Effy believes the next step of the fight for inclusion lies with breaking down more barriers for transgender wrestlers.
Friday’s episode of Busted Open Radio featured Effy as a guest, and the GCW Tag Team Champion was asked about how more wrestling promotions could make more progress towards inclusion for its LGBTQ performers. Effy said that he believed that transgender performers need to be uplifted in a positive way, similar to how gay and female performers have been advocated for in recent years.
Effy highlighted how Max The Impaler, who identifies as non-binary, has been put in women’s division matches by some promoters despite not identifying as a female.
“The first thing that sort of comes to mind is this battle that transgender brothers, sisters and non-binary family are going through right now. I know a lot of professional wrestlers personally who are transgender and some of them are non-binary, which means they do not identify with any gender at all and one of those that comes to mind is Max The Impaler. They have done work for Ring Of Honor, they have done work on my shows and I have constantly seen them go through this battle where you don’t want to have to be the sword all day, but when people constantly misgender you and people segment you into a group because they go, ‘Well, you can’t go over here with the guys, so we’ve just got to say you’re a women’s wrestler even though that’s not how you identify.’ Seeing them just continue to push forward and get to that next step, even though they’ve had everyone looking at them going, ‘You need to fit in here, you need to fit into something. Sorry you feel that way, but if you don’t fit into something, it’s not going to work for the programming.’
“The battle now of moving away from that gender segregation and understanding that when Max the Impaler has a match, every single match they technically have is an intergender match, if you will, because they don’t have a specific gender and are non-binary. Whether they’re fighting a man or a woman, or if they’re fighting someone who is a different non-binary person, there’s never a gender homogeny amongst their matches.”
Effy said that there’s definitely been some progress made when it comes to female and gay performers, but now the wrestling community needs to help the transgender community be included in the same way.
“So, as we move forward, I know the gays and girls have gotten more opportunities, but I want to make sure we’re still uplifting in the same way, in the real world as we are in the wrestling world, our transgender brothers, sisters and family members out there because I think that’s the next step of this fight. If gays or lesbians are paying any attention, a lot of this stuff mirrors perfectly. Like you said, Mark Henry, with the Civil Rights [movement], this mirrors perfectly. It’s a tale as old as time, this different that’s different than you who you may not have the knowledge or education on, let’s just hate it or push it away or not do anything to deal with it versus [asking] what are we missing as a community because we’re not involving these individuals that want to bring their talent and their skill into this wild, weird world where almost everything has worked and not worked. What’s the risk in taking another chance there?”
Co-host Mark Henry went on to note that he had the pleasure of calling a recent match featuring Max The Impaler and Nyla Rose, sharing that it will air on AEW programming soon. He called it bad-ass, hard-hitting wrestling between two performers, and would never see that match and turn it down because they had enough gay or women’s matches on the card, responding to Effy’s prior comment about a promoter saying they wouldn’t book a certain match because they’d already filled a quota on the card.
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