Dani Laidley pictured during an earlier phase of her life (top row) and now. Photos (clockwise from top left): Herald Sun, Daily Mail, ABC, Supplied (via ABC).

Take a step back, and try to imagine the courage it took for Dani Laidley to front up at a North Melbourne club function on Friday. Cameras rolling, microphones listening, the joint filled with old teammates who remembered her as Dean Laidley, “the boy from Balga”.

It was a daunting scenario, even for the most mentally-tough Shinboner.

Reunions with old co-workers or classmates usually trigger innocuous insecurities around weight gain, hair loss or lacklustre career advancement. The ‘baggage’ Dani brought with her on Friday was a bit more than that: among other things, a gender transition which began in 2019 and, last May, humiliation at the hands of police, who circulated photos of Laidley in custody wearing a wig and make-up before they were splashed across front pages in both Melbourne and her hometown of Perth.

Consider the personal demons holding Dani back as she embarked on her journey: first repressing her desire to change, then inhibiting her need to come out, and finally resisting the imperative she felt to reveal herself to the world at North’s Arden Street headquarters, defying those who humiliated her last May.

Dani grew up in the working-class Perth suburb of Balga during the 1970s and ‘80s, a time and place where terms like ‘transgender’ weren’t even discussed, much less rejected. Who do you talk to about emerging, confronting issues like gender identity in a setting like that?

Later in life, Laidley – married and with three children – played alongside such meat-and-potatoes legends as Glenn Archer and Mark “Wild Man of Borneo” Zanotti, part of a blokey locker room seemingly just as impervious to thoughts of gender reassignment. Yet, in all likelihood, Dani had by then begun asking questions around gender and sexuality, if only as repressed self-talk (with all the damage that brings).

The knot in Dani’s stomach must have been as big as an oversized twine ball as she approached Arden Street (and some of those same teammates) on Friday.

Fortunately for Dani, she retains the courage of a Junkyard Dog, her nickname over a 151-game career with West Coast and the Roos. With a little nudge from people at North, she was going.

Speaking at a press conference to mark North Melbourne being officially debt-free for the first time since 1987, Laidley looked comfortable mingling with former teammates, and took the opportunity to promote Transgender Awareness Week, which ended on Friday. “I am proud of both my tribes,” she said.

North chairman Ben Buckley told the gathering Laidley, a coach and premiership player with the Kangaroos, was an integral part of the football club and its history. “We reached out and embraced her and embraced her new chapter in her life,” he added.

It was quite the prodigal return for Laidley, who just 18 months ago was charged with stalking and drug possession offences. While she was in custody, a Victoria Police officer saw fit to secretly share photos of Laidley, wearing a wig and make-up but not yet ‘out’ as LGBTQIA+, on social media.

The inevitable result was public humiliation on the front pages of the Herald Sun and West Australian:

While Laidley avoided convictions under a court diversion program, 11 police officers were disciplined and ordered to pay Laidley up to $3000 each in compensation. Criminal charges were also laid against four officers over the photo leak, which was described as “appalling” by chief commissioner Shane Patton.

Meanwhile, the Herald Sun defended its front-page story as “clearly newsworthy and in the public interest” while the West Australian said high-profile public figures in legal trouble were always fair game “no matter what the alleged offender is or isn’t wearing”. No word as to how the public interest was served by voyeurism, or whether the titillating photos elevated an otherwise middling story to page one.

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Ironically, Laidley’s arrest and the vile attempts to degrade her seem to have hastened Dani’s sorting out her life, reconnecting with critical sources of support like North and emerging from seclusion as a proud transgender woman. Moreover, the tawdry episode inadvertently revealed there’s been at least partial progress in Australia on issues of gender and sexuality since Laidley’s playing days.

“Following Laidley’s arrest, football people – especially but not confined to North Melbourne’s past players and officials – were not at all judgmental about the fact that Laidley had been photographed by police wearing a dress, a blonde wig and make-up,” Jake Niall wrote in The Age.

“Mick Malthouse, for instance (said) his immediate reaction was ‘disappointment’ – not with his former (West Coast) player and assistant coach, whom he defended to the hilt, but with the destructive leaking of the photograph by Victoria Police.”

Such attitudes seem to be in line with those of wider society. A 2018 IPSOS study of attitudes towards transgender people showed that 71 per cent of Australians felt we are becoming more tolerant.

The AFL celebrates Pride Round each year and supports marriage equality, with North Melbourne clearly a standout among its clubs, while police (yes, police) toted rainbow flags at Melbourne’s Midsumma Pride parade in May.

Yet, as with most testy social issues, the truth is much more complicated. How, in a society more ‘accepting’ of LGBTQIA+ people, do pernicious police officers and malign media circulate images of Laidley at her lowest ebb in smudged make-up and a wig?

Perhaps you’re hoping disciplinary action against the offending officers last year put an end to such malevolence. Think again: earlier this month in an incident under investigation by Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC), police allegedly shared more photos of Dani (and a bunch of contemptible comments) during her trip to the races at Geelong.


Police officers allegedly took this picture of Dani Laidley at a Geelong race meeting earlier this month. Photo: supplied (via ABC).

While North Melbourne rallied around its former player and coach and welcomed her home before the cameras, one former teammate was ambivalent on Laidley’s transition at a personal level. When Niall asked the unnamed former Roo if the players “would have been as tolerant of Laidley’s photographed appearance, had he been open about that tendency in the past”, the answer was straightforward: “I think not at a footy club.”

Such confused duality is a regular occurrence among Australians on what is tough, confronting issue. On one level, clubs, leagues, government agencies and NGOs want to be inclusive – as much to fulfil regulatory obligations as anything else – while ordinary people, academically at least, are more accepting of LGBTQIA+ people as a whole these days.

On another level, many people – perhaps even some of the ‘inclusive’ folks mentioned just now – ogled the front pages of the Herald Sun or the West Australian after Dani’s arrest last May, satisfying their voyeurism with images of a “footy star turned tranny”. It seems unfair to label moves towards inclusion on LGBTQIA+ issues as virtue signalling or window dressing, but in some cases it may well be just that.

Tellingly, no male AFL footballer has come out as gay or bisexual (much less transgender) in more than 50 years. A 2014 study by the Australian Human Rights Commission showed up to 11 in 100 Australians have a diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex, yet – of the more than 750 listed AFL players this year – not one has come out.

That no current AFL player is LGBTQIA+ is pretty well a statistical impossibility. Indeed, one wonders how much longer Laidley herself might have waited to ‘come out’ had certain police officers not forced her hand that fateful night last May.

Eighteen months ago, one Melbourne-based club official told Niall that, despite attitudinal change on LGBTQIA+ issues across society, Laidley’s arrest and abasement at the hands of police and media meant “it was now even less likely that an (AFL) footballer would come out”.

Perhaps Dani Laidley’s having the guts to front the cameras on Friday marks a move in the right direction.