wore pants.
Yes, wear pants, your a guy, guy’s wear pants. If you would just wear pants then you would be respected and treated fairly.
And you know what? I tried that, and nothing changed, I was still the adult man that people also knew that I wore skirts and dresses. So no, nothing changed, even my second coach wouldn’t give me a chance to take my warmup pants off even though they interfered with my skating.
wore black skates.
When I started skating, I did the traditional black skates. But when I was skating better and was wearing dresses and tights more often, the saying that “Black goes with everything” wasn’t really true in this case. So I switched to white skates, although I did have a thought when my first pair started to break down to get a different color. Of which most likely would have been blue of all things! I think the white however is a better, more neutral, color to go with.
looked like everyone else.
This one, wow, just wow, why would I want to look like everyone else? Does everyone else really look like everyone else? No, they don’t, so what are we really taking about? Oh, the overall look, yes, ok, so females can choose pants, leggings, skirts, dresses in whatever fit and color they desire. Same with their boots, they don’t have to be white and again can be any color they desire, including black! In fact I’ve seen black, purple, leopard print, pink, green, orange, bedazzled white and who knows what else.
But your a male so your choice is ankle length pants, sleeved shirt, both in dark colors although you’d be ok with a white shirt. Don’t forgot they should be a size or two bigger than you normally wear, and of course black boots.
stopped skating.
Yes, you heard that right, and it boils down to the fact that adults shouldn’t be skating. Although I think in this case they just didn’t want me to skate, but for the most part, adult skaters were the oddity and therefore could be ignored for the most part. If one was lucky, you could find some ice time that was specific to adults as some places restricted participation based on age and not ability. And what a shame too that younger people couldn’t see that there is still skating well beyond their youth.
Of course the majority of the discrimination I faced was unseen, there are a lot of things I tried to do, most of it however in vain.