National netball coach helps sex workers - Sarah Michelle’s transgender story

TransGenerations, an eight-part web series, tells the stories of transgender Kiwis from their late 70s to early 20s, documenting the history of trans experience in New Zealand and dispelling stereotypes about who trans people are. In episode five, host Brady Peeti meets Sarah Michelle, the first openly trans person to coach a national netball team.

Sarah Michelle is a child of the 1980s, a time when trans women were being kicked out of pubs, beaten or worse. Although she didn’t understand what trans was at the time, she doesn’t remember a moment when she felt anything other than female.

It seemed a much more dependable identity than being bi-racial with a Pakeha mum and a Cook Islander dad, surrounded by a Maori community in South Auckland.

“Growing up bi-racial is hard. You’ve kinda given this label of some sort of white privilege,” she said.

Sarah Michelle said her mum supported her early on as she explored her gender identity. Her dad, on the other hand, supported rugby league, which he insisted she should play. He hoped to mould Sarah Michelle into someone who wasn’t a “sissy” in his eyes.

She was good at it, too. But sports were not the immediate saving grace for her that they were for Lexie in Episode 2 of TransGenerations.

As Sarah Michelle leaned further into her identity as a woman during high school, she found netball. She went on to represent New Zealand as a player at two mixed gender world cups in 2004 and 2006. Later on, she coached the national men’s side.

However, transphobic taunts and attitudes have followed her netball career, even until now.

Netball coach and umpire Sarah Michelle on the courts at Netball Manurewa. Herald photo / Jason Oxenham

It isn’t dissimilar to what she hears lobbed at trans sex workers in South Auckland, who she supports through the organisation Street Survival Workers. Sarah Michelle prefers to use the term survival rather than sex workers.

“It’s not a job that many people want to get into,” Sarah Michelle explained, adding that many do it to make a living when other jobs are closed to them due to prejudice. Often, she is out patrolling streets, warming the ladies up with tea before they go out into the night and handing out condoms.

Sarah Michelle has found her own safe haven, too. And it’s on a dragon boat team.

“I went to the first practice [and said] ‘Hi, sis. Hi, sis’ and literally paddled as a woman no questions asked,” she said. It was a change of atmosphere from the oddly macho world of mixed and men’s netball.

From being born into a world where trans people were handed violence rather than acceptance to finding her seat in a women’s dragon boat team, Sarah Michelle can’t help but reflect on the progress made so far.

TransGenerations is made with the support of NZ On Air. To follow the series, see nzherald.co.nz/transgenerations