In wrestling, I’m playing a more macho version of myself than is myself. So there are times that dips into more of a dysphoric situation. But I have gotten more comfortable with that.

There's also the added benefit of just being able to yell at people for misgendering me, which in a weird way for me is pretty euphoric: somebody will say, "Oh, he's really beating you up," and I'm shout back, "She's beating them up" as I beat somebody up. It's fun.

As a lot of wrestlers have gone to say, wrestling is like the gayest activity that you can get into – oiled up dudes, tiny underwear, at each other for anywhere between two to 30 minutes. That’s like pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty gay.

My gender exploration came more from my personal life than from wrestling, because there's a wild current of homophobia in wrestling despite it being an extremely gay activity.

In recent years, I've seen more and more queer wrestlers, from Sonny Kiss in Australia to Lucas Fantasia and Singapore. I recently wrestled Erfie, who’s an openly bisexual wrestler.

Navigating these spaces as one of the only trans wrestler is a little hard because most of the time, I'm competing against cis men, so there's not really a "conflict" point. There isn’t a ‘clash’ because I'm never really booked against women.

Erfie is the closest I've gotten to being booked against somebody who wasn't like a straight cis man, and he's a cis boy, a twink and very femme.

My gear is the Trans Pride flag and the non-binary pride flag and I'm very expressive and very emotive about those things.

The reception has generally been pretty good and fans are getting used to just calling me the Queer Queen, which is gonna be unfortunate when I have to change to a different hashtag.


[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued tomorrow]