A New Frontier and A New Pride

Another trans person wants to break new ground, but her dream is snatched away.

'It Feels Very Possible.' How This Transgender Racing Driver Is Hoping to Make Sports History
Time
By Suyin Haynes
June 12, 2019

Charlie Martin hurtles around the racetrack, her gloved hands gripping the steering wheel with only blond hair visible from the top of the driver’s seat. She zooms underneath banners emblazoned with the logo of the 24 Hours of Le Mans motorsport race, her focus unbroken. Eventually slowing to a halt after a 30-minute run, Martin unbuckles her seatbelt. It’s not a helmet that she takes off, but a VR headset; not a racing car that she lifts herself out of, but a state-of-the art simulator at Cranfield Simulation, an aerospace facility about two hours north of London.

The simulator is just one of the many ways Martin, 37, is preparing for the biggest race of her career so far — and the chance to make history. She plans to be the first transgender driver to ever compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France — one of the world’s most prestigious motorsport races. Her journey begins June 15, where she will compete in the Road to Le Mans race as part of the Michelin Le Mans Cup, marking the start of a three-year program setting her on the road toward the 24 Hours race, and towards making LGBT history. Her story is a rare one in a sport not known for its diversity, and comes at a time when many transgender people are facing a rising backlash for their participation in different sports.

But her dream was suddenly dashed, according to CNN…

But Martin's Le Mans date with destiny was suddenly snatched away when the funding she needed fell through just two weeks before this weekend's race.

"It's a real shame," says Martin, whose place in the team has been filled for the Le Mans weekend only. "Unfortunately because of last-minute delays with sponsorship we couldn't continue.

But that doesn’t mean she is not involved with racing, in the same CNN article,

A decision to go to France and compete in a one-off round of the French Hill Climbing Championship in St-Goueno renewed Martin's passion and her hopes of becoming a professional racing driver. She had broken the class record and won the race by three seconds, a positively monumental margin by hill climb standards.

"People were a bit surprised that this English girl who no one had heard of had come over and blown everyone away," Martin recalls with a smile.

Being an “out” trans woman she is a role model for many trans women who are hesitant to jump into male dominated sports and she shows the world that we will not be forced back into the closet… that we are trans and we are proud.

---

Saturday was the first Middletown Pride Parade and I thought that they did an excellent job. I didn’t see the parade but from the Facebook photos and from what others had to say it looks like the parade was a success.

I got there a little after 3 when the parade had ended, I looked at Google Maps and it showed that Rt. 9 was a solid black, not red but at a standstill and most of the streets on Rt. 9 side of the parade route were red. So I decided to come in from the western side of Middletown going by Wesleyan University, as I drove by the side streets that headed toward Main St cars were parked all along the roads, finally I found a parking space about a half a mile away (I did luck out a little, the space was in the shade) after walking down the park I found our table for the CT TransAdvocacy Coalition and it was also now in the shade.

After checking in at the table I wandered around the Pride and said “hi” to many of the people that knew including my endo. At one booth I talked to a former classmate at UConn School of Social Work and is now a lobbyist and she told me that the legislative committee that I was appointed to was funded for two years and that it can be renewed every two years.

I went back to the CTAC and took over there while they got their turn to walk around the Pride.

We packed up and left around 5, I talked to the police officers first about where to load the car up with the table and chairs so they allowed me to pull right up to the curb which save a lot of walking with the table and chairs.

Something that I noticed at all the Prides that I have been to is loud music, the vendors and non-profits pay good money to be at the Pride events only to have visitors stop at their booths and they have to shout in their ears to be heard. At the Hartford Pride the booths near the stage on the Trumbull St end of Pratt St have shout to be heard and the same thing for our booth in Middletown we had a radio station ten feet from our table. Ditto for Norwalk and Providence Prides.

It would seem to me that those who are organizing the various Prides would create some type of buffers between where loud music is played and where the vendors are located. Maybe have food trucks in-between the vendors and the music.

But all in all it was a beautiful day, perfect weather for the Pride.