous. Yes, I had a public
profile because I was still working in the AFL at
that point in time, and look, maybe they did recognize
me in years because at that point in time, I
was flying from pers to Melbourne like four days a week,
so I was just on a Rordo pilot and I'd
(04:18):
gone to the long gate and I got through and
I got on the plane, which is a little bit scary.
Really one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Do you know how many people apparently end up in
Austria instead of Australia.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I'm sure not many, Daniel. I now forgive this if
this comes across as an ignorant question, because I know
that people may feel differently about it, But being someone
who was and is such a public figure going through
what you went through and coming out the other side,
people must have so many questions because they've known you
(04:49):
as one version of who you are and how you presented.
And I don't just mean family and friends, which for
a lot of people who are transgender, they have to
have that conversation with their direct networks, but you had
to have it on like a huge public scale because
firstly of the way it came to light, and that's
a big conversation that we'll get into, but also just
when you are a person who's a public figure, it's
(05:12):
like as though people who have loved you or seen
you or think they know you, even though they have
no connection to you whatsoever, but feel as though they
owed something they're owed an explanation almost or you weren't
the person that they thought you were, So there's so
much more loaded into it. But the question I want
to ask, do you look at your life as two
separate lives now or do you still acknowledge the person
(05:33):
that you once were? How do you reconcile those two people?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah? Well, firstly, when I talk about my life, I
always talk about phase one and now, and there was
a time that I went through that, probably four or
five years ago and maybe even a little bit longer,
where you know, I hated that first phase of my
life because I really thought football was holding up Little Dannie,
(06:00):
so to speak. The hard thing in my story and
my experience is that I never got to have that
conversation with my family and friends because of the way
it came out. No one really knew. A very very
small amount of people knew, but not my family so
to speak. And then when it became so public so quickly,
(06:23):
and the narrative when it first came out was quite
unkind horrible, and there was all this stuff, you know,
floating around, and it wasn't until we got some strategies
behind us to start to control the narrative about me
and my story and then once we started to tell
(06:44):
my story, we wrote the book and we did the documentary.
People have been amazing, I have to say, and because
because there was phase one of my life and I
had somewhat of a public profile, it was a challenge
for people. And I've known my whole life. And then
you know, going out going to the football, people would
(07:06):
come up and say, oh, Hidin, you know you do it,
and they go, oh, no, sorry, I really apologize. And
I could understand that because people had to transition with me, yeah,
and slowly get used to it. And I can quickly
pick up when people make a mistake. You know, I
(07:27):
may use the wrong pronoun or wrong name or you know,
whatever it might be, and that's okay because I can
tell that they're being.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Kind, like no ill intent.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
There's so much grace in that, because that was going
to be My next question is when you do refer
to this phase one of your life, do you still
ever say the name that used to be once upon
a time your name or is it something that you
kind of go, okay, That is a phase I don't
speak about, but I understand how for some people it
must be who were in your life for a very
(08:01):
long time, or I have known you for a long time,
it would have been a transition for them as well.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Yep. Yeah, absolutely, I'm at a stage in my life
now and it's taken some time to get here that
I'm very proud of the first days of my life.
Just I'm not going to talk about my family or children,
and that's an absolute given. Like you know, the three beautiful,
beautiful angels, I'm probably talking about more about, you know,
(08:29):
my playing career and coaching career and what I achieved
in over thirty years in the AFL. You know, I
now look back and I'm very, very proud. But there
was times where I thought football, because of the barriers
that I was going to face, I thought football was
(08:52):
killing me, and being ashamed and embarrassed of who and
what I was was taking its toll. Invariably in the
end when it became public. The people that I lived
in fear of and shame and embarrassment of what they
would think of me, they were the first ones there
and they were so and still are to this day,
(09:14):
so very very supportive and for me to be able
to talk about everything in my life and not be compartmentalized.
You know, it wasn't until my I'm not giving away
my age but that anyway, But I think that was
my fifty second birthday, was my first birthday in my
(09:37):
life where I had my football tribe, work, colleagues, family, friends,
and the transgender community all in one place celebrating my birthday.
And that was so, so very very cool. And it's
something that you know now I don't take for granted.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, that's so beautiful. You just mentioned you said I
had known my whole life, but obviously it took a
lot of people to catch up. Can we go back
to your childhood? What was that like for you? A?
Literally just what was your family life like and getting
into sport, and B what was it like for you internally?
Like when you say you always knew, what did you know?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yeah, it was probably six seven years of age where
I first stumbled on this experience of finding this peace
and calmness. I put nail Poli shop and it was like, oh,
what is this? What is the attraction to this? But
my family life at that time, my mum and dad
(10:40):
split when I was six and my brother was four,
and so we moved around between parents and grandparents right
through till I was about fifteen. So I was a
very withdrawn child at that point in time. I didn't
make relationships very good and I didn't really trust people
(11:02):
because people were coming in and out of my life
at that point in time, and it was sport, football
and cricket. I was lucky enough to play for w
Way and cricket from eleven years of age through to
seventeen as well as playing football, So the sport for
me was a release, if you like, to balance up
(11:25):
what was going on in my family life, but also
what was going on inside of me. And now peeling
back the layers after all these years, that feeling I
know now was little Danielle and there were days when
and times where she would be quiet and content and
going about her business, and there were days where it
(11:47):
was she was roaring, she was misbehaving, She wanted attention,
she wanted to live her life. And so the football
as I started to grow up, put a bit of
calmness or evenness around what I was feeling, because you know,
back in those days there's no Google and you know
to find resources or reading. You know, this is an
(12:09):
early seventies, late seventies growing up in Perth, if I
had perhaps wanted to speak to someone enough that I trusted,
it was a pretty scary thought.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
As a kid though, dealing with that and also throwing
yourself into football. I can imagine that football, as you say,
is masking it, but also it's reinforcing these masculine stereotypes,
especially at that time, like football was all boys. There
weren't many girls that were playing it at all.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Oh no, no, did you feel.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
A sense of shame? Did you feel a sense of
like I need to push this down and put this
in a box, Like how are you grappling with when
you say it's little Daniel that was there, But how
are you grappling with I guess showing up every day
with the boys in a team in an environment that
doesn't really allow for anything that would be considered feminine.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
No, that's right. And to me they were being so young,
they were just two separate things and football allowed me
to forget everything while you know, you're training or you're playing,
and you know, that's how I ended up balancing out
my life for a long period of time. But I
could look back now as a twelve, thirteen, fourteen year old,
(13:23):
there was lots of anxiety and depression, which I didn't
know what it was. But again going back and pewing
the layers and talking to my gender psyche and my psychologist,
you know, I were able to puel this back. But
what happened was football happened very quickly in my mid
mid teams. I found myself at the West Perth Football Club,
(13:43):
very quickly at sixteen years of age. So I'm still
at school and this is before national competition, before the
West Coast Eagles, and I'm playing league football at West Perth,
which was huge back in the day. And so once
I got there and I could see a pathway or
a career, I just put my heart and soul into that.
(14:06):
And I never pushed away Little Daniel, She's just walked
with me because you know, I'm still wrestling with what
is this? Why am I feeling like this? Why do
I believe my inside is not congruent with my outside?
If you like. So what happened was in the Ladley family,
there's the disease of addiction right on the Ladley side
(14:29):
and my right through my forefathers to my great great grandfather.
So all alcoholics and or communit suicide by one means
or another, right down to my father, who basically drank
himself to death, and I was determined to break that cycle.
Unbeknownst to me, the disease of addiction manifested in me
(14:50):
in a completely different way to my forefathers, and that
was becoming a workaholic and putting all my efforts into football.
But then when I started to get my late teens,
early twenties, little Danielle was really really, really misbehaving. As
the years went on, it became very tough to balance
(15:12):
both of them, you know. So you start to build
a persona as a football player and as a football
coach of this hard, tough, uncompromising player coach, and that
was actually even further who away from who I really was.
So then I had this other tussle about people see
me as this, know me as this, but this is
(15:33):
who I really am, And that was really difficult to juggle.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
When was it, Danielle, that you actually realized that your
gender didn't align with the sex you were given at birth?
By that, I mean did you have a bit of
a conflicting, confuting journey into working out what it was like?
Am I gay? Is something? Quote unquote wrong with me,
Like what was that? Until you actually came to the
(15:58):
conclusion where you're like, oh, I guess that inside I'm
a woman because I imagine back and like you said before,
it wasn't spoken about. There was no one for you
to look to and say, oh, that's what I'm feeling like,
I can't imagine what that was like for you to
work out on your own.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah, it was difficult. I'm too scared to talk to
anyone about it and not resources. But the first time,
and I did go through that period, Am I gay?
Is this fetish? You know? You ask yourself all these questions.
And I remember still being in Perth at the point
in time, I might have been nineteen or twenty. I
(16:34):
was in a news agency and I saw and it
happened to be it was either a Playboy or a
Penthouse magazine and had the plastic on it in those days,
and there was a picture of this beautiful woman on
the cover. It had tula transgender woman or transsexual woman.
I think it's said back there. And I saw it
and I thought, oh, what's that? So I thought, right, oh,
(16:57):
I've got to read that. So Chula was her stage name,
her name was Karen Cossi, a transgender woman from the UK,
and she had just finished filming and she was in
one of the Bond movies. She was outed by the
British press as been transsexual back in those days. As
I'm reading the article and she's talking and explaining, I'm going,
(17:21):
oh my god, that's me. That's me. That's me, that's me,
that's me. That was the first time really it was like, okay,
I'm getting a fair idea now about what this looks like.
So that's mid eighties, and then from then on it
was like you could get bits and pieces and find
(17:43):
a little bit more material to read and things like that.
So that was quite a turning point. But it was
also really scary because it was like, well, what.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Do I do like with this information?
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, I'm now playing AFL football, I'm married, child, and
confusion reigned through that period of time. So I never
pushed it away. But the one thing I have learned
is you can't outrun gender dysphoria. It will get you.
And there's a whole scale of gender dysphoria. Once you're diagnosed,
(18:17):
there is a small percentage of people that have gender
dysphoria that don't transition, and there's certain there's different levels.
So really your journey is individual and up to you
and how you want to live your life.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Do they have any concept of how common it might
be or is it something that's almost so hard to
put a number on because so many people who may
experience it don't talk about it for the fear of
what people might think or.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Say or yeah, so this is what we're going through
now in society. I read and listen to what's going
on in the US with Donald Trump and the transgender ideology,
and you know, this is fake news and we are
going to stop the The reality is, gender dysphoria has
(19:06):
been around for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
Now we're seeing a spike in transgender people and it's
on the table and people talking about it because a
there's more resources, there's more gender clinics, it's spoken about now,
so more people are coming out to use those resources,
if you like, And that's why now, you know, people say, well,
(19:28):
how long has this been around? But you know, I
look back at people like myself who didn't use those
resources or didn't know what it was and went through
a lot of mental health issues, self harm issues, self
esteem issues. You know, those are the people that we
don't know or we don't see yet. I actually read
(19:50):
something on Twitter this morning, you know, were there any
transgender Indigenous people in Australia three hundred years ago? And
I just started laughing because the indigenou this population in
Australia has a huge and percentages are about the same
community of brother boys and sister girls. And it just
goes to show you the lack of education or understanding
(20:12):
that people just go off on these tangents. One of
my passions is to talk about like we are today,
to get people to have a little bit more of
an understanding. And it might not be everyone's cup of tea,
and that's okay. We're all humans, just be respectful and
we could all get on with our lives.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
It's all so crazy, though, when you speak about coming
across this magazine and the story of the person that
you resonated with, to think that what they had kept
as a secret was added by the UK media, and
then you look at the parallels drawing in your own life.
It was horrifying what the police did to you, the
people who were supposed to protect you. The people who
were supposed to have everybody's collective best interest at heart,
(20:53):
they set out to intentionally mock or to intentionally humiliate you.
At the time, it was twenty twenty. Photos were leaked
to the media of you after being was it arrested?
Was that you were brought in. I talk me through
what happened to that period and the retribution that you
received for that, if there was any.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yeah. So I was in at a time in a
property dispute. I had an apartment in Saint Kilda who
someone was living in and I wanted them out. I'd
been in a relationship prior with this person and she
wouldn't move out, so she put an intervention order on me.
And at this stage, I'm just being diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
(21:35):
I'm in a pretty bad shape mentally. I didn't know
what to do. I didn't know to who to reach
out to, what to do. I was just starting to
with my gender psyche work out strategies of how to
tell family, friends, like everyone else got to do. And
I didn't know what to do. So I went to
(21:57):
the apartment and I rang the police and said, I'm
breaking intovention order. Here's the address, come and arrest me.
So really it was a very bad decision on my behalf,
but it was a cry for help, and come and
arrest me they did. And then I was taking a
Saint Kilda police station and was on a Saturday nine
about eight thirty and saw me handcuffs walking into the
(22:19):
police station and there would have been I don't know
a dozen maybe fourteen police officers in a semi circle,
laughing sniggering at me. And then you know, I had
to have photos taken. And then anyway, when I was
getting interviewed about what happened, a police officer thought it
was a good idea to take a photo of me
in the interview room through some glass and then it
(22:41):
spread like wildfire. What really didn't come out, though, is
when I got arrested, they took my phone. They asked me,
and this is another bad mistake on my behalf. They said,
we need you pin number. If you don't give it
to us, you'll never get your phone back. And I
had on my phone a photo video diary of my
(23:02):
transition and I didn't want to lose that, so I
gave them the pin number. So when I'm getting interviewed,
they're going through my phone and taking photos of my photos. Wow,
and also put them out on a WhatsApp group.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
You know, you said it was a bad decision on
your part. You genuinely think that these are people whose
position in the community is to protect and that even
and in a moment like that, even if you have
been arrested, you've called them, You've said, come arrest me.
It's so obvious that you're in a position of vulnerability.
(23:37):
It's so obvious that you're in a position of needing help,
of needing assistance, of needing care, not of needing exploitation.
And I mean it did end in that police officer
who distributed the photos and him losing his job. But
how did you have to go about getting that sort
of justice because I can only imagine the months following
(23:58):
that would have been some of the hardest period of
your life.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yeah, it was very difficult. So there was two things.
So firstly, there was criminal charges laid against three police officers,
so they had to go to port and one eventually
lost his job through my situation, but other situations that
he found himself in. And then there was about another
dozen or so police officers who got charged internally with
(24:26):
what they called disgusting behavior, and for the first time
in the history of Victoria Police, they made these police
officers pay me money directly. It was only a very
small sum. I think it was five hundred to fifteen
hundred for each officer, depending on their level of guilt.
So that was the police investigations and through the judicial system.
(24:50):
But then with the photos that were taken, there was
a civil case which we settled our court, but that
took two and a half years. Through that time again
it became my mental health deteriorated. But you know, we've
moved on. I actually now do I actually work with
the police now. Would you believe that I've put together
(25:10):
a training package for them. So every fortnight when a
new academy starts, they have a full day of this
training package that I helped the police develop. So that's
that's a pretty cool thing. And there also some legislation
changed around what is police information and private information or
what information can be disseminated by police, So the legislation
(25:34):
has changed for that, So just be taxing. But we're
well and surely past it now and we don't look back.
And I always just thought that, you know, if you
keep drinking someone else's poison, you're never going to move on.
And that was something that Donna and I decided to do.
And now, yeah, we have a pretty good relationship with
the training staff out of the academy.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Daniel, are you happy to discuss what the reaction was
like with your family and how you went and had
that conversation.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
I'd been planning to have the conversation with my children,
but we never got to that stage. So it has
caused the family a whole lot of grief. My son
has been wonderfully supportive and he was there from the
get go and brought the cavalry in the football community.
My family here in Purse were very supportive, but my
(26:21):
two girls, it's taken them. It's a lot of trauma
for them. My youngest was only nineteen when it happened.
Can you imagine being a nineteen year old one of
your parents is on the front page of the paper,
the trolling. She lost a lot of friends, and my
eldest daughter is a school teacher and what she went through.
(26:43):
So that's still a work in progress with the girls.
You know, as frustrating as it is, I know everyone's
working on themselves and it'll be in their time. We
do now talk and text, which is cool, but we
haven't caught up. We haven't caught up since that day,
but it became public.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Daniel, that must be so hard.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
It is, it is, but I still see my Psycha
every week and just trying to be the best person
that I can be. I can now sit in those
feelings of disappointedment of you know, we're just not seen
because we're also very very very close. But I can
now sit in that knowing. And what I've had to
(27:26):
do is go and walk a mile in their shoes.
And I tell people that, you know, if you listen
to me in my journey, in my stories, just walk
a mile in my shoes for a bit and you'll
understand a little bit better. So I've had to do
that with them and walk in their shoes through this
period of time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Do you feel like as a society we have a
fixation with gender? Because as you say this and you
explain what happened to you and the fallout that it
created with your family, I think, but what's the big deal,
you know, Like, what's this obsession with like the identity
or the labeling or the way in which people feel
(28:04):
that we should show up within our genders. And I mean,
you would be so much more close to these conversations
with the people that you've mentored with the workshops and
the programs that you've created for police. But do you
feel as there was a society we have a fixation
on gender being a relatively fixed ideology.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Yeah, I do, but we have come a long way.
It's so good to hear in a short period of time.
And I think in regard to the rainbow community and
all the letters, you know, the gay and lesbian community
are probably forty or fifty years you know, we can
go back to the seventy eight ers and Stonewall and
you know, all that sort of stuff, and somehow the
(28:42):
tea fell off the table during that period of time.
But now it's certainly on the table and people are
speaking about it. There's a couple of things that I
do have trouble with, you know, in elite sport, transend
to people transitioning and then going straight from competing in
a men's common petition to a women's competition. I know
personally that, let's say it, after ten years of playing
(29:06):
AFL football, at twenty six or twenty seven that I
transitioned and I went and played in the women's competition.
If there was one there, I think I would have
had competitive advantage. So for me, we're really early in
the early stages of that, and for me, the science
will work that out as we go along. But I
(29:26):
also think from a community level, anyone who hasn't been
at an elite level and have transitioned through their teenage
years or early twenties, let them play. You know, we're
all human. We all want to belong, we all want
to love, we all want to be loved. You want
to be part of a community that accepts and supports you.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Speaking of the sporting community, I would love to chat
to you a little bit about how much it's changed,
because we are all led to believe that there is
a pretty high level of transphobia and homophobia within sporting communities,
especially going back forty or fifty years. But you have
such a unique experience on having been a professional athlete
that's in the locker rooms with these teams that are
(30:08):
having these conversations behind closed doors, So you got the
opportunity to see what people's inner thoughts were whilst knowing
what your inner thoughts were What was it like then
compared to what it's like now.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
So you know, when I was playing and when I
was coaching, the most prevalent act of homophobia, if that's
what you want to call it, was conversations around who's
the gay footballer? Who's the gay footballer? And if I
heard those conversations, like my anxiety would go through the
(30:41):
roof and I would get out of those conversations like
exit straight away, and then you know, the anxiety would be,
oh my god, what should they hear about me? What's
going to happen? So it was really really high, and
that's going back a few years ago. I think we're
getting much much better. It's been disappointing this year about
(31:03):
the amount of homophobic slurs we've had in the AFL,
the WAFL, you know, the VFL is quite alarming. In
one of the lads who have got charge with making
a homophobic slur, I think which his brother or his
cousin is actually gay. So sometimes I don't know what
this is. There's a disconnect there of people aren't homophobic,
(31:26):
but those comments will come out of their mouth, you know,
if they're frustrated on the field or whatever. It might
be and do I know what that is? No, I don't.
And the reality is there's gay players in the AFL,
gay umpires. I'm assuming you know, it's gay administrators that
the clubs know, their friends know, but it's their life
and they want to keep it private. And people say, oh,
(31:50):
well you know, Dannielle, what you've done in that story.
It makes it easier for someone to stand up and say,
this is why to disagree with that all of a sudden,
if there is a one, two three footballers that make
that decision all of a sudden, instead of being the
great midfielder at I'll say North Melbourn Football Club because
(32:12):
that's I played there, it's the gay North Melbourne player. Yeah,
it's a label you get branded. So within the AFL itself,
I think it's not as prevalent as it still is
in society.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
As in it's not as accepted yet, Like we seem
to have come leaps and bounds in general society, especially
depending on the areas that you are, Like in Sydney
we've moved mountains, whereas like if you're from regional areas,
you're playing in regional footballs or there's still a long
way to go depending on the clubs and the communities
that you're coming from.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, and that's right. And one of the things that
we were involved in. No, and I going back just
over a year and now a year ago now, we
bust one hundred and twenty gender diverse the kids from
regional Victoria down to Melbourne with a family friend, a
school teacher, a mentor and we had a big conference
(33:03):
day at the Security Pride Center and they loved it.
And at the start they were all pretty quiet, but
then what happened was I realized everyone was the same
and like mind and it was a.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Safe spaces like emotional to think about.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah, and it was so cool kids. The kids love it.
And so we've done a couple of those. And you know,
particularly in rural areas, as you were talking about, gender diverse,
kids stopped playing sport because there's no one else like
me and the team or you know, I am a
little bit different and that and we want them to
play sport, we want them to be involved in community.
So education is a big priority for us.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Danielle, tell me about your beautiful partner, Donna, because when
we spoke on the pickup last year, it was my favorite.
One of my favorite parts of your story, this idea
that someone who's been in your life for so long,
who's known every phase of your life, can love you
and be with you in an unconditional sense and knows
you better than anyone does. How did you meet Donna?
(34:01):
And how did that friendship turn into a romantic relationship?
Speaker 3 (34:06):
We actually meet in grade one.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Wow, so sweet talking about in sweet.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Ninety seventy three and two little left handers, so we
they put us together, try to change us from left
handed to right handed back in the day. Yeah, And
then we ended up, you know, in primary school being
boyfriend and girlfriend if you like that. I left the
school for a few years and then came back and
you know, then we were a boyfriend and girlfriend again.
(34:31):
And then in high school. Donna tells a really interesting
story that there was only home phones back then, so
you would ring up after school and Donald say, oh,
you know, let's come to netball training or I'll come
to footy training, or you know, let's catch up or whatever,
and I'd say, oh no, no, no, no, I've got
too much homework. And at that part of time, or
was it homework, it was me spending time as myself,
(34:55):
which she did not know about. Donald was a very
good netballer and then footy, you know, her career to off,
and you know, we left school and stuff, and then
I ended up going to Victoria. We reconnected maybe eight
or nine years ago. Now. We just started talking and
then I was still living in Melbourne and Donald would
come over and we catch up, and I come to
(35:16):
Perth and you know, then we're caught up in Bali.
So this was very frustrating for her because I would
disappear and go off and be doing me things and
that would really frustrate her. Yeah, so it just got
to the point where we were getting closer and closer
and closer, and then it all blew up. She was there.
She supported me the whole way. She accept me for
(35:37):
who I was, and she her man treat if you like,
is she loves the person regardless of who or what
they are. And yeah, so we spend all our time together.
It's fun. Yeah, she's been there for every step of
the way.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
So beautiful, it really is.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
We always hear this saying of like when people go
through a big change in their life, and I'm not
just meaning a change like transitioning, but we hear this
like I'm still me, Like I'm still the same person.
Did you feel like that or did you in fact
feel like you are not the same person because you
were masking for so many years, Like you're finally who
you really are.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Yeah. The only thing that's different now is my inside
is now confluent to the outside. The change on the
outside is I've seen myself like this my whole life,
but other people haven't. So that's the big thing. Yes,
I'm the same person, you know. I think I'm a
much better, more all rounded person, you know, at peace
(36:39):
and much more social than and talk a lot more
than I ever would. Quite introverted, but always wanting to
get back home because I did tell my then wife
maybe around ninety nine two thousand, so get home, kids
very young in bed so I could just spend time
as me, so also very sociable person back then.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
What do you think would have happened if the photos
had never leaved, if you were never forced into this
almost like pressure cooker of acceptance and of radical change,
what do you think would have been the outcome?
Speaker 3 (37:16):
So at that point, we were putting together a plan,
as I said before, with family and friends, and that
was scary in itself, but the scariest part for me
was the AFL Football World profile. So what we were
doing was put it to a strategy. You wouldn't believe this.
We put a strategy together to go to the AFL
(37:40):
and ask them if they would stand with me beside me,
support me having given the game so much and the
game given me so much. So that's what we were
working towards. How that looked. We probably never got to that,
and obviously it never happened that way. I think it
would have taken a little bit longer and it would
have been much more organized. On your terms, yes, yeah,
(38:04):
and you know, doing it the right way.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
What was the sporting community in the AFL's reaction to Like,
was it a surprise?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Was it what you expected?
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Did they? Half of them, you know, like distance themselves
from you, while the other half supported you.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
I've not had one person say for what I've heard
a bad word about me or when I've met them,
They've been so very, very supportive. I now speak to
the players that I played with and players that I
coached and people that I work with a lot more
now than I ever did before. So everyone has been unbelievable.
(38:40):
They just want me to be happy and to be
able to leave a life where you're happy and at peace.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Danniel I always think about this from like a parent's
perspective as well, because there's so many conversations that circulate
now in media around how parents do and don't respond
to their children when their children come forward and discuss
years of gender dysphoria or their own confusion around their gender.
What would be as someone who has lived it and
(39:07):
recognized quite young that there was this this incongruence between
the outside and the inside. If you're a parent and
your child wants to talk to you about these things
or it feels as though what they're experiencing isn't the
way in which we're perceived to be, how do parents
best react? What would you say is the best thing
that a parent could do to help support their child?
Speaker 3 (39:29):
So support is a key word families, and particularly more
importantly immediate family supporting their child or have a huge
effect on the child self esteem, mental health, lifestyle, and
that can be confronting for a parent. So to educate
themselves now, I do speak at some schools, and I've
spoke at a big grammar school in Melbourne about a
(39:51):
month ago, and there was probably all the teachers from
the school there and there would have been two hundred
parents came along to have a listen. At the end,
there were a dozen moms and dads who waited to
have a chat to me because their child was going
through some issues. So I talk about the support. I
(40:11):
spoke about using the resources and actually listening to your
child when I say child, you know this is a
high school, so teenage years late teenage years, and just
give them reassurance that everything will be okay.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
I think a lot of parents also think, you know,
when your kid's life to be hard, you know. I
think that's like a very common thought is like, well,
I just want your life to be as easy as
it can possibly be. And so it's a fear as well.
It's a fear around what your child might experience in
their life.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Yeah, it's going to be there's going to be some challenges,
there's going to be some issues and some barriers. That's
an absolute given. But what we want to be able
to do is continue to break down those barriers over
this next period of time. So the more people we
can talk to and educate and give them a better
understanding of it is great for this generation of transgender people,
(41:03):
but also you know, the next generation and the next
generation as we as we go through time.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
One of the last things I'd love to know, and
it's such a divisive discussion, is around gender affirmation surgery
and the age that you should be able to do it.
We hear a lot of people teenagers like you said,
they're technically children by law, you know, we say, under eighteen,
saying that they know who they are, they really want
to have this gender affirmation surgery, and then people saying, well,
(41:29):
you're not old enough to know. You might change your mind.
You know, you should wait it out, see what happens.
What are your thoughts around that.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
I think it shouldn't just be I want surgery. No,
that's a much much more complex journey than that. There's
a lot of psychology, there's a lot of GPS, there's
a lot of counseling. Then there's hormone replacement therapy. There's
so many stages before you get to you get to
(41:57):
that point under age. I think it should be a
family and parental decision. But again, when the family's working
through that and they see their child generally they're all
on the same page, but obviously there's still some families
that really struggle with it. So again, it's a tricky situation,
that one that we need to be very very careful
(42:19):
about moving forward for these children. But there's wonderful gender
clinics around at the moment, like World's best Practice. And
you know, for people who say that people who have
surgery and I'm not saying bottom surgery completely, but homoe
replacement therapy, and then they've become unhappy. The amount of
(42:40):
the transitioners is like under one percent, and I'm sure
there would be people who get their nose done that
wish they didn't would be higher than one percent. Like
a spit, there's always arguments.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
I also think it's used as like a scare tactic, right,
It's like, yeah, it is, it's concerned. Well, it's actually
just like you know, it's a homophobia dressed up as concern,
dressed up as this like, oh, but what happens is
pearl clutching of like, well, what happens if there's a
change of mind, And it's such an insignificant amount of
people that experience that change of mind because of the
many processes that need to go through as an individual
(43:14):
in a family before anyone would ever sign off on surgery.
That's like, I mean, I don't know. I can't speak
for like the States, but I know here it's simply
not an easy process by any means.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
It is used as a skied tactique.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Danielle, thank you so much for giving us your time today,
and we're going to put links to your book and
any support services that you can recommend. We will get
those from you as well. We're going to put all
of those in our show notes for anyone that's listening
to the conversation today that wants to know more. So
thank you so much for sharing your experience with us.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
No, it's been a privilege, and thank you for allowing
me to tell a story.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Thank you, Dannielle. It's our privilege.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Thank you. Okay from kababaaa BUMBERSO
Lifelun Cut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands
were never seeded. We pay our respects to their elders
past and present, Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
This episode was recorded on cameragle Land. Hi guys, and
(00:22):
welcome back to another episode of Life on Cut. I'm Laura,
I'm Brittany.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Now. Today's episode is one that has been in the
works for almost a year. We interviewed Dannielle on the
pickup last year and both of us have been saying
ever since then that we couldn't wait to get you
on the podcast. But Danielle lately played one hundred and
fifty one games for West Coast Eagles in North Melbourne
Football clubs, winning an AFL premiership with the Kangaroos in
nineteen ninety six. She became one of the youngest senior
(00:48):
coaches ever at thirty six years old, coaching North Melbourne
for one hundred and forty nine games across seven seasons
from two thousand and one to two thousand and nine.
But for the best part of five decades, Danielle harbor
a seat as a boy growing up in the blocks
of Perth. As a teenager and a young man playing AFL.
As married father of three, she knew that she was female,
(01:09):
regardless of the gender that was assigned at birth. For decades,
Danielle kept her gender to herself and threw herself into
sporting successes and also became a bit of a workaholic. Eventually,
the pain of keeping this secret led to some very
dark coping mechanisms. In May twenty a police officer took
a photo of Danielle in an interview room at Saint
Kilda Police Station while she was wearing a wig and makeup,
(01:32):
and this radically changed her life forever. This photo was
shared in a group chat before it was leaked to
the media and also to the public following her diagnosis
with gender dysphoria. Daniel works extensively as an advocate for
transgender people, raising awareness in a quest for acceptance of diversity. Danielle,
it is such a pleasure to have you as part
of the pod. Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Thank you, thanks Laura, Thanks Brittany for for having me.
I'm looking forward to he we our chat.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
We kickstart with with an embarrassing story. We really love
to throw our guests under the bus, just to I
guess make people feel a little bit less alone out
in the world. Do you have one?
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Yes, I do. And it goes back to about two
thousand and eleven, I think it was. I was in
Adelaide at the time and I was about to board
of a flight going back to Melbourne. So as you do,
you queue up and you scan your ticket and found
my seat, got settled and you know, everything was fine,
(02:31):
and then just before we went to take off, the
last person who boarded the plane had the same seat
number as me, and I've said, look, here's my seat number.
This is my seat. I'm not going anywhere. So then
the flight attendants come down and you know, they couldn't
work it out, and then one of them said, oh,
can I have a look at your ticket? She said,
(02:52):
you're on the wrong plane.
Speaker 2 (02:55):
How did you get through so many like.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Yeah, I bought a plane to Brisbe instead of the
Melbourne flight, And that shocked me because how did my
ticket scan? But the most embarrassing thing was the walk
of shame, like I'm holding up the whole plane and
having to get all my things walk out. It was
so embarrassing, and luckily enough, the Melbourne flight hadn't left yet,
(03:19):
and so I held that flight up as well because
obviously I'm the last person on and I got to
my seat and no one was in it. So I
was very happy in the end. But let me tell you,
I had a very red face walking off the plane.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
It's so much worse because you doubled down.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
You're like, I ain't moving, like this is my seat,
I'm here first, And then not only is it not
your seat, it's the entire wrong plane. It's the wrong
to say I'm dead.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
It makes you wonder because they do so many checks
and I'm pretty sure the reason why you show them
as you enter the plane is so that they can
make sure you didn't just accidentally get onto the wrong plane.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Well you're famous, then do you think that they just like,
maybe because you're famous, didn't really look at the ticket
or something, or were just like can you go?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Well, I wouldn't say famous. Yes, I had a public
profile because I was still working in the AFL at
that point in time, and look, maybe they did recognize
me in years because at that point in time, I
was flying from pers to Melbourne like four days a week,
so I was just on a Rordo pilot and I'd
(04:18):
gone to the long gate and I got through and
I got on the plane, which is a little bit scary.
Really one hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Do you know how many people apparently end up in
Austria instead of Australia.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I'm sure not many, Daniel. I now forgive this if
this comes across as an ignorant question, because I know
that people may feel differently about it, But being someone
who was and is such a public figure going through
what you went through and coming out the other side,
people must have so many questions because they've known you
(04:49):
as one version of who you are and how you presented.
And I don't just mean family and friends, which for
a lot of people who are transgender, they have to
have that conversation with their direct networks, but you had
to have it on like a huge public scale because
firstly of the way it came to light, and that's
a big conversation that we'll get into, but also just
when you are a person who's a public figure, it's
(05:12):
like as though people who have loved you or seen
you or think they know you, even though they have
no connection to you whatsoever, but feel as though they
owed something they're owed an explanation almost or you weren't
the person that they thought you were, So there's so
much more loaded into it. But the question I want
to ask, do you look at your life as two
separate lives now or do you still acknowledge the person
(05:33):
that you once were? How do you reconcile those two people?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah? Well, firstly, when I talk about my life, I
always talk about phase one and now, and there was
a time that I went through that, probably four or
five years ago and maybe even a little bit longer,
where you know, I hated that first phase of my
life because I really thought football was holding up Little Dannie,
(06:00):
so to speak. The hard thing in my story and
my experience is that I never got to have that
conversation with my family and friends because of the way
it came out. No one really knew. A very very
small amount of people knew, but not my family so
to speak. And then when it became so public so quickly,
(06:23):
and the narrative when it first came out was quite
unkind horrible, and there was all this stuff, you know,
floating around, and it wasn't until we got some strategies
behind us to start to control the narrative about me
and my story and then once we started to tell
(06:44):
my story, we wrote the book and we did the documentary.
People have been amazing, I have to say, and because
because there was phase one of my life and I
had somewhat of a public profile, it was a challenge
for people. And I've known my whole life. And then
you know, going out going to the football, people would
(07:06):
come up and say, oh, Hidin, you know you do it,
and they go, oh, no, sorry, I really apologize. And
I could understand that because people had to transition with me, yeah,
and slowly get used to it. And I can quickly
pick up when people make a mistake. You know, I
(07:27):
may use the wrong pronoun or wrong name or you know,
whatever it might be, and that's okay because I can
tell that they're being.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Kind, like no ill intent.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
There's so much grace in that, because that was going
to be My next question is when you do refer
to this phase one of your life, do you still
ever say the name that used to be once upon
a time your name or is it something that you
kind of go, okay, That is a phase I don't
speak about, but I understand how for some people it
must be who were in your life for a very
(08:01):
long time, or I have known you for a long time,
it would have been a transition for them as well.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Yep. Yeah, absolutely, I'm at a stage in my life
now and it's taken some time to get here that
I'm very proud of the first days of my life.
Just I'm not going to talk about my family or children,
and that's an absolute given. Like you know, the three beautiful,
beautiful angels, I'm probably talking about more about, you know,
(08:29):
my playing career and coaching career and what I achieved
in over thirty years in the AFL. You know, I
now look back and I'm very, very proud. But there
was times where I thought football, because of the barriers
that I was going to face, I thought football was
(08:52):
killing me, and being ashamed and embarrassed of who and
what I was was taking its toll. Invariably in the
end when it became public. The people that I lived
in fear of and shame and embarrassment of what they
would think of me, they were the first ones there
and they were so and still are to this day,
(09:14):
so very very supportive and for me to be able
to talk about everything in my life and not be compartmentalized.
You know, it wasn't until my I'm not giving away
my age but that anyway, But I think that was
my fifty second birthday, was my first birthday in my
(09:37):
life where I had my football tribe, work, colleagues, family, friends,
and the transgender community all in one place celebrating my birthday.
And that was so, so very very cool. And it's
something that you know now I don't take for granted.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, that's so beautiful. You just mentioned you said I
had known my whole life, but obviously it took a
lot of people to catch up. Can we go back
to your childhood? What was that like for you? A?
Literally just what was your family life like and getting
into sport, and B what was it like for you internally?
Like when you say you always knew, what did you know?
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yeah, it was probably six seven years of age where
I first stumbled on this experience of finding this peace
and calmness. I put nail Poli shop and it was like, oh,
what is this? What is the attraction to this? But
my family life at that time, my mum and dad
(10:40):
split when I was six and my brother was four,
and so we moved around between parents and grandparents right
through till I was about fifteen. So I was a
very withdrawn child at that point in time. I didn't
make relationships very good and I didn't really trust people
(11:02):
because people were coming in and out of my life
at that point in time, and it was sport, football
and cricket. I was lucky enough to play for w
Way and cricket from eleven years of age through to
seventeen as well as playing football, So the sport for
me was a release, if you like, to balance up
(11:25):
what was going on in my family life, but also
what was going on inside of me. And now peeling
back the layers after all these years, that feeling I
know now was little Danielle and there were days when
and times where she would be quiet and content and
going about her business, and there were days where it
(11:47):
was she was roaring, she was misbehaving, She wanted attention,
she wanted to live her life. And so the football
as I started to grow up, put a bit of
calmness or evenness around what I was feeling, because you know,
back in those days there's no Google and you know
to find resources or reading. You know, this is an
(12:09):
early seventies, late seventies growing up in Perth, if I
had perhaps wanted to speak to someone enough that I trusted,
it was a pretty scary thought.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
As a kid though, dealing with that and also throwing
yourself into football. I can imagine that football, as you say,
is masking it, but also it's reinforcing these masculine stereotypes,
especially at that time, like football was all boys. There
weren't many girls that were playing it at all.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Oh no, no, did you feel.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
A sense of shame? Did you feel a sense of
like I need to push this down and put this
in a box, Like how are you grappling with when
you say it's little Daniel that was there, But how
are you grappling with I guess showing up every day
with the boys in a team in an environment that
doesn't really allow for anything that would be considered feminine.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
No, that's right. And to me they were being so young,
they were just two separate things and football allowed me
to forget everything while you know, you're training or you're playing,
and you know, that's how I ended up balancing out
my life for a long period of time. But I
could look back now as a twelve, thirteen, fourteen year old,
(13:23):
there was lots of anxiety and depression, which I didn't
know what it was. But again going back and pewing
the layers and talking to my gender psyche and my psychologist,
you know, I were able to puel this back. But
what happened was football happened very quickly in my mid
mid teams. I found myself at the West Perth Football Club,
(13:43):
very quickly at sixteen years of age. So I'm still
at school and this is before national competition, before the
West Coast Eagles, and I'm playing league football at West Perth,
which was huge back in the day. And so once
I got there and I could see a pathway or
a career, I just put my heart and soul into that.
(14:06):
And I never pushed away Little Daniel, She's just walked
with me because you know, I'm still wrestling with what
is this? Why am I feeling like this? Why do
I believe my inside is not congruent with my outside?
If you like. So what happened was in the Ladley family,
there's the disease of addiction right on the Ladley side
(14:29):
and my right through my forefathers to my great great grandfather.
So all alcoholics and or communit suicide by one means
or another, right down to my father, who basically drank
himself to death, and I was determined to break that cycle.
Unbeknownst to me, the disease of addiction manifested in me
(14:50):
in a completely different way to my forefathers, and that
was becoming a workaholic and putting all my efforts into football.
But then when I started to get my late teens,
early twenties, little Danielle was really really, really misbehaving. As
the years went on, it became very tough to balance
(15:12):
both of them, you know. So you start to build
a persona as a football player and as a football
coach of this hard, tough, uncompromising player coach, and that
was actually even further who away from who I really was.
So then I had this other tussle about people see
me as this, know me as this, but this is
(15:33):
who I really am, And that was really difficult to juggle.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
When was it, Danielle, that you actually realized that your
gender didn't align with the sex you were given at birth?
By that, I mean did you have a bit of
a conflicting, confuting journey into working out what it was like?
Am I gay? Is something? Quote unquote wrong with me,
Like what was that? Until you actually came to the
(15:58):
conclusion where you're like, oh, I guess that inside I'm
a woman because I imagine back and like you said before,
it wasn't spoken about. There was no one for you
to look to and say, oh, that's what I'm feeling like,
I can't imagine what that was like for you to
work out on your own.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Yeah, it was difficult. I'm too scared to talk to
anyone about it and not resources. But the first time,
and I did go through that period, Am I gay?
Is this fetish? You know? You ask yourself all these questions.
And I remember still being in Perth at the point
in time, I might have been nineteen or twenty. I
(16:34):
was in a news agency and I saw and it
happened to be it was either a Playboy or a
Penthouse magazine and had the plastic on it in those days,
and there was a picture of this beautiful woman on
the cover. It had tula transgender woman or transsexual woman.
I think it's said back there. And I saw it
and I thought, oh, what's that? So I thought, right, oh,
(16:57):
I've got to read that. So Chula was her stage name,
her name was Karen Cossi, a transgender woman from the UK,
and she had just finished filming and she was in
one of the Bond movies. She was outed by the
British press as been transsexual back in those days. As
I'm reading the article and she's talking and explaining, I'm going,
(17:21):
oh my god, that's me. That's me. That's me, that's me,
that's me. That was the first time really it was like, okay,
I'm getting a fair idea now about what this looks like.
So that's mid eighties, and then from then on it
was like you could get bits and pieces and find
(17:43):
a little bit more material to read and things like that.
So that was quite a turning point. But it was
also really scary because it was like, well, what.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Do I do like with this information?
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Yeah, I'm now playing AFL football, I'm married, child, and
confusion reigned through that period of time. So I never
pushed it away. But the one thing I have learned
is you can't outrun gender dysphoria. It will get you.
And there's a whole scale of gender dysphoria. Once you're diagnosed,
(18:17):
there is a small percentage of people that have gender
dysphoria that don't transition, and there's certain there's different levels.
So really your journey is individual and up to you
and how you want to live your life.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Do they have any concept of how common it might
be or is it something that's almost so hard to
put a number on because so many people who may
experience it don't talk about it for the fear of
what people might think or.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Say or yeah, so this is what we're going through
now in society. I read and listen to what's going
on in the US with Donald Trump and the transgender ideology,
and you know, this is fake news and we are
going to stop the The reality is, gender dysphoria has
(19:06):
been around for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
Now we're seeing a spike in transgender people and it's
on the table and people talking about it because a
there's more resources, there's more gender clinics, it's spoken about now,
so more people are coming out to use those resources,
if you like, And that's why now, you know, people say, well,
(19:28):
how long has this been around? But you know, I
look back at people like myself who didn't use those
resources or didn't know what it was and went through
a lot of mental health issues, self harm issues, self
esteem issues. You know, those are the people that we
don't know or we don't see yet. I actually read
(19:50):
something on Twitter this morning, you know, were there any
transgender Indigenous people in Australia three hundred years ago? And
I just started laughing because the indigenou this population in
Australia has a huge and percentages are about the same
community of brother boys and sister girls. And it just
goes to show you the lack of education or understanding
(20:12):
that people just go off on these tangents. One of
my passions is to talk about like we are today,
to get people to have a little bit more of
an understanding. And it might not be everyone's cup of tea,
and that's okay. We're all humans, just be respectful and
we could all get on with our lives.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
It's all so crazy, though, when you speak about coming
across this magazine and the story of the person that
you resonated with, to think that what they had kept
as a secret was added by the UK media, and
then you look at the parallels drawing in your own life.
It was horrifying what the police did to you, the
people who were supposed to protect you. The people who
were supposed to have everybody's collective best interest at heart,
(20:53):
they set out to intentionally mock or to intentionally humiliate you.
At the time, it was twenty twenty. Photos were leaked
to the media of you after being was it arrested?
Was that you were brought in. I talk me through
what happened to that period and the retribution that you
received for that, if there was any.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Yeah. So I was in at a time in a
property dispute. I had an apartment in Saint Kilda who
someone was living in and I wanted them out. I'd
been in a relationship prior with this person and she
wouldn't move out, so she put an intervention order on me.
And at this stage, I'm just being diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
(21:35):
I'm in a pretty bad shape mentally. I didn't know
what to do. I didn't know to who to reach
out to, what to do. I was just starting to
with my gender psyche work out strategies of how to
tell family, friends, like everyone else got to do. And
I didn't know what to do. So I went to
(21:57):
the apartment and I rang the police and said, I'm
breaking intovention order. Here's the address, come and arrest me.
So really it was a very bad decision on my behalf,
but it was a cry for help, and come and
arrest me they did. And then I was taking a
Saint Kilda police station and was on a Saturday nine
about eight thirty and saw me handcuffs walking into the
(22:19):
police station and there would have been I don't know
a dozen maybe fourteen police officers in a semi circle,
laughing sniggering at me. And then you know, I had
to have photos taken. And then anyway, when I was
getting interviewed about what happened, a police officer thought it
was a good idea to take a photo of me
in the interview room through some glass and then it
(22:41):
spread like wildfire. What really didn't come out, though, is
when I got arrested, they took my phone. They asked me,
and this is another bad mistake on my behalf. They said,
we need you pin number. If you don't give it
to us, you'll never get your phone back. And I
had on my phone a photo video diary of my
(23:02):
transition and I didn't want to lose that, so I
gave them the pin number. So when I'm getting interviewed,
they're going through my phone and taking photos of my photos. Wow,
and also put them out on a WhatsApp group.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
You know, you said it was a bad decision on
your part. You genuinely think that these are people whose
position in the community is to protect and that even
and in a moment like that, even if you have
been arrested, you've called them, You've said, come arrest me.
It's so obvious that you're in a position of vulnerability.
(23:37):
It's so obvious that you're in a position of needing help,
of needing assistance, of needing care, not of needing exploitation.
And I mean it did end in that police officer
who distributed the photos and him losing his job. But
how did you have to go about getting that sort
of justice because I can only imagine the months following
(23:58):
that would have been some of the hardest period of
your life.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Yeah, it was very difficult. So there was two things.
So firstly, there was criminal charges laid against three police officers,
so they had to go to port and one eventually
lost his job through my situation, but other situations that
he found himself in. And then there was about another
dozen or so police officers who got charged internally with
(24:26):
what they called disgusting behavior, and for the first time
in the history of Victoria Police, they made these police
officers pay me money directly. It was only a very
small sum. I think it was five hundred to fifteen
hundred for each officer, depending on their level of guilt.
So that was the police investigations and through the judicial system.
(24:50):
But then with the photos that were taken, there was
a civil case which we settled our court, but that
took two and a half years. Through that time again
it became my mental health deteriorated. But you know, we've
moved on. I actually now do I actually work with
the police now. Would you believe that I've put together
(25:10):
a training package for them. So every fortnight when a
new academy starts, they have a full day of this
training package that I helped the police develop. So that's
that's a pretty cool thing. And there also some legislation
changed around what is police information and private information or
what information can be disseminated by police, So the legislation
(25:34):
has changed for that, So just be taxing. But we're
well and surely past it now and we don't look back.
And I always just thought that, you know, if you
keep drinking someone else's poison, you're never going to move on.
And that was something that Donna and I decided to do.
And now, yeah, we have a pretty good relationship with
the training staff out of the academy.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Daniel, are you happy to discuss what the reaction was
like with your family and how you went and had
that conversation.
Speaker 3 (25:59):
I'd been planning to have the conversation with my children,
but we never got to that stage. So it has
caused the family a whole lot of grief. My son
has been wonderfully supportive and he was there from the
get go and brought the cavalry in the football community.
My family here in Purse were very supportive, but my
(26:21):
two girls, it's taken them. It's a lot of trauma
for them. My youngest was only nineteen when it happened.
Can you imagine being a nineteen year old one of
your parents is on the front page of the paper,
the trolling. She lost a lot of friends, and my
eldest daughter is a school teacher and what she went through.
(26:43):
So that's still a work in progress with the girls.
You know, as frustrating as it is, I know everyone's
working on themselves and it'll be in their time. We
do now talk and text, which is cool, but we
haven't caught up. We haven't caught up since that day,
but it became public.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Daniel, that must be so hard.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
It is, it is, but I still see my Psycha
every week and just trying to be the best person
that I can be. I can now sit in those
feelings of disappointedment of you know, we're just not seen
because we're also very very very close. But I can
now sit in that knowing. And what I've had to
(27:26):
do is go and walk a mile in their shoes.
And I tell people that, you know, if you listen
to me in my journey, in my stories, just walk
a mile in my shoes for a bit and you'll
understand a little bit better. So I've had to do
that with them and walk in their shoes through this
period of time. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Do you feel like as a society we have a
fixation with gender? Because as you say this and you
explain what happened to you and the fallout that it
created with your family, I think, but what's the big deal,
you know, Like, what's this obsession with like the identity
or the labeling or the way in which people feel
(28:04):
that we should show up within our genders. And I mean,
you would be so much more close to these conversations
with the people that you've mentored with the workshops and
the programs that you've created for police. But do you
feel as there was a society we have a fixation
on gender being a relatively fixed ideology.
Speaker 3 (28:21):
Yeah, I do, but we have come a long way.
It's so good to hear in a short period of time.
And I think in regard to the rainbow community and
all the letters, you know, the gay and lesbian community
are probably forty or fifty years you know, we can
go back to the seventy eight ers and Stonewall and
you know, all that sort of stuff, and somehow the
(28:42):
tea fell off the table during that period of time.
But now it's certainly on the table and people are
speaking about it. There's a couple of things that I
do have trouble with, you know, in elite sport, transend
to people transitioning and then going straight from competing in
a men's common petition to a women's competition. I know
personally that, let's say it, after ten years of playing
(29:06):
AFL football, at twenty six or twenty seven that I
transitioned and I went and played in the women's competition.
If there was one there, I think I would have
had competitive advantage. So for me, we're really early in
the early stages of that, and for me, the science
will work that out as we go along. But I
(29:26):
also think from a community level, anyone who hasn't been
at an elite level and have transitioned through their teenage
years or early twenties, let them play. You know, we're
all human. We all want to belong, we all want
to love, we all want to be loved. You want
to be part of a community that accepts and supports you.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Speaking of the sporting community, I would love to chat
to you a little bit about how much it's changed,
because we are all led to believe that there is
a pretty high level of transphobia and homophobia within sporting communities,
especially going back forty or fifty years. But you have
such a unique experience on having been a professional athlete
that's in the locker rooms with these teams that are
(30:08):
having these conversations behind closed doors, So you got the
opportunity to see what people's inner thoughts were whilst knowing
what your inner thoughts were What was it like then
compared to what it's like now.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
So you know, when I was playing and when I
was coaching, the most prevalent act of homophobia, if that's
what you want to call it, was conversations around who's
the gay footballer? Who's the gay footballer? And if I
heard those conversations, like my anxiety would go through the
(30:41):
roof and I would get out of those conversations like
exit straight away, and then you know, the anxiety would be,
oh my god, what should they hear about me? What's
going to happen? So it was really really high, and
that's going back a few years ago. I think we're
getting much much better. It's been disappointing this year about
(31:03):
the amount of homophobic slurs we've had in the AFL,
the WAFL, you know, the VFL is quite alarming. In
one of the lads who have got charge with making
a homophobic slur, I think which his brother or his
cousin is actually gay. So sometimes I don't know what
this is. There's a disconnect there of people aren't homophobic,
(31:26):
but those comments will come out of their mouth, you know,
if they're frustrated on the field or whatever. It might
be and do I know what that is? No, I don't.
And the reality is there's gay players in the AFL,
gay umpires. I'm assuming you know, it's gay administrators that
the clubs know, their friends know, but it's their life
and they want to keep it private. And people say, oh,
(31:50):
well you know, Dannielle, what you've done in that story.
It makes it easier for someone to stand up and say,
this is why to disagree with that all of a sudden,
if there is a one, two three footballers that make
that decision all of a sudden, instead of being the
great midfielder at I'll say North Melbourn Football Club because
(32:12):
that's I played there, it's the gay North Melbourne player. Yeah,
it's a label you get branded. So within the AFL itself,
I think it's not as prevalent as it still is
in society.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
As in it's not as accepted yet, Like we seem
to have come leaps and bounds in general society, especially
depending on the areas that you are, Like in Sydney
we've moved mountains, whereas like if you're from regional areas,
you're playing in regional footballs or there's still a long
way to go depending on the clubs and the communities
that you're coming from.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
Yeah, and that's right. And one of the things that
we were involved in. No, and I going back just
over a year and now a year ago now, we
bust one hundred and twenty gender diverse the kids from
regional Victoria down to Melbourne with a family friend, a
school teacher, a mentor and we had a big conference
(33:03):
day at the Security Pride Center and they loved it.
And at the start they were all pretty quiet, but
then what happened was I realized everyone was the same
and like mind and it was a.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Safe spaces like emotional to think about.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah, and it was so cool kids. The kids love it.
And so we've done a couple of those. And you know,
particularly in rural areas, as you were talking about, gender diverse,
kids stopped playing sport because there's no one else like
me and the team or you know, I am a
little bit different and that and we want them to
play sport, we want them to be involved in community.
So education is a big priority for us.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Danielle, tell me about your beautiful partner, Donna, because when
we spoke on the pickup last year, it was my favorite.
One of my favorite parts of your story, this idea
that someone who's been in your life for so long,
who's known every phase of your life, can love you
and be with you in an unconditional sense and knows
you better than anyone does. How did you meet Donna?
(34:01):
And how did that friendship turn into a romantic relationship?
Speaker 3 (34:06):
We actually meet in grade one.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
Wow, so sweet talking about in sweet.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
Ninety seventy three and two little left handers, so we
they put us together, try to change us from left
handed to right handed back in the day. Yeah, And
then we ended up, you know, in primary school being
boyfriend and girlfriend if you like that. I left the
school for a few years and then came back and
you know, then we were a boyfriend and girlfriend again.
(34:31):
And then in high school. Donna tells a really interesting
story that there was only home phones back then, so
you would ring up after school and Donald say, oh,
you know, let's come to netball training or I'll come
to footy training, or you know, let's catch up or whatever,
and I'd say, oh no, no, no, no, I've got
too much homework. And at that part of time, or
was it homework, it was me spending time as myself,
(34:55):
which she did not know about. Donald was a very
good netballer and then footy, you know, her career to off,
and you know, we left school and stuff, and then
I ended up going to Victoria. We reconnected maybe eight
or nine years ago. Now. We just started talking and
then I was still living in Melbourne and Donald would
come over and we catch up, and I come to
(35:16):
Perth and you know, then we're caught up in Bali.
So this was very frustrating for her because I would
disappear and go off and be doing me things and
that would really frustrate her. Yeah, so it just got
to the point where we were getting closer and closer
and closer, and then it all blew up. She was there.
She supported me the whole way. She accept me for
(35:37):
who I was, and she her man treat if you like,
is she loves the person regardless of who or what
they are. And yeah, so we spend all our time together.
It's fun. Yeah, she's been there for every step of
the way.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
So beautiful, it really is.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
We always hear this saying of like when people go
through a big change in their life, and I'm not
just meaning a change like transitioning, but we hear this
like I'm still me, Like I'm still the same person.
Did you feel like that or did you in fact
feel like you are not the same person because you
were masking for so many years, Like you're finally who
you really are.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Yeah. The only thing that's different now is my inside
is now confluent to the outside. The change on the
outside is I've seen myself like this my whole life,
but other people haven't. So that's the big thing. Yes,
I'm the same person, you know. I think I'm a
much better, more all rounded person, you know, at peace
(36:39):
and much more social than and talk a lot more
than I ever would. Quite introverted, but always wanting to
get back home because I did tell my then wife
maybe around ninety nine two thousand, so get home, kids
very young in bed so I could just spend time
as me, so also very sociable person back then.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
What do you think would have happened if the photos
had never leaved, if you were never forced into this
almost like pressure cooker of acceptance and of radical change,
what do you think would have been the outcome?
Speaker 3 (37:16):
So at that point, we were putting together a plan,
as I said before, with family and friends, and that
was scary in itself, but the scariest part for me
was the AFL Football World profile. So what we were
doing was put it to a strategy. You wouldn't believe this.
We put a strategy together to go to the AFL
(37:40):
and ask them if they would stand with me beside me,
support me having given the game so much and the
game given me so much. So that's what we were
working towards. How that looked. We probably never got to that,
and obviously it never happened that way. I think it
would have taken a little bit longer and it would
have been much more organized. On your terms, yes, yeah,
(38:04):
and you know, doing it the right way.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
What was the sporting community in the AFL's reaction to Like,
was it a surprise?
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Was it what you expected?
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Did they? Half of them, you know, like distance themselves
from you, while the other half supported you.
Speaker 3 (38:18):
I've not had one person say for what I've heard
a bad word about me or when I've met them,
They've been so very, very supportive. I now speak to
the players that I played with and players that I
coached and people that I work with a lot more
now than I ever did before. So everyone has been unbelievable.
(38:40):
They just want me to be happy and to be
able to leave a life where you're happy and at peace.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Danniel I always think about this from like a parent's
perspective as well, because there's so many conversations that circulate
now in media around how parents do and don't respond
to their children when their children come forward and discuss
years of gender dysphoria or their own confusion around their gender.
What would be as someone who has lived it and
(39:07):
recognized quite young that there was this this incongruence between
the outside and the inside. If you're a parent and
your child wants to talk to you about these things
or it feels as though what they're experiencing isn't the
way in which we're perceived to be, how do parents
best react? What would you say is the best thing
that a parent could do to help support their child?
Speaker 3 (39:29):
So support is a key word families, and particularly more
importantly immediate family supporting their child or have a huge
effect on the child self esteem, mental health, lifestyle, and
that can be confronting for a parent. So to educate
themselves now, I do speak at some schools, and I've
spoke at a big grammar school in Melbourne about a
(39:51):
month ago, and there was probably all the teachers from
the school there and there would have been two hundred
parents came along to have a listen. At the end,
there were a dozen moms and dads who waited to
have a chat to me because their child was going
through some issues. So I talk about the support. I
(40:11):
spoke about using the resources and actually listening to your
child when I say child, you know this is a
high school, so teenage years late teenage years, and just
give them reassurance that everything will be okay.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
I think a lot of parents also think, you know,
when your kid's life to be hard, you know. I
think that's like a very common thought is like, well,
I just want your life to be as easy as
it can possibly be. And so it's a fear as well.
It's a fear around what your child might experience in
their life.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Yeah, it's going to be there's going to be some challenges,
there's going to be some issues and some barriers. That's
an absolute given. But what we want to be able
to do is continue to break down those barriers over
this next period of time. So the more people we
can talk to and educate and give them a better
understanding of it is great for this generation of transgender people,
(41:03):
but also you know, the next generation and the next
generation as we as we go through time.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
One of the last things I'd love to know, and
it's such a divisive discussion, is around gender affirmation surgery
and the age that you should be able to do it.
We hear a lot of people teenagers like you said,
they're technically children by law, you know, we say, under eighteen,
saying that they know who they are, they really want
to have this gender affirmation surgery, and then people saying, well,
(41:29):
you're not old enough to know. You might change your mind.
You know, you should wait it out, see what happens.
What are your thoughts around that.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
I think it shouldn't just be I want surgery. No,
that's a much much more complex journey than that. There's
a lot of psychology, there's a lot of GPS, there's
a lot of counseling. Then there's hormone replacement therapy. There's
so many stages before you get to you get to
(41:57):
that point under age. I think it should be a
family and parental decision. But again, when the family's working
through that and they see their child generally they're all
on the same page, but obviously there's still some families
that really struggle with it. So again, it's a tricky situation,
that one that we need to be very very careful
(42:19):
about moving forward for these children. But there's wonderful gender
clinics around at the moment, like World's best Practice. And
you know, for people who say that people who have
surgery and I'm not saying bottom surgery completely, but homoe
replacement therapy, and then they've become unhappy. The amount of
(42:40):
the transitioners is like under one percent, and I'm sure
there would be people who get their nose done that
wish they didn't would be higher than one percent. Like
a spit, there's always arguments.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
I also think it's used as like a scare tactic, right,
It's like, yeah, it is, it's concerned. Well, it's actually
just like you know, it's a homophobia dressed up as concern,
dressed up as this like, oh, but what happens is
pearl clutching of like, well, what happens if there's a
change of mind, And it's such an insignificant amount of
people that experience that change of mind because of the
many processes that need to go through as an individual
(43:14):
in a family before anyone would ever sign off on surgery.
That's like, I mean, I don't know. I can't speak
for like the States, but I know here it's simply
not an easy process by any means.
Speaker 3 (43:24):
It is used as a skied tactique.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Danielle, thank you so much for giving us your time today,
and we're going to put links to your book and
any support services that you can recommend. We will get
those from you as well. We're going to put all
of those in our show notes for anyone that's listening
to the conversation today that wants to know more. So
thank you so much for sharing your experience with us.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
No, it's been a privilege, and thank you for allowing
me to tell a story.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
Thank you, Dannielle. It's our privilege.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
Thank you. Okay from kababaaa BUMBERSO
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