Sport is a big thing in my family. My father was a Socceroo. One of my sisters was a competitive figure skater, the other a rhythmic gymnast and my brother was a top-notch cricketer until he injured himself playing AFL. I played rugby. I played from the age of eight until my mid-20s.

I was never super passionate about rugby. I played in the front row and I enjoyed the big hits and testing my body’s strength and endurance, but I never liked the culture surrounding the game. I was a bookish, science fiction nut, theatre dork and deeply closeted transgender woman. I didn’t really draw any joy from the macho antics of the lads at the rugby club.

I injured my knee during an undergraduate production of Macbeth. The show’s aesthetic was inspired by The Matrix, and featured many poorly choreographed martial arts fight scenes. The knee injury took me away from rugby. I began focusing on making a career in comedy. I didn’t play much sport after that. I lost my fitness. I didn’t care. I hated being a man.

I came to grips with my gender dysphoria a few years ago, and began transition. I began to make my health and fitness a priority again. I wanted to go back to team sports but I didn’t know how that was going to fit into my life any more.

It’s no secret that a lot of people feel really weird about trans women competing in sports alongside cisgender women. Rigorous studies from the scientific and medical communities have determined that trans women who have been on hormone replacement have physical capabilities within the range of cisgender women. Organisations like Fifa and the IOC, informed by those studies, allow trans women to participate in women’s competitive sports. Nevertheless, despite the science, people are weird about it.

I was very fortunate to discover roller derby. I made a friend at a trans support group who played and it was exactly what I needed: a full-contact women’s sport with its roots in alternative culture that was built on the principles of inclusivity and diversity. Derby has been at the forefront of championing queer and trans participation in sport.

The game is complex; my friend describes it as “chess on rollerskates with everyone throwing bricks at you”. If I had to summarise it succinctly it would be: one player from each team is called a jammer, she’s trying to do laps of the circuit. The other eight players, four from each team, are trying to stop them. Team Australia – our national team – are competing in the roller derby world cup in Manchester this week. They’re going to smash it.

‘The greatest thing about roller derby is that it’s a place where women discover that they are stronger than they’ve been lead to believe.’ Photograph: Steven Craddock

I began training two-and-a-half years ago. I started with very little skating experience. I trained for a year before I was qualified to actually play a game.

My house is now covered in derby paraphernalia. My lounge room is littered with rollerskate wheels. Each set has a slightly different hardness to the others so I can adjust the grip and speed of my skates depending on the surface I’m skating on. There’s piles of lycra and fishnets and I own mountains of booty shorts.

I am strong. I’m not as strong as I was before transition but I am much stronger than a lot of the women I play with. I was also much stronger than a lot of the boys I played rugby against, so it makes sense. I feel, in any other sporting environment, my strength would be held to scrutiny – and when I see stories like Hannah Mouncey being blocked from the AFLW draft I remind myself of how fortunate I am to be in the derby bubble. In the bubble, I’m not scrutinised or just tolerated. I play a sport where my body is celebrated – where every type of body is celebrated: short, tall, skinny, fat, old, young, trans or cis.

The greatest thing about roller derby is that it’s a place where women discover that they are stronger than they’ve been led to believe. Our culture gaslights women into believing that they’re incapable. I’ve witnessed a number of women the moment after they take their first big hit or make their first solid block; the moment when they realise that their body is strong. If my trans status has given me any advantage, it’s that I didn’t spend my youth being told my body was weak. I’ve always known my body was capable.

There’s this idea that letting a trans woman play sport against cis women is like letting a lumbering giant loose among children. It’s not true and it’s an insult to everyone who skates with me. The women who I play with are just as capable as me. I am not the strongest.

Last week I attended a derby convention in Queensland. I was playing on a team made up of a mix of players from the convention. I sat on the bench as one of the players on my team explained that she was in her 50s and a bit hard of hearing, and another player ran off to let the referees know to use hand signals for the game. Also on the bench were players who are representing Australia this weekend.

And that’s what I love most about roller derby: that we all share the track. Everybody is celebrated, every body is celebrated.

• The roller derby world cup is held this weekend in Manchester. Jordan Raskopolous is appearing at All About Women in Sydney