"On the night of her 60th birthday, Sally Goldner climbed on to the top rope of the wrestling ring, to the roars of the crowd, and launched herself on to her competitors with a missile dropkick. The crowd roared. For a second, she was completely airborne, before landing on her opponents. Wow, I'm doing this,' she thought. Exhilarating. I couldn't think of anything I'd rather be doing on my birthday."
"Back home, she would shift the coffee table and roll around the lounge floor or bounce off the couches the seat, arms and back were three turnbuckles in each corner. But something about wrestling felt off. Most of the representation seemed to be burly cisgender men A lot of the storylines reflected queerphobia, she says. While I was aware of something about myself, I didn't know I was trans, or understand what that meant."
Goldner, a Melbourne resident, has been a lifelong wrestling fan who attended Festival Hall as a child and reenacted matches at home. She experienced bullying at an all-boys school, disliked sport, and abandoned music after returning her violin in tears. Following parental advice, she studied accountancy and found work easy but soul-destroying, prompting introspection after hearing kd lang's Ingenue. Wrestling representation felt exclusionary and queerphobic, while awareness of gender identity remained unclear. On her 60th birthday, she performed a missile dropkick from the top rope during an Alpha Pro battle royal and was celebrated by competitors and the crowd.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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