Chloe Anderson

Chloe Psyche Anderson is a transgender woman volleyball player. She is the first transgender athlete in a California college or university. She met the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA)

Anderson grew up in Long Beach, California. In preschool, she loved playing princesses and dressing up. A while before kindergarten she started getting bullied. She got beat up almost every day for about 7 years. When she was in middle school, she started failing classes, trying not to get noticed. Her only target was to not get noticed. She only felt excited about playing volleyball.

But by junior year she was feeling too sad. Her grades were too bad. She got kicked off the volleyball team at school.

Anderson began her transition from male to female at the age of 19 after years of feeling like she was assigned the wrong gender. Before her transition, she had always felt like she didn't belong with the boys, she felt like she belonged with the girls. Anderson’s mother wasn't accepting of her child's decision because she assumed Anderson was only cross-dressing. Eventually, she learned to accept her daughter. Her mother became a big supporter and always cheers for her at volleyball games. Anderson worked to afford treatments for gender transition.

Anderson found it difficult to play volleyball while taking hormones. Her body did not work as expected. By one year into her treatments, she was much slower and less powerful than before. Her "male muscles...melted off her body." She argues that trans players do not keep advantages of their gender before gender transition.

After Anderson changed the gender on her birth certificate and took gender replacement hormones for a year, both the California Community College Athletic Association and the NCAA let her play college volleyball.` Anderson played for Santa Ana Community College for two years and then changed to playing for the University of California Santa Cruz Volleyball team.