Trans Athletes' Resistance 9781803823652, 9781803823645, 9781803823638

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Trans Athletes’ Resistance

Emerald Studies in Sport and Gender Series Editor: Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, University of Toronto, Canada Editorial Board: Douglas Booth, Thompson Rivers University, Canada; Jayne Caudwell, Bournemouth University, UK; Delia Douglas, University of Manitoba, Canada; Janice Forsyth, University of British Columbia, Canada; Caroline Fusco, University of Toronto, Canada; Tara Magdalinski, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia; Jaime Schultz, Pennsylvania State University, USA; Heather Sykes, University of Toronto, Canada; Beccy Watson, Leeds Beckett University, UK Emerald Studies in Sport and Gender promotes research on two important and related areas within sport studies: women and gender. The concept of gender is included in the series title in order to problematize traditional binary thinking that classifies individuals as male or female, rather than looking at the full gender spectrum. In sport contexts, this is a particularly relevant and controversial issue, for example, in the case of transgendered athletes and female athletes with hyperandrogenism. The concept of sport is interpreted broadly to include activities ranging from physical recreation to high-performance sport The interdisciplinary nature of the series will encompass social and cultural history and philosophy as well as sociological analyses of contemporary issues. Since any analysis of sport and gender has political implications and advocacy applications, learning from history is essential Contributors to the series are encouraged to develop an intersectional analysis where appropriate, by examining how multiple identities, including gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social class and ability, intersect to shape the sport experiences of women and men who are Indigenous, racialized, members of ethnic minorities, LGBTQ2S+, working class or disabled. We welcome submissions from both early career and more established researchers

Previous Volumes Gender, Athletes’ Rights, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport – Helen Lenskyj Running, Identity and Meaning: The Pursuit of Distinction Through Sport – Neil Baxter Sports Charity and Gendered Labour – Catherine Palmer The Professionalisation of Women’s Sport: Issues and Debates – Edited by Ali Bowes and Alex Culvin Sport, Gender and Mega-Events – Edited by Katherine Dashper

Sport, Gender and Development: Intersections, Innovations and Future Trajectories – Lyndsay M.C. Hayhurst, Holly Thorpe and Megan Chawansky Gender Equity in UK Sport Leadership and Governance – Edited by Philippa Velija and Lucy Piggott Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles – Edited by Ali Durham Greey and Helen Jefferson Lenskyj Women’s Football in a Global, Professional Era – Edited by Alex Culvin and Ali Bowes

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Trans Athletes’ Resistance: The Struggle for Justice in Sport EDITED BY ALI DURHAM GREEY University of Toronto, Canada

AND HELEN JEFFERSON LENSKYJ University of Toronto, Canada

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Emerald Publishing Limited Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL First edition 2024 Editorial matter and selection © 2024 Ali Durham Greey and Helen Jefferson Lenskyj. Individual chapters © 2024 The authors. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited. Reprints and permissions service Contact: www.copyright.com No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-80382-364-5 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-80382-363-8 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-80382-365-2 (Epub)

Ali and Helen would like to dedicate this book to trans athletes of all ages and levels, and to honour their courageous resistance as they fight for the freedom to participate in the sports of their choice.

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Table of Contents

About the Editors

xi

About the Contributors

xiii

Acknowledgements

xvii

Chapter 1 Introduction: The Binary World of Sport: Belonging and Resistance Helen Jefferson Lenskyj and Ali Durham Greey

1

Part 1: Trans Athletes’ Resistance: The Sociocultural Context Chapter 2 Trans Athletes and the Limits of Recognition, Visibility and Intelligibility C.B. Lucas and Matthew R. Hodler

15

Chapter 3 The Locker Room Politics of the Meninos Bons de Bola and the Rise of the Right in Brazil CK Snyder

29

Chapter 4 Policy on the Run: The Development of Trans and Gender Diverse Inclusion Policies in Community Sport in Australia Ryan Storr, Anna Posbergh and Sheree Bekker

43

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Part 2: Autoethnography: A Methodology for Trans Athletes’ Resistance Chapter 5 Slipping Into the Shadows: Boxing, Affect and Healing Justice Dan Irving

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Chapter 6 Bobbing and Weaving: A Nonbinary Boxer’s Experiences of Sport, Gender and Resistance Ali Durham Greey

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Chapter 7 Collateral Damage From Anti-Transgender US Legislation: Perspectives From a Transgender Student-Athlete Estel Boix Noguer and Leslie K. Larsen

87

Part 3: Trans Athletes’ Resistance: Case Studies Chapter 8 Embodying Disobedience, Inciting Resistance: Nonbinary Athletes and the Limits of Gender in Sport Sabeehah Ravat

103

Chapter 9 Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Persons’ Experiences of Recreational Sport and Physical Activity Eva Boˇsnjak and William Bridel

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Chapter 10 Conclusion: Resistance: The Way Forward Helen Jefferson Lenskyj and Ali Durham Greey

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Index

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About the Editors

Ali Durham Greey (they/them) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Their work examines the experiences of trans and nonbinary people in sport and in education. Ali is a SSHRC-Joseph-Armand Bombardier Scholar and a retired member of the Canadian Olympic boxing team. Ali’s work has been featured in the Canadian Review of Sociology, the Journal of Homosexuality, The Routledge Handbook of Athlete Welfare, Athlete Learning in Elite Sport and Leisure Studies. www.aligreey.com. They co-edited Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles with Helen Lenskyj (Emerald, 2023). Dr Helen Jefferson Lenskyj (she/her) is a Professor Emerita, University of Toronto. Her work as a researcher and activist on gender and sport issues began in the 1980s, and her critiques of the Olympic industry include seven books, most recently The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach (Emerald, 2020). helenlenskyj.ca. She co-edited Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles with Ali Greey (Emerald, 2023).

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About the Contributors

Dr Sheree Bekker (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the Department for Health at the University of Bath, UK. Her current research comprises two key strands: (1) understanding the influence of gendered environments on sports injury and (2) conceptualizing gender inclusive sport. She takes a translational approach to this research, with the aim of providing innovative considerations that are useful in policy and practice. Eva Boˇsnjak (they/them) is an equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) practitioner working in the postsecondary sector as a consultant for sport organizations. They hold a MSc in Sociocultural Aspects of Sport and Physical Activity from the University of Calgary. Eva uses their lived experiences as a trans nonbinary person and former athlete to advocate for creating safer sporting spaces for trans and gender diverse communities. They are a 2020 SSHRC CGS-M recipient. Dr William Bridel (he/him) is Associate Dean (Academic) and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology at the University of Calgary. His teaching and research focus on sociocultural aspects of sport, physical activity and the body. His research interests include investigations of LGBTQI2S1 inclusion in sport historically and at present, as well as inclusion and safe sport policy. He is a 2017 SSHRC Insight Development Grant recipient, a 2020–2021 Calgary Institute for the Humanities Fellow and was awarded the 2021 University of Calgary Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Faculty Award. Dr Matthew R. Hodler (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Sport Media and Communication at the University of Rhode Island, USA. He teaches and writes about gender, race, nationalism and sport. He’s on the Membership Committee of URI’s AAUP faculty union and is the editor for the Journal of Sport History’s Film, Media, and Museums Review section. Dr Dan Irving (he/him) is an Associate Professor at Carleton University in Canada. His two current research projects contribute to Transgender Studies (trans unemployment) and Critical Masculinity Studies (affective politics of white youth masculinity). His work has been published in Radical History Review, Sexualities and Australian Feminist Studies. He co-edited (with Rupert Raj) Trans Activism in Canada: A Reader. As a member of the Beaver Boxing Club in

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Ottawa, Ontario, Irving is passionate about boxing and is training for his first (and only?) amateur bout. Dr Leslie K. Larsen (she/her) is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Kinesiology major in the Department of Kinesiology at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS). She holds a PhD in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Sport Psychology from the University of Tennessee. Her research interests include cultural sport psychology, women in coaching and coach education. She is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant through AASP and a member of the Executive Board of the Western Society for Physical Education of College Women. She has also worked as part of the CSUS Institutional Equity Collaborative and the College of Health and Human Services Anti-Racism Task Force to develop equity and inclusion training programs for faculty and staff and to amplify student voices throughout CSUS’s campus. Leslie is a former Mental Conditioning Coach at IMG Academy and a former NCAA Division I women’s basketball coach. C.B. Lucas (they/them) is an Independent Scholar residing in the USA. They research trans history, teach courses in kinesiology and facilitate community fitness practices. Informed by transfeminist ethics of care, their work recognizes interconnectedness and builds solidarity across communities. They can usually be found fixing up old bikes at the local bike co-op or riding with their local chapter of the Radical Adventure Riders. Estel Boix Noguer (they/he) is a former NCAA DI student-athlete and current rowing coach in California. They were born and raised in Spain, the country they represented at the international level for five years. Since they came out as transgender in 2019, he has been an advocate for their community and the need for more trans inclusive practices in sports. Currently, he is coaching at River City Rowing Club in West Sacramento (CA), where he not only coaches the demanding sport of rowing, but also teaches all his athletes about LGBTQ2S1 topics. You can follow his work and advocacy on Instagram @coach_estel. Dr Anna Posbergh (she/her) is a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, in the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport in the School of Kinesiology. Her research examines the governance and regulation of women athletes and their bodies, particularly through policies and media representations. [School of Kinesiology, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities]. Sabeehah Ravat (all pronouns) is a graduate of the Women and Gender Studies program at the University of South Florida. Their MA thesis, completed at the University of South Florida, involved a trans-centred critical discourse analysis of International Olympic Committee documents relating to gender regulation. Their research interests focus on the formulation, contestation and negotiation of racialized gender in sport, as well as diasporic kinship constructions of gender and sexual minorities. Sabeehah plans to pursue a PhD in the future.

About the Contributors

xv

Dr CK Snyder (she/they ela/elu) is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Louisville. They have also taught at Federal and State Universities in Bah´ıa and Pernambuco, Brazil. Snyder’s research interests include transnational feminism, Latin American/Brazilian Studies, physical cultural/sport studies and digital studies. You can find Snyder’s writing on these topics in The Radical Teacher, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology, The International Journal of Women’s Studies, and in edited volumes including Transnational Feminist Itineraries (Duke University Press). Currently, Snyder is working on a book manuscript titled ‘Which Team Do You Play For: Visibility and Queering in Brazilian Futebol.’ Dr Ryan Storr (he/him) is a Research Associate in the Sport Innovation Research Group at Swinburne University. His research explores LGBTIQ1 inclusion within sport and movement contexts and how sports engage with issues around diversity and inclusion.

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, we thank the authors who have contributed to Trans Athletes’ Resistance: The Struggle for Justice in Sport. We recognize the invaluable work done by these pioneering scholars, especially the trans athletes, activists and allies whose voices are heard in the following chapters. We also thank Katy Mathers, Abinaya Chinnasamy and the team at Emerald Publishing for their support and commitment to this project. We gratefully acknowledge the research grant awarded to us by the Senior College of the University of Toronto. As always, Helen would like to thank her children and her partner, Liz, for love and support, and Liz for her usual excellent proofreading. Finally, thank you to my co-author and editor Ali Greey – it was a pleasure to work with you again on this book. Ali would like to thank Lorraine, Mer, Krystal and Heather for their encouragement and support. Ali would like to extend their heartfelt thanks to the following for their mentorship and support: Lee Airton, Anna Baeth, Caroline Fusco, Jessica Fields, Jen Gilbert, David Pereira, Chris Mosier, Ellie Roscher and Boba Samuels. Editing these volumes with Helen has been a dream come true for a junior scholar like me. Thank you, Helen, for your mentorship and friendship.

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Chapter 1

Introduction: The Binary World of Sport: Belonging and Resistance Helen Jefferson Lenskyj and Ali Durham Greey

Abstract In the face of widespread opposition and hostility, trans and nonbinary athletes, from recreational to professional levels, continue to resist exclusion and oppression by daring to compete, participate and play. The long-standing binary thinking that characterizes sport poses particular challenges for trans women, who are positioned by advocates of trans exclusion as an alleged threat to women’s sport. As context for this discussion, Lenskyj examines how social psychologists have contributed to understandings of belonging and community and the implications for trans and nonbinary athletes’ rights to share the benefits that sport offers. The concept of ‘deliberative freedoms’ – including freedom to live one’s life without having others view certain traits as ‘costs’ – provides a framework for investigating resistance. Greey then draws on a sociological understanding of gender to argue that inclusion is not synonymous with belonging. Belonging for trans athletes, Greey argues, requires more than the ‘letter of the law.’ Belonging requires recognition from teammates, coaches and other sport community members. An overview of terminology is presented, followed by an overview of chapters, summarizing the key themes and findings. Keywords: Resistance; belonging; intersectionality; nonbinary; fairness; sex; gender; sport; transgender

Belonging and Resistance: Negotiating Contradictions Helen Jefferson Lenskyj Sport has a long-standing reputation in western society as a ‘social good’. Since the early 1900s, the socialization function of organized sport and physical activity has been widely promoted in schools and communities, initially for boys and Trans Athletes’ Resistance, 1–11 Copyright © 2024 Helen Jefferson Lenskyj and Ali Durham Greey Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited doi:10.1108/978-1-80382-363-820231001

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young men, and, more recently, for girls and young women. Belonging to a club or team, according to this line of thinking, fosters a sense of belonging and community. As practised in most western countries, the organization of sport is based on the assumption that sex/gender are binary. While progressive scholars of the 1980s aptly labelled sport the last bastion of male supremacy, contemporary critics, including contributors to Justice for Trans Athletes (Greey & Lenskyj, 2023) and to this book, document how sport remains one of the last bastions of binary thinking. It would be difficult to contemplate any organization that polices the boundaries between male and female as rigidly and rigorously as sports federations. For example, would the management of a symphony orchestra abandon the principle of selection based on merit and instead use testosterone levels to determine who plays wind instruments, percussion instruments or stringed instruments? Would state departments of education base teachers’ promotion to administrative positions on testosterone? Sport promises acceptance, but it also holds the threat of rejection. Children and youth whose interests and skills do not lie in these areas, those who do not conform to gendered expectations, and those who are marginalized because of racism, classism, or other systems of discrimination, are unlikely to enjoy this sense of belonging. Two examples below illustrate the complexities of these processes in childhood, most notably the ways in which acts of resistance play out in unanticipated ways. Linda (a pseudonym), a ciswoman who identified as lesbian, reflected on her childhood experiences in gym classes (Lenskyj, 2003). She described how her level of play was considered ‘too rough’ for a girl, and so she was given the choice of playing scatter-dodge with the girls, using only her left hand, or joining the boys’ game. She chose to play with the boys, and was the last one standing, but many years later, she could still recall her ambivalence as she watched the girls on the sidelines cheering her on. I had this really very mixed thing that has stayed with me ever since. I wanted to wipe out every boy in that group and I did, by the way – I won . . . I wanted to win for them, for the girls, for them to see that it could be done. At the same time, what was mixed up with this was the incredible contempt for the girls because they were all in their little dresses and little shoes sitting passively on the side, cheering for me, and I didn’t want to be one of them and yet I knew I was one of them. (Cited in Lenskyj, 2003) The story resonates with me as I recall my reaction, at about 9 years of age, to my friend Susan’s announcement that she had started taking ballet classes. I had just begun piano lessons, which I considered much more exciting and important than ballet. (In hindsight, I wish I could have told her that I’d taken up martial arts, but that only happened 30 years later.)

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My immediate response was to mock Susan for doing ‘stupid things with pointy toes’. She was conventionally ‘feminine’ in the context of 1950s middle-class Sydney (Australia), and I wasn’t. In fact, Linda’s word ‘contempt’ captures my own feelings about Susan’s ballet endeavours. For better or for worse, I didn’t realize that my reaction set me even further apart from the clique that welcomed her and other ‘feminine’ girls. Being completely non-athletic at that age also sealed my fate as an ‘outsider’ in a school that had mandatory sport or PE classes four days per week. As these reflections suggest, resistance produces mixed feelings and unanticipated outcomes. Rejecting hegemonic femininity in these historically specific contexts was personally satisfying for Linda and for me – in fact, we both had clear memories of the incidents many years later – but our individual resistance did not change the social and cultural systems that produced rigid expectations of gender-appropriate behaviour and excluded us as non-conforming girls. Although there have been positive social changes in the last few decades, the challenges facing trans individuals in sport and in other social contexts are significantly more complex than either Linda or I, as cisgirls, faced.

The ‘Need to Belong’ The two personal examples above invoke the concepts of connection, belongingness and ‘need-to-belong’ that social psychologists began to develop in greater depth in the 1990s. Reviewing the existing work on attachment, hierarchy of needs and other relevant areas, Baumeister and Leary (1995, p. 497) concluded that ‘a need to belong is a fundamental human motivation’. However, they failed to explore how gendered and cultural expectations shape these needs. For example, Carol Gilligan’s (1982) pioneering work examined the ways in which socialization of girls and women led them to value ‘webs of connection’ and thus influenced their moral reasoning. In the sport context of the 1980s and 1990s, too, there was some evidence that girls and women valued fun and friendship somewhat more highly than winning and beating one’s opponent, while boys and men tended to prioritize winning (Lenskyj, 1994). Of relevance to questions of values, Indigenous anthropologists explain how the perspectives of Maoris (New Zealand Indigenous peoples) on the concept of community reach beyond western notions of individualism to value the ‘living web of the world’. Maori peoples promote a relational worldview: ‘I belong therefore I am’ or ‘I belong therefore I am, and so we become’ (Spiller et al., 2011, emphasis added). Relational and inclusive worldviews stand in stark contrast to western notions of individualism that animate sport as currently constituted. Cis athletes have the privilege of belonging and claiming an identity as an individual and as a member of a group, while trans, nonbinary and intersex athletes are deliberately, cruelly and often violently excluded from belonging and from becoming. As Greey (in Greey & Lenskyj, 2023, p.11) explained, ‘My own story and those of countless other athletes, trans and cisgender alike, suggests that sport can be crucial to experiences of gendered becoming and belonging’.

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Many trans athletes and allies call for sport to be reorganized in ways that are genuinely inclusive, changes that would require not only abandoning sex and gender categories based on flawed science but would also generate creative alternatives to the achievement model that dominates all levels of western sport (Lenskyj, 2020; Pielke, 2023; Travers, 2023). Contributors to this volume explore and document some of these alternatives.

Freedom to Be. . . Investigations into belongingness often fail to consider the converse of the ‘needto-belong’ – that is, the need to be different, the need to resist. For some, the ‘need to be different’ may manifest itself in an unequivocal rejection of binary thinking about gender and sex, by developing an identity that defies gender-based categorization, as exemplified by those who choose the pronouns they/them. Some key questions emerge: What happens to those children and adults who approach ‘belongingness’ from a different position, or to those who are not permitted to belong? How do they negotiate the contradictions and the ambivalence they feel? Do they want to be trailblazers or do they simply want to be accepted as team-mates and co-competitors? Do they want to change themselves in order to fit in, or do they want sport to change? In her 1985 publication, pioneering Canadian feminist scientist Ursula Franklin posed the question ‘Will women change technology or will technology change women?’ (Franklin, 1985). Short answer: the women who succeeded in male-dominated areas such as science and technology were unlikely to ‘rock the boat’, and if they did, they would soon discover the perils of doing so. The same prediction applied to sport: women who gained entry to decision-making positions in sport organizations were largely limited to making reform efforts from within (Lenskyj, 2003, Ch. 4). Now, in 2023, let us pose a similar question: Will trans athletes and their allies change sport, or will sport change trans athletes and their allies? The controversy over the related issue of intersex athletes’ eligibility suggests that sport will not change. When Caster Semenya challenged her exclusion from women’s sport, sport authorities required her to change her body through hormone treatment to lower her (endogenous) testosterone levels. She refused the treatment, and took the only other option available, by competing in middle-distance races instead of sprints. In other words, she had to change her training programme, and by extension, her body, to accommodate the discriminatory policy.

Deliberative Freedoms Legal scholar Sophia Moreau examined Semenya’s experiences in relation to the concept of ‘deliberative freedoms’, a concept that she explained as follows: . . .freedom to deliberate about one’s life. . .without having to treat certain traits (or other people’s assumptions about them) as costs

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and without having to live one’s life with these traits always before one’s eyes. (Moreau, 2020, p. 84, emphasis added) In Semenya’s words, ‘I don’t want to be someone people want me to be. I just want to be me’, while Dutee Chand, another intersex athlete whose eligibility was unfairly challenged on the grounds of high endogenous testosterone, said, ‘I am who I am’ (cited in Moreau, 2020, p. 80). The freedom not to have to think constantly about ‘certain traits’ is largely taken for granted by cis, heterosexual and gender-conforming women, and in sport, their right to participate in the women’s division is unlikely to be questioned. For women like Semenya and Chand, to have deliberative freedom would allow them to be their authentic selves. After all, they had lived their lives as girls/ women without question until their outstanding athletic performances attracted global attention – and suspicion. While trans women and men also express the desire to be their authentic selves, their situation is significantly different from that of intersex women, and, for them, deliberative freedom is arguably more difficult to attain because of the process of transitioning. In the public eye, amplified by mainstream and social media, their trans identities and aspects of their transition are likely to be seen as their most salient features (Campbell, 2021). Given this reality, some trans athletes may welcome the opportunity to speak publicly as advocates and educators – exemplars of trans pride – while others may want to experience sport as a safe and welcoming place where their trans identity is simply accepted. For nonbinary athletes, deliberative freedom is further complicated by the binary thinking that characterizes western society in general, and sport in particular. Even the so-called ‘pronoun debate’, specifically the use of ‘they/them’, remains contentious in 2023. By way of illustration, imagine a scenario where the questioner is intentionally making the person’s nonbinary appearance a ‘cost’ that they need to explain and justify, by asking them, ‘Are you male or female?’ To experience deliberative freedom, the nonbinary person may answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘neither’ or ‘both’, or may choose simply to ignore the question as irrelevant. To quote Layshia Clarendon (quoting poet Andrea Gibson), ‘my pronouns haven’t even been invented yet’ (WNBA’s Layshia Clarendon, 2021).

On Belonging: Why Inclusion Isn’t Enough Ali Durham Greey Participants in discussions about trans athletes tend to be polarized between those advocating for exclusion and inclusion. Certainly, inclusion is preferable to exclusion, when trans athletes are prohibited from competing; however, inclusion is not a sufficient objective. To experience the full benefits of sport, trans athletes must become full members, rather than simply being included. Consider, for example, the experience of Kelly [pseudonym] a varsity athlete. She is technically permitted to play, although she has had to assert her right to play multiple times

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in her varsity career. However, her teammates deny her full membership through social slights or microagressions on a regular basis. Without full and authentic membership on the team, the promise of Kelly’s inclusion rings hollow and Kelly’s experience is unfulfilling. Evelyn Nakano Glenn’s (2011) work offers insight into the importance of interpersonal interactions which signal belonging. Her work suggests that to experience the benefits of formal legal rights enabling inclusion, one must also receive recognition from community members. Glenn writes: Citizenship is not just a matter of formal legal status; it is a matter of belonging, which requires recognition by other members of the community. Community members participate in drawing the boundaries of citizenship and defining who is entitled to civil, political, and social rights by granting or withholding recognition. (2011, p. 3) Glenn distinguishes between citizenship as a formal legal status and what she terms ‘substantive citizenship,’ an experiential sense of belonging within one’s community. Although Glenn’s concept focuses specifically on citizenship within the nation state, it also offers insight into the limits of inclusion for trans athletes. Trans athletes’ belonging in sporting environments is influenced by both formal rules imposed by organizations as well as informal social interactions with teammates, coaches and other members of sporting communities. Belonging – as a concept and an experience – is not synonymous with inclusion. An athlete whose peers and coaches recognize and affirm their belonging will have a vastly different experience than an athlete who has been merely included. Inclusion – as I understand it – solely means that an athlete has not been excluded outright. Inclusion often translates into mere tokenism and grudging conformity to the ‘letter of the law’ rather than genuine acceptance and celebration of difference. Belonging, on the other hand, provides an athlete with a felt sense of mattering to and membership within the team or the sport. Trans athletes’ belonging necessitates more than token inclusion, it requires community recognition. Recognition is conferred through interactional gestures which signal another’s belonging. These can include gestures – spoken or unspoken – that communicate one is welcome, considered and a part of. Belonging is a relational and interactional status. One’s felt sense of belonging is secured and maintained through recognition provided by other community members. On the other hand, belonging can also be denied when community members do not provide recognition; and belonging can also be revoked, when community members withdraw the recognition they had previously provided.

Terminology • Trans people are those whose gender is not consistent with their gender

assignment at birth.

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• Nonbinary people’s gender identity and/or gender expression exists outside the

categories of man and woman. They may define their gender as between, beyond, or entirely separate from binary understandings of gender. • Trans girls/women are girls/women who were assigned male at birth, and trans boys/men are boys/men who were assigned female at birth.

Overview of Chapters Ali Durham Greey NOTE: The cut-off point for this book was 31 December 2022. Challenges that trans athletes and allies face, and the resistance that they mount against these challenges, are constantly evolving, and we hope to see these topics addressed in future publications. Contributors to Part 1 examine the broader context of trans athletes’ resistance. These chapters outline the challenging sociopolitical, institutional and policy contexts in which trans athletes’ resistance operates. Authors examine the ideologies embedded within modern sport, and present examples of trans-inclusion policies. In Chapter 2, C.B. Lucas and Matthew Hodler counter dominant discursive portrayals of trans women athletes by pointing to the ways in which sport is already and inherently unfair. Drawing on two case studies – cyclist Austin Killips and swimmer Lia Thomas – Lucas and Hodler examine the intersecting forms of oppression enacted upon trans women athletes’ bodies by modern sport structures: heterosexism, cisnormativity and white supremacy. The authors employ these case studies to illustrate how modern sport reproduces dominant medicalized narratives to construct limits around what constitutes acceptable transness. They argue that modern sport commits harm through denying opportunities for expansive gendered subjectivity. They advocate for resisting and rejecting modern sport’s regulatory practices and, instead, building queer futures, calling for reimagining and resisting sporting structures that take into account multiple ways of gendered being: ‘Transness is ephemeral, sport should be too’. In Chapter 3, CK Snyder examines how trans athletes navigate visibility and representation within an extreme right-wing political climate in the Global South. The focus of Snyder’s chapter is the Meninos Bons de Bola, ‘Soccer Star Boys’, a trans men’s futebol team. Drawing on photos of the team in their locker room, Snyder explains how the Meninos Bons de Bola resist the fascist Brazilian state through nudity at the same time as they carefully guard their visibility within a hostile sociopolitical climate. Focusing on two photographs of the team in the locker room, Snyder unpacks the resistance engendered by the exposure of these trans athletes’ bodies. The photographs capture the athlete’s vulnerability, strength, humanity and joy. Snyder points to the ways in which the Meninos Bons de Bola’s photographs contest the fascist violence and repression rampant in Brazilian Bolsonarism through images that insist on the players’ humanity and beauty. The team asserts that their bodies on the pitch and in the locker room are ‘art, activism, and resistance,’ and Snyder points to how the team uses futebol as

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an avenue to fight for trans justice. Snyder argues that, in the context of Bolsonarism and the daily violence this ideology inspires, the Meninos Bons de Bola have adopted a careful approach to trans resistance, one that emphasizes the importance of discernment and caution regarding the team’s visibility and representation. In Chapter 4, Storr, Posbergh and Bekker examine the Australian context for trans-inclusion sport policies. The authors argue that applying elite sport trans-inclusion policies to the community sport context is harmful and ineffective, since elite policies bar trans and gender diverse athletes – many of whom do not even aspire to compete at a high level – from the social and physical benefits of recreational community sport. The authors survey the Australian community sport policy context, noting that many community sport organizations prioritize the inclusion of athletes of all genders. However, they point out that the trans-inclusion policies of some community organizations actually function as trans-exclusion policies that were implemented as a result of aggressive anti-trans lobbying, a move that they refer to as creating ‘policy on the run’. They identify several barriers to the implementation of effective and inclusive trans policies and guidelines for sporting organizations. In Part 2, contributors draw on their firsthand experiences of being trans and nonbinary in the athletic arena. These chapters point to the complexity of trans athletes’ resistance at the individual level. They capture emotions ranging from disappointment and misery to humour and joy in trans athletes’ experiences. These chapters should not be seen as representative of a typical trans athlete experience, an experience which Lucas and Hodler (in Chapter 2) adeptly argue does not exist. Greey and Irving employ autoethnographic research methods to legitimize and communicate knowledge gleaned from lived experience. Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that draws directly on the researcher’s lived experience to improve understandings of social phenomena. Researcher reflexivity is crucial to autoethnography, whereby the researcher pays close attention to their reflections, relationships and emotions. Some in the social sciences have discredited autoethnography, labelling it ‘me-search’ a qualitative method lacking empiricism. It’s important to note that this critique of autoethnography often relies on positivist understandings of science that are not suited to qualitative methods. This positivist approach assumes that for research to be empirical, it must be objective and free from bias. As a result, the researcher is directed to locate themself at an objective distance from the researched, an analytic distance which is – of course – impossible within autoethnographic research methods. Feminist and critical race scholars, however, have challenged and critiqued the importance placed on analytic distance and objectivity. These scholars have argued that this positivist logic functions to centre cisgender, straight, white and male bodies as objective, while rendering Black, Indigenous, racialized bodies, as well as women and queer and trans people as biased (Collins, 2008; Haraway, 1988; Harris, 2021; Schilt, 2018). These marginalized bodies are marked by race, gender and sexuality and are unable to represent themselves as objective (code for white, straight and male). As a result, autoethnographic research methods resist positivist logics which uphold objectivity as an ideal or

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even an attainable goal for researchers. Using autoethnographic methods, the contributors to Part 2 make an epistemological statement: trans and nonbinary athlete experience is a valid source of knowledge. In Chapter 5, Dan Irving describes his experience as a trans man training for his first amateur fight. He describes how representations of boxing that characterize boxing solely as violent and aggressive miss the complexity of the sport. Irving points to how pugilistic violence is a ‘response to systemic gender, racial, sexual and economic oppression’. His account is funny and gut-wrenching, and it eloquently captures the experience of stepping into the sparring ring for the first time. Irving describes how his own passion for boxing was driven by an experience of being an outsider as a trans man; boxing gave him a ‘chance to release some pressure built up by a constant low-grade rage I carry’. Irving poignantly captures how pugilistic violence is not only driven by aggression and violence, but also by vulnerability, deep love and injustice. Irving introduces the concept of ‘healing justice’ through ‘exploring boxing as intimate and affective grounds for bearing witness to the pain and injury of the Other shaping their daily lives’. Healing justice, Irving suggests, involves ‘witnessing the pain, vulnerability and resilience of oneself and other boxers’. In Chapter 6, Ali Durham Greey provides an autoethnographic account of their experience as an elite boxer. The author considers how sport can facilitate gendered liberation and describes how the boxing ring functioned as a place of possibility for their expression of nonbinary masculinity. Boxing provided the author with an improbable ‘way out’ of a binary gender system that didn’t anticipate or account for their gender expression. Greey describes how through learning to box they advanced their violent potential (Jump, 2021) which had profound repercussions for the ease with which they carried themself through the world as well as their ability to access nonbinary masculinity. They expand on Gleaves and Lehrbach’s (2016) argument that competitive sport provides a crucial stage upon which our gendered stories unfold (See also, Lenskyj & Greey, 2023, Chapter 1). Drawing on memories from their boxing career, Greey argues ‘The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in competitive sport stay with us for a lifetime. These stories shape how we make sense of ourselves and others, and they are profoundly important’. Noguer and Larsen, in Chapter 7, use memory work and participant case analysis to analyze the experiences of the first author, as a trans man competing on a NCAA Divison I varsity Women’s Rowing team. The authors describe the mix of emotions Noguer (they/he) experienced training and competing: ‘love and hate, calmness and excitement, fulfillment and disappointment, gratitude and frustration’. The authors point to the emotional tension and anguish that arose for Noguer when they competed in a beloved sport in an environment that refused to affirm his gender. The authors illuminate the affective cost of competing within this environment: repeated experiences of being misgendered by coaches and teammates, alienating conversations and invasive and awkward questions. Noguer describes the experience of competing in a state that was governed by legislation that prohibited him from using the men’s washroom: ‘I did not want to race. I felt emotionally tired, but I still had to do it. . . All of those thoughts were

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going through my head on the way to the racecourse’. The authors conclude the chapter with concrete suggestions for how organizations like the NCAA can better support trans student athletes. The authors in Part 3 present case studies to illustrate how sport and physical activity can function simultaneously as an empowering and harmful space for trans, nonbinary and gender non-conforming athletes. These authors identify sport and physical activity as a site of joy and agency, and, significantly, as a site of resistance to the constraining and harmful binary gender structure of sport. Black feminist scholars contend that gender is never separate from race, and the chapters in this section point to how gendered expectations of masculinity and femininity are inextricably linked to race (including whiteness). In Chapter 8, Ravat explores the concept of embodied disobedience through an analysis of how nonbinary athletes challenge the gender binary in professional sports, centring WNBA player Layshia Clarendon in their analysis. Ravat points to Clarendon’s claim that ‘Being Black and Non-binary is my superpower’ to examine Clarendon’s intersectional resistance to racism and cisnormativity in sport regulation practices. For Ravat, the notion of a ‘third gender’ competition category is insufficient because it ultimately legitimizes the gender binary as natural, rather than a socially constructed binary inextricably linked to race. Through centring Layshia Clarendon’s experience as a Black nonbinary athlete, Ravat argues that the embodied disobedience of nonbinary athletes challenges and makes visible the limitations of the binary regulation of gender in sport. In Chapter 9, Boˇsnjak and Bridel examine trans and gender non-conforming people’s experiences in recreational sport and physical activity. Drawing on interviews with trans and gender non-conforming people, the authors illustrate how, despite the benefits of sport and physical activity, interviewees faced significant barriers based on the binary understandings of gender that shape the logics of sport spaces. Boˇsnjak and Bridel illustrate how the anxiety that these individuals face in locker rooms, as a result of repeated encounters where their gendered belonging is challenged, often leads them to avoiding sport spaces altogether. The authors also point to how sport and physical activity provided their interviewees with an embodied way to affirm their bodies and their gender. However, because of the binary organization of sport, the interviewees reported that they chose individual sports and weren’t able to access the community benefits of team sports. Boˇsnjak and Bridel conclude by pointing to the role that allies can play in improving trans and gender non-conforming people’s access to sport and physical activity spaces. They call for supporters to step beyond allyship and to act as ‘accomplices,’ advocates who put their own privilege on the line to challenge systemic oppression.

References Baumeister, R., & Leary, M. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.

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Campbell, R. (2021, September 19). A trans athlete’s guide to writing about trans athletes. Los Angeles Times. http://latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-09-19/transathletes-identities-are-not-all-about-medical-transitions Collins, P. H. (2008). Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (1st ed.). Routledge. Franklin, U. (1985). Will Women Change Technology or Will Technology Change Women? CRIAW Papers. CRIAW. Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice. Harvard University Press. Gleaves, J., & Lehrbach, T. (2016). Beyond fairness: The ethics of inclusion for transgender and intersex athletes. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 43(2), 311–326. Glenn, E. N. (2011). Constructing citizenship: Exclusion, subordination, and resistance. American Sociological Review, 76(1), 1–24. Greey, A., & Lenskyj, H. (2023). Conclusion. In A. Greey & H. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes (pp. 163–174). Emerald Publishing Limited. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. https://doi.org/10. 2307/3178066 Harris, J. L. (2021). Black on Black: The vilification of “me-search,” tenure, and the economic position of Black sociologists. Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, 4(2), 77–90. Jump, D. (2021). ‘Look who is laughing now’: Physical capital, boxing, and the prevention of repeat victimisation. Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 28, 1–19. https://doi. org/10.35295/OSLS.IISL/0000-0000-0000-1171 Lenskyj, H. (1994). Girl-friendly sport and female values. Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal, 3(1), 35–46. Lenskyj, H. (2003). Out on the Field: Gender, Sport and Sexualities. Women’s Press. Lenskyj, H. (2020). The Olympic Games: A Critical Approach. Emerald Publishing Limited. Lenskyj, H. J., & Greey, A. D. (2023). Introduction: The Binary World of Sport. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles. Emerald Publishing Limited. Moreau, S. (2020). Faces of Inequality. Oxford University Press. Pielke, R. (2023). Making sense of debate over transgender athletes in Olympic sports. In A. Greey & H. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes (pp. 31–43). Emerald Publishing Limited. Schilt, K. (2018). The ‘not sociology’ problem. In D. R. Compton, T. Meadow, & K. Schilt (Eds.), Other, Please Specify: Queer Methods in Sociology (pp. 37–50). University of California Press. Spiller, C., Erakovic, L., Henare, M., & Pio, E. (2011). Relational well-being and wealth: Maori business and an ethic of care. Journal of Business Ethics, 98, 153–169. Travers. (2023). ‘Female’ sport and testosterone panic. In A. Greey & H. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes (pp. 45–60). Emerald Publishing Limited. WNBA’s Layshia Clarendon has surgery. (2021, January 29). USA Today. http:// usatoday.com/story.sports/wnba/2021/01/29/wnbas-layshia-clarendon-has-surgeryto-remove-breasts/115416724/

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Part 1 Trans Athletes’ Resistance: The Sociocultural Context

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Chapter 2

Trans Athletes and the Limits of Recognition, Visibility and Intelligibility C.B. Lucas and Matthew R. Hodler

Abstract Sport co-produces our notions of sex, gender and sexuality. Sport policies based on inclusion demand trans athletes become visible. This creates a problem within sport’s hierarchical gender order, and trans athletes’ bodies become comprehensible only through mobility from one sex/gender to the other – literally the embodiment of movement through a static gendered space. In this chapter, we examine the contradictory expectations placed on trans athletes to be visible within heterosexist, white supremacist ‘regimes of looking’ (Fleetwood, 2011). Our purpose is twofold: (1) to critically examine the construction of transness through white racial frames and (2) to grapple with the inherent harmfulness of sport. We ask why trans people would want to participate in an institution that actively limits opportunities for expansive subjectivity, ultimately concluding that the potential for queer futures lies in the very construction of limits themselves. We forward a belief in what sport could be when intentionally created through queer world building. We highlight teams, leagues and spaces that have developed processes that work against dominant forms of medicolegal recognition and visibility politics. Keywords: Queer futures; transgender participation in sport; re-imagining sport; inclusion; trans intelligibility and sport; regimes of looking Invariably, whenever a trans woman begins to compete in an organized sport, a debate is triggered about whether or not she (as a stand in for all trans women) should be allowed to compete in that sport. Questions about biological advantages and fairness such as does she have some sort of inherent advantage due to having gone through testosterone-driven puberty? And, if so, how soon will we see an invasion of ‘biological males’ in women’s sports? are at the forefront of this debate

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(see Chapter 11, ‘Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles’). Predictably, calls for re-examining inclusive practices and support for more exclusionary policies that allegedly insure women’s sport is a ‘level playing field’ soon follow. It is our contention that these debates around the fairness of trans women’s participation in women’s sports limit our imagination for what both sport and transness are/can be. The whole purpose of competition is to separate and sort bodies/performances; modern sport is inherently unfair. The current mode of governing trans people’s participation in modern sport is through policies that demand trans people conform to ideological meanings of fair sport. In order to maintain fairness, modern elite sport rules make trans people visible; intelligible only through medicalized and pathologized narratives. Unimaginative devotion to this particular mode of fairness reveals the limitations of the dominant discursive constructions of both sport and transness. This chapter is in conversation with scholars of trans, queer and sport studies who examine the multitudinous ways trans subjectivity and/or sporting participation are discursively constructed (Bey, 2022; Gill-Peterson, 2018; Gossett & Huxtable, 2017; Henne, 2014; Schultz, 2011; Snorton, 2017; Sykes, 2006). We use vignettes of two white trans women athletes (cyclist Austin Killips and swimmer Lia Thomas) to examine the contradictory expectations placed on trans athletes by heterosexist, white supremacist modern sport structures. Our purpose is twofold: (1) to critically examine the construction of transness and (2) to grapple with the inherent harmfulness of modern sport. In order to be included in modern sport, trans athletes must become visible by publicly declaring their transness, undergoing specific types of transition and providing supporting medical documentation. But, there is no one trans experience and no one way to transition. Rules that require trans women who want to participate in competitive sport to transition in a particular way under a particular governing body’s rules work at the discursive level to narrow and standardize meanings of transness. And despite their bodily compliance in transitioning in these prescribed ways, trans women’s presence is questioned and attacked. We contend that modern sport itself is harmful. Further, modern sport’s logic of ‘inclusion’ amplifies the harm done to trans women athletes by actively limiting opportunities for expansive subjectivity. We envision a queer sporting future that reimagines the hierarchical, anti-democratic, capitalist-centric model of sport that excludes people in the first place.

Austin Killips Austin Killips’ 2021–2022 professional cyclocross season ended with a broken collarbone in a crash at the World Cup race in Namur, Belgium (Killips, 2022). Despite it being cut short, she had a successful season with multiple top-15 finishes. Cyclocross is a type of off-road cycling race that includes a mixture of technical challenges, surface changes and fast-paced action. Riders complete several laps of a closed course, and races typically last 45–60 minutes. Its popularity in the United States has remained steady over the past several decades, even

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if it has not matched the levels of popularity in Europe. A typical race weekend in the United States will include several days of racing for amateurs and professionals alike, resulting in a festive atmosphere celebrating bikes and the people who ride them. US cycling competition levels for women’s cyclocross range from Level 1: expert to Level 4: novice, and a rider can move up category levels (Cats) by earning points in races. Killips started riding cyclocross in 2019 in Chicago and quickly demonstrated her ability by advancing from Cat 4 to Cat 2. With a sponsorship from the Pratt Racing team for the 2021 season, Killips raced the inaugural United States Cyclocross (USCX) Series as a professional and became the first known trans woman to start a UCI World Cup race (Pham, 2022). In an interview with cyclocross media site CXHairs, Killips said that the cyclocross community had been mostly supportive of her racing (Schuster, 2021), but she eventually became a target of anti-trans harassment as the season wore on. A group calling themselves ‘Save Women’s Sports’ protested Killips’ participation in the USA Cyclocross Championships held outside Chicago in December 2021. Carrying banners that read ‘say no to males competing as females’ and ‘woman 5 adult human female’, they also reportedly verbally harassed Killips on each lap. The group again protested at the Cyclocross World Championships in January 2022, appearing on the live broadcast coverage.

Lia Thomas In December 2021, University of Pennsylvania fifth-year swimmer Lia Thomas set school, meet and/or pool records in all three of her wins at the Zippy Invitational in Akron, Ohio, USA (Sutherland, 2021). Because the Ivy League shut down sports for the period 2020–2021 due to the global pandemic, this was Thomas’s first semester swimming for the women’s team after nearly 30 months on hormone replacement therapy (HRT), in compliance with the NCAA rules requiring trans women to undergo at least 1 year of testosterone suppression treatment. By the beginning of 2022, she ranked among the top eight nationally (Sanchez, 2022). Both swimming-centric and mainstream media began to cover her, often within a broader anti-trans framework. Due in part to this media attention, the NCAA changed their policy in mid-January 2022, ceding control over trans eligibility policies to each sport’s National Governing Bodies (e.g. USA Swimming). However, the NCAA did not enact USA Swimming’s new, more stringent and exclusionary trans participation policy because ‘implementing additional changes at this time could have unfair and potentially detrimental impacts on schools and student-athletes intending to compete in 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championships’ (NCAA, 2022). Despite these last-ditch efforts to create more structural obstacles for her inclusion, Thomas was eligible to compete in the 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championships (see Chapter 11, Volume 1). By early March, Thomas had become a target of anti-trans activists and many self-proclaimed women’s sports advocates. As the media coverage and anti-trans

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activist actions escalated, the women’s NCAA championship received more attention than it typically gets. Thomas’ win in the 500-yard freestyle was a flashpoint; while she did not dominate in any conventional manner (she set no national, collegiate, pool or meet records), her victory was framed as controversial with her body allegedly serving as evidence of unfair advantages. The same anti-trans group ‘Save Women’s Sports’ loudly protested her participation. Thomas swam two more events over the weekend, finishing tied for fifth in the 200-yard freestyle and eighth in the 100-yard freestyle (Sports Illustrated, 2022). Her performances trended on social media and became a talking point for right-wing politicians amidst a continuing cascade of anti-trans legislation in US states.

Modern Sport: Who Would Want to Be Included in It? Both Killips and Thomas are white trans women competing in sports seen as individual sports. As we will argue, a trans woman is an ideal villain for activists claiming to support women’s sport. There are real problems within women’s sport, such as widespread sexual harassment and abuse, emotionally abusive coaching, lack of resources, comparatively little media attention, disproportionately low levels of coaching and leadership opportunities for women and unequal pay for equal work (see Schultz et al., Volume 1). However, these structural issues are framed through individualized responsibility narratives that value individualized solutions. Trans women’s participation in sport, therefore, becomes the personal trouble that replaces the public issues in modern sport (see Ingham, 1985). These two case studies illustrate the limited and limiting dominant discourses surrounding trans participation in sport. Further, they demonstrate how modern sport works ideologically to construct dominant trans narratives and shape cultural imagination of what transness is. This discursive process occurs through the interconnected ideologies of sex essentialism, white supremacy and colonial racial ideology. The answer to who counts as trans depends on the binary logics of sporting ability, athleticism and physicality. Elite competitive sport in the United States encourages a win-at-all-cost philosophy, aggression/violence and meritocratic ideologies that obscure the processes and effects of racism, heterosexism and capitalism. Professional cyclocross and NCAA swimming fall within this type of sporting system. They both have hierarchical organizational structures where administrators, sponsors and coaches have (and repeatedly abuse) overwhelming access to power. Jay Coakley identifies this sporting structure as the ‘power and performance model’ (Donnelly & Coakley, 2002), a model part and parcel of late-capitalist modernism that creates scarcity of resources, funding and decision-making power. Under these conditions, high performance/elite sport protects those at the top of hierarchical systems/organizations and harms athletes at the bottom. Foundational to modern sport and the power and performance model that governs it is the ideological myth that sport is a ‘level playing field’ – the myth

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that, out on that field/cycling track/pool, all is equal. Indeed, in some cases, it is true: the swimmer in lane four has the same distance to swim in the same water as the swimmer in lane six. However, the swimmer in lane four might swim for a team that practices in a state-of-the-art facility with funding for a nutritionist, a masseuse, a weightlifting coach and an event-specific coach, while the swimmer in lane six swims for a team that does not offer similar resources (see Hodler & Lucas-Carr, 2016). Such inequitable resource distribution is quite common in modern sport and erased through the ubiquity of the ‘level playing field’ ideology. Athletes participating under this model often have very little space to exercise agency or power. These systems are hierarchically organized such that athletes are often made into ‘docile bodies’ to be coached, managed and/or engineered to optimal sporting performance (Shogan, 1999). As Donnelly and Coakley (2002) argue, athletes are encouraged to make achievement goals alongside coaches, but they often have little say in their actual day-to-day training regimen, hiring and firing of their coaches or resource allocation. Additionally, because of the intense focus on competition, they are faced with sporting discourses that promote violence as necessary to be successful (Messner, 2002). They are encouraged to do violence to their own body and are lauded for enduring pain inflicted upon them by others (Messner, 2002). Furthermore, success is defined solely through victory, resulting in competitors being understood as a dehumanized enemy to vanquish. In this model, an athlete does not compete with a fellow athlete, they compete against an opponent. Because sport reifies capitalist white supremacist heteropatriachies, women’s teams experience serious systemic issues including underfunding, lack of women coaches and administrators, gatekeeping of resources and sexual and physical abuse (Allison, 2018; Birrell & Theberge, 1994; Brackenridge, 1997; Musto et al., 2017). Debates around these issues, fuelled by capitalist logics of scarcity, promote individualized problems and solutions. For example, in women’s sports, individually successful women are celebrated in the media as inspirations, and the systemic issues in women’s sport are ignored or painted as simple obstacles to be overcome with hard work and dedication (Hodler & Lucas-Carr, 2016; McClearen, 2022). To understand the rhetoric surrounding trans women’s participation in sport, particularly discourses that frame trans women as invaders and cheaters who are stealing opportunities from cis women (Lucas & Newhall, 2018), scholars and practitioners must examine the history of trans narratives and the construction of transness in US culture.

Trans Intelligibility and the White-Racial Frame Trans studies scholars use Judith Butler’s concept of ‘cultural intelligibility’ to describe the meanings of transness and to examine the historical set of conditions that made trans subjectivity comprehensible and visible (Gill-Peterson, 2018; Snorton, 2017; Vipond, 2019). While people who we might now call trans have existed for as long as people have existed, meanings of transness are neither universal nor fixed. In the United States, trans life narratives, recognition and

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intelligibility are grounded in colonial logics of a racialized gender binary (Snorton, 2017). Dominant meanings of transness are rooted in the mid-twentieth century Western medicalization of trans people (Meyerowitz, 2002) and are embedded in discursive formations bound by whiteness and capitalism (Bey, 2022; Snorton, 2017). In 2012, gender identity disorder was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Despite formal depathologization, pathologization remains the dominant framework for understanding transness and trans people in the United States (Stryker, 2017). Medicolegal processes stemming from the establishment of official diagnoses and treatment protocols in the 1960s do not merely create categories to classify pre-existing people but rather re-produce entire ways of imagining what it means to be trans and who counts as trans. Access to care did and still does depend upon whether or not clinicians believe patients can convincingly perform their ‘new’ gender in a white heteronormative manner (Stryker, 2017). Transness was and continues to be subjected to what Nicole Fleetwood calls the ‘regimes of looking’ (2011); intelligibility depends on trans people presenting themselves in ‘respectable’ ways inherent to the white racial frame. Through their presentation and behaviour, trans women must prove their transness to distrustful medical gatekeepers, reinforcing the idea that (un) acceptable transness can be seen. As such, trans women face rhetorical castigation as evil deceivers (Bettcher, 2014; Serano, 2020) with their bodies marked as monstrous (Hale, 1998). Further, sport, physical activity and ‘rough-and-tumble play’ were literally written into the 1960s diagnostic criteria. Trans women had to disavow any interest in sport and express disgust with any athleticism their body displayed (Adams, 2013; Stryker, 2017). The subjectivity of trans women who want to play sport is therefore contested, and they are cast as evil deceivers looking to take advantage of women in sport. And because trans intelligibility relies on integration into respectable white regimes of looking, trans women’s athletic bodies are cast as visible proof of their cheating and deception (Lucas & Newhall, 2018; Sykes, 2006). In a kind of ‘pornographic fascination’, trans women athletes’ bodies are discussed and policed, marked as threateningly freakish yet open for dissection by voyeuristic questions and gazes (Gossett & Huxtable, 2017). Anti-trans groups weaponize simplistic understandings of biology to target trans women athletes. Their condemnable actions and language rely on and reinforce the very same pathologized meanings of transness reproduced by trans inclusive sport policies. In fact, trans inclusive policies of modern sport serve up trans women’s bodies for visual inspection and subjugation to the regimes of looking. To compete, Killips and Thomas must become visible by publicly declaring their transness. This process invites reactionary politics and puts them directly in harmful situations because of their visibility (Page, 2017). Modern sport policies don’t just govern pre-existing people. They create the boundaries of trans intelligibility and the categories for people to be sorted into. Not only is transness medicalized, it is also sportified.

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Boundary Policing: Women’s Sport, White Supremacist Purity and Limits of Trans Visibility In the past several decades, trans participation has been promoted primarily through the politics of visibility and inclusion. Accessing competitive sports in the US demands visibility from trans women; they must declare their transness in order to compete. Then, they must conform to prescribed narratives and bodily expectations set forth by governing bodies. Media coverage of trans athletes revolves solely around their bodies, with an objectifying focus on trans women’s hormonal pasts (Lucas & Newhall, 2018). Participation policies further this dehumanization by overtly framing trans women’s bodies as problematic and in need of alteration. The same sex-gender duality that enabled to be intelligible transness forecloses the ability for trans women to be accepted as women within the inflexible structures of modern sport. Proponents of women’s sport have long defended the value and need for women’s sport, so the notion that it needs protection is part of its history. This nexus of modern sport being a part of the gender binary project, the rising popularity of women’s sport that are also seen as constantly under attack, and the long-advocated-for necessity of women-only spaces in a patriarchal society, make women’s sports an ideal site for policing women’s bodies. Trans women are vulnerable to what Page (2017) describes as cycles of visibility and reactionary violence where they have repeatedly been cast as the bogey(wo)man stealing opportunities from cis women. Unfortunately, modern sport has yet to account for the diversity of sex, gender, and human physicality. The history of women’s sport is also a history of exclusion, paranoia, and accusations of cheating (see Cahn, 2015; Lenskyj, 2013). Fellow competitors, coaches, and governing bodies use visual evidence to support the accusations: cheaters are too fast, too muscular, and too athletic. These accusations have disproportionately affected Black women and women from the global south as racialized gender ideologies paint them as more naturally athletic and capable of hard physical labour (Brown, 2015; Schultz, 2011). Meanwhile, the fears and constant policing of sexed and gendered boundaries work to infantilise girls and women in sport, reifying the notion that they are in need of protection while also reinforcing the hierarchical gender binary (McClearen, 2022). At the crux of the issue is the collision between white supremacist ideologies that uphold white femininity as pure and in constant need of protection and discourses that construct trans women as always already physically superior to cis women. Trans women are cast as villainous deceivers while white women inhabit their position of perpetual victimhood. This was demonstrated in 2014 when the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) voted to adopt a policy which governs trans participation in sport. Before the board meeting in October, the ultra-conservative Minnesota Child Protection League took out a full-page ad in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. ‘A male wants to shower beside your 14-year-old daughter. . .Are YOU ok with that?’ (Child Protection League, 2014, C18). Thomas’s imagined body was used to foment similar concerns when an anti-trans

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activist group claimed that her presence in the women’s locker room violated university and state anti-sexual harassment and violence statutes (Lord, 2022). After Ren´ee Richards won a lawsuit enabling her to play in the 1977 US Open women’s draw, a moral panic ensued with media circulating so-called floodgate theories – purporting that big, hulking trans women would begin taking over (white) women’s sport (Birrell & Cole, 1990; Pieper, 2012). This cycle repeats itself whenever a trans woman enters a sporting space, with visceral anti-trans reaction following. Most recently, nearly 45 years later, after both Killips and Thomas competed. Many self-proclaimed and opportunistic protectors of women’s sport depicted Killips and Thomas as the lead of an inevitable army of trans women (or ‘biological males’ as they put it) who would dominate ‘adult human females’ (cis women), heralding the end of women’s sports. While both Killips and Thomas were subjected to this type of anti-trans bodily focus, the relative popularity of NCAA swimming made Thomas a bigger target. For example, the UK’s Daily Mail published voyeuristic photos of her taken by a photographer hiding in the bushes (Ashford & Cohen, 2022). Her body was scrutinized and Othered, despite her broad muscular shoulders and relatively flat chest looking quite similar to other elite swimmers – for example, an anti-trans activist identified an image of cis woman Olympian Katie Ledecky as having a ‘very male build’ who ‘should compete with the. . .males’ in the wake Thomas’s success (PinkNews, 2022; see Chapter 11, Volume 1 for additional discussion of this media coverage). Trans women continue to be caught in no-win situations where they are harassed, demonized, and dehumanized. Despite the fact that they are more likely to be the victims of violence than perpetrators, trans women athletes are more likely to be depicted as the scary monster lurking in bathrooms to harm (white) women and children and framed as individualized villains whose eradication will sufficiently protect cis women athletes and solve the issues of inequity plaguing women’s sport (Lucas & Newhall, 2018). Getting rid of trans women, of course, will not solve the issues endemic to modern sport for the same reasons that inclusion and visibility politics will not adequately provide space for trans and gender expansive people to participate in sport: it does not change the fundamentally flawed and violent structure of modern sport itself.

Building Queer Futures The general push for trans participation in sport has been through strategies of inclusion, a model demanding trans athletes comply with policies developed by cis-centric governing bodies. Trans inclusion is framed as a human-rights issue where an individual’s access to sport is protected under anti-discrimination clauses and rights-based participation policies. As we noted above, Killips and Thomas are included in their respective sports, but not necessarily on their terms and not necessarily in a way that changes modern competitive sporting structures. The use of human-rights language does not change the structure of sport, instead it demands that trans people literally change themselves in order to fit into the existing categories. Trans women comply in the name of fairness by following the

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rules; and still, they are branded as cheaters and anti-trans actors cry ‘unfair’. In short, modern sport’s attempts to include trans women merely reproduce narrow forms of intelligibility. We advocate for moving away from debating the intricacies of policies governing trans participation and towards questioning the very structures that demand particular, fixed versions of transness (and then harm athletes who follow the policies). Inspired by Muñoz (2009), our project imagines possibilities for more expansive and less harmful futures, an ongoing process of becoming, always on the horizon, not-yet-here. Building queer futures and opening space for expansive transness are part of a world-making project achieved through resistance, interrogation of power structures, and redistribution of resources. It is a doubled process: utopian imagination and concrete action in the here-and-now (Lucas & Hodler, 2018; Muñoz, 2009). This process of building queer futures parallels participant-centred social justice work within sport that promotes democratic processes and values competition with others instead of against others. Reimagined sporting spaces focus on athletes’ well-being, allowing for the expansion of their identities, relationships, and experiences (Donnelly & Coakley, 2002). Because gender and sport are co-constructed and depend on each other for coherence, building queer futures necessitates expanding what counts as trans alongside reimagining sport. Lia Thomas’s sport of swimming is deeply embedded in whiteness and the power and performance model; it is tightly regulated by interdependent and interconnected governing bodies that impose eligibility and codes of conduct onto all competitive swimmers’ bodies (see Hodler, 2018; Mellis & Hodler, 2021). In our opinion, it is a sport less amenable to building queer futures. Cycling, on the other hand, has robust amateur participation through a network of independent clubs and organizations. Molly Cameron, a popular trans woman rider, prefers to race in the men’s category since she came out in the mid-2000s. In an attempt to be inclusive, USA cycling changed its rules to permit athletes to participate in the gender category listed on their driver’s licence in 2015 (Hurford, 2016). Cameron, therefore, was barred from competing in the men’s 401 category at the 2016 USA Cyclocross Nationals because her gender listed on her driver’s licence is female. Prominent riders and fans put public pressure on USA Cycling, and Cameron was able to register and race in her usual division (Men’s 401). She has since founded the RIDE group, whose aim is to bring together and advocate for LGBTQ2S1 cyclists. They have recently been involved in discussions within the cycling industry and have mounted a public campaign encouraging riders to wear RIDE wristbands featuring the trans flag. Newhall (2021) argues that the decentralized, de-hierarchized structures of club cycling allow for independent and democratic decision making that centres trans athletes. It is the organizing work of cyclists and independent teams like the STKD!!! Racing team and the Stamina Racing Collective that continue to push USA Cycling to amend their policies and practices. Indeed, club and recreational teams occupy a unique position for redistributing power, though it is certainly not a guaranteed outcome. The decentralized nature

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of club organizations does provide the opportunity to enact democratic processes and opens space for grappling with queerness, expansive conceptualizations of gender, and trans participation. Broad (2001) outlines this process within rugby, while Travers and Deri (2011) and Lenskyj (2003) examine the ways that lesbian softball leagues offer a model of queering sport by shifting away from assumptions of shared biological commonality towards cultural affinity – rejecting the sex essentialist paradigm that governs trans participation policies in modern sport. Explicitly grounded in feminist and queer principles, grassroots development of roller derby is another example of how groups reimagine sport and transness. In 2015, independent member leagues and teams within the women’s flat track derby association (WFTDA) utilized democratic processes to reject their own trans inclusion policy. The policy, first enacted in 2011, included language about medical transition and prescribed hormone levels. Together they pushed for broader and more expansive definitions of womanhood (Becker, 2018). We highlight these previous examples not to hold them up as exemplary and universal; they have their own issues around class, race and racism (see Adjepong, 2017). Instead, we use these examples to imagine the worlds that are possible – worlds that can allow trans women athletes to flourish. While inclusion models are celebrated and lauded, they simultaneously reinforce and make invisible the violent structures of sport. Eschewing modern sport structures and policies of inclusion will allow for rearticulating expansive meanings of transness and building sporting spaces that are more democratic and less harmful. The groups we have highlighted join a long history of people working to build queer futures of sport where trans women compete in a variety of ways, on their own terms. Rather than privileging the rigidity of modern sport, these groups crack open fissures in sport’s overdetermined façade. The realities of trans women’s experiences demand more flexible sporting structures that can account for multiple ways of being. Transness is ephemeral; sport should be too.

References Adams, M. L. (2013). No taste for rough-and-tumble play: Sport discourses, the DSM, and the regulation of effeminacy. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 19(4), 515–543. Adjepong, A. (2017). “We’re, like, a cute rugby team”: How whiteness and heterosexuality shape women’s sense of belonging in rugby. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 52(2), 209–222. Allison, R. (2018). Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women’s Professional Soccer. Rutgers University Press. Ashford, B., & Cohen, S. (2022, January 5). Exclusive: ‘It’s the calm before the storm.’ Trans UPenn swimmer Lia Thomas and teammates set aside their differences to train for final home meet of season following outcry over her record-breaking feats. Daily Mail. https://www.dailyadvent.com/gb/news/84145ec714746ba9a68b550535 2754b6-EXCLUSIVE-Its-the-calm-before-the-storm-Trans-UPenn-swimmer-LiaThomas-and-teammates-set-aside-their-differences-to-train-for-final-home-meetof-the-season-following-outcry-over-her-recordbreaki

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Becker, S. (2018). Contesting and Constructing Gender, Sexuality, and Identity in Women’s Roller Derby. UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones. Bettcher, T. M. (2014). Trapped in the wrong theory: Rethinking trans oppression and resistance. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 39(2), 383–406. Bey, M. (2022). Black Trans Feminism. Duke University Press. Birrell, S., & Cole, C. L. (1990). Double fault: Renee Richards and the construction and naturalization of difference. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7, 1–21. Birrell, S., & Theberge, N. (1994). Ideological control of women in sport. In Women and Sport: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (pp. 341–359). Human Kinetics. Brackenridge, C. (1997). ‘He owned me basically. . .’: Women’s experience of sexual abuse in sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 32(2), 115–130. Broad, K. L. (2001). The gendered unapologetic: Queer resistance in women’s sport. Sociology of Sport Journal, 18, 181–204. Brown, L. E. C. (2015). Sporting space invaders: Elite bodies in track and field, a South African context. South African Review of Sociology, 46(1), 7–24. Cahn, S. K. (2015). Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Women’s Sport. University of Illinois Press. Child Protection League. (2014, September 28). [Advertisement]. Minneapolis Star-Tribune. C18. Donnelly, P., & Coakley, J. (2002). The Role of Recreation in Promoting Social Inclusion. Laidlaw Foundation. Fleetwood, N. (2011). Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. University of Chicago Press. Gill-Peterson, J. (2018). Trans of colour critique before transsexuality. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 606–620. Gossett, C., & Huxtable, J. (2017). Existing in the world: Blackness at the edge of trans visibility. In R. Gossett, E. A. Stanley, & J. Burton (Eds.), Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (pp. 39–56). The MIT Press. Hale, C. J. (1998). Tracing a ghostly memory in my throat: Reflections of Ftm feminist voice and agency. In T. Digby (Ed.), Men Doing Feminism (pp. 99–129). Routledge. Henne, K. (2014). The “science” of fair play in sport: Gender and the politics of testing. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 39(3), 787–812. Hodler, M. R. (2018). The $100-million dollar man: Michael Phelps, the Olympic system, and USA swimming’s shifts in “eligibility”. Sport History Review, 49(1), 82–100. Hodler, M. R., & Lucas-Carr, C. (2016). “The mother of all comebacks” a critical analysis of the fitspirational comeback narrative of Dara Torres. Communication and Sport, 4(4), 442–459. Hurford, M. (2016, January 4). Molly Cameron and USA cycling confront trans awareness. Bicycling. https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20006598/molly-cameronand-usa-cycling-confront-trans-awareness/ Ingham, A. G. (1985). From public issue to personal trouble: Well-being and the fiscal crisis of the state. Sociology of Sport Journal, 2(1), 43–55. Killips, A. (2022, May 7). What a Body Can Do. Estro Junkie. https://estrojunkie. substack.com/p/what-can-a-body-do?s5w

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Lenskyj, H. (2003). Out on the Field: Gender, Sport, and Sexualities. Women’s Press. Lenskyj, H. (2013). Gender Politics and the Olympic Industry. Palgrave Macmillan. Lord, C. (2022, February 22). Indecent exposure laws cited in letter to U.S. legal authorities highlights litigation threat to sports & college bosses blind to women’s rights in transgender debate. StateofSwimming.com. https://www.stateofswimming. com/indecent-exposure-laws-cited-in-letter-to-u-s-legal-authorities-highlightslitigation-threat-to-sports-college-bosses-blind-to-womens-rights-in-transgenderdebate/ Lucas, C. B., & Hodler, M. R. (2018). #TakeBackFitspo: Building queer futures in/ through social media. In New Sporting Femininities (pp. 231–251). Palgrave Macmillan. Lucas, C. B., & Newhall, K. (2018). Out of the frame: How sports media shapes trans narratives. In R. Magrath (Ed.), LGBT Athletes and Sports Media (pp. 99–124). Palgrave-MacMillan. McClearen, J. (2022). “If you let me play”: Girls’ empowerment and transgender exclusion in sports. Feminist Media Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2022. 2041697 Mellis, J., & Hodler, M. (2021, February 6). Klete Keller is not an aberration; USA swimming has a racism problem. Tropics of Meta. https://tropicsofmeta.com/2021/ 02/06/klete-keller-is-not-an-aberration-usa-swimming-has-a-racism-problem/ Messner, M. A. (2002). Taking the Field: Women, Men, and Sports (Vol. 4). University of Minnesota Press. Meyerowitz, J. (2002). How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press. Muñoz, J. E. (2009). Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. NYU Press. Musto, M., Cooky, C., & Messner, M. A. (2017). “From fizzle to sizzle!” Televised sports news and the production of gender-bland sexism. Gender and Society, 31(5), 573–596. NCAA. (2022, February 10). CSMAS subcommittee recommends no additional changes to testosterone threshold for trans women at 2022 women’s swimming and diving championships. NCAA Media Center. https://www.ncaa.org/news/2022/2/ 10/media-center-csmas-subcommittee-recommends-no-additional-changes-totestosterone-threshold-for-trans-women-at-2022-womens-swimming-and-divingchampionships.aspx Newhall, K. (2021). Mostly what we do is ride bikes”: A case study of cycling, subculture, and transgender policy. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 8(3), 349–367. Page, M. M. (2017). One from the vaults: Gossip, access, and trans history-telling. In R. Gossett, E. A. Stanley, & J. Burton (Eds.), Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (pp. 135–146). The MIT Press. Pham, T. (2022, September 22). Europeans dominate first USCX weekend at GoCross. CX Magazine. https://www.cxmagazine.com/europeans-dominate-first-uscxweekend-at-virginias-blue-ridge-go-cross-2022-series-standings Pieper, L. P. (2012). Gender regulation: Renee Richards revisited. International Journal of the History of Sport, 29, 675–690.

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PinkNews. (2022, March 21). Watching a transphobe own themselves online is like watching a baby take its first steps. Except instead of steps, it’s [Image] [Status update]. Facebook. https://m.facebook.com/pinknews/photos/a.101501412 68066518/10160364890726518/ Sanchez, R. (2022, March 3). “I am Lia”: The trans swimmer dividing America tells her story. Sports Illustrated. https://www.si.com/college/2022/03/03/lia-thomaspenn-swimmer-transgender-woman-daily-cover Schultz, J. (2011). Caster Semenya and the “question of too”: Sex testing in elite women’s sport and the issue of advantage. Quest, 63(2), 228–243. Schuster, Z. (2021, October 20). In first world cup, Austin Killips is more than just a bike racer. CXHairs Bulletin. https://cxhairs.substack.com/p/in-first-world-cupaustin-killips?s5r Serano, J. (2020). Autogynephilia: A scientific review, feminist analysis, and alternative ‘embodiment fantasies’ model. The Sociological Review, 68(4), 763–778. Shogan, D. (1999). The Making of High-Performance Athletes. University of Toronto Press. Snorton, C. R. (2017). Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. University of Minnesota Press. Staff, Sports Illustrated. (2022, March 20). Lia Thomas finishes eight in 100 final to close out collegiate career. Sports Illustrated. https://www.si.com/college/2022/03/ 20/lia-thomas-finishes-eighth-100-final-ncaa-championships Stryker, S. (2017). Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution. Seal Press. Sutherland, J. (2021, December 10). Penn’s Lia Thomas opens up on journey, transition to women’s swimming. SwimSwam. https://swimswam.com/penns-liathomas-opens-up-on-journey-transition-to-womens-swimming/ Sykes, H. (2006). Transsexual and transgender policies in sport. Women in Sport and Physical Activity Journal, 15(1), 3–13. Travers, A., & Deri, J. (2011). Transgender inclusion and the changing face of lesbian softball leagues. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 46(4), 488–507. Vipond, E. (2019). Becoming culturally (un)intelligible: Exploring the terrain of trans life writing. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies, 34(1), 19–43.

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Chapter 3

The Locker Room Politics of the Meninos Bons de Bola and the Rise of the Right in Brazil* CK Snyder

Abstract This chapter examines the locker room practices of Brazil’s first transexual (their term) men’s amateur soccer team, the Meninos Bons de Bola (MBB), or Soccer Star Boys. Drawing on a photo shoot with the MBB inside the locker room, and on conversations with photographer Isabel Abreu as well as members of the team, this chapter explores the debates surrounding queer and trans body politics amidst the rise of the right in Brazil and the Americas. Taken in 2017 and released in 2018, the photo series capture a moment of political transition in Brazil; the images are taken after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff and her socialist Workers’ Party and before the election of ultra-rightwing candidate Jair Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro rose to power, in part, by positioning himself against so-called ‘gender ideology’ and attacking marginalized populations, including LGBTQIA1 people. Bolsonarismo and its followers are politically fascist; they believe changing gender norms are linked to Brazil’s perceived decline; they claim these shifting norms are humiliating, and respond with nationalism and violence. In this climate, the MBB have shifted their approach to trans politics by becoming more discerning about the teams’ visibility and representation. Analysing both the images and their context, this chapter suggests that the Meninos’ experiences highlight the connections between political fascism and what queer sport theorist Brian Pronger refers to as Body Fascism. The MBB contest such forms of repression through strategic uses of nudity and through representational choices that insist on the player’s humanity and beauty. By asserting that their bodies on the pitch and in the locker room is ‘art, *

Parts of this chapter have been published in the The Latin American Research Review, issue 58-3, 2023.

Trans Athletes’ Resistance, 29–42 Copyright © 2024 CK Snyder Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited doi:10.1108/978-1-80382-363-820231003

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CK Snyder activism and resistance’ (the team’s tagline), the MBB fight for trans justice in and through futebol. Keywords: Brazil; football/futebol/soccer; trans men; Bolsonarismo; Meninos Bons de Bola; locker room

I first met Raphael H. Martins, founder and captain of Brazil’s first transexual (their term) men’s soccer team, Meninos Bons de Bola (MBB), or Soccer Star Boys, on a bus en route to the Brazilian women’s soccer final on 20 July 2017 at the Barueri stadium in São Paulo, Brazil. Martins told me then that it was the first time he had set foot in a soccer stadium since the police assaulted him at a game a year before. Recounting the assault, he shared that the police stopped him as he entered the stadium. Apparently, they were sceptical about the differences between the physical appearance of the person who stood before them and the indicated sex and presentation of the person captured in Rapha’s photo ID card. The security guards took him to a room, locked the door and only released him after they had forcibly ‘verified’ that what was under his shirt and in his pants matched the sex indicated on his ID. I relate this story, one that he has also shared during interviews with the media, because it points to the daily violence that gender nonconforming people, and especially those who are also Black, face in Brazil. Indeed, as recent statistics suggest, Brazil is the deadliest place in the world for trans people (Trans Murder Monitoring, 2022). But his story also suggests that futebol is a crucial site where the pressure to adhere to binaries is often viciously enforced. If Brazil is o pa´ıs de futebol, the nation of soccer, what does it mean that access to this national pastime is so vehemently policed along gendered lines and in increasingly violent ways? This chapter analyzes the MBB’s approach to representation in and through futebol to explore the debates surrounding queer and trans body politics amidst the rise of the right wing in Brazil. In this chapter, I take up two main questions: in the context of a political shift rightward, how has sport become central to campaigns against movements for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer/questioning, asexual and other people (hereafter LGBTQ1), referred to by conservative cultural warriors as ‘gender ideology’? And, given the pervasiveness of anti-trans violence in Brazil, including such campaigns that have attempted to make trans peoples’ very existence illegal, why and how do trans athletes like Rapha appeal to futebol to affirm their existence? I, therefore, recount the story of Brazil’s first trans men’s soccer team to investigate what happens when trans futebolistas unite to demand access to the national sport. In what follows, I introduce a note about terminology and positionality. Then, I trace the formation of the MBB alongside larger political shifts. Specifically, I provide an overview of Brazilian politics from 2016 to 2018, focusing on gender, sport and the resurgence of fascism. Next, I explore the meanings of nude protest in Brazil, emphasizing the need to understand what naked means for gender dissidents. I assert that for trans activists who are navigating precarity, nudity can be both an antifascist reaction and a form of healing. Both motivations become

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evident through visual analysis of the MBB’s photo series, O Vestiario (the locker room), as demonstrated in this chapter. These images, captured in 2017, expose fascism in this moment of its resurgence. I conclude with a call to pay attention to the struggles for justice for trans athletes like the MBB because these are connected to struggles against oppression, writ large.

A Note on Terminology and Positionality The MBB originally referred to themselves as transexual men. I will use the term ‘trans’ throughout this chapter with the understanding that it is the best (though imperfect) term to refer to the multiple and diverse identities held by the players. I will use the terms soccer, football and futebol (the Portuguese word) interchangeably. Although MBB more directly translates to ‘The Boys Who are Good at the Ball’, the team’s preferred translation is ‘Soccer Star Boys’. A note on positionality: I met Martins while conducting fieldwork in São Paulo, interviewing Afro-descended non-conforming and women-identified players (Snyder, 2018). Since 2016, we have communicated regularly during my visits to Brazil and via WhatsApp, and we have developed what can now be called a deep friendship. In our conversations, he shared both personal and team-related victories and struggles. These range from the small victories at Martins’ job to networking and funding opportunities for the team. Examples of challenges are difficulties with medical providers and growing tensions between him and another member of the team, Thiago (a pseudonym), who was a co-captain of sorts. Martins has asked me for advice and to help the team where possible, by reading and translating documents and applying for grants, for instance. Because of my many privileges (as a white, non-trans, native English speaking North American researcher) and our very different life experiences, my relationship with Martins has frequently required me to reflect about the ethical navigation of our differences in power. Our relationship is built on mutual support, a fact that Martins has reiterated: I use my position to help the team in ways that are possible from my location and with my linguistic skills, and the MBB, in turn, share experiences that help my research. Martins’ goals for the MBB are centred around visibility for trans men, and so he welcomes ‘outsiders’ who share this goal. I write about Martins with his explicit consent to do so, and about the team with the permissions of team leadership (team membership fluctuates with Martins as captain, founder and constant).

The Formation of the MBB and Brazil’s Political Shifts: A Parallel Timeline (2016–2018) On 28 August 2016, a group of soccer players came together to form the MBB, or Soccer Star Boys, Brazil’s first trans men’s football team. It was days before the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first woman President, and the progressive Workers’ Party (PT, or Partido Trabalhador) she represented. The moment – marked by the right wing power grab that Rousseff refers to as a

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constitutional coup – signals a dramatic change in the trajectory of Brazilian democracy, and in many ways the MBB’s formation and visibility campaigns parallel governmental shifts. In the first three years of the MBB’s existence (2016–2019), conservative backlash against so-called ‘gender ideology’ framed gender dissidence as one reason for Brazil’s perceived decline and played a central role in the rise of Bolsonarismo, a movement increasingly labelled as fascist. Seizing on the decentralization of power in the wake of the impeachment, ultra-right groups increasingly sought influence in realms they perceived to fall under the umbrella of culture, such as gender norms and artistic expression. Reactionary ‘cultural warriors’ drew on vast, transnational networks of resources to roll back decades of progressive policy and hard-fought rights for marginalized Brazilians including LGBTQ1 people. ‘Gender ideology’ is a term used by conservatives to mark any movement that promotes equality for women and LGBTQ1 people as a ploy to undermine heteronormative, traditional family values and promote immorality. For instance, during his visit to the White House in 2019, Bolsonaro gave a public statement that highlighted his and Trump’s shared commitment to ‘traditional family’ and opposition to ‘gender ideology’. According to this logic, to challenge a gender order that defines women and men in opposition and that confines women to certain traditional roles is to challenge societal order, writ large. During this same visit, the official gifts exchanged between Trump and Bolsonaro were men’s soccer jerseys, signalling the lasting associations between Brazil and futebol. The use of the men’s jerseys points to how the national sport, like national politics, remains largely articulated along masculine, and specifically cisgender, heterosexual, masculine lines. The jersey exchange, combined with this public declaration using the language of ‘traditional family’ and ‘gender ideology’, suggests that maintaining Brazilian futebol’s hegemonic masculinity is part of a conservative platform to reify conventional gender roles and orders. Queer and trans people in general, and athletes, in particular, are thus projected as a threat to the gendered social order. How, then, do these cultural politics play out on bodies, and specifically, on the bodies of athletes? In his book Body Fascism: Salvation in the Technology of Physical Fitness philosopher and queer sport theorist Brian Pronger built on the work of Deleuze, Guattari, and Foucault, which understand fascism not only as an historical landmark, but as also the fascism within us that inspires us to ‘love power’, to want ‘the very thing that dominates and exploits us’ (2002, p. 109). This orientation to power manifests in our thinking and everyday comportment. In this sense, I assert that sport is a key site for understanding where political fascism and body fascism meet. Pronger agreed, arguing that wittingly or unwittingly, our modern urge to ‘order, organ-ize (sic.), control, repress, direct, impose limits’ on our bodies signals a ‘fascist will within us to desire. . . a life of domination’ (2002, p. 110). We see this in the cult of fitness that aims to control the ways bodies look, move, and feel as they engage in sport and physical culture. The author defended his use of the term fascism to name such a prevalent force by comparing it, for instance, to feminism: a term that describes how patriarchy manifests on multiple registers, both personal and political. Naming oppression is

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an important step in transforming it. Body fascism was born out of Pronger’s commitment to root it out, in all its manifestations, and discover possible ways to live outside of such oppressive ideologies. We must identify fascism to become antifascist. And if antifascist bodies are liberated bodies, then perhaps a marker of liberation is nakedness. At this watershed in Brazil’s political history, the naked bodies of queer and trans people found themselves at the centre of a number of high-profile debates; demands for punishment and censorship following a naked performance piece at the Art Museum of São Paulo and the closure of the Queer Museum in Porto Alegre are but two examples. In response, LGBTQ1 activists staged their own naked protests against what they identified as the resurgence of fascism. This chapter reads activists’ defiant disrobing as both a form of resistance on its own terms and as a diagnostic of larger transformations in power (Abu-Lughod, 1990). To analyze this pivotal time in the culture wars, I examine the MBB and their naked politics. Given the simultaneous targeting of trans people by the political right and the particular forms of invisibility trans men face, the MBB and their politics of representation matter. Raphael H. Martins founded the MBB in 2016. At the time, he was working in São Paulo’s Reference Center for Defense of Diversity (Centro de Referˆencia e Defesa da Diversidade, CRD, da Secretaria Municipal de Assistˆencia e Desenvolvimento Social) as a socio-educational counsellor. While working there, Martins noticed that even in a centre dedicated to gender and sexual minorities, services and opportunities for people like him – the ‘T’ in LGBT – were largely absent. The lack of representation, low numbers, minimal rights and invisibility of trans men contributes to their marginalization not only in the arena of medicine but also in circles that discuss gender and human rights, and among even LGBTQ1 communities. Responding to a lack of support for trans masculine members of the LGBTQ1 community, and to remedy their invisibility, Martins turned to the most Brazilian of solutions: he formed a soccer team. From the outset, the team captain imagined the MBB community not only as a team that gathers once a week to play, but also as a support group to help players navigate a world that is largely hostile to their gender identities, particularly while many undergo medical transition. Today the MBB has around 32 active members who play recreational soccer and who compete in ‘alternative’ and LGBT amateur competitions, mostly in São Paulo. Intervening in a traditionally hegemonic (cisgender masculine, heteronormative) national pastime, the MBB advocate for rights and recognition via Brazil’s most beloved sport, futebol. In 2017, the team staged its first nude photoshoot as a form of protest. Naked photographs marked a significant departure from the team’s previous images, which featured the Meninos fully clothed, often uniformed. The 2017 shoots suggest the MBB responded to right wing cultural politics of censorship and erasure by refusing shame and embracing vulnerability. Rather than conceiving of conservative and queer movements in opposition, I recognize the relationship between them as dynamic: the well-funded right targets LGBTQ1 movements, simultaneously shining light on issues that often struggle to gain visibility and

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shaping the LGBTQ1 response (Fetner, 2008). The athlete activism of the MBB offers insight into the struggles of marginalized groups amidst a growing political right that argues that their very existence does not matter. The MBB’s naked protest exposes the ways dissident bodies get caught in the crosshairs of the culture wars and they also become tools to navigate such forces.

Meanings of Dissident Nakedness in Brazil: Towards a Trans Politics of Resistance and Liberation Disclosing my flesh exposes the flesh of the world; perhaps that is the obscenity. –From ‘Nudes and naked souls: critical phenomenology of skin disclosure and hemispheric trans theory’ by Roc´ıo Pichon-Rivi`ere (2021, p. 444) As Pichon-Rivi`ere notes in this section’s opening quote, disclosing one’s flesh reveals a great deal of information about the time, place and values of a given society. Fascists in Brazil arm themselves with suits, uniforms, religion, whiteness and masculinity (as seen in Trump’s and Bolsonaro’s jersey exchange). The opposite of donning a uniform, of suiting up, is disrobing. Getting naked is a process of exposure. Baring the body may leave one defenceless and unguarded. If aggressive self-exposure can be understood as a universal gesture, ‘it is also one of the most highly context driven modes of dissent and vulnerability’, according to Naminata Diabate, author of Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa (2020, Kindle 15). To understand the MBB’s nudity, one must contextualize the racialized and gendered politics of naked protest in Brazil. Ideas of exposure today are influenced by histories of colonialism. Writing on these histories, Maria Lugones’ argues that European colonization inflicted a new system that differentiated the gender configurations of white bourgeois colonizers from the people they colonized (2008). Extending Lugones’ analysis, trans feminist scholar Talia Mae Bettcher suggests this racist gendered system has persisted, and it awards greater dignity to bodies that are more fully clothed, i.e. European. Colonizers identified the Indigenous American and African people they dominated over as naked, whether or not they actually were, and as, therefore, less dignified (Bettcher, 2017). Black feminist scholars including Patricia Hill Collins have written on how colonizers forced the nakedness of Black and enslaved women to rationalize white men’s sexual violence (2009). These histories must be accounted for when unpacking racialized and gendered reactions to naked bodies. Clearly, nudity is not always liberatory. And yet, it is also dangerous to continue to unequivocally correlate clothedness with dignity and bareness with shame. To be naked can be revolutionary, liberatory or even healing (PichonRivi`ere, 2021), as I will show in the context of the MBB and repressive regimes. Certainly, as Diabate reminds us, there are contextual considerations that might shift the meaning of baring one’s body: as a form of dissent, for instance.

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Currently, naked protest is one form of nudity on the rise. Writing on women’s defiant disrobing in a Brazilian context, Barbara Sutton observes that unclothed bodies, especially those of women, are pervasive: in the media, on the beach and during carnival, for instance (2007). However, she argues, baring the body in protest or for political reasons is often condemned and punished, under the label of obscenity (2007, p. 144). Sutton concludes that it is the act of protest that conservatives take issue with rather than the nudity, although due to social conventions, nudity often pushes protest into the realm of the punishable. Defiant disrobing is risky, prompting Diabate to ask: which sociopolitical climates and arrangements would incite this form of revolt (2020, Kindle Edition 4)? Diabate develops the concept of naked agency to describe ‘the dynamic cycle of power and vulnerability that involves women and their targets’, as they use nakedness as a political tool in multiple African contexts (Kindle Edition 2). Both Sutton and Diabate write about women’s intentional nudity as a remarkable form of dissent because it defies traditional gendered expectations. In this way, feminist and LGBTQ1 resistance can be understood in solidarity against heteronormative regimes, as in the word disidencias or ‘sexual dissidents’, a term that describes the multiple groups who stand together against obligatory heterosexuality (Mongrovejo, 2010; Vidal-Ortiz et al., 2014). Still, the naked bodies of presumably cisgendered women, and especially Brazilian women, have been theorized extensively (Bennett, 1999; Pravaz, 2008; Williams, 2015). There is less scholarly work on the nude rebellion of queer and trans people. Following the above authors’ assertion that unclothed protest can be used to read a climate and interpret a political dialogue: in an environment where right-wing politicians target trans people for ridicule and violence, it remains imperative to understand the naked protests of gender dissidents as a form of resistance. The milieu in Brazil from 2016 to 2018 was turbulent, especially for queer and trans people who have found themselves in the spotlight of the culture wars. The MBB contend that the very existence of their trans bodies is a form of protest: the team’s tagline, for example, declares ‘Our Bodies on the Pitch are Art, Activism, and Resistance’. In a dialogue of sorts, LGBTQ1 activists have changed their tactics in response to the agendas of rich, powerful and transnational right wing movements (Cowan, 2016; Fetner, 2008). Often, trans contributions to LGBTQ1 activism are sidelined (Fetner, 2008). Trans men in particular have been historically invisibilized even within LGBTQ1 movements; thus, even though the MBB are small in numerical terms, they are significant representatives. If the very act of inhabiting and performing gender dissidence is a form of resistance, then the MBB’s undress is an act/reaction that marks escalating stakes. Beyond protest, for queer and trans people healing can become the analytic through which self-exposure is read, according to Roc´ıo Pichon-Rivi`ere (2021). The double bind of exposure is that in making visible experiences of oppression one may risk losing dignity (Bettcher, 2017; Gossett et al., 2017). But if one hides oppression from the public to save face, then how will collective healing happen? The idea that baring one’s body is shameful and undignified represents a ‘scarcity model’ of dignity. This model, understood as a contemporary manifestation of colonialisms’ ‘racist nudity enforcement’, interprets nudity as punishment

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(Bettcher, 2017, p. 445). Ultimately, Pichon-Rivi`ere argues, a scarcity approach to nakedness must be dismantled. Without ignoring or denying the antagonism that often accompanies exposure, the author draws on abolitionist and restorative justice models in her quest to imagine self-exposure and its transformative potential otherwise. In choosing to get naked, trans activists like the MBB met the rising tides of hate with the sort of transformative vision Pichon-Rivi`ere proposes. Specifically, if what the Brazilian right demands is censorship, it is conceivable that a cultural response is to bear one’s nakedness. With the understanding that conservative and LGBTQ1 activists influence one another’s political strategies, I turn, then, to gender dissident futebolistas to understand how they navigate this hostile environment and what their forms of resistance might signal about the operation of power. Specifically, I examine photographs taken of the MBB soccer team in São Paulo shot by Isabel Abreu in a locker room in July 2017 and circulated in September 2018. In the years and months leading up to the 2018 election, the MBB used strategic nudity to various ends including public protest, community building and self-realization.

Locker Room Exposures: Antifascism in the Humanity, Vulnerability and Healing of O Vestiario The MBB did a naked and semi-naked photo shoot in July 2017, and the images began circulating in mainstream media weeks before the October 2018 Presidential election. Tensions in Brazil during this period were palpable. Naked politics were one way of resisting the rising tides of right wing hate. Amidst the national turmoil, photographer Isabel Abreu photographed self-selecting members of the team in the changing room of the workers’ union in the city centre of São Paulo, where the Meninos gather every Sunday to train. O Vestiario, the Portuguese term for locker room (a place where sportspeople change clothes), is a place where people get naked. Because of this, O Vestiario evokes a mix of emotion: fear, excitement, pleasure and anxiety. For many people in Brazil (and around the world), the locker room is a mysterious, slightly dangerous place (Perin, 2019). Mainstream understandings of the locker room conceive of it as a mostly cis-masculine place, as in the US American phrase ‘locker room talk’. Certainly, it is a place where gender is increasingly policed along binary lines (Greey, 2022), although it is also latent with (homo)erotic potential. What, then, can the locker room reveal about the ways people, and especially gender dissident folx, navigate body fascism? The goals of the Vestiario shoot were perhaps less explicitly related to electoral politics and speak more to the MBB’s approaches to their trans politics of representation at that time. O Vestiario was shot in July 2017, a moment of political uncertainty but not necessarily one where the MBB felt directly targeted or threatened, beyond the everyday transphobia they already endured. The Vestiario’s 2018 release, however, can be understood as a direct response to the pre-election climate of anti-LGBTQ1 hostility. Placing the series within the context of Abreu’s larger work with the team, the Vestiario is one of many shoots

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taken during her years of work with the MBB, in which she aims to reflect their beauty and humanness. The Vestiario series is smaller in scale than her other shoots, featuring five players who volunteered to be photographed. The intimacy on display in the locker room images is rare for the MBB, and it signalled a deviation in their representational strategy. While the Vestiario shoot is in many ways consistent with the MBB’s approach to visibility – insofar as they wish to showcase the existence and normalcy of trans men – the series is exceptional in its vulnerability. In the locker room, it is just the MBB, and so the shoot reflects more discretely the team’s approach to trans visibility. As part of the Meninos mission, they are focused on both outward and inward forms of visibility. Their outward facing goals are to show that trans men exist in São Paulo, in Brazil and within LGBTQ1 circles, and that they, too, have a right to futebol. By being publicly visible, the MBB became a gathering place for trans men to build community. For instance, after the team’s very first practice, Martins recalled: After the first game, we sat in a circle and each one of us shared a little of our story. It was really strong. We are still invisible and we have the need to speak. Today, if one of us shares negative feelings, we embrace them. We get mad, we celebrate, we incentivize. We have become a family. They spoke of their desire to reflect inwards, to themselves and to other trans men, their beauty and sense of brotherhood. Abreu, who worked with the team from 2016 to 2018, shared these commitments to visually representing the MBB’s humanity. Still, the series is an outlier for the MBB. After months of trying to photograph the locker room, the Meninos chose July 2017 to allow access to Abreu, and September 2018 to share images with the public: why then? In part, it was about timing. During her time working with the players, Abreu built trust with the team. Over this period, team members established rapport and comfort with one another. But, I also suggest that their vulnerability illustrates how the naked politics of gender dissidents signal a response to the historical moment of uncertainty in that it counters the violent condemnation of right wing politicians. I suggest the Vestiario photos attest to Pichon-Rivi`ere’s ideas about nudity as reparation (2021). At first glance, the images are subdued and straightforward. Five players participated, to varying degrees. There are few superfluous details in these images; the focus is on the plain, beautiful subjects. The defiance of these pictures, then, is that viewers must see the players as they are. Furthermore, the black and white renderings are unforgiving, exposing everything. The black and white pictures in this private space reveal a nakedness that seems more vulnerable. Monochrome gives the appearance of classic portraiture, evoking an earlier era. Against the idea that trans is something ‘new’, this visual representation attests to the fact that gender dissidents have always existed (Snorton, 2017). By simply being themselves in the photos, the MBB expose the conservative right as responsible for politicizing gender. The Meninos existence is just that – existence – it is not the promotion of some ‘gender ideology’ or plot to destroy the traditional

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Photo shared with permissions from Isabel Abreu, Photographer and Artist, @isabel_spbr

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family. The nostalgia of grayscale images tugs at the heartstrings, and communicates an unequivocal beauty. In the first image (Fig. 1), Raphael H. Martins, the MBB’s founder and capitan is looking straight into the camera, grinning as he lathers up. His stare is brave without the need to intimidate. Martins is bare from the waist up, skin covered in droplets, communicating that he is in the shower and presumably disrobed. He is handsome and luminous with smooth dark brown skin and a glowing, magnetic smile.1 The MBB founder and captain shared with me that when he looks at this and other images of himself, he feels empowered. Abreu’s photographs make him feel seen. If fascists attempt to humiliate LGBTQ1 people, this photo stands in contrast. In the second photo (Fig. 2), like the first, there is masculinity without violence. Four players stand in a circle and show their biceps. The pose is a familiar masculine trope: to be a man is to be strong and muscular. The hints of smiles that tug on the corner of the players’ mouths, though, suggest they are mocking this version of masculinity. Here, the Meninos appear playful and flexing, in the multiple senses of the word. To flex is to literally tense one’s muscle, but informally or in vernacular language, to flex can mean to ridicule or boast. Ridicule demonstrates the athletes’ confidence in their gender; there is no hint of fragile masculinity in this image. Such toxic versions of manhood are touted by Bolsonaristas, who react to perceived societal degradation by arming militants (among other escalations). This image, though, presents a jocular take on ‘arming’. Players are in their boxer shorts, with their hair still wet from the shower, yet even in this private environment they stand close to one another, bodies touching. While the MBB family is not the traditional (i.e. heternormative) one revered by conservatives, the Meninos refuse to be less-than. When I first looked at these images, I saw joy and love. Perhaps, though, my gazing says more about me and what I wish to see than what is actually there (Sturken & Cartwright, 2018). As in any image, there is much left unseen (Campt, 2017). Speaking about the series, Abreu reiterated that it took over a year of working with the MBB before being allowed into the locker room. She perceives that it is her positionality as an elderly woman – she believes that the MBB view her as a sort of desexualized grandmother – that allowed her to work with them in this intimate space. Locker rooms are politically charged spaces, especially for trans folks. I mention this not because nudity is the ultimate measure of liberation – it certainly is not (see section above on ‘The Meanings of Dissident Nakedness in Brazil. . .’) – but to highlight what a big deal the Vestiario series was. While the censorship of nudity might be a dangerous signal of oppression, the presence of naked bodies does not necessarily mean liberation. In fact, the photographer does not recount the shoot as liberatory, or even good in a technical photographic sense, but she does recognize its importance in relation to her larger body of years of work with the team. To open this space was vulnerable, and capturing its beauty models the type of healing Pichon-Rivi`ere proposes (2021). The locker room is fraught, even for the MBB family, which is why this opening, however small, was a grand gesture.

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We can conceive of the locker room and its photographic renderings as types of technology that can both oppress and liberate, in line with Pronger’s understanding of body fascism. The camera is a technology that holds various potentialities. It is liberatory to see oneself as beautiful, as human. However, it is difficult to read gender in ways that are not normative or oppressive, and that is a risk.2 In protesting and making themselves vulnerable via photographic technologies, which have the capacity to harm or heal, the MBB resisted erasure despite the peril. In their resistance, they show that power is present and attempting to discipline dissident bodies. Multiple possibilities – oppression and liberation, shame and healing – are at work in the Vestiario series. Accounting for their photos’ context, I note that 2017 (when the photos were originally taken) was still a moment of political uncertainty. Abreu’s shoot takes place after over a decade of Workers’ Party policy, that, while imperfect, did usher in certain civil rights for marginalized groups. Bold, naked, proclamations of freedom may have felt more imaginable while riding the Pink Wave (Friedman, 2019). It is even possible to read the nakedness as an urgent assertion of freedom, an attempt to counter a looming, growing suppression. The Vestiario series’ circulation in mainstream news media, however, the weeks leading up to the Presidential election. Perhaps the tension Abreu and Martins describe hint at the ways Brazilian fascism, realized in Bolsonarismo, takes its toll on the body. It is my intent to focus on the relationship between naked protest and the growing political right; it is not my intent to reflect here on the MBB’s shifting relationship to visibility from their formation to today (Snyder, 2019). I do, however, note that this is the first and only shoot in the locker room, and the two shoots analyzed herein are, for now, the only naked and semi-naked ones. Since the series were shot, right-wing violence has continued to escalated culminating in events such as the assassination of Marielle Franco, the exile of Jean Wyllys and the illegal incarceration of former president Lu´ız Lula Ignacio da Silva. It is not necessarily true, or a desirable goal, that a return to progressive politics will be accompanied by nudity. But it is more difficult, and certainly riskier, to get naked in fascist Brazil.

Conclusions The Vestiario photoshoot illustrates the way that oppression and resistance can play out on the body. The defiant disrobing of gender dissidents like the MBB goes against fascist demands to control, normalize and hierarchize bodies. Baring the body is also a perilous move for groups that are targeted for repression. Examining cultural politics in this moment of governmental transitions rightward sheds light on the intimate effects of such shifts. The Locker Room Politics of the MBB is a call to pay attention to dissident sporting bodies as a site where repressive governance exposes itself. In baring their skin, the MBB made visible this newest wave of fascism and the resistance against it. At a moment of governmental change away from the relative openness of

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previous times and towards more suppression of difference, trans people and trans athletics have become a target. The MBB continue to resist, changing their strategies in ways that enable them to survive and thrive in the face of oppression.

Notes 1. For more explicit discussions of the MBB’s racial politics, see Snyder, 2019. 2. I am aware of at least two other photographers that had wanted to shoot the team in the locker room, and the players refused. Clearly the MBB are savvy and strategic about their image. They understand the camera as a tool that can both oppress and liberate. But Abreu’s goal has always been to show the MBB their beauty and power, and in allowing her into the Vestiario with them, they demonstrate their trust in her renderings.

References Abu-Lughod, L. (1990). The romance of resistance: Tracing transformations of power through bedouin women. American Ethnologist, 17(1), 41–55. https://doi.org/10. 1525/ae.1990.17.1.02a00030 Bennett, E. G. R. (1999). Gabriela Cravo e Canela: Jorge Amado and the myth of the sexual mulata in Brazilian culture. In I. Okpewho, C. Boyce Davies, & A. A. Mazrui (Eds.), The African Diaspora: African Origins and New World Identities (pp. 227–233). Indiana University Press. Bettcher, T. M. (2017). Getting “naked” in the colonial/modern gender system: A preliminary trans feminist analysis. In M. Mikkola (Ed.), Beyond Speech: Pornography and Analytic Feminist Philosophy (pp. 157–176). Oxford University Press. Campt, T. M. (2017). Listening to Images. Duke University Press. Collins, P. H. (2009). Black Feminist Thought. Routledge. Cowan, B. (2016). Securing sex: Morality and repression in the making of cold war Brazil. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Diabate, N. (2020). Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa. Duke University Press. Fetner, T. (2008). How the religious right shaped lesbian and gay activism. University of Minnesota Press. http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0812/2008009096.html Friedman, E. J. (Ed.). (2019). Seeking Rights from the Left: Gender, Sexuality, and the Latin American Pink Tide. Duke University Press. Gossett, R., Stanley, E. A., & Burton, J. (2017). Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility. MIT Press. Greey, A. D. (2022). ‘It’s just safer when I don’t go there’: Trans people’s locker room membership and participation in physical activity. Journal of Homosexuality, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2038968 Lugones, M. (2008). The coloniality of gender. Worlds & Knowledges Otherwise, 13–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-38273-3_2 Mongrovejo, N. (2010). Itineraries of Latin American lesbian insubordination. In E. Maier & N. Lebon (Eds.), Women’s activism in Latin America and the Caribbean:

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Engendering social justice, democratizing citizenship (pp. 187–201). Rutgers University Press. Perin, G. (2019). Camisa Brasileira - Ensaio Fotogr´afico de Gilberto Perin on Vimeo. Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/253123331 Pichon-Rivi`ere, R. (2021). Nudes and naked souls critical phenomenology of skin disclosure and hemispheric trans theory. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 27(3), 431–450. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-8994126 Pravaz, N. (2008). Where is the carnivalesque in Rio’s carnaval? Samba, mulatas and modernity. Visual Anthropology, 21(2), 95. https://doi.org/10.1080/08949460 701688775 Pronger, B. (2002). The theory of the body: Technology, puissance, pouvoir. In Body Fascism: Salvation in the Technology of Physical Fitness (pp. 149–197). https://doi. org/10.1007/978-94-010-3014-4_8 Snorton, C. R. (2017). Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. University of Minnesota Press. Snyder, C. (2018). The soccer tournament as beauty pageant: Eugenic logics in Brazilian women’s futebol feminino. WSQ, 46(1–2). https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2018. 0025 Snyder, C. K. (2019). Which team do you play for? In Visibility and Queering in Brazilian Soccer. University of Maryland. Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2018). Introduction. In Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (3rd ed., pp. 1–12). Oxford University Press. Trans Murder Monitoring. (2022). https://transrespect.org/en/map/trans-murdermonitoring/. Accessed on July 13, 2022. Vidal-Ortiz, S., Viteri, M. A., & Serrano Amaya, J. F. (2014). Resignificaciones, Pr´acticas y Pol´ıticas Queer en Am´erica Latina: Otra Agenda de Cambio Social. N´omadas, 41, 184–201. Williams, E. A. (2015). Mucamas and mulatas: Black Brazilian feminisms, representations, and ethnography. In C. R. Rodriguez, D. Tsikata, & A. A. Ampofo (Eds.), Transatlantic Feminisms: Women and Gender Studies in Africa and the Diaspora (pp. 103–123). Blue Ridge Summit.

Chapter 4

Policy on the Run: The Development of Trans and Gender Diverse Inclusion Policies in Community Sport in Australia Ryan Storr, Anna Posbergh and Sheree Bekker

Abstract This chapter examines the creation and development of trans inclusion policies in community sport in Australia. More specifically, it explores the impact of such policy, or lack thereof, on trans and gender diverse people who are currently engaged or wish to engage with community sport in the state of Victoria, Australia. This chapter evaluates the impact of Federal legislation and guidelines for the inclusion of trans and gender diverse people in Australian sport, and how sport organizations have responded in creating trans athlete policies for community sport participation. Next, we discuss the experiences and challenges for trans and gender diverse athletes playing and competing in community sport. We examine how these athletes work against institutional norms which typically reinforce a rigid gender binary. This chapter draws on a range of research projects in Australia by the first author and concludes with some recommendations for future research and both policy and practice. Keywords: Community sport; trans athletes; gender inclusion; sport policy; transgender; youth sport

Introduction Transgender athletes have become one of the most widely discussed groups in both sport and society in recent years (Burke, 2022; Buzuvis, 2021). Debates, discussions and commentary on their inclusion in sport has had significant repercussions, most importantly, impacting transgender and gender diverse athletes who wish to participate in community sport (Storr, Jeanes et al., 2021). Researchers have recently begun to document and explore trans and gender Trans Athletes’ Resistance, 43–55 Copyright © 2024 Ryan Storr, Anna Posbergh and Sheree Bekker Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited doi:10.1108/978-1-80382-363-820231004

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diverse participation in community sport and movement settings. Storr et al. (2021) identified that trans and gender diverse young people experience a range of barriers and systemic discrimination in sport and school sport settings, and that ongoing ‘debates’ around trans athletes have negative impacts on their mental health, and often results in them removing themselves from sport. Russell et al. (2022) have also highlighted trans athletes’ experiences within the lifestyle sport of rock climbing, drawing attention to how trans athletes can help foster positive and meaningful narratives of positive representation in sport. Additionally, Cauldwell (2020, 2022) explored trans and nonbinary participation in community swimming, identifying the need for trans only spaces, and the transformational impact and liberation that can occur for trans people and their bodies when they can access safe and inclusive spaces to swim. Other important work has identified the ongoing challenges and discrimination that trans and gender diverse young people experience when accessing and participating in community and youth-based sport settings (Travers, 2018). For example, Hargie et al. (2017) found that by being denied opportunities to foster social connections in sport and to attend sport events, trans people missed out on accruing social capital. Furthermore, the gender binary in school settings, and how it is enforced onto young trans and gender diverse people, limits the type and range of sporting opportunities and activities that they can engage with (Ferguson & Russell, 2021). Storr, Nicholas et al. (2021), also found that young trans and gender diverse people are regularly advised and guided into playing sports based on their perceived gender. Still, the impact on community participation for trans1 and gender nonbinary athletes remains a neglected area, despite polarizing debates in academic and mainstream conversations. This is particularly significant considering that the bulk of sport participation happens at the grassroots and community level, and the well-recognized public health benefits of community sport. Despite the vast coverage and discussions around trans athletes (especially trans women) in elite sport, trans and gender diverse athletes participating for health and social benefits are routinely ignored. As there is a growing body of literature on the topic of trans inclusion in sport across a variety of platforms (Greey & Lenskyj, 2022), our aim in this chapter is to draw attention to academic, policy and practical implications for trans and gender diverse athletes in sport, specifically within the context of community sport. This chapter contributes to the knowledge gaps around the role and impact of policy of trans and gender diverse people’s participation in community sport settings. We argue that inclusive sport policy is crucial to the sustainability of sport participation, for athletes of all genders, and to ensure that trans and gender diverse athletes can access the health and social benefits to sport. For sport to embrace the principles it often espouses, such as ‘sport for all’, ‘sport for social good’ and ‘sport as a social leveller’, community sport policies should be developed and enacted based on both evidence and a human rights framework. In the context of trans and gender diverse athletes, policies must ethically and pragmatically respond to their specific needs with the intent to include rather than exclude, particularly considering their highly vulnerable and marginalized status

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in society (Strauss et al., 2020; Winter et al., 2016). With this in mind, this chapter provides a snapshot of the creation and implementation of trans and gender diverse inclusion policies at the community level in Victoria, Australia. We draw upon the first author’s research fieldwork in Melbourne, Australia, and experiences working with State Sport Organizations (SSOs) and National Sport Organizations (NSOs) through the charity Proud2Play (which he co-founded), as well as the first author’s previous research exploring how Australian Sporting Organizations develop trans athlete policies (Stewart et al., 2021).

Background In June 2019, Sport Australia and the Australian Human Rights Commission, in conjunction with the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports (COMPPS) produced the ‘Guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport’ (hereafter: The Guidelines) (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2019). As a set of guiding principles, this document sought to support the sport sector in its efforts to address the growing number of trans and gender diverse athletes in sports across Australia, predominately at the community level. This was particularly significant given that the sport sector, and the administrators tasked with inclusion efforts, did not feel equipped, or supported, to deal with trans and gender diverse athletes, and needed help prior to the document’s publication (Stewart et al., 2021). Sport Australia then partnered with the Australian Human Rights commission to undertake the work and publish the document, while also engaging in extensive consultation with trans and gender diverse athletes across Australia and those working across inclusion and gender diversity. Notably, the document operated as guidelines for use by sports organizations to develop their own policies for their own sports, rather than rules or regulations, and offered a starting point and point of reference in the absence of any current policy. This is in line with the 2021 International Olympic Committee Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations (IOC, 2021), which also takes a guideline approach (Bekker et al., 2022). The choice of a guideline approach rather than a regulatory one was purposeful: for many community sports at the time, trans and gender diverse inclusion policy was not (and still is not) perceived as a priority or point of urgency from a regulatory point of view (Stewart et al., 2021). This is because community sports in Australia often are operating on a volunteer basis with many competing demands for their precious resources (Bekker & Finch, 2016; Bekker et al., 2017), and trans and gender diverse inclusion was managed simply and straightforwardly by community clubs, rather than being the major policy ‘issue’ it is often made out to be by the media. Rather, at the time, concerns around return to play and ‘back to basics’ after the Covid-19 pandemic often dominated organizational policy discussions (Elliot et al., 2021). Further, community sport operates from different value systems and principles than elite sport. Community

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sport centres around participation, inclusion, fun and enjoyment, whereas elite sport is much more focused on competition, winning and excellence. Applying principles from elite sport policies to community sport is incongruent and frequently irrelevant for circumstances in which amateur trans and gender diverse people want to participate. Consequently, many sports did not prioritize specific inclusion policies for trans and gender diverse athletes at the community level, as sports organizations had a different starting point (community sport prioritizes participation over competition, for example). On the rare occasions when some sports organizations did prioritize trans inclusion policies, this was often in response to lobbying and social pressures from anti-trans groups (Burke, 2022; Posbergh, 2022; Pielke, 2022). As such, this was done reactively, or ‘on the run’.

‘Policy on the Run’: Creating and Developing Policies In creating and developing The Guidelines (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2019), administrators contended with a wide variety of considerations such as which type of document (i.e. guidelines or a policy), its content and, most critically, its purpose: to include trans athletes, protect cisgender women or ensure fairness for all participants of all genders? These challenges are common in the Australian sporting context (Bekker et al., 2017). For example, some pro women’s organizations have stated that the inclusion of trans women in sport is unfair and balancing fairness and inclusion is not possible, arguing fairness for cisgender women will always carry more weight than the inclusion of trans women. In particular, the decision on the type of document is an important consideration, and one that presents both barriers and facilitators to adoption and implementation (Bekker & Finch, 2016). In ultimately deciding to develop a set of guidelines rather than an official rule, regulation or policy, a contentious issue emerged: sport organizations could ultimately choose to not adopt these guidelines. However, there were certain elements within The Guidelines that were designed to dovetail with legal frameworks around protection from discrimination based on protected characteristics (such as gender identity and sexual orientation), and as such these were important facilitators built into The Guidelines. What The Guidelines meant in practice and for day-to-day purposes was unclear for many administrators and volunteers. As with many policies, particularly within The Guidelines, there are details of legal jargon and human rights principles which, for many volunteers who run community sports clubs, can be difficult to understand and confusing to implement (Storr, Jeanes et al., 2021). Further, volunteers may not have received any training or education on trans inclusion, and are often overburdened with other issues such as child protection and administrative tasks. To aid in these processes, supporting resources were created by scholars at Western Sydney University (including the first author), which included resource sheets, a podcast and some posters to be put in community sport club rooms (Sport Australia, 2023). However, it is still uncertain

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how well these were adopted or distributed across the sector. This evaluation is important work for future research.

‘Fumbling in the Dark’: Adopting and Implementing Policies We now discuss some general lessons learnt from the ways in which some State Sporting Organizations (SSOs) in Victoria, Australia, are responding to the creation and development of trans athlete policies at the community level. Lessons and insights are drawn from the first author’s research fieldwork, primarily through interviews and observations (Stewart et al., 2021; Storr et al., 2022) and his role with Proud2Play, which he co-founded. Part of Storr’s role at Proud2Play included working with SSOs, NSOs and both professional and community sports clubs. Other work involved working with administrators to help develop and design policies and give feedback and support to drafted policies. Therefore, the following lessons and insights are grounded in both research and practical work on the ground, working with sport organizations. We outline three key themes which characterize the creation and development of policies concerned with trans and gender diverse people: (1) lack of education and knowledge, (2) the impact of reactive responses to resistance and backlash, and (3) lack of community consultation. We discuss each in turn, before finishing with a case study of trans children in community sports and the policy implications for their full inclusion. 1. Lack of education and knowledge around gender diversity and inclusion Generally, there appears to be a low level of knowledge and understanding around trans inclusion in sport and, more specifically, about trans and gender diverse people (Stewart et al., 2021). Administrators tasked with creating and developing trans athlete policies often lack education about trans and gender diverse people, gender affirmation and gender diversity and the complexities and nuances surrounding trans athletes and the barriers they experience (Barras et al., 2021). Such barriers range from access to facilities and teams to registration form challenges and medical care. Even for diversity and inclusion managers working in sport who are aware of the unique barriers and challenges for trans and gender diverse athletes, there exist multiple considerations across all areas of diversity and inclusion, such as cultural diversity, disability and broader LGBTIQ12 inclusion (Spaaij et al., 2018). Amidst these multiple spheres, gender diversity remains a relatively new concept and, as such, has received minimal attention until recently. Moreover, administrators who express a proactive desire to create inclusive policies for trans athletes to facilitate and increase their participation often share concerns of not feeling confident, having the right expertise, or, as stated in their own words, feeling ‘out of their depth’. Considering this reality, it is particularly important for LGBTIQ1 led, especially trans led organizations, to help facilitate and foster comprehensive conversations around trans and gender diverse

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experiences in sports, thereby promoting knowledge transfer between the organizations and the athletes. Doing so is a critical step towards supporting administrators working on trans policies. At the same time, there remain many potential organizations and/or individuals who are reluctant to partner or collaborate with trans athletes or support services and instead, opt to develop policies based on their own personal prejudice and views around gender in sport. The result is often policies or guidelines driven by gendered and biologized stereotypes and prejudices around what women and men can or cannot do. The most concerning aspect of such policy development is the absence of education or training around trans and gender diverse athletes for administrators and policymakers, as well as a lack of engagement or consultation with such athletes. However, it is important to note that the burden of education should not be placed onto trans athletes and allies, and those working with these communities should take steps to educate themselves first before engaging with trans athletes for the purpose of consultation. Correspondingly, a key recommendation for those creating policies on trans and gender diverse athletes is to undertake relevant education and training, which should include engaging with pertinent academic or public readings, learning appropriate terminology and developing a critical awareness around how and when gender norms are maintained and/or circulated in sport cultures and policy. It is important to note here, however, that the administrators who create the policies do not enact the policies. It is the volunteers within clubs who implement the policies. Therefore, there needs to be better communication pathways between the policy creators (sport administrators) and enactors (sports clubs volunteers), and support for the volunteers to bring the policy to life. Doing so will benefit comprehensive and effective policymaking efforts through ensuring that administrators are informed and educated on the topic of trans athletes and their specific needs. In this vein, it is important to remember that such policies are based on inclusion rather than exclusion and actively seek to protect their welfare through non-discrimination (Bekker et al., 2022; Martowicz et al., 2022). 2. Impact of reactive responses to resistance and backlash to trans athletes A recent position statement that contextualized and further explained the ‘IOC’s framework on fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations’ stated that inclusion policies should encompass three key values: fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination (Martowicz et al., 2023). Speaking directly to international federations (IFs), the authors noted that, ‘when considering whether and how to introduce eligibility criteria for sex-segregated competition, IFs are encouraged to develop policy responses that embody all three of these values’ (Martowicz et al., 2023, p. 26). While this document was intended to guide Olympic and elite sports, we and others argue that these values must also be applied at the grassroots level. Indeed, Erin Buzuvis discusses and promotes the importance of values-driven policies for community sport clubs wherein organizations and clubs are encouraged to centre and

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consider the club’s values (Buzuvis, 2011). This subsequently compels clubs to develop inclusion policies that reflect these principles. While such an approach invites the possibility for policies based on inclusion rather than exclusion, policymaking processes are not isolated from increasing global coverage and propaganda against trans people. Unsubstantiated fears of trans and gender diverse people in bathrooms and toilets is one particular example which has encouraged a proliferation of the anti-trans movement in sports at all levels (Baeth & Goorevich, 2023; English & Pieper, 2023). The reaction within sports and by sport administrators has manifested in significant resistance and backlash (Nicholas, 2020), which either halts the creation of inclusive policymaking efforts or, in some extreme cases, like Swimming Australia, imposes blanket bans on trans women athletes. 3. Lack of community consultation Creating inclusive policies requires a level of community engagement and consultation with the people directly impacted (i.e. trans and gender diverse athletes) to hear their voices and perspectives and to centre their experiences. However, several policies across the sport sector in Australia have been created with little or no input and engagement from trans and gender diverse athletes. The sport organizations cited reasons such as not being able to access or engage the community. Lacking athlete input and voice is problematic for several reasons. First, the primary aim of an inclusion policy is to facilitate and support the participation of trans and gender diverse athletes. As such, and given that the policy directly impacts them, their input and experiences are essential for comprehensive and effective policy development and without their input, policies may not (and often do not) adequately address the most pertinent and relevant issues at hand (Bekker & Posbergh, 2022). Centring the voices and experiences of trans and gender diverse athletes is instrumental in helping policymakers to understand both the barriers and facilitators to inclusion for this community, alongside cultural and organizational considerations, which can include eligibility matters, discrimination and vilification and uniform concerns. Understanding these issues allows policymakers both to address them and to make accommodations to facilitate full participation for trans and gender diverse people. Second, the matter of access and engagement with the community, many trans people have been targeted by media and online accounts with abuse and vilification (Faye, 2021), and so may have legitimate concerns about engaging in public discussions. Furthermore, they may be justified in doubting that their experiences will be taken into account, or more importantly, that they will be actually listened to or responded to with appropriate actions. Finally, the lack of athletes’ voices in policymaking processes reinforces problematic and traditional power hierarchies within and between administrators and athletes (Bekker & Posbergh, 2022). This can, and has, manifested in organizational (as opposed to interpersonal) violence against athletes and as such it is

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important to recognize that policy is never simply neutral, but that it can have both positive and negative consequences (Bekker & Posbergh, 2022). As such, equitable inclusion of those who are marginalized in all policy-making decisions relating to them is an important and necessary step in policymaking and implementation.

Case Study: Transgender Children in community Sport To illustrate these three themes, we now turn to a case study in which we outline some of the challenges experienced by trans and gender diverse children and their families when navigating complex and incomplete policy terrain. Drawing from the first author’s experiences working with young trans and gender diverse people through Proud2Play, seeking to access, participate and play sport in a community sport club, we discuss some of the specific challenges encountered which include policy, discrimination and bullying, changerooms and bathroom facilities and registration forms (Storr, Nicholas et al., 2021). In particular, we highlight the impact of these barriers on young people and their families.

Policy Some sports and clubs do not have policies for the inclusion of trans people and when policies do exist, they are frequently outdated or modelled on elite participation policies (Bekker & Finch, 2016). For example, one community Aussie Rules Football league policy has not been updated in over a decade and is based on a previous World Athletics trans policy. Specifically, if a young person wanted to participate in a community football competition, this community policy requires the young athlete to undergo gender reassignment surgery (sic) and suppressed hormones for a specified amount of time. While surgical requirements for trans and gender diverse athletes are largely absent at the elite sport levels today, administrators’ lack of knowledge surrounding the invasiveness and antiquated nature of this community policy permitted it to remain in effect for over a decade. (To the knowledge of the first author, the Aussie Rules policy has not yet been retracted or updated). This has meant that trans girls are not able to play football and compete in their affirmed gender category (e.g. in the girls’ team in the given league). Despite being pressured to update their policy, the league stated they did not have the tools nor capacity to do so immediately, and instead, would consider addressing the policy at the end of the season. During this time, although the young athletes could play at their club – whose leaders and members were supportive of their participation – they could not play in the team or league and thus, sat out of the competitions for the remainder of the season. One young athlete impacted by the policy spoke about the resulting distress; they simply wanted to ‘play with their friends’. The league’s lack of tools or capacity was clearly an excuse for not addressing the problem or working towards a solution to facilitate the participation of the young person. The impact on the young person and their family was

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described as humiliating and alienating. Further, it was confusing for the young person to grasp and understand why they were not allowed to play. The conversations between parents or carers and their children in such circumstances are challenging and emotive. No child should be told they cannot play sport because of their gender. This reinforces the difference between elite and community sport values, and the damage of putting elite sporting principles into community sport contexts. Registration forms – this is one of the most common problems for families navigating community sport and registering their child to play in teams and competitions. In order for a young person, regardless of their gender, to participate and register at a club or competition, they need to register through a central registration system in Australia. Several major sports use similar systems, which are completed externally from the sport. As such, when problems arise, many administrators will defer blame outside of the sport organization, stating it is an external company who deals with it and families should ‘speak to them’. This abdication of responsibility from key actors and people charged with promoting inclusion is frustrating. The first author has experienced this problem in the field and working on the ground. It creates a void in which it becomes almost impossible to address the problem, because there is nobody to address the concern, and each party passes on responsibility. This appears to be a specific tactic designed to reinforce structures that seek to exclude trans athletes from sporting competition and discourage them from escalating the issue further. For trans and gender diverse athletes, the key problem with the registration process is that several providers ask for ‘sex assigned at birth’ without an accompanying general gender question. Doing so is problematic for several reasons. First, it breaches confidentiality in asking a young person or their family to oust them or disclose their trans identity when they may not want to or there could be consequences for doing so (e.g. bullying and differential treatment). Second, when such options are presented around sex or gender, they are often presented as binary, thus excluding any nonbinary or gender diverse young people. Lastly, many parents or guardians want to be honest and may feel pressured to select the box with their child’s sex assigned at birth. This may then lead to confusion for the parents and young athlete, who may not know if their child is automatically assigned to the competition or team of their sex assigned at birth. For example, a young transgender girl may select ‘male’ for sex assigned at birth, leading the organization to automatically put her into the boys’ groups and teams. This may then contribute to challenging and difficult conversations with coaches and administrators, who are uninformed about trans identities. Some families may wish to discuss support and education with clubs or volunteers to ensure their child’s safety and welfare. But for many other trans children – who are already socially affirmed with regards to their gender identity – this is often unnecessary, and the club and teammates have always known the child as their affirmed gender (Travers, 2018). In this regard, having to forcibly ‘out’ a child or force them to disclose their gender identity unnecessarily is harmful, specifically from a child safeguarding perspective. It is also important to note however, that

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some parents may not be supportive of their child’s gender affirmation or affirmed gender, which can add further complexity. This is why creating policies on the run is often ineffective and does not respond to or address the issues affecting trans and gender diverse athletes, while administrators often ‘fumble in the dark’ trying to navigate and enact these policies. It also clearly highlights the need for consultation and input from trans and gender diverse people, and their families, so they can design policies to respond to and cater to the unique needs of this community.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have discussed and presented what is happening ‘on the ground’ with regards to community sport and trans and gender diverse inclusion policies. To do so, we explored the impact on participation for trans and gender diverse young people who wish to engage and participate in community sport, in Victoria, Australia. The result is often an incomplete development of community sport policies or the development of policies ‘on the run’. These policies appear to be created in response to increased resistance and backlash to trans people (Pape, 2022), a lack of proper community consultation or engagement with trans and gender diverse people, and a lack of the appropriate knowledge or education around the topic. To address these barriers, we suggest that sports administrators and policy makers engage with appropriate resources, expertise and a range of academic research on the topic, especially around community sport and broader inclusion and gender. We also suggest administrators consider the use and purpose of policies. Are policy documents aimed to include people, thus having a positive impact on trans participants, and does the policy actually get implemented, or merely sit online in cloud storage? For many organizations, policies become part of a tick box exercise so they can affirm their commitment to diversity and inclusion, despite evidence suggesting the contrary. We also propose that community inclusion policies should benefit all genders and be written to reflect the diversity and values of the club or league. In this regard, we echo and reinforce Buzuvis’ (2011) calls for ‘values driven inclusion policies’ which reflect the ethical and moral values of the club or league. For example, this could mean prioritizing opportunities for all club members rather than focusing on winning. This also builds on a body of research within community sport in Australia, which explores the nexus between participation and performance, where clubs can often prioritize success and winning over the participation of all club members (Spaaij et al., 2019). Following Bekker et al. (2023), we recommend that Gender Inclusive Sport (that is, ‘sport that is inclusive and affirming of – and safe for – all women and sex/gender minoritized people, regardless of whether their bodies, gender expression, and/or identity align neatly with normative notions of the female/male binary’) follows key principles including: leading with inclusion, increasing access to community and youth sport and doubling down on gender equity (Bekker et al., 2023). Sport should critically reflect on the role of their club within their

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local and wider community, and on the role of community sport. Reinforcing the values of inclusion, fair play, access, health and teaching young people about social and cultural diversity should be central to this reflection and consideration on the role sport can play for people of all genders.

Notes 1. We use trans as an umbrella term for all identities that encompass those individuals whose sex assigned at birth differs from their gender identity or gender expression *the text that follows is a little unclear, including different gender affirmations and bodies. 2. We use the term lesbian gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer – LGBTIQ1 to refer to sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics within Australian contexts. We do not use Two Spirited because this is not a term culturally appropriate or relevant to Australia. Regardless, Australia is home to many Indigenous Peoples with a great deal of gender and sexuality diversity.

References Australian Human Rights Commission. (2019). Reflective Practice Framework: Guidelines for the Inclusion of Transgender and Gender Diverse People in Sport. NSW. https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/ahrc_reflective_practice_ framework_tgd_guidelines_2019.pdf Baeth, A., & Goorevich, A. (2023). Mediated moral panics: Trans athletes as spectres, politicians as protectors, and farces of fear. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for trans athletes: Challenges and struggles (pp. 135–147). Emerald Publishing. Barras, A., Frith, H., Jarvis, N., & Lucena, R. (2021). Timelines and transitions: Understanding transgender and non-binary people’s participation in everyday sport and physical exercise through a temporal lens. In Temporality in Qualitative Inquiry (pp. 57–71). Routledge. Bekker, S., & Finch, C. F. (2016). Too much information? A document analysis of sport safety resources from key organisations. BMJ Open, 6(5), e010877. Bekker, S., Paliadelis, P., & Finch, C. F. (2017). The translation of sports injury prevention and safety promotion knowledge: Insights from key intermediary organisations. Health Research Policy and Systems, 15(1), 1–9. Bekker, S., Storr, R., Patel, S., & Mitra, P. (2023). Gender inclusive sport: A paradigm shift for research, policy, and practice. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. https://doi.org/10.1080/19406940.2022.2161599 Bekker, S., & Posbergh, A. (2022). Safeguarding in sports settings: Unpacking a conflicting identity. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 14(2), 181–198. Bekker, S., Storr, R., & Posbergh, A. (2022). Inclusion, fairness and non-discrimination in sport: A wider lens. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 56, 1064–1065. Burke, M. (2022). Trans women participation in sport: A feminist alternative to Pike’s position. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 1–18.

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Buzuvis, E. (2011). Transgender student-athletes and sex-segregated sport: Developing policies of inclusion for intercollegiate and interscholastic athletics. Seton Hall Journal of Sports and Entertainment Law, 21, 1. Buzuvis, E. (2021). Law, policy, and the participation of transgender athletes in the United States. Sport Management Review, 24(3), 439–451. Caudwell, J. (2020). Transgender and non-binary swimming in the UK: Indoor public pool spaces and un/safety. Frontiers in Sociology, 5, 64. Caudwell, J. (2022). Queering indoor swimming in the UK: Transgender and non-binary wellbeing. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 46(4), 338–362. Elliott, S., Drummond, M. J., Prichard, I., Eime, R., Drummond, C., & Mason, R. (2021). Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on youth sport in Australia and consequences for future participation and retention. BMC Public Health, 21(1), 1–16. English, C., & Pieper, L. P. (2023). ‘This Bill Is about Fairness’: An argument against the prioritization of competitive fairness at the expense of justice in US school sport. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for trans athletes: Challenges and struggles (pp. 107–131). Emerald Publishing. Faye, S. (2021). The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. Penguin. Ferguson, L., & Russell, K. (2021). Gender performance in the sporting lives of young trans* people. Journal of Homosexuality, 1–25. Greey, A. D., & Lenskyj, H. J. (Eds.). (2022). Justice for trans athletes: Challenges and struggles. Emerald Publishing Limited. Hargie, O. D., Mitchell, D. H., & Somerville, I. J. (2017). ‘People have a knack of making you feel excluded if they catch on to your difference’: Transgender experiences of exclusion in sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 52(2), 223–239. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690215583283 IOC. (2021). Framework on fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations. https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/ Documents/News/2021/11/IOC-Framework-Fairness-Inclusion-Non-discrimina tion-2021.pdf Martowicz, M., Budgett, R., Pape, M., Mascagni, K., Engebretsen, L., DienstbachWech, L., Pitsiladis, Y. P., Pigozzi, F., & Erdener, U. (2023). Position statement: IOC framework on fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 57(1), 26–32. Nicholas, L. (2020). Whiteness, heteropaternalism, and the gendered politics of settler colonial populist backlash culture in Australia. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 27(2), 234–257. Pape, M. (2022). Feminism, trans justice, and speech rights: A comparative perspective. Law and Contemporary Problems, 85(1), 215–240. Pielke, R. (2022). Making sense of debate over transgender athletes in Olympic sport. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes (Emerald Studies in Sport and Gender) (pp. 31–43). Emerald Publishing Limited. https://doi.org/10. 1108/978-1-80262-985-920221003 Posbergh, A. (2022). Defining ‘woman’: A governmentality analysis of how protective policies are created in elite women’s sport. International Review for the Sociology of Sport. https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902211072765

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Russell, K., Leeder, T. M., Ferguson, L., & Beaumont, L. C. (2022). The space between two closets: Erin Parisi mountaineering and changing the trans* narrative. Sport, Education and Society, 1–13. Spaaij, R., Lusher, D., Jeanes, R., Farquharson, K., Gorman, S., & Magee, J. (2019). Participation-performance tension and gender affect recreational sports clubs’ engagement with children and young people with diverse backgrounds and abilities. PLoS One, 14(4), e0214537. Spaaij, R., Magee, J., Farquharson, K., Gorman, S., Jeanes, R., Lusher, D., & Storr, R. (2018). Diversity work in community sport organizations: Commitment, resistance and institutional change. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 53(3), 278–295. Sport Australia. (2023). Resources for the inclusion of trans and gender diverse people in community sport. https://www.sportaus.gov.au/integrity_in_sport/transgender_ and_gender_diverse_people_in_sport/resource Stewart, L., O’Halloran, P., Oates, J., Sherry, E., & Storr, R. (2021). Developing trans-athlete policy in Australian National Sport Organizations. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 13(4), 565–585. Storr, R., Jeanes, R., Rossi, T., & lisahunter (2022). Are we there yet? (Illusions of) Inclusion in sport for LGBT1 communities in Australia. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 57(1), 92–111. Storr, R., Jeanes, R., Spaaij, R., & Farquharson, K. (2021). “That’s where the dollars are”: Understanding why community sports volunteers engage with intellectual disability as a form of diversity. Managing Sport and Leisure, 26(3), 175–188. Storr, R., Nicholas, L., Robinson, K., & Davies, C. (2021). ‘Game to play?’: Barriers and facilitators to sexuality and gender diverse young people’s participation in sport and physical activity. Sport, Education and Society, 1–14. Strauss, P., Cook, A., Winter, S., Watson, V., Toussaint, D. W., & Lin, A. (2020). Associations between negative life experiences and the mental health of trans and gender diverse young people in Australia: Findings from Trans Pathways. Psychological Medicine, 50(5), 808–817. Travers, A. (2018). The trans generation. In The Trans Generation. New York University Press. Winter, S., Diamond, M., Green, J., Karasic, D., Reed, T., Whittle, S., & Wylie, K. (2016). Transgender people: Health at the margins of society. The Lancet, 388(10042), 390–400.

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Part 2 Autoethnography: A Methodology for Trans Athletes’ Resistance

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Chapter 5

Slipping Into the Shadows: Boxing, Affect and Healing Justice Dan Irving

Abstract This chapter offers an autotheoretical account of my experiences as a trans man training for my first amateur bout – one that has yet to come but borne out of a never-ending fight. My chapter is in conversation with autobiography (McBee, 2018), journalistic (Oates, 2006) and ethnographical scholarship addressing the intricacies of pugilistic violence as a response to systemic gender, racial, sexual and economic oppression (Beauchez, 2017; Rutter, 2007). Boxing draws fighters from marginalized communities. As a trans man, I have fought intense ‘negative’ feelings most of my life – emotions culminating into rage. I joined an amateur boxing club in Ottawa after trying to instigate a street altercation with a stranger. Feeling out of control, I sought refuge with others who also believe fighting solves problems. Influenced by Oates’ observations that boxing is ‘primarily about being, and not giving, hurt’ (2006) and sharing McBee’s experience of ‘loving those men even as I hit them in the face, and knowing that they love[] me back’ (2018), I explore boxing as intimate and affective grounds for bearing witness to the pain and injury of the other shaping their daily lives. Amateur boxing as an embodied and affective space exceeds the oft reductionist (mis) understanding of the sport as a violent spectacle of individual bravado and the emphasis scholars and the mainstream media place on the ‘heroic body’ (Woodward, 2007); instead, I offer glimpses into the healing justice as social justice that witnessing the pain, vulnerability and resilience of oneself and other boxers can provide. Keywords: Boxing; affect; sport; collective spaces; witnessing others; healing justice; transgender; pain

Trans Athletes’ Resistance, 59–69 Copyright © 2024 Dan Irving Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited doi:10.1108/978-1-80382-363-820231005

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It was an extremely hot July day in Ottawa. I was sitting on a concrete ledge by a sidewalk talking on the phone. After hanging up, I jumped onto the sidewalk and apparently landed too close to another man. Without stopping or looking me in the eye, he mumbled: ‘fuckin’ idiot’. I flew into a rage. I never did anything! Not to mention, my perception that he did not think I was worth confronting eye-toeye and face-to-face. I escalated the situation by shouting for him to come back and call me that again. I wanted to fight right there but, fortunately, he did not; instead, he slipped into a store. I was left alone to deal with the inner turmoil that drove me to challenge a stranger to a street fight. I thought to myself ‘who are you?’, ‘you better try to cope with this inner rage, grief and shame in a more constructive way’, and ‘if you think that physical combat can foster some relief and healing from the emotional and spiritual battles you have faced your entire teenage and adult life, then join a boxing gym’. This chapter offers a personal narrative of my experiences as a trans man training for my first amateur boxing bout – one that has yet to come but borne out of a never-ending fight. More than a sport, ‘boxing is life’ (Oates, 2006, p. 18) illuminating ‘life’s beauty, vulnerability, despair, incalculable and often self-destructive courage’. I posit that amateur boxing is an affective ground for bearing witness to the pain shaping our own lives, as well as the lives of others. Characteristic of affect, amateur boxing exceeds the oft reductionist (mis)understanding of the sport as a violent spectacle of individual bravado and the ‘heroic body’ (Woodward, 2007, p. 67). Boxing functions as a social space comprised of multiple exchanges and felt responses within boxers ourselves, between sparring partners or opponents, as well as fighters and the audience. I apply affect theory to direct attention towards the ‘social and sensual logic that informs boxing as a bodily craft’ (Wacquant, 2004, p. 7). Boxing offers glimpses into embodied sensate knowledge and unconscious communications within-between-amongst members of boxing communities that often address what cannot always be articulated verbally. We are living in hostile times wherein divisions along racial, sexual, gender and class lines are becoming increasingly deeper and more pronounced. White supremacy, heteropatriarchy, cisnormativity, nationalism and class as systemic governing relations erode us from the inside out often culminating in self-hatred and hostility towards others. Wider boxing communities are also fractured by significant racism, sexism, homophobia and cisgenderism. Crews and Lennox remind us that ‘[t]o examine blood and boxing bodies as vulnerable, wild, monstrous, and abject is to make space for instances of resistance within boxing and to make visible and bring to the fore alternative possible futures for the sport and its participants’ (2021, p. 48). Similar to a cut ‘man’ in a boxer’s corner, healing justice is required for social justice practices to be developed and sustained. Drawing from my own experiences, I seek to extend Crews and Lennox’s assertions for ‘the potential of alternative modes of being and strategies of resistance’ (2021, p. 42) to spaces beyond boxing itself. Amateur boxing is a productive site for healing justice. While one marginalized group cannot understand fully what it feels like to be the other, the vulnerability of the human psyche and body is shared in common. Furthermore, we have a mutual recognition concerning particular bodily fluids,

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sounds and movements that signify pain, defeat and determination. The sight of blood dripping from one’s nose or smeared over faces and gloves, the sounds of a fighter’s groans and the audience’s collective ‘ooohs’ in response to a hard body shot, the stinging feeling of an opponent’s jab, and the smell of venue getting increasingly pungent as more fighters sweat profusely until the final bell rings all communicate injury done to oneself and to others. As a result of such affective exchanges – bodies communicating pain, injury, determination and the courage to keep fighting - witnessing the pain, vulnerability and resilience of oneself and other boxers offer glimpses into the healing justice as social justice. This chapter is organized into three rounds to mirror the division of an amateur bout. The first section focuses on my inner struggles with the shame, anxiety and feelings of vulnerability relating to my trans subjectivity. Boxing literally forces individuals to look at themselves in the mirror. Shadow boxing is often performed in front of a mirror so boxers can imagine an opponent to practice head movement, footwork, and defence to gain confidence and correct any errors in technique. This is an exercise antithetical to disassociation from the body and mind as shadow boxers must be attuned. With the exception of a trainer, few watch shadowboxing except for that person in the mirror, their body intact but weighed down by systemic oppression. Hidden from others but manifest as anger, depression, anxiety, confusion, the bravado of a boxer can mask an aching heart and a battered soul – ‘a being who screams. . . “I want to be someone. I exist”’ (Crews & Lennox, 2021, p. 42) In the second section, I focus on sparring partners and opponents in a match to illustrate relations of interdependence that demonstrates boxing as an affective ground for witnessing others’ struggles and resilience. Sparring is nerve-wracking and feeling one’s own trepidation and motivation cultivates empathy for others. During these training exercises, one must be attuned with others. Bodies move in sync as both boxers learn how to spot physical and emotional indicators of fatigue, anger, fear and how this will translate into offensive and defensive manoeuvres. Such non-verbal attunement, or sensate knowledge, can enrich relationships outside of the ring. The third section, the final round, pivots towards broader social and affective relations by discussing spectators. Collectively audience reactions, as well as individual responses to visual signifiers of exhaustion, pain and injury (e.g. cries of encouragement for both fighters showing signs of fatigue or discouragement to ‘dig deep’ within for the energy to ‘finish strong’) lend themselves to thinking through compassion for others. Regardless of whether individual spectators are boxers themselves, they are familiar with the intricacies of the ‘sweet science’ of boxing, or have been cheering for their favourite boxer or the fighter who appears to be winning, the embodied visual and audible cues of pain, struggle and determination to achieve foster common grounds across difference.

Round 1: Facing Oneself I hate shadow boxing. I have little choice but to do three rounds of it at the club because it is a warmup exercise for my sparring class. I refuse to incorporate this

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crucial exercise when training on my own, to my detriment. Shadow boxing, true to its purpose, makes me feel extremely self-conscious. Of course, part of this feeling relates to being forced to look at myself. The mirror has always reflected negative images regardless of the stage in my life. Pre-transition, it reflected ugliness, and awkwardness. Post-transition, I witnessed a masculinized exterior yet the emotional and spiritual agony that I bore prior to, and following, my transition was reflected back as physical weight. I could not stand to see the 30 pounds of excess weight I carried as fat. I have always experienced an overwhelming sense of unbelonging in society. I felt as though the extra padding protected me from being detected by others to be as weak, vulnerable and small as I felt. What happens to vulnerable people in neoliberal society rooted in neoliberal hyper- and competitive individualism? I fell in love with boxing during my first class. Like so many who enter the doors of a boxing gym, my goal was to get into the ring and fight. Initially, I longed for that moment when I could hit and be hit with reckless abandon. This is not boxing. Boxing teaches humility, and in particular ways, strips away difference. Purchasing a gym membership does not entitle one to enter the ring. This is a space reserved for those who, through blood, sweat and tears, have trained their ‘body and soul’ (Wacquant, 2004). Coaches recognize those who are ‘fight-ready’. When I told a coach of my dream to fight, he responded quickly with: ‘you will have to lose thirty pounds. There is no way that a guy your size can go in there with a guy 165 or 170lbs, buddy, you’d get killed’. Given my height is not quite 503, it is much safer for me to fight in a lower weight category. I lost the weight and felt myself inching closer to the ring. I have embraced my small stature because, to me, it reflects hard work and determination. I am 592, 140 lbs and while that is small the fire inside me looms large. The multiple battles I have withstood during my adult life left me psychologically scarred. Unlike the physical scars from gender affirming top surgery, psychic injury is easier to mask. Boxing emphasizes the fit, heroic, disciplined and machine-like body, nevertheless, ‘sporting bodies are sites of contestation’ (Crews & Lennox, 2021, p. 50) the boxing body especially due to the ever-present threat of harm. I still hate shadow boxing. While I have more of a boxer’s physique, the mirror confronts me with my worst fears: I will never fit in and I will always have to fight alone. Compared to the other guys around me, I have little finesse. I watch them and see fluid movements and confidence as they taken on imaginary opponents. My combos are simplistic, I cannot relax so my body is too tense, I do not move my head off the line leaving myself open to counter-attacks. Not only do I worry that others will see this ugly performance but that my feelings of awkwardness and never being good enough will be sensed by those around me. They will reject me. During yet another round of fighting in the shadows, my inner voice screams for this mentally excruciating exercise to be over. The coach yells ‘last ten seconds’, I throw my fiercest combination towards the guy in the mirror. My effort was, as trans man and amateur boxer, Thomas McBee describes: ‘I wasn’t trying to beat him. I was trying to save him’ (2018, p. 144). Time is called and we pivot

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away from self-confrontation. I am exhausted and cannot win this fight alone. I long for the partner drills that follow.

Round 2: Know Your Opponent After a few years in adult technical class, I confronted my fear and asked a coach if I could join his sparring class. Sparring can be geared to lighter contact to emphasize more technical aspects of this ‘sport of crisis’ (Oates, 2006, n.p.) such as angles, timing, foot and head movement, strategically directing an opponent’s movement and other skills attributed to ring intelligence. While never reaching the power and intensity of fighting, the sparring ring can be quite dangerous and both partners are at risk. Our group has a reputation among more elite competitors as being rough and unruly. Unlike the young and prospective boxers training for national and international competition, the guys and one trans woman in our class are drawn by our passion for the sport and our desire to have a few amateur bouts. We are a diverse group ranging in age, race, gender identity and class, nevertheless, we must function as a team. Boxing blurs lines between the internal world of the individual and external social relations comprising public spaces. Those who research boxing often stress the interpersonal and productive nature of the ‘. . .simultaneously fraternal and competitive’ (Wacquant, 2004, p. x) relationships between boxers. Boxers bring themselves – a being sutured together by and through multiple systemic power relations – to contribute to the comprising of a team ‘assembled. . . around a single project: that of building a collective floor in which each individual is both a recipient and a contributor. . . “By yourself, you’re not a boxer. . . whether you’re a beginner or world champion, it’s thanks to the other guy’s punches that you learn and progress”’ (Beauchez, 2017, p. 116). Progression exceeds the technical skill one needs to hone to be a good boxer. John Rutter emphasizes the ethical dimensions of boxing by stating that ‘[t]he face-to- face encounter is “not a play of mirrors” but instead a serious responsibility to and for the Other’ (Rutter, 2007, p. 287). While I learn from (and have stories about) many of my sparring partners, my interactions with two guys stand out the most regarding the potential to affect and be affected that boxing incites. My never-ending passion for boxing cannot obscure my lack of aptitude for the sport and does not translate into an ability to cultivate the finesse reflected in the multitude of different styles boxers display in the ring. Boxing demands individuals be present within, and attentive to their bodies to avoid injury. This sense of being with one’s body is juxtaposed to the first half of my life prior to transition whereby disassociating from my ‘female’ embodiment was key to my survival. One of my sparring partners is a cisman who is shorter than me. We were paired together often because our stature afforded us the opportunity to learn basics of contact whilst not having to constantly navigate the extended reach advantage that taller boxers have over us. We became friendly acquaintances fast. Many times, we discussed techniques shorter guys can use to work their way

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‘inside’ of taller boxers while watching other members of our class spar or during partner drills. I experienced, or rather projected, a tension between us despite our friendly rapport. Extending the first rule of boxing – to protect oneself at all times – into more intimate aspects of my life, I hid my being a trans man from him. While he shared with me his frustration with the height advantage that most boxers have over shorter guys, I often wondered how being a short man impacted his sense of self and the ways that he navigated social space. What he lacked in stature, he made up for in style. His head movement, ability to ‘bob-and-weave’ and slip punches were incredible and gained him much respect and admiration at the club. My movements, on the other hand, are stiff and clunky reflecting my continuous inability to relax whilst facing an opponent. I am known for being offensive and, to my detriment with more skilled boxers, aggressive. I attempt to charge into the pocket and fight on the inside. This works well with this sparring partner and, there was one memorable round, where we were somewhat interlocked but free enough to exchange repeated body shots. This moment was exhilarating and exhausting as we each pummelled the sides of each other’s bodies. The coach allowed us this moment to unleash this f(l)ur(r)y before abruptly reigning us in from brawling, or a lack of attentiveness to technique and throwing unrealistically voluminous combinations of punches. Such behaviour is unbecoming of a boxer. Boxing is a very disciplined endeavour wherein fighters train their bodies to endure the excruciating demands of an amateur bout’s three two-minute rounds. In addition to one’s body, boxing training involves self-discipline over one’s emotions, particularly fear, anger and defeatism that is borne from physical exhaustion. I do not know what triggered my friend to lose control and pound furiously at the side or my body, however, I know that for me this moment presented a chance to release some pressure built up by a constant low-grade rage I carry. While emotions are not verbally articulated during sparring, feelings are ever-present, mediated and managed among those in the ring. Such intervention creates spaces for healing justice to occur because while we may not be speaking to emotions, we bear witness to, mediate and manage the feeling states of others. While coaches halt brawling because it is antithetical to boxing as a highly technical sport, it is also possible that such intervention is to aid those lost to rage. After all, ‘in the ring, it is dangerous to invoke too much anger. It can be a stimulant, but it is very expansive of energy. It is impractical to get mad most of the time’ (Oates, 2006, p. 28). Again, while I can only know my own longings in this moment, my sparring partner was helping me unlock and release my anger in a safe way. Both of us protecting our sides with our arms and our heads with our gloves, we could help each other through presenting an opportunity for some relief, as anger is expelled through guttural noises, breathing and sweat. A second incident with another sparring partner also creates openings to consider amateur boxing’s function as an affective site where we bear witness to the pain of others and the potential of such a site to orient us towards healing justice. This particular guy is closer to me in age than stature and, given the rigours of boxing on the body, those who discover the sport later in life are at a

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disadvantage. I was in adult technical class with this cis man of colour and was excited to see him confront his confessed anxieties and join the sparring class. I was paired with him for his first ever round. Remembering how nerve-wracking my own experience was, and the mercy that was shown by my first sparring partner, I paid forward that generosity of spirit. I was not aggressive and during the last 10 seconds of the round practiced blocking body shots so he could finish the round strong and in control. A couple of weeks later, the coach called both of us into the ring to spar again. From my corner, I watched two of my teammates offering him advice on a particular combination to throw to exploit one of my significant weaknesses – I cannot block or duck under a hook. Waiting alone, I felt an ache of sadness as I watched their eyes dart from me to him as they instructed him to prey on this weakness. It was not long into the round when he threw the combo, and the impact of his hook to my head ignited my desire to ‘answer back’ as the coach phrases it. Like many beginners, he protects himself by putting his gloves on either side of his head exposing his entire face. I fired a jab that landed dead centre on his face. His expression was one of pure shock. The flash of shock, the fear or anger in a sparring partner’s eyes, their mouths opening wide indicating fatigue, the redness of their skin when freshly struck or the blood dripping from their nose or a cut lip speaks. One’s opponent as well as those in their corner must listen carefully because ‘half of knowing how to fight is just being willing, really willing, to pay attention’ (McBee, 2018, p. 89). I oppose Oates’ assertion that ‘boxing as a phenomenon sui generis stimulates rather than resolve certain emotions. If boxing is akin to classic tragedy in its imitation of action and of life it cannot provide the catharsis of pity and terror’ (93, emphasis Oates). Unlike life, boxing offers immediate justice for two pugilists struggling to endure their time between the ropes. I found catharsis for self-pity, as well as my fear. Furthermore, there was no need for animosity towards my sparring partner nor those in his corner. He delivered his hook, and I landed my jab concluding that exchange. Boxing is not a sport where one can dwell on mistakes or successful moves made in the immediate past. One must focus exclusively on staying present. In these moments, boxers enact the crucial foundation of every empathetic and vulnerable opening necessary for healing justice outside of the ring – we are present to each other. Imagine how vibrant social justice organizations and movements could be if we dealt with inevitable hurt and injuries immediately than left it in the past. Contact drills and sparring produce intimate physical and psychological bonds between boxers. Boxing often attracts people whose first opponent is systemic oppression where violence in a variety of forms threatens their body and soul routinely (Beauchez, 2017, p. 118). As Oates explains: ‘. . .it is reasonable to assume that boxers fight one another because the legitimate objects of their anger or not accessible to them. . . you fight what’s nearest, what’s available, what’s ready to fight you. . . If boxers as a class are angry one would have to be willfully naive not to know why. For the most part they constitute the disenfranchised of our affluent society, they are the sons of impoverished ghetto neighborhoods in which anger, if not fury, is appropriate. . .’ (p. 63).

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Marginality draws individuals to the sport and close to each other while rendering themselves open to controlled violence (Beauchez, 2017, p. 109; McBee, 2018, p. 122). While controlled violence cannot eradicate feelings of fear and anger when one faces their ever-present vulnerability to injury, boxing is an affective space affording individuals the opportunity to understand their self-worth (Beauchez, 2017, p. 109; McBee, 2018, p. 183), as well as ‘readily agree [ing]’ to assisting others in their fight to value and celebrate their own lives (McBee, 2018, p. 122; Wacquant, 2004, p. 15). McBee states that boxing: . . . provides room for what so many [people] lack: tenderness, and touch, and vulnerability. The narratives we see about boxing matches always start at the ending: two [individuals] in the ring, squaring off the violence obscures the deeper story, the ones about the one or both the fighters who see your biggest weakness and teach you to turn it into an advantage. In gyms all over the world, [people] are sharing their worst fears, [. . .] are asking for help, [and] are sparring one another with great care. (2018, P. 183)

Round 3: Outside the Ring After a lengthy search for a novice boxer in my age range and weight class, my first fight was scheduled for 19 May 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic which has had us all against the ropes made it impossible for me to step inside them. Given my lack of experience fighting, I draw on another significant experience sparring, and scholarship addressing amateur boxing bouts to inform this section. Boxing as an affective endeavour with the transformative potential necessary for healing justice is also evident from the perspective of the audience. With the exception of friends and family members, spectators are not privy to the intimate details shaping the life histories, identities, and present struggles that both boxers endure in their daily lives. The crowd gathers for fight night because combat sports are an exhilarating and entertaining spectacle for many people especially among marginalized populations. It is the love of boxing combined with shared vulnerabilities defining humanity that produces empathy for the suffering of others. Precarity fosters spectator’s ability to garner respect for the tenacity of boxers to continue to fight despite their obvious woundedness or, in the case of a bout where it is evident well in advance of the final bell, that one boxer has lost. Sparring occurs every Wednesday at my boxing club. Part of training for a fight involves honing one’s ability to focus solely on oneself and one’s opponent whilst tuning out the sights and sounds coming from spectators. It is commonplace to have other boxers of various levels gather around the ring to watch sparring. While I have gained the respect of many club members because of my weight loss and physical conditioning resulting from my commitment to training, I am not a boxer who attracts much attention. The same cannot be said of the younger guy with whom I had been matched given our similar heights, weights

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and our novice status. Unlike me, this guy picked up the finer aspects of boxing quickly and before long was throwing combinations seamlessly, slipping most of my punches and affording me the opportunity to embrace humility regularly. The one time that I clearly dominated our three rounds would also be the last time that dominated our sparring sessions. He was ready for me the following week. Like always, I engaged offensively only to have my punches blocked and countered by a series of blows that excited those who gathered. I could hear the buzz of their anticipation and was painfully aware that even more boxers were drawn to the ring to watch. Despite multiple coaches’ advice against charging ‘directly down the line’, getting hit ignites my rage, and my instinct is to attack immediately. When I moved in, he was ready. I heard cheering for him and some murmuring in response to what they saw I had coming for me. Impeccably timed, he caught me both off guard and balance with a hard cross. It hurt plus I heard my neck crackling as his punch snapped my head back. My body was thrust backwards by the power and momentum of his punch. I tried desperately to keep my balance to avoid hitting the mat because falling amid a struggle to stay alive (at that moment and in life itself) is not an option for me. This exchange, like all exchanges, rounds and matches defining boxing, held a multiplicity of psychically and somatically charged dynamics. As his body unfurled to release the power from his legs through the torque of his hips that loads power into his punch, my forward momentum was halted, and as I involuntarily stumbled backwards, the physical pain and mental shock I felt at that precise moment was captured in the collective utterance of those watching: ‘oooooooooooh!’. Their reflexive response bore simultaneous witness to the fight, skill and drive in him and the shock and pain that my body was forced to absorb. This guttural sound – the ‘oooooooooh!’ – made simultaneously and collectively by the audience demonstrates boxing’s transformative potential as an affective realm. Anyone who has attended a boxing event or watched a televised fight comprehends the ooooooh and most likely has lent their individual voice to this chorus expressing mutual sentiment. Given our shared physical and psychological vulnerabilities, spectators’ audible responses such as oooooooh, groans, cheers, as well as physical movements such as rising from their seat (or moving to the edge of it), turning their head to avoid witnessing intense injury demonstrate the mutual empathy, compassion, support and frustration that we feel in common. While audiences can admire and appreciate taut and superbly fit boxing bodies, bodies that ‘bleed, sweat and are injured’ (Crews & Lennox, 2021; Rutter, 2007; Woodward, 2007, p. 68) are most relatable given that we all have experienced physical pain and mental anguish. Years of training and experience cannot protect boxers, and the risk of injury is immanent when stepping into the ring. There is a synergistic relationship between the individual boxer, their opponent and the audience as a ‘shadowy third’ (Oates, 2006) entity. From the outset, this affective dynamic crackles with energy given that ‘[t]he ceremonial ringing of the bell is a summoning to full wakefulness for both boxers and spectators’ (Oates, 2006, p. 8) within what Lois Wacquant aptly dubs the ‘theatre of bruising’ (2007, p. 4). The bell alerts both fighters that it is permissible to engage in violent exchanges and awakens the audience to the

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ferocity about to take place. After all, ‘. . .boxing “is no Game of chess; The spectator sees men [sic] bleed, suffer, sometimes fall; he [sic] sees. . . the swelling, bursting face of the boxer is seen by all. . .”’ (Sartre quoted in Rutter, 2007, p. 288). This witnessing – seeing pain in the other – has the potential to conjure feelings of care and compassion among strangers.

Conclusion As Oates articulates: Boxing spectacle is degrading, no doubt – in that the most primary sense of the word: add degrading of the self; a breaking-down, as if one’s sensitive nerve endings were being worn away. That the losing, failing, staggering boxer will not quit is very much a part of the degradation process, for boxing is as much as about losing as winning, about being hurt as doing hurt, and even the most macho of spectators is roused to sympathy with the boxer who, through losing, has displayed that ‘grace’ and ‘courage’. . .. (Oates 179) Boxing is a contradictory sport. It is simultaneously an individual pursuit of discipline, athleticism and technique while being a space of kinship and community. It is violent and skilled wherein pugilism is often described as akin to a technical dance. It is a space of glory and crushing defeat. It is a physical sport often performed between the walls of a cramped gym and the even more constrictive ropes that line the ring and, simultaneously, it is an affective atmosphere eluding containment to ensure that the fight continues long after the final bell has rung. In this chapter, I have attempted to demonstrate glimpses into the affective workings of boxing on an individual level, between boxers, as well as between fighters and the audience. Boxing is not typically a space where emotions are discussed; nevertheless, feeling states such as rage, frustration, aspiration and defeatism are ever present, acknowledged and dealt with through shadow boxing, sparring and fighting. Boxing affords space for members of marginalized communities to confront their own pain and psychic wounds within their past and shaping their present. Moreover, embodied responses to injury and fatigue that we witness on the face of another, the sounds of breath exhaled when someone is striking an opponent and timing their next move and the outpouring of bodily fluids such as blood and sweat are intimate engagements that signify boxers are seeing and being seen. While privilege and different social locations prohibit us from knowing how transphobia, racism and xenophobia are felt by others, we can see that fellow boxers are exerting themselves, are hurt or exhausted. Moreover, this recognition of vulnerability to injury, as well as the grit and tenacity to continue to fight even what may seem like a losing battle, is present among wider boxing audiences.

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These instances of messy and often grotesque recognition serve as instances of healing justice. Boxing not only has the tools to address its own injurious violence that reproduces wider relations of systemic oppression, but it can also serve as a model for broader social justice movements.

References Beauchez, J. (2017). Boxing, the Gym, and Men: The Mark of the Fist. Springer. Crews, S., & Lennox, P. S. (2021). Boxing and Performance: Memetic Hauntings. Routledge. McBee, T. P. (2018). Amateur: A Reckoning with Gender, Identity and Masculinity. Scribner. Oates, J. C. (2006). On Boxing. Harper Perennial. Rutter, J. D. (2007). Dismantling the face: Toward a phenomenology of boxing. Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, 7(3), 281–293. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1532708606297159 Wacquant, L. (2004). Body & Soul: Notebooks of an Apprentice Boxer. Oxford University Press. Woodward, K. (2007). Boxing, Masculinity and Identity. Routledge.

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Chapter 6

Bobbing and Weaving: A Nonbinary Boxer’s Experiences of Sport, Gender and Resistance Ali Durham Greey

Abstract Even though trans and nonbinary athletes regularly experience oppression and exclusion in sport, many encounter sport as a site of gendered liberation. Most literature on trans and nonbinary athletes focuses on experiences of oppression; much less examines trans and nonbinary athlete resistance. Centring the voices of trans and nonbinary athletes in sport is essential for attending to the complexity of their experiences in sport. I draw on my own experiences as a nonbinary elite boxer to explore what is at stake in sport and demonstrate how sport can function as a site of joy and resistance for trans and nonbinary athletes. Amid ongoing debates about whether or not it is fair for trans women athletes to compete in sport, Gleaves and Lehrbach (2016) argued that sport does not solely concern who wins but also encompasses the ‘the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves’ in competitive sport. I argue that the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in competitive sport stay with us for a lifetime. These stories shape how we make sense of ourselves and others. I explore how women, trans, and nonbinary boxers issue a threat to patriarchal cisheteronormative customs in boxing, precisely because we disrupt the assumption that aggression is the male domain and that masculinity equals cisgender maleness. I contribute to the growing body of literature centring trans and nonbinary voices by drawing attention to how trans and nonbinary athletes’ experiences of sport are characterized not only by exclusion and oppression but also by joy and resistance. Keywords: Transgender; boxing; nonbinary; sport; resistance; trans

Trans Athletes’ Resistance, 71–86 Copyright © 2024 Ali Durham Greey Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited doi:10.1108/978-1-80382-363-820231006

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As I push open the doors to Toronto Newsgirls’ Boxing Club, I’m struck by a pungent scent of leather. I perch myself on the bench by the door to kick off my winter boots. I spot ‘Crusher’ leaning against the south wall of the gym. She waves at me while resting between sets of pull-ups. All the boxers at Newsgirls are given ‘boxing names’ by the gym’s head coach, Savoy. Receiving one’s boxing name is a boxer’s rite of passage in the gym. As I walk through the gym’s entrance, I admire the images on the wall: photographs of women1, trans and nonbinary people competing in the ring. I pass the photograph that captures my attention every time I pass by: it’s an action shot of ‘Razor’, a young nonbinary boxer, in the ring. The photographer must have been positioned directly behind Razor’s opponent because Razor’s gaze appraises me as I pass by the photo. Razor’s nose is bleeding heavily, and the blood has been smeared above their lip. Razor has a determined and defiant grin on their bloodied face. My attention is diverted when the gym’s head coach, Savoy, notices I’ve entered. Savoy is standing talking to two people who are new to the gym, whom Savoy always affectionately refers to as ‘newbies’. ‘Kangaroo in the house!’ Savoy calls out to me affectionately. I grin and we high five; I’m already blushing because I know what she will say next. Addressing the newbies as well as the group of seven or so boxers warming up beside the mirror, Savoy raises the volume of her voice to announce: ‘three-time Canadian champion, Kangaroo: in the house!’ Savoy declares my presence this way every time I enter Newsgirls’. In my delighted embarrassment, I rush into the gym’s makeshift locker room. I began boxing at Newsgirls in 2012. Days before I first entered the gym I was at a local pub and, by chance, women’s Olympic boxing was on the television. It was my first-time watching women competing in the sport. After watching a match or two, in a moment of tipsy hubris, I boasted that I could defeat the Canadian athlete – Mary Spencer – competing before me on the screen. A friend at the pub challenged me to prove it. So, the next day I went to a boxing gym and began what eventually became a rewarding journey into the sport of boxing. Over the next 4 years, I won three Canadian championships, climbed the international charts to achieve top eight in the world ranking and – at the 2016 Canadian Olympic trials – defeated the Canadian athlete whom I’d watched that evening in the pub, Mary Spencer, who later became my friend, mentor and teammate. On my first day at Toronto Newsgirls I sat, like all newbies during their first workout, on the side of the ring with Savoy for the Newsgirls’ orientation. ‘Imagine you’re walking down a dark alleyway with your niece’, Savoy begins. ‘Suddenly, you notice that someone has started following you’, she continues. You notice that the alleyway leads to a dead end, and you’re trapped. The person following you continues to approach. You’re scared now. You know that you must protect yourself and your niece, but don’t know what to do. You look down at the ground. . . Savoy drops her gaze to the floor, ‘and you find two hammers’. Savoy appraises her hands, tightening them into solid fists: ‘You pick them up’. Raising

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her arms to brandish her clenched fists, Savoy remarks: ‘You decide that hell or high water, you’re going to make your way out. At Newsgirls we’re going to teach you how to use your hammers to make your way out’. Boxing was ‘my way out’, my way out of a gender system which neither anticipates nor accounts for bodies like mine. Through boxing, I found an alternative understanding of my gender, my masculinity and my embodiment. Boxing assisted me in embodying my own masculinity. Boxing facilitated a reimagining of myself, what I am capable of and how I relate to others in this world. In this chapter, I draw on my experiences as a nonbinary athlete to describe the crucial role boxing played in my life, helping me to better accept and understand my gendered embodiment. In the first section, I begin by building on important work by Gleaves and Lehrbach (2016), who argue that sport plays a crucial role in how we understand ourselves and that to categorically deny trans people from participating in competitive sport functions to diminish our collective imaginary of gendered possibilities. In the second section, I outline how women, trans, and nonbinary people’s participation has been interpreted as an incursion into an exclusively male domain, an incursion which has inspired a gendered panic. I also describe how my experience in boxing facilitated a new relationship with my nonbinary masculinity. In the final section, I consider the tension between misogyny/transphobia in the sport and the low importance placed on gender in practices for pairing boxers for training. I also discuss the intersection between transphobia/misogyny and race/class inequities.

Sport and the Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves Sport is crucial to our collective understanding of gender. Gleaves and Lehrbach (2016) argue that, for athletes and fans alike, sport is a cultural and social institution integral to how we, as a collective and as individuals, understand our gendered selves. Gleaves and Lehrbach suggest that ‘sport is a way for men and women [sic] to “tell stories about themselves to themselves” that invoke and further inform their gendered identities’ (p. 320). In other words, competitive sport is a crucial stage upon which our gendered stories unfold. For many, the stories ‘we tell ourselves about ourselves’ on the field, on the court and in the ring become the bedrock of how we understand ourselves and how we make sense of who we are. One of the key stories I tell myself about myself comes from my fifth boxing match. This fight was particularly memorable because I was competing in Flint, Michigan against Claressa Shields, the formidable 2012 Olympic gold medallist who had defeated many of her opponents by early round knockout or technical knockout (TKO). Claressa would later become the only professional boxer in history, in the either the men’s or women’s division, to hold all four major world titles simultaneously in two weight classes. Claressa was unstoppable. It was no wonder that no athlete in the ‘women’s’2 69 kg, 75 kg or 81 kg divisions was willing to take the fight. Claressa’s coach had tried to lure potential competitors from across North America with flights, cash payments, and favours; but none would agree to the fight. Even though Claressa had won Olympic gold in London, 2012, she had never fought a match in front of her home crowd. This would be her

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first fight on home turf. Shortly before this moment, I had moved from Toronto Newsgirls to the Windsor Amateur Boxing Club to intensify my training. I begged and cajoled my coach, Charlie, for over 2 weeks before he agreed to let me take the fight. When we arrived at the venue on the night of the fight, I was exceptionally nervous. Charlie tried to convince me to stay in the private area Claressa’s coach had provided us with, but I wandered around the venue taking in the people and the event. I marvelled at how many people had arrived to watch Claressa fight. I watched as a long line of young Black girls waited for their chance to exchange a few words with, and receive an autograph from Claressa, who sat relaxed and formidable, in her yellow and purple boxer’s robe. When she saw me, Claressa put down her pen and came over. ‘Thank you so much for coming’, shaking my hand with a firm grip and looking me in the eye. ‘I wondered if you might chicken out’, she remarked. I smiled with feigned nonchalance and told her that I wouldn’t miss my chance to beat the Olympic champion on her home turf. She laughed, ‘I can’t tell you how much it means to be able to put this event on’. When we stepped into the ring, I stood across from what seemed like a completely different person the one who shook my hand. Without taking her eyes off me, Shields paced around the ring, appraising me like a piece of raw, but uninteresting meat. The bell rang and the fight began. The crowd roared Shield’s name in unison. At about 10 seconds into the fight, I lunged towards her with a jab. Shield expertly parried my jab with her left and delivered her signature killer right-hand blow to my left eye. The force was stunning, and I was knocked to the ground. I was disoriented by the blow, but I immediately hopped back onto my feet. As the referee delivered the requisite 10 count – required any time a boxer is knocked down – I began to perceive the damage Shield’s blow had yielded. My left eye was closing a little more with every passing second. In the rounds that followed, the referee periodically halted the match to check my eye, which became concerningly more swollen and discoloured as the match progressed. The referee and the ringside doctor threatened to end the fight if my eye became anymore swollen. I knew that if I received one more blow to my face from Shields, the officials would end the match, and I would receive a TKO. If I lost by TKO, I would be suspended from the ring for 3 months, which would mean I would miss my chance to qualify for nationals. For the remainder of the fight, I ran from Shields: I threw few shots and moved continuously to avoid her blows. Between rounds, I could hear Shield’s coach urging her to double her efforts to knock me out and end the fight. I raised my guard high to protect my injured eye and endured the shots Shields threw to my body. When the final bell rang, I was ecstatic. I had, without a shadow of a doubt, lost the fight, but I had gone the distance with one of the best fighters in history. This memory – more than any other – is the one I remember when I reflect on my boxing career. It is a memory of my courage and resilience, of getting back up after being knocked down, and a memory of defying the odds. This memory has contributed to how I understand myself. It provides me with a touchstone of some of my character traits which I cherish most: courage, resilience, determination and drive. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves in competitive sport stay with

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us for a lifetime. These stories shape how we make sense of ourselves and others, and they are profoundly important. To categorically deny sport, and its capacity to help us know and make sense of ourselves, from people whose gender assignment and gender identity are not congruent is a profound injustice (English & Pieper, 2023; Travers, 2023). To deny trans people the ability to participate in competitive sport not only excludes us from full participation in the public sphere, but this denial also diminishes our collective imagination of the vast possibilities for diverse gendered embodiment (Gleaves & Lehrbach, 2016). Seeing athletes of diverse genders on the pitch, on the court and in the ring shows others, like my old coach Savoy regularly says, that ‘that’s an option’.

Fig. 1.

In the Ring With Claressa. Photo credit: Zack Wittman.

The ‘Women’s’ Division of Boxing and Gender Panic Competing as a boxer was a crucial part of my gender journey; however, boxing is not typically a welcoming sport for women, trans and nonbinary people. If any one sport best functions to reproduce and reaffirm cisgender heterosexual masculinity, one might argue, boxing would be that sport. Pulitzer Prize winning author Joyce Carol Oates describes women’s role in the boxing ring. At boxing matches women’s role is limited to that of the card girl and occasional National Anthem singer: stereotypical functions usually performed in stereotypically zestful feminine ways – for women have no natural place in the spectacle otherwise. The card girls in their bathing suits and spike heels, glamour girls of the 1950s, complement the boxers in their trunks and gym shoes but are not to be taken seriously: their public exhibition of themselves involves no risk and is purely decorative. (1987, p. 72)

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Fig. 2.

Fig. 3.

I’m Knocked Down by Claressa in the First Round. Photo credit: Zack Wittman.

I Keep My Guard up for the Remainder of the Fight. Photo credit: Zack Wittman.

Women’s role in boxing is relegated to the sidelines, as a prop or prize for the male boxers and viewers. In this role, the only women featured are feminine, hypersexualized, passive and – for the most part – white or light-skinned. Oates

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Claressa and I Hug After the Fight. Photo credit: Zack Wittman.

declares: ‘Boxing is for men, and is about men, and is men’ (1987, p. 72 emphasis original). Boxing has typically been the exclusive domain of cisgender heterosexual male masculinity. Women, trans and nonbinary boxers not only invade the male-only space that boxing has historically provided men, we also disrupt the assumption that masculinity equals maleness. Women, trans and nonbinary boxers punch, grunt, swagger and spit just like cisgender male boxers. We do not emulate male masculinity; we employ boxing to help us embody our own. It is no wonder then that women, trans and nonbinary people have been systematically excluded from boxing. Our participation in boxing challenges the binary understandings of gender underpinning cisheteropatriarchy. Although women have been competing in boxing since at least the 1720s (Jennings, 2015; Thrasher, 2012), women’s professional and amateur boxing was illegal until recent decades: until 1988 in Sweden, 1991 in Canada, 1993 in the United States and 1998 in Britain (Boxing Ontario, 2017; Kipnis & Caudwell, 2015; Trimbur, 2013). The prohibitions placed on women’s boxing were justified by alleged physical fragility. Of course, these allegations were warranted by no empirical research. In a similar vein, today trans women’s participation in sport is highly regulated, and in sports like rugby and swimming is now categorically prohibited at the international level (Pringle & Denison, 2022). These prohibitions rely on assumptions about women’s bodies, rather than empirical science to justify exclusion.

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When women were finally allowed to compete in boxing, their/our inclusion was met with derision and disgust from male boxers, coaches and fans, as well as resistance from sporting organizations. Boxing’s renowned historian, Bert Sugar, captured a common sentiment about women’s participation in the sport when he said ‘I’d rather poke my eye out with a sharp stick than watch women’s boxing’ (Thrasher, 2012, p. 73). While men’s boxing has been included in the modern Olympic Games since 1904, citing medical safety concerns, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) excluded women boxers until the 2012 Olympics (Godoy-Pressland, 2015). Once finally permitted to compete, the IOC limited women’s boxing to only three of the 10 weight divisions available to men (Jennings & Cabrera Vel´azquez, 2015; Lindner, 2012). Compared to the men’s division, boxers in the women’s division continue to face fewer opportunities for funding, media representation and competition. Boxers in the women’s division inspire panic about gender in the sport. Sport governing bodies have employed strategies to mediate this panic through attempting to regulate femininity in the boxing ring. In 2009, the international governing body of amateur boxing, Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA) mandated that all boxers in the ‘women’s’ division compete in skirts rather than the shorts most boxers wore. This decision was reportedly made to help audiences distinguish between the female and male boxers (Creighton, 2011). All boxers in the women’s division were mandated to wear skirts because ‘AIBA president Wu Ching-Kuo [said] he has heard from fans who couldn’t tell women from men when fighters wear protective headgear’ (Godoy-Pressland, 2015, p. 32). Ching-Kuo is, in fact, correct in his observation that often it is difficult to distinguish boxers in the ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s’ divisions. Many boxers, irrespective of gender, have lean, sculpted bodies and perform a boxer’s characteristic masculine swagger as they enter the ring. Many in the women’s division have cropped their hair short, and long hair remains hidden after it has been tucked into the athlete’s headgear. For a nonbinary athlete like myself, witnessing the gendered landscape of boxing was profoundly inspiring and affirming. But for AIBA, which is invested in the marketability of amateur boxing, the masculinity of boxers in the ‘women’s’ division represented a significant fiscal and social liability, one apparently best mitigated by mandating boxers in the ‘women’s’ division to wear skirts during competition. Thankfully, this decision was ultimately reversed after boxers in the ‘women’s’ division sharply criticized the mandate. The act of mandating skirts functioned as a strategy for mediating the incursion of women, trans, and nonbinary people into a sport that is unequivocally understood as the exclusive domain of men (Godoy-Pressland, 2015; Jennings & Cabrera Vel´azquez, 2015; Paradis, 2014; van Ingen & Kovacs, 2012). By mandating skirts, the governing body attempted to fortify the boundaries between the ‘men’s’ and ‘women’s’ divisions, a boundary which many boxers in the ‘women’s’ category, irrespective of gender identity, challenge by expressing masculinity. Boxing cultivates opportunities for the expression of non-male masculinity. The masculinity of those who are not cisgender males threatens to disrupt the gender order, and inspires gender panic as a result (Halberstam, 1998). Most

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boxers entering the ring to compete at the international level embody a similar masculine affect, irrespective of the gender division they fight in: they bounce into the ring, sliding their slack jaws from side-to-side, mouths wide, clacking their teeth like wild predators. They roll their heads violently and shake out their lean, sculpted arms, all the while wearing vacant bored expressions. Boxing’s affect is unequivocally masculine.

Boxing, Masculinity and Violent Potential Learning how to box was foundational to embodying my gender more authentically. This experience didn’t stem solely from witnessing the masculinity of my teammates and competitors. Boxing enabled me to begin carrying myself through the world with much less fear. I began to stand up straighter; I sustained eye contact in instances when I would normally tend to avert my eyes. I felt more entitled to access and celebrate my masculinity. Boxing facilitated a discovery of my aggression and masculinity. Deb Jump (2021) draws on Hobbs’ (1995) concept of ‘violent potential’ to describe how the greater a person’s ability to defend themself, the less likely other people are to physically threaten them. My own experience of how learning to box changed how I carry myself in the world exemplifies this concept. Ever since I was young, I had difficulty interacting with boys. When I was 8 years old, I had joined my elementary school’s cross-country team. Running long distances with others was profoundly thrilling for me, and I quickly found that if I matched my stride to one of the other boys in my grade, I could run faster and further than I could on my own. None of the girls in my grade were on the cross-country team, so I ran with four boys from my grade. Because I ran alongside them several days a week, I assumed we were teammates. I didn’t realize that those boys didn’t consider me a team member until one day in grade three. I was sitting in class and one of the boys, who was sitting behind me, took scissors and cut off my hair. As I heard the snip of his scissors slicing through my braid and saw the grin on his face; I was overcome by shame, shame for thinking that I was one of them. The boy was sent to the principal’s office for his transgression; but after that incident, I struggled to look him in the eye. My difficulty interacting with boys continued into my teenage years and with men into young adulthood. Before learning to box, as I moved through public space, I often avoided making eye contact with men, and I was quick to cede space on the sidewalk: if a man was walking on the sidewalk in a space that I might reasonably assume to be mine, I would regularly step aside to allow him to pass. Groups of men talking or laughing together inspired anxiety in me and I would often go out of my way to avoid them. As I developed and refined my violent potential, however, this began to change. Thousands of hours training in the boxing gym – hitting the heavy bag, as well as receiving and delivering blows during sparring sessions – dramatically changed how I carried myself in the world. When I walked on the sidewalk, I did not proactively cede space to men walking in the opposite direction. If a man on

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the subway made eye contact that I perceived as threatening, I no longer looked immediately away. In sharing my experience of the changes that arose in me from boxing, it isn’t my intention to suggest that boxing or martial arts is a panacea that can provide embodied confidence for all. Violent potential is not universally available to all. As a 6 foot, white, muscular, masculine-presenting person, my embodiment has a natural ability to access violent potential that my boxing training only amplified. Similarly, I am not suggesting that self-defence training is a solution or antidote to misogyny or rape culture. It is not appropriate to assume that all bodies and identities will have, through boxing, an experience similar to the one I’ve had. My boxing training had a profound effect on my experience of moving through the world. I still remember the first time I refused to move over on the sidewalk. I was walking as two men, who were talking, walked in the opposite direction. I had moved as far to the right of the sidewalk as I could without stepping into a muddy yard. The men passing may have not had any ill-intentions about the interaction; it is easy to lose spatial acuity when involved in conversation, but my attention was focused on the principle. I refused to cede my space on the sidewalk any further. As a result, my shoulder slammed into the man closest to me, and the impact was substantial. We both turned around to appraise the other. His face clouded over with what I interpreted to be anger or aggression. I stopped walking and turned my whole body to face him. I was stunned to find that I held his gaze easily. I felt relaxed and confident as I waited to see how he would respond. Just as quickly as the anger had flooded his face, it was gone. He lowered his eyes to the ground and mumbled ‘sorry dude’. I began to move through the world carrying the embodied knowledge that I could manage interactions like these, however they unfolded. The openness, even eagerness, I had for moments like these seemed to dissuade others from escalating them. My violent potential became a source of pleasure. It was a capacity that altered how I understood my ability to move through the world. It also altered how cisgender men responded to my presence. As this shift in my violent potential occurred, I began feeling safer exploring my gender identity. It was around this time in my young adulthood that I cut off my long braid to adopt a hair style that felt more masculine, and I began experimenting with they/them pronouns. When I was fighting or sparring with other athletes in the ‘women’s’ division, my coach often accused me of ‘pulling my punches’, a phrase used to chastise an athlete who is not hitting as hard as they can. But in the ring with competitors from the ‘men’s’ division, I didn’t have that problem. I remember one occasion, sparring with a cisgender male athlete, Allister. I had overheard him complaining to his coach about being paired with me. ‘It’s not fair, I can’t go as hard as I need to with [them], to prep for my fight coming up’, he’d whined to his coach, who had put him in the ring with me anyway. When the sparring began, I went ballistic on him, as if he stood in for all the boys and men I’d met who had underestimated my athletic or violent potential. My coach later told me that I growled as I unleashed a non-stop flurry of combinations on his head and body. At the sight of blood from his nose, I was incensed further and intensified my efforts. Finally, his coach halted the round to take Allister out. Allister made little protest. As he

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stepped dejectedly from the ring, I knew something in me had been, somehow, resolved. As Irving (this volume) suggests, rage often fuels boxers from marginalized communities. One of the first rules in boxing is to train your nervous system to never allow your anger to drive your boxing. Anger-driven boxing lends itself to ‘leading with the chin’, which almost certainly results in defeat and humiliation. The key is for the boxer to tap into the mental passion of rage while keeping their body and nervous system relaxed, even impartial. This balance or juxtaposition is what produces great performances, like the one I had sparring with Allister. On the one hand, aggression functioned as a tool for accessing and claiming my masculinity, and on the other, aggression helped me resolve my own fear of men.

Experiences in the Ring: Gender, Race and Class In this section, I consider the tension in boxing between the cisheteropatriarchal culture of boxing and the diminished role gender plays in pairing boxers for training. I also discuss the intersection between transphobia and misogyny and race/class inequities. In Western society, the idea of sorting athletic competitors according to any variable other than gender is virtually unthinkable (Travers, 2013). Regardless of which sport, gender trumps all other variables when determining who competes with whom. Male-at-birth competitors are almost ubiquitously assumed to have an athletic advantage over female-at-birth competitors in every sport. Little attention is paid to research suggesting female-at-birth competitors may have an advantage over male-at-birth in sports such as long distance swimming (Knechtle et al., 2020) and ultra-distance sports (Tiller et al., 2021). Collectively, it is assumed that dividing competitors according to binary understandings of sex-at-birth is the fairest way to organize competitive sport (Schultz et al., 2023). Alternatives to this schema are not taken seriously, and they are dismissed as radical (cf. Posbergh, 2022). Since sport relies so heavily on binary and cisgender understandings of sex and gender, trans and nonbinary people – whose very existence challenges these taken for granted assumptions about sex and gender – are interpreted as threatening to ‘women’s’ sport and their participation is dismissed as ‘unfair’ (English & Pieper, 2023; Pielke, 2023). I want to argue that, in the sport of boxing, we might glimpse an informal model of organizing athletes that goes beyond normative binary gender sorting. I hold this model in tension with the fact that boxing culture remains a hotbed of ¨ unchecked misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia (Staritz & Sulzle, 2022). However, when it comes to sparring matches – during which boxers compete in unregulated fights, supervised by coaches, rather than by referees – gender plays a significantly lesser role in determining which athletes are matched together. In my experience, when pairing athletes, coaches prioritize athletes’ skill level and body weight over gender. Whether an athlete is left or right-handed was also a factor that supersedes gender when determining which boxers are matched together. Most of the boxing gyms that I visited had few fighters in the ‘women’s’ division, and – as a result – these athletes mostly, or even exclusively, sparred with athletes competing in the ‘men’s’ division. On the other hand, what I have overheard in

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the gym reflects just how alive and well misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia are within boxing culture. In recent years, there has been a significant upswell of trans-exclusive voices in sport (Baeth & Goorevich, 2023). These voices allege that fair sport excludes trans women; however, sport isn’t fair for a multitude of reasons, physiological, financial, and gendered, but that does not warrant the categorical exclusion of trans women (Pielke, 2023). The example below points to how misogyny and transmisogyny function, alongside white supremacy, and class oppression in what Travers (2023, p. 43) refers to as a ‘constellation’ of oppressive forces. I was training out of a boxing club in Windsor at the time. I had recently returned from my fight against Claressa Shields in Flint, Michigan. Things were going well in my boxing career: I had been briefly featured in a local newspaper and I had recently qualified for nationals. I was sparring with a young man I’ll call Luis. At the time he was in his late teens. Luis was from a working-class immigrant family. He was young, tall, and strong. He had a reputation for going too hard with the other boxers during sparring sessions. Hoping to further cultivate resilience in me before my first national championship, my coach put me in to spar with Luis. We’d done a few rounds by this point. Usually, when I sparred with Luis he would land some heavy right hands, and then jab and jab and jab to humiliate me for the remainder of the round (and, at the same time, to spare me from receiving punishment from further right hand shots). But today, I was doing well. To my satisfaction, I landed a few nice rights of my own that snapped his head back satisfyingly. The buzzer sounded and my coach called us over. Luis was wiping his nose dejectedly while our coach spoke to us about our sparring. Afterwards, in a good-natured tone, Luis joked that he should ‘put on a dress and box as a woman’. I asked him what he meant with more than a hint of defensiveness in my voice. ‘Well, I saw your thing in the paper, you’ve just qualified for nationals. . . I could get funded and go pro if I just put on a dress and boxed as a woman, you know. . . put a wig on too!’ He laughed bitterly as he headed for the locker room and some of the boys and men nearby, including my coach chuckled at his joke. This interaction with Luis and the laughter that followed his joke reflects and reproduces a pervasive logic about the ‘women’s division’: that it is easier to reach elite levels in ‘women’s’ boxing than it is in ‘men’s’ boxing. His joke suggested that boxers in the ‘men’s’ division are marginalized, receiving fewer opportunities for funding and elite competition. In a sense, Luis may have been correct in observing a rise in opportunities for boxers in the ‘women’s’ division. Since ‘women’s’ boxing was finally included in the Olympic Games in 2012, the athletes have received increasing media attention, funding, sponsorships and competition opportunities. But these new opportunities came after decades of underfunding, lack of media representation, interference with uniforms and even prohibitions against competing, and these opportunities are only a fraction of those available to boxers in the ‘men’s’ division. Luis’ joke was personal: he suggested that my achievements weren’t credible because I had earned them in the ‘women’s’ division. It reflected a lack of awareness about how male privilege has shaped competition in the ‘men’s’ division as well as an entitlement to voice that opinion.

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Luis’ joke also referenced a dominant transmisogynist narrative about ‘women’s’ sport that portrays transwomen as changing genders to access and dominate women’s sport. A growing media frenzy alleges that transwomen herald the demise of women’s sport and that their participation violates the fairness of sport (see e.g., Baeth & Goorevich, 2023; English & Pieper, 2023). These allegations ensue despite the fact that there is a lack of empirical evidence suggesting transwomen have a competitive advantage over cisgender women (Jones et al., 2017). Luis’ joke relied on both misogynist and transmisogynist logics to derive humour. He both undermined the value of ‘women’s’ sport and ridiculed the validity of trans expressions of gender. If I didn’t know Luis personally, it might be easy to overlook how race and class also fit into the interaction. Luis’ race and class position shaped how he interpreted information about gender and opportunity in the sport of boxing. When I met him, Luis was a teenager working two jobs after school to help his family pay rent. Luis’ father was a first-generation immigrant recently laid off after an injury at his non-union job. For Luis, the dream of ‘making it’ in boxing was about more than glory, it was also about family and financial security. Luis was frustrated, however, because on a regular basis his obligations to attend to his family’s financial precarity interfered with his training. Though Luis was a talented boxer, he was unlikely to reach his full potential; financial barriers to his success were significant. Although there is some evidence that boxing has historically provided a means of upward mobility for a small percentage of members of marginalized communities, for the vast majority of athletes boxing provides neither fame nor fortune. Luis’ envy about my success in the ‘women’s’ division and the misogynist and transmisogynist elements of his joke were laden with a class and race precarity that he saw little resolution to, except through ‘making it’ in boxing. The possibility of making it in boxing is, for racialized working-class men, seen as an alternative to dehumanizing labour conditions, an opportunity which allows them to maintain dignity while also providing financial security for their families ´ 2022). Luis’ comments about gender and boxing were contextualized in (Colon, his own class precarity and his limited resources for pursuing boxing, resources he thought that I received without apparent constraint. I’ve included this story not out of spite towards Luis, nor to explain away the violent logics embedded within his joke, but to point to the myriad forces acting upon the topic of trans inclusion in the ‘women’s’ division: misogyny paired with transmisogyny, inflected with material race and class inequalities.

Conclusion In this chapter, I’ve drawn on my own experience as an elite boxer in the ‘women’s’ division to outline what is at stake in sport and to demonstrate how sport can function as a site of gendered exploration and liberation. I described how the sport of boxing enabled me to discover my own masculinity. Through drawing on my own memories boxing internationally, I’ve demonstrated the ways

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in which ‘the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves’ in competitive sport inform how we understand ourselves long after we’ve hung up our gloves. These stories about ourselves in competitive sport stay with us for a lifetime and shape how we make sense of ourselves and others; they are profoundly important. I’ve also explored how women, trans and nonbinary boxers have been systemically excluded from the sport of boxing, precisely because we disrupt patriarchal cisheteronormative assumptions about aggression and athleticism. Through boxing I learned that masculinity does not equal maleness, and through the sport I began to embody my own masculinity. Although many boxers in the ‘women’s’ division are trans and nonbinary and embody non-normative expressions of gender, the culture of boxing is not particularly progressive in terms of feminism or trans-inclusion. On the contrary, misogynist, homophobic and transphobic rhetoric is a frequent fixture in boxing gyms. Despite this, in boxing, gendered sorting is not as pervasive as it remains in other sports and offers up an opportunity to resist the centrality of sex assignment to the normative order of sport.

Notes 1. Trans women are women; this is reflected in my use of the term women. 2. I’ve included ‘women’s’ division in parentheses in recognition of the fact that this division includes – whether they are visibly out or not – trans and nonbinary people.

References Baeth, A., & Goorevich, A. (2023). Mediated moral panics: Trans athletes as spectres, politicians as protectors, and farces of fear. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles (pp. 135–147). Emerald Publishing Limited. Boxing Ontario. (2017). The Organization. http://boxingontario.com/about-us/theorganization/ ´ G. A. T. (2022). Fighting for family and glory: Hope, racialization, and Colon, exploitation in a U.S. boxing gym. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 46(22), 156–175. Creighton, J. (2011). Women’s boxing split as governing body suggests skirts. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/sport/boxing/15452596 English, C., & Pieper, L. P. (2023). “This bill is about fairness”: An argument against the prioritization of competitive fairness at the expense of justice in US school sport. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles (pp. 107–131). Emerald Publishing Limited. Gleaves, J., & Lehrbach, T. (2016). Beyond fairness: The ethics of inclusion for transgender and intersex athletes. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 43(2), 311–326. Godoy-Pressland, A. (2015). Moral guardians, miniskirts and Nicola Adams: The changing media discourse on women’s boxing. In A. Channon & C. R. Matthews

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(Eds.), Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors Around the World (pp. 25–40). Palgrave MacMillan. Halberstam, J. (1998). Female Masculinity. Duke University Press. Hobbs, D. (1995). Bad Business. Oxford University Press. Jennings, L. A. (2015). She’s a Knockout: A History of Women in Fighting Sports. Rowman & Littlefield. Jennings, G., & Cabrera Vel´azquez, B. (2015). Gender inequality in Olympic boxing: Exploring structuration through online resistance against weight category restrictions. In A. Channon & C. R. Matthews (Eds.), Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors Around the World (pp. 89–103). Palgrave MacMillan. Jones, B., Arcelus, J., Bouman, W., & Haycraft, E. (2017). Sport and transgender people: A systematic review of the literature relating to sport participation and competitive sport policies. Sports Medicine, 47(4), 701–716. Jump, D. (2021). “Look who is laughing now”: Physical capital, boxing, and the prevention of repeat victimisation. Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 28, 1–19. https://doi. org/10.35295/OSLS.IISL/0000-0000-0000-1171 Kipnis, H., & Caudwell, J. (2015). The boxers of Kabul: Women, boxing, and Islam. In A. Channon & C. R. Matthews (Eds.), Global Perspectives on Women in Combat Sports: Women Warriors Around the World (pp. 41–56). Palgrave MacMillan. Knechtle, B., Dalamitros, A. A., Barbosa, T. M., Sousa, C. V., Rosemann, T., & Nikolaidis, P. T. (2020). Sex differences in swimming disciplines—Can women outperform men in swimming? International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(10), 3651. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17103651 Lindner, K. (2012). Women’s boxing at the 2012 Olympics: Gender trouble? Feminist Media Studies, 12(3), 464–467. Oates, J. C. (1987). On Boxing. HarperCollins. Paradis, E. (2014). Skirting the issue: Women boxers, liminality and change. In E. Lisahunter, W. Smith, & W. Emerald (Eds.), Pierre Bourdieu and Physical Culture (pp. 84–91). Routledge. Pielke, R., Jr. (2023). Making sense of debate over transgender athletes in Olympic sport. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles (pp. 29–41). Emerald Publishing Limited. Posbergh, A. (2022). Sex integration and the potential of track-and-field. In G. Moln´ar & R. Bullingham (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Gender Politics in Sport and Physical Activity. Routledge. Pringle, R., & Denison, E. (2022). Examining World Rugby’s transgender ban and perspectives of women and girls who play rugby in England, Canada, and Australia. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles. Emerald Publishing Limited. Schultz, J., Baeth, A., Lieberman, A., Pieper, L. P., & Sharrow, E. (2023). The future of women’s sport includes transgender women and girls. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles (pp. 15–27). Emerald Publishing Limited. ¨ Staritz, N., & Sulzle, A. (2022). Masculinity, homonegativity, and ignorance as barriers to the inclusion of LGBTQ people in Austrian sports cultures. In I. Hartmann-Tews (Ed.), Sport, Identity and Inclusion in Europe: The Experiences of LGBTQ People in Sport. Routledge.

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Thrasher, C. (2012). Disappearance: How shifting gendered boundaries motivated the removal of eighteenth century boxing champion Elizabeth Wilkinson from historical memory. Past Imperfect, 18, 53–76. Tiller, N. B., Elliott-Sale, K. J., Knechtle, B., Wilson, P. B., Roberts, J. D., & Millet, G. Y. (2021). Do sex differences in physiology confer a female advantage in ultra-endurance sport? Sports Medicine, 51(5), 895–915. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s40279-020-01417-2 Travers (2013). Thinking the unthinkable: Imagining an ‘un-American,’ girl-friendly, women- and trans-inclusive alternative for baseball. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 37(1), 78–96. Travers (2023). ‘Female’ sport and testosterone panic. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles (pp. 43–58). Emerald Publishing Limited. Trimbur, L. (2013). Come Out Swinging: The Changing World of Boxing in Gleason’s Gym. Princeton University Press. van Ingen, C., & Kovacs, N. (2012). Subverting the skirt: Female boxers “troubling” uniforms. Feminist Media Studies, 12(3), 460–463.

Chapter 7

Collateral Damage From Anti-Transgender US Legislation: Perspectives From a Transgender Student-Athlete Estel Boix Noguer and Leslie K. Larsen

Abstract A number of anti-transgender bills were proposed in the United States during the first half of 2021, with several becoming laws. The passing of these bills has made it increasingly difficult for trans people to gain access to lifesaving, gender-affirming healthcare and to participate in sport based on their gender identity rather than their sex assignment at birth. In light of these new laws, sport organizations such as the NCAA have made statements promising to support trans athletes. While these statements may promote awareness, in order for trans athletes to compete safely and openly throughout their collegiate careers, the NCAA must create policies and implement effective practices centred around trans inclusion. In this chapter, I (Estel, they/he) share my journey as a transgender student-athlete at an NCAA Division I university during the Spring 2021 season. During my collegiate athletic career, I felt both grateful for the chance to row and fear and frustration due to discrimination. Through memory work and participant case analysis, my co-author and I outline the ways that transphobic myths may have influenced my interactions with administrators, coaches and athletes throughout my collegiate athletic career and negatively impacted my wellbeing and performance. We also identify specific ways in which NCAA policies on trans inclusion are outdated and do not align with their expressed commitment to the well-being of trans student-athletes; we provide recommendations for changes to these policies. Further, we recommend trans-inclusive practices NCAA member institutions can implement to create an inclusive and empowering sports environment. Keywords: Transgender; NCAA; college; trans-inclusive; LGBTQ; student athlete Trans Athletes’ Resistance, 87–99 Copyright © 2024 Estel Boix Noguer and Leslie K. Larsen Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited doi:10.1108/978-1-80382-363-820231007

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‘Hey coach, my pronouns are they, them, theirs or he, him, his’, I told one of my coaches at my university after he misgendered me. We were getting the boat trailer ready for our Conference Rowing Championships, my last college rowing race. For the last four years, I had competed for an NCAA Division I (DI) Women’s Rowing crew even though I kind of knew I was not a woman. It was not until my last year when I came out as a transgender man to my team, including the coaching staff. Unfortunately, all my coaches had a hard time remembering that. ‘Oh, sorry, I am really trying Estel, but it is hard to remember’, Coach said, ‘I actually have a story to tell you. You’re not the first transgender person I’ve met’. He then proceeded to tell me a story about ‘his friend’. Coach was really excited to tell me about his friend, and I was actually happy to know he had someone in his life who was a transgender man, just like me. At the end of the story, Coach said, ‘And then, one day he shows up with these huge boobs! It was crazy!’. I took a long pause. I was genuinely confused and even more upset than before. A teammate of mine was right next to me, and she was also uncomfortably silent. She knew something was wrong. ‘Coach. Is your friend a trans woman?’ I asked him. I was hoping he would realize his mistake. ‘Well, he was a dude all his life, and then one day he turned into a woman’. I sighed. Talking to my coaches about any LGBTQ2S1 topic took way too much effort. I then proceeded to do what everyone expected me to do: I once again educated my coach about pronouns, ways to explain someone’s transition, and that deadnaming and misgendering someone (even if they are not present at that moment) is something to avoid. To my surprise, Coach had no idea about what his friend’s name was after they transitioned. He was not too concerned about his mistakes either. When I got home after that interaction, I seriously considered filing an anonymous report about that interaction. But I did not. They would definitely know it was me because I was the only one advocating for transgender inclusion on the team. I would have been taking a risk by reporting him, and that could have changed my ability to participate in the Conference Championship. I still wonder what would have happened had I spoken out against him and the other coaches’ actions. The biggest question is: Would it have even mattered? Would the university have done something about it? My experiences tell me, probably not. This is one of many negative interactions that I (Estel, they/him) experienced as a trans man in the NCAA DI women’s rowing crew. Throughout this chapter, my co-author and I use memory work and participant case analysis to make connections between my experiences as a trans athlete and the broader considerations of trans inclusion in the context of NCAA DI sports. We identify transphobic myths that have led state legislatures to propose and pass bills that exclude trans athletes from participating in sport. Further, we discuss the NCAA’s response to these bills and, more broadly, the policies and practices of the NCAA with regards to trans inclusion. Lastly, we offer suggestions for trans-inclusive practices the NCAA and its member schools can implement to create an inclusive and empowering sports environment for all student-athletes.

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Rowing as Metaphor Rowing is a sport that has allowed me, Estel, to feel contrasting emotions at the same time: love and hate, calmness and excitement, fulfillment and disappointment, gratitude and frustration. Sometimes, I even feel all those emotions all together, in a mix that either confuses me or gives me energy to keep moving. The sport itself has two basic principles, the recovery and the drive. The recovery occurs when the rower is relaxed and slowly getting ready to place their blades to the water. During the drive, the rower applies all their power with their legs, body and arms, helping the boat move fast on the surface of the water. This has been my experience as a trans man competing in a NCAA DI women’s sport. When I am on the water, I am in a recovery phase. The rowing shells (boats) become my best friends and allies; they do not care where I am from or who I am. Rowing is when I feel the most confident. All the negative feelings go away, and the boat and I become one. Off the water, I feel as though I am constantly in a drive phase, and it often takes all my power to exist in a transphobic world. As an early adolescent, I did not fit in anywhere; I was bullied and lonely. I was also somehow aware I was born in the wrong body. I felt like a boy inside, so why was I supposed to be a girl? I loved to wear boy’s clothes, play videogames with my friends and just be myself. I remember saying it out loud: ‘I wish I was a boy’. Unfortunately, the people around me did not support this. To survive, I had to follow the gender rules and slowly started to act like a girl, which I hated. As a collegiate athlete, I came out to my coaches and teammates during my final year of eligibility (2020–2021), but I was not allowed to start testosterone therapy until the end of the season. I thought it would be worth it to stick around and stay in this drive phase one more year. This decision came with repeated experiences of being misgendered by coaches and teammates, uncomfortable conversations and awkward questions. Was all the pain that I went through during my last year competing worth it? No, it was not. However, it made me aware of how much change is needed in schools and administrations involved with college sports, so even now, I am choosing to use my power to continue to push for this change.

Legislative Bills and NCAA Policies During my NCAA DI student-athlete career, the NCAA had general transgender policies for all sports. For a transgender woman (male to female) to participate in women’s sports, she must be on hormone suppression treatment for at least one year; a transgender man (male to female) who is not on hormones can compete on whichever team he desires. Once he starts testosterone treatment, he can only compete on a men’s team (NCAA, 2012). Since I was not taking testosterone, I knew I was eligible to compete on the women’s team, but the anti-trans legislation being proposed and passed around the country made me question whether it was safe to do so. Learning about anti-transgender bills and trying to navigate my journey as a transgender man on a women’s team was challenging. The stress of not knowing if I

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was welcomed on a women’s team as a trans man happened when races were around the corner. To add to the stress, I was dealing with being rejected by my parents when I came out to them. I could barely find any motivation to row or work out. I would find myself crying in the boat in the middle of the workout, and I did not have enough energy to tell my teammates about it. I was struggling. I was scared and not sure if I was doing the right thing. I contemplated suicide again.

Legislation The United States saw a rise in policies negatively targeting transgender athletes in 2020 and 2021. Over 30 anti-transgender bills were introduced in states across the United States. Although transgender athletes play sports for the potential benefits sports can provide, some states have begun to deny trans athletes the opportunity to do so. At the federal level, Title IX protects transgender students by requiring schools to let students participate in activities such as athletics. This means that Title IX protects students’ right to participate in teams that align to their gender identity, as well as giving them protection against harassment and discrimination. Recently, Title IX has been highly influenced by politics; whoever is in power has applied Title IX differently. For example, President Obama’s administration declared that Title IX required schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms and participate in activities based on their gender identity. However, President Trump’s administration staged an attack on this position and actively worked to eliminate protections for transgender students experiencing discrimination (Bagagli et al., 2021). In 2021, President Biden signed an executive order which once again restored the rights of transgender students (Strangio, 2021). Title IX is an example of legislation that can be used to protect the rights of transgender students and athletes; however, the implementation of Title IX is not immune to the larger political climate (Gift & Miner, 2017). Despite the presence of Title IX, transgender sports participation policies are inconsistent throughout the country, as each state and institution can pass their own laws (Goldberg, 2021). States with a Republican majority in their legislatures are increasingly passing anti-transgender bills that reinforce the narrow, misleading idea that someone who has ‘male’ reproductive organs is and will always be a man, and a person with ‘female’ reproductive organs is and will always be a woman. Anti-transgender bills, often framed under the guise of protecting girls’ and women’s sports, are inconsistent with empirical facts about human biology, and these bills target and discriminate against transgender youth (Cahill, 2021; Jones, 2021). When applying these false beliefs regarding gender identity into athletics, conservative lawmakers claim they support these anti-transgender bills “‘so girls are not forced to compete with biological males’” (Reeves, 2021, as cited in Brassil, 2021, para 2). These policies, based on biopolitical practices, subject transgender athletes to strict measures which enforce the gender binary (Fischer & McClearen, 2020).

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NCAA Policies In response to these legislative measures, in April 2021, the NCAA (2021) published a statement of support for the participation of transgender athletes in sport, aligning it with values of fair and inclusive competition. In addition, the NCAA stated they will only choose championship venues that can provide a safe environment for transgender student-athletes to participate. However, the NCAA did not mention what they would do regarding the remaining 2021 championships scheduled in states where anti-trans bills and laws were currently present (Athlete Ally, 2021). Additionally, the NCAA later announced locations for its Spring 2021 NCAA baseball and softball regionals in Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, states that had recently passed anti-trans legislation (ESPN, 2021). Rather than taking action and relocating these events to transgender inclusive states, the NCAA left the remaining 2021 championships and several baseball and softball regional games to take place in states with bills targeting transgender athletes. The season went on, and we were getting ready for our conference championship. I was not looking forward to it; my mental health was not the best at that point. I was struggling to perform well, and the aspect that terrified me the most was that the races took place in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I knew about all the bills and laws that affected transgender people in that state, so I was pretty anxious about competing there. I kept telling myself I was making a big deal out of it and nothing would probably happen. I only transitioned socially, and I internalized what my coach told me and told myself, ‘I didn’t look transgender, I was just wearing sport clothes and short hair’. It was the day before the race when everything started to get even worse. I remember going to the men’s bathroom on the hotel reception and finding someone else there. The look on their face said it all, and to avoid any conflict or problems, I just ran outside and went to the women’s bathroom instead. I had never had issues when going to the men’s bathroom before, and probably it was just my head playing games on me. That moment made me insecure about everything. After dinner, I was anxious, nervous and going through a panic attack in my bedroom. The teammate I shared a room with was just sleeping peacefully while I was crying in the bathroom, sobbing about how much I hated myself. I was terrified of that race. I just wanted it to be over. I wanted my rowing career to be over. I did not want to race. I felt emotionally tired, but I still had to do it. That is what I signed up for, and there was no way out. All of those thoughts were going through my head on the way to the racecourse: ‘I should have opted out or told the coach I wanted to take it easier and just focus on my health. I made a mistake. I want to disappear. I will disappoint everyone’. As I expected, the race did not go well. Through holding the competition in Tennessee, the NCAA failed to uphold its commitment to providing a safe environment for me and other trans athletes to compete and my performance, and more importantly, my mental health suffered immensely.

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Myths and False Fears About Transgender Athletes As mentioned previously, anti-transgender policies are based on ambiguous data and scare tactics. Some individuals within the sports world assume that transgender women have an advantage over cisgender women. This reflects the sexist view that women’s sport needs protection against a problem of unfairness that does not even exist (Fischer & McClearen, 2020). The unfair advantage myth is rooted in two false assumptions. The first assumption of this myth is that sports are ever fair (Gleaves & Lehrbach, 2016). Many factors such as body size, visual acuity, flexibility, access to training facilities and coaching, access to high quality foods and supplements, etc. can lead to unearned athletic advantages. For example, a cisgender athlete who is tall and has large hands will likely have an advantage in basketball. Similarly, a team with more income will be able to afford better equipment, facilities and coaching and thus have a significant advantage. While these advantages are not available to all participants within sport, they are not labelled unfair (Jones et al., 2017). Instead, certain advantages are deemed acceptable and necessary variables within sport and competition. There is no direct research suggesting transgender athletes have an advantage at any point in their transition (Athlete Ally, 2021). Gleaves and Lehrbach (2016) posit that even if an advantage did exist, the inclusion of transgender athletes enriches sporting spaces, which is more in line with the purpose and value of sport than an attempt to eliminate any form of advantage. The second assumption of the unfair advantage myth is that transgender athletes have higher levels of androgenic hormones, such as testosterone, which leads to improved athletic performance (Jones et al., 2017). According to Fischer and McClearen (2020), many of the individuals working to exclude transgender athletes from sports believe that gender-affirming hormone therapy is the same as using performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). Unlike PEDs, the use of hormone therapies is supervised by healthcare providers, and transgender athletes have not been shown to gain an athletic advantage after taking therapeutic levels of testosterone or hormone blockers (Fischer & McClearen, 2020). Further, research has repeatedly found that testosterone is not the only marker in determining athletic advantage (Jordan-Young & Karkazis, 2019). Lastly, transgender athletes in elite settings, including the NCAA, must follow strict rules regarding hormone levels. These rules require that their hormone levels conform to the biological norms set for their gender category. Testosterone levels of transgender athletes will be lesser than or equal to their cisgender teammates, which further discredits the argument that transgender athletes disrupt the ‘fairness’ of the sport (Gleaves & Lehrbach, 2016). Despite the vocalized assertions of those working to exclude transgender athletes from sport, a transgender woman has yet to dominate women’s sports. Nevertheless, lawmakers and supporters of anti-transgender bills claim that the transphobic measures preventing transgender athletes from participating in sport are created to protect women and women’s sports (Strangio & Arkles, 2020). According to Cunningham et al. (2018), supporters of anti-transgender bills are concerned that transgender people are a threat to cisgender girls and women

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inside and outside of sport. Cunningham and colleagues further explain that these supporters believe cisgender men will take advantage of inclusive policies by competing in girls’ and women’s event and/or harassing girls and women in female locker rooms (Cunningham et al., 2018). Unfortunately, transgender women are often portrayed as ‘perverted men’ who want to take control and invade female spaces (Bettcher, 2007). Claims like these have no empirical support, but some groups use it as a way to feed popular anxieties about child abuse and sexual assault (Fischer & McClearen, 2020). Despite these fears and the perceived need to protect cisgender women, there have been no incidents of sexual assault in female locker rooms committed by transgender people (Bagagli et al., 2021). Strangio and Arkles (2020) further debunk the myths regarding the predatory nature of transgender athletes and explain that the myths and the resultant trans-exclusive policies hurt all women. These myths are especially harmful for those who do not fit into the hegemonic ideals of femininity and are seen as too strong or too good. Although transgender athletes must follow rigid requirements and rules, these athletes are frequently criticized and humiliated for competing in sports. Transgender women are women who belong in sports.

What Should We Expect From the NCAA and Its Member Institutions to Protect Transgender Student-Athletes? ‘Coach, if you have any questions about me or what it means to be trans please let me know and I will explain it the best I can. I don’t want to get repeatedly misgendered’ Coach knew about what happened, and how much it affected me. ‘Oh, I see. Well, you know I am really trying, it is just something new, and I have never dealt with it’. He took a short pause. ‘I just don’t get it. Aren’t there non-straight classmates or professors just like you in that program that can help you out?’ I froze. I did not have the energy to explain for the thousandth time to that cisgender middle-aged white man about the difference between sexuality and gender. I took a deep breath. I smiled under my face mask, and I told him that I am a transgender man, and that does not automatically make me gay. He looked even more confused. Politely, I told him I would just send him an informational email about it. However, I already knew he would not even open the email. A feeling of exhaustion surrounded me; everyone in that space expected me to educate them on basic LGBTQ2S1 topics because I am transgender. No matter how hard I tried to educate them, they never seemed interested or to care about the LGBTQ2S1 community. Researchers have repeatedly found that transgender athletes do not have a competitive advantage over cisgender athletes and that inclusion of transgender athletes does not make sport less fair (Gleaves & Lehrbach, 2016; Ingram & Thomas, 2019; Jones et al., 2017; Jordan-Young & Karkazis, 2019). This is especially true when only physiological criteria are considered (Torres et al., 2022). Thus, rather than focusing on testosterone levels and fairness, it may

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prove more beneficial to bring attention to inclusion and developing strategies to better support transgender athletes in NCAA sport. To create a more inclusive space for transgender athletes, the NCAA and its member schools can push for improved policies, increased awareness and better training for coaches and staff members. When the misleading claims of athletic advantage appear, it would advance trans inclusion if sport psychologists, coaches and athletic administration addressed the issue by educating their community. Providing accurate information about transgender athletes and policies can be useful in creating an inclusive, safe space within the team. Finding informed and educated professionals to provide training can be a valuable experience for athletes, coaches and sports administration. Transgender athletes on a team are not responsible for educating others; teams should not expect or claim these athletes to be the experts on the subject, but rather, ensure that these athletes feel supported and safe within their teams (Morris & Van Raalte, 2016). Coaches and administrators can work to become familiar with transgender policies, respecting athletes no matter their gender expression or identity. Educating others about terminology, policies, and ways to address other issues such as harassment from other athletes or fans that may affect transgender student-athletes is also an important step towards creating an inclusive space for transgender athletes (NCAA, 2011). Further, coaches and staff can help transgender student-athletes in finding communities that support them both in and outside of sport. Colleges often have diverse student populations, with LGBTQ2S1 clubs and centres available for many on campus. In my experience, finding a community where I (Estel) felt like I belonged made a positive impact on my mental health. The NCAA could be made more trans-inclusive if the organization revised and updated their transgender student-athlete guidelines. The NCAA aimlessly updated their transgender participation policy in March 2022 in response to political pressure initiated following the success of a trans woman swimmer, Lia Thomas (Athlete Ally, 2022). Now, the NCAA follows similar guidelines to the International Olympic Committee and attests that transgender participation policies will be different in each sport. This sport-by-sport method chosen by the NCAA leaves each sport to follow the transgender inclusion policies of its corresponding national sport organization. If an individual sport does not have transgender participation policies, the next step would be looking at the international federation guidelines (NCAA, 2022). This updated policy is quite problematic. According to Athlete Ally (2022), the new policy does not have safeguards to protect transgender athletes from invasive treatment, nor does it outline ways the NCAA will work with a sport’s governing body to prevent harm to transgender athletes. Within the updated policy, the NCAA also did not comply with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s most recent Standards of Care. It is our hope that all of these concerns would be addressed in the development of future policies regarding trans inclusion within the NCAA. Once new policies are developed, we recommend that individuals both within and outside of the organization review and update the policies annually.

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Moreover, with the increased number of anti-transgender policies around the United States, the NCAA can offer more support towards transgender student-athletes. The NCAA holding championships in states with anti-transgender laws such as Tennessee or Arkansas is potentially harmful to transgender athletes. Relocating the championships, as was promised by the NCAA Board of Governors, would advance trans inclusion (NCAA, 2021). This will also help the NCAA uphold their promise to protect transgender student-athletes and give these athletes a safe space to play sports. Organizations like the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (2020) provide a number of useful recommendations to make athletics more inclusive and equitable for transgender athletes. The guidelines are recommendations to be adopted and discussed by universities who seek to improve in their inclusivity policies and practices. Some of the measures that athletic organizations could follow include (GLSEN, 2020): • Schools and athletic departments need to work in partnership with the trans-

gender student-athletes to ensure their participation and facility usage is safe and affirming. • Transgender athletes may use pronouns or names that are inconsistent with school records or identifying documents. Coaches and staff need to ensure that the pronouns and names that transgender student-athletes use are respected and honoured. • If a petition challenging the transgender student-athlete’s participation emerges, the school and athletic department need to assemble an eligibility committee, which includes school administrators, staff members, experts in healthcare and gender affirming advocates familiar with the issues affecting the athletes. • Coaches and staff should communicate with their transgender student-athletes to determine what information about their gender identity can be shared with others. Some universities are working to create more inclusive measures for transgender student-athletes by publishing guidelines with policies and recommendations for all of the staff within athletics. One example is a set of guidelines from UC Berkeley, which includes recommended practices to improve the experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming athletes. UC Berkeley (2019) established that their athletics policies ought to consist of inclusive policies and practices that commit to diversity, equity and inclusion for everyone. The university requires the policy be reviewed yearly by several offices (including the Athletic Director) to stay up to date with changes in terminology or medical science (UC Berkeley, 2019). Another helpful example comes from Lafayette College (2015). The guidelines for Lafayette College include useful terminology and resources for both athletes and staff. These guidelines also provide detailed explanations about specific situations that may occur such as locker room access. Lafayette College suggests it

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will protect transgender student-athletes from discrimination in bathrooms, locker rooms (both in their campus and when traveling away with their team) and hotel stays. Therefore, if athletes are harassed for using facilities in accordance with their gender identity, Lafayette College claims that they will ensure their transgender student-athletes get support and help when playing their sport (Lafayette College, 2015). These sets of guidelines are good examples that other colleges should consider when creating inclusive policies for their transgender student-athletes. The policies would be most effective if accompanied by a mandatory yearly training for staff and coaches to gain more awareness and understanding of the topic. If schools require guidance when creating these policies and training, they would benefit from reaching out to the LGBTQ2S1 campus organization or the department of inclusion and diversity. Furthermore, organizations like Athlete Ally (2016) provide models for athletic departments so they ensure a safe environment for transgender and gender non-conforming student-athletes.

Conclusion Despite the resources and attempts made by the NCAA to make DI college sports more inclusive for transgender student-athletes, more needs to be done to provide a safer environment for transgender athletes. Steps such as training, creating partnerships with LGBTQ2S1 centers, or looking for examples and policy models can make a significant difference within a college’s athletic department. These measures may not only make schools more inclusive and safer for transgender athletes, but may also welcome a wide range of transgender youth who want to continue to participate in sports while in college. As I, Estel, am becoming more confident about my identity, I often wonder how it would have been to have more support in my last year in the rowing team. Even though I tried to convince my coaches and athletic staff about trans-inclusion training and resources, I wish I had more allies and people around me asking for the same changes. I really hope that, after this chapter is published, my former university can focus on making improvements in their department. Almost a year ago, I finished my student-athlete career in Tennessee, one of the states that has implemented anti-transgender bills. With the rise of anti-transgender bills, I am also seeing a rise in activists fighting for transgender rights. Unfortunately, I am seeing more hate than ever towards the transgender community, with sports becoming a hostile, dangerous space for transgender athletes. People have suddenly become ‘experts’ in sports, and they argue that it is unfair for transgender athletes to compete in teams that align with their gender identity. All these ‘protectors of women’s sports’ are creating a solution for a non-existent problem. Lia Thomas won her first NCAA DI championship in the month of April 2022, and she has been the only openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA championship. It is important to remember that the NCAA transgender policies have been around since 2011, and no other transgender athlete has

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been remarkable enough for people to pay attention to, even though a number of transgender athletes have been participating for some time. The intent of this chapter has been to connect my personal experiences to the broader context of trans inclusion within the NCAA in an attempt to personalize the political. Oftentimes, the voices of trans athletes are forgotten in the midst of debates surrounding who is allowed access to sporting spaces. We encourage each of you to continue reading and listening to trans voices to learn more and better understand the importance of transgender inclusion in sports. Finally, we leave you with the charge to amplify trans voices and to challenge all forms of transphobia and hate within sport.

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story/_/id/31444999/ncaa-baseball-regionals-potential-host-sites-include-threestates-sex-birth-laws Fischer, M., & McClearen, J. (2020). Transgender athletes and the queer art of athletic failure. Communication & Sport, 8(2), 147–167. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 2167479518823207 Gift, T., & Miner, A. (2017). Dropping the ball: The understudied nexus of sports and politics. World Affairs, 180(1), 127–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/004382 0017715569 Gleaves, J., & Lehrbach, T. (2016). Beyond fairness: The ethics of inclusion for transgender and intersex athletes. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 43(2), 311–326. https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2016.1157485 GLSEN. (2020, September). Gender Affirming and Inclusive Athletics Participation. GLSEN. https://www.glsen.org/sites/default/files/2020-09/GENDER-AFFIRIMI NG-INCLUSVE-ATHLETICS-PARTICIPATION-SEP-2020.pdf Goldberg, S. (2021, February). Fair play: The importance of sports participation for transgender youth. Center for American Progress. https://cdn.americanprogress. org/content/uploads/2021/02/09122423/Fair-Play-correction2.pdf?_ga52.183614 630.147793041.1620576205-109623616.1620576205 Ingram, B. J., & Thomas, C. L. (2019). Transgender policy in sport, A review of current policy and commentary of the challenges of policy creation. Current Sports Medicine Reports, 18(6), 239–247. https://doi.org/10.1249/JSR.0000000000000605 Jones, S. (2021, May 5). The Republican war against trans kids. GQ. https://www.gq. com/story/chase-strangio-on-anti-trans-laws Jones, B. A., Arcelus, J., Bouman, W. P., & Haycraft, E. (2017). Sports and transgender people: A systematic review of the literature relating to sport participation and competitive sports policies. Sports Medicine, 47, 701–716. https://doi.org/10. 1007/s40279-016-0621-y Jordan-Young, R., & Karkazis, K. A. (2019). Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography. Harvard University Press. Lafayette College. (2015, December). Transgender Policy. Lafayette Athletics. https:// goleopards.com/documents/2018/7/31//trans_athlete_policy_Dec_2015.pdf? id53688 Morris, J. F., & Van Raalte, J. L. (2016). Transgender and nonconforming athletes: Creating safe spaces for all. Journal of Sports Psychology in Action, 7(2), 121–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/21520704.2016.1184732 NCAA. (2021, April 12). NCAA Board of Governors statement on transgender participation. NCAA. https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/media-center/news/ ncaa-board-governors-statement-transgender-participation NCAA. (2011, August). NCAA Inclusion of Transgender Student-Athletes. NCAA Office of Inclusion. https://www.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/Transgender_ Handbook_2011_Final.pdf NCAA (2012). Champions of Respect: Inclusion of LGBTQ Student-Athletes and Staff in NCAA Programs. NCAA Office of Inclusion. https://www.ncaapublications. com/productdownloads/CRLGBTQ.pdf NCAA. (2022, January 19). Board of Governors updates transgender participation policy. NCAA. https://www.ncaa.org/news/2022/1/19/media-center-board-ofgovernors-updates-transgender-participation-policy.aspx

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Strangio, C. (2021, January 21). What President Biden’s LGBTQ executive order does and doesn’t do. ACLU. https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/what-presidentbidens-lgbtq-executive-order-does-and-doesnt-do Strangio, C., & Arkles, G. (2020, April 30). Four myths about transgender athletes, debunked. ACLU. https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/four-myths-about-transathletes-debunked/ Torres, C. R., Lopez Frias, F. J., & Mart´ınez Patiño, M. J. (2022). Beyond Physiology: Embodied experience, embodied advantage, and the inclusion of transgender athletes in competitive sport. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 16(1), 33–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/17511321.2020.1856915 UC Berkeley. (2019). Transgender/gender Non-conforming (T/GNC) Student Athlete Participation in UC Berkeley Intercollegiate Athletics: Background, Guidelines & Recommendations. CalBears. https://calbears.com/documents/2019/10/25// Transgender_Gender_Non_Conforming_Student_Athlete_Participation_in_UC_ Berkeley_Intercollegiate_Athletics.pdf?id520294

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Part 3 Trans Athletes’ Resistance: Case Studies

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Chapter 8

Embodying Disobedience,1 Inciting Resistance: Nonbinary Athletes and the Limits of Gender in Sport Sabeehah Ravat

Abstract In the binary sex-segregated space of professional sports, sex-gender diversity is met with suspicion, derision and exclusion. In the United States, along with widespread anti-trans policies at various societal levels, legislations and regulations are being pushed to limit or eliminate transgender athletes from competing in all levels of sports. However, little scholarship has considered the implications of the presence of nonbinary athletes, those who identify outside the spectrum of man and woman, beyond the conversation of a ‘third gender’ category in sport. In this chapter, I seek to examine how nonbinary athletes embody disobedience by challenging the binary categorization of sex-gender within professional sports. I explore the racialized embodiment of sex and gender in professional women’s sports, specifically WNBA player Layshia Clarendon. I explore how disobedience is employed to incite resistance against the narrow sex-gender categories that are forced upon athletes. Finally, I argue that embodied disobedience provides a key pathway for nonbinary athletes to undermine the regulatory nature of sex-gender categorization in sport. Particularly, nonbinary athletes may seek medical and social forms of gender affirmation, while simultaneously embodying disobedience by continuing to actively participate in professional sports categories in which they may not neatly fit. Keywords: Nonbinary; sex-gender; disobedience; resistance; Layshia Clarendon; professional sports

Trans Athletes’ Resistance, 103–114 Copyright © 2024 Sabeehah Ravat Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited doi:10.1108/978-1-80382-363-820231008

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Introduction Trans athletes, people who refuse and refute traditional categorization, reveal the limitations of the biologically determined sex/gender system. (Anderson & Travers, 2017, p. 6) In August 2020, WNBA player Layshia Clarendon proclaimed: ‘Being Black and Nonbinary is my superpower’ (Bar-Lavi, 2020). Clarendon joined a growing number of professional athletes who both embody and advocate for gender fluidity in sport. At the same time, professional leagues, international sporting federations and national governments continue to create and push policies that regulate how gender-diverse people can access and navigate socio-political spaces. As one of the most highly consumed entertainment products in contemporary society (Chelladurai, 2004), professional sports remain a crucially visible platform for the negotiation of binary sex-gender.2 Clarendon goes by they/she/he pronouns, and I will use these pronouns interchangeably throughout this chapter, as it is both crucial to their agency as a nonbinary person and to my effort to centre the voices of trans athletes. Clarendon’s simultaneous ontological claim to Black and nonbinary identities, particularly in sport where racialized sex-gender is historically and contemporarily regulated, is powerful. The use of superpower as a singular noun shows that Clarendon views her race and sex-gender as intrinsically connected to her notion of strength, courage and success. Furthermore, by rooting his superpower in his embodied positionality, Clarendon is taking up and subverting normative understandings of superpowers. While ‘being Black and Non-Binary is [their] superpower’ (Bar-Lavi, 2020), that does not mean that Clarendon (and other nonbinary athletes) should have to shoulder the responsibility of dismantling the rigorous binarization of sex-gender that pervades professional sports. In this chapter, I assert that sex segregation and gender regulation policies in sport rely on the exclusionary and regulatory nature of bioessentialism – the belief that identity is rooted in binary biological understandings of sex (see Pape, 2022). Thus, the nuanced realities of sex-gender are policed by sex segregation and gender regulation in sport. Furthermore, an increasing number of professional athletes who resist the binary sex segregation of sport demonstrate how insufficient the notion of a ‘third gender category’ is in terms of grappling with sexed and raced bodyminds3 of athletes. I briefly analyze some key queer feminist science studies’ challenges to sexual dimorphism. I also consider how constructions of the sex-gender binary are inextricably connected to race. Next, I explore WNBA player Layshia Clarendon as an example of how nonbinary athletes embody disobedience. I also argue that this embodied disobedience provides a contextual framework for resisting sex segregation and gender exclusion in professional sports. The goal of this chapter is not to suggest a nonbinary or postgender framework for sport, but rather to show how the embodied disobedience

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of nonbinary athletes exposes and undermines the binary regulation of gender in sport.

Nonbinary: A Working Definition Nonbinary emerged as a socio-political identity label in the early 2000s and gained prominence over the last decade (Erikainen et al., 2020). Beginning with transgender scholarship and gaining traction within trans activist movements, nonbinary became a specific path to gender subversion (Garrison, 2018). Rather than being a third category, nonbinary identities, perhaps, constitute one of the most effective ways of challenging and dismantling the gender binary. While often interacting with trans issues in multiple ways, nonbinary is importantly used to critique binary cis- and transnormativity. Furthermore, nonbinary is used in conjunction with and contests labels of trans and genderqueer in various ways. For this chapter, I loosely draw on the definition of nonbinary put forth by philosopher Robin Dembroff (2018, n.p.): I consider nonbinary identity to be an unabashedly political identity. It is for anyone who wishes to wield self-understanding in service of dismantling a mandatory, self-reproducing gender system that strictly controls what we can do and be . . . To be nonbinary is to set one’s existence in opposition to this system at its conceptual core. For Dembroff, nonbinary identity is a sociocultural construct that resists and sometimes goes so far as to reject capital G, ‘Gender’ (Malatino, 2020, p. 33). In other words, both Dembroff and Malatino note that genders can be useful for identification, positionality and expressions; at the same time, nonbinary identity can be instrumental to refusing and dismantling the ways that ‘Gender’ systemically structures sociocultural systems (Malatino, 2020). Nicholas and Clark assert that ‘genderqueer or nonbinary are usually identity labels not tied to any physicality’ (2020, p. 38), but I hesitate to disconnect nonbinary experience from the bodyminds of people who have those experiences. It is crucial to consider how the biologies4 and bodies of nonbinary people are intrinsically connected to their identities and experience; this is because sex and gender are co-constituted as much as they may resist or undermine one another. Thus, I simultaneously explore the political position of nonbinary and the material implications of nonbinary biologies in relation to their impacts on athletes’ bodyminds.

Constructing Bodies, Sex and Gender Throughout history, bioessentialism has served to produce and reinforce the notion of women as a naturally inferior sex. Thus, it has been a nemesis of feminist and queer theory for decades. More recently, the concept of biofeminism

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has been mobilized in trans-exclusionary feminist spaces to emphasize the embodied ‘truth’ of biological cisgender womanhood and the subsequent ‘existential threat’ of trans women (Pape, 2022). However, as much as bioessentialist thinkers reduce gender to sexual dimorphism, trans-inclusive feminist biologists and science scholars embrace biologies as sites of important transformative potential for feminist and queer theory. Sex-gender are intricately linked concepts. Since ‘the body is produced and controlled through a series of regulatory practices’ (Caudwell, 2003, p. 375), it stands to reason that bodies are both materially and discursively created. For example, the X chromosome is a material component of all human biology – i.e. every living human has at least a fragment of an X chromosome – but was historically feminized both structurally and functionally such that it is still considered the ‘female chromosome’ (Richardson, 2017, p. 31). This is despite the scientific fact that ‘the X plays no special role in female development’ (Richardson, 2017, p. 35). In other words, dominant understandings of chromosomes, hormones and bodily functions ‘came from humans, not from nature’ (Anderson & Travers, 2017; Jordan-Young & Karkazis, 2019, p. 46; Pape & Pielke, 2019). As such, because mass scientific communication renders sex as binary, the physical body becomes discursively weaponized to construct social notions of femininity and masculinity.

Either/Or and Nothing More: Sport as Binary Since its inception, sport has been a phallocentric space, dominated by traditional notions of masculinity (Pronger, 1990). This has manifested first in the complete exclusion of women and nonmen from sport and, later, in a system of binary sex segregation. Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 (Sex Discrimination: Overview of the Law, 2023), which prevents discrimination based on sex at educational institutions that receive federal funding, granted women athletes equal opportunity in sports across all educational levels (Sex Discrimination: Overview of the Law, 2023). Despite the significant impacts of Title IX on the development of women’s sports, and under the guise of protecting the fragility of cisgender women, sport continues to reinscribe the sustained dominance and success of boys and men (Pape, 2019; Sykes, 2006; Travers, 2013). Importantly, while professional sports provide a glaringly obvious display of bioessentialist understandings of sex-gender, ‘the gendered organisation of sports reflects and is a particularly rigorous example of broader socio-scientific, cultural, and political processes of gender binarisation’ (Erikainen, 2020, p. 148). That is to say, sport did neither create the sex-gender binary, nor is it wholly responsible for its continued role in regulating sex-gender diversity; sports are a cornerstone of contemporary society and provide an active platform upon which binary sex-gender can be perpetuated and maintained (Anderson & Travers, 2017; Pape & Pielke, 2019; Travers, 2013). This can be seen in continued efforts to produce, uphold and update gender regulation policies in national and international competition, including the updated IOC policies in November 2021 and new FINA policies in 2022.

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The binary system of sport relies on discrete and immutable categories of sex-gender. This is important because, first, binaries rely on a clear distinction between two opposing points and, second, this exclusivity inherently forbids any hybridity that might threaten the distinctions of those binaries. The binary organization of sport is not an unintentional reliance on inaccurate sexual dimorphism (Pape, 2019); rather, it is a deliberate and stubborn adherence to regulation that ensures the exclusion of bodyminds that cannot or will not fit into a given category. Furthermore, due to the racialization of gendered categories, this organization ‘renders some bodies inadmissible into the binary gender system’ (Pastor, 2019, p. 3). Specifically, chattel slavery and the continued legacy of anti-Black racism renders Blackness ‘an exclusion from the dominant symbolics of gender’ (Snorton, 2017, p. 105). For Black women specifically, being marked as ‘female’ allowed for the myth of hypersexuality to justify their abuse at the hands of white men, while the erasure of feminine characteristics rendered the women objects such that they could not be considered victims (Batelaan & Abdel-Shehid, 2020). Thus, Black athletes, by virtue of their Blackness, are already rendered as deviant gendered subjects (Anderson & Travers, 2017; Magubane, 2014; Nyong’o, 2010; Pape, 2019); they are framed as both lacking and in excess of acceptable gender (Ravat, 2022) in order to justify increased surveillance and regulation. Sex segregation in sport is often justified as a means to achieve fairness, specifically for women. This argument relies on two specific beliefs: ‘firstly, female and male bodies are fundamentally different and, secondly, in sport this difference manifests as female performance inferiority’ (Erikainen, 2020, p. 3). The systemic separation of men’s and women’s sports situates athleticism as a singular concept and deems ‘male biologies’ more naturally inclined towards that athleticism (Anderson & Travers, 2017; Pape, 2019, 2022; Sykes, 2006). As such, female athletes are always playing outside the boundaries of both hegemonic masculinity and emphasized femininity (Connell, 1987). Sex segregation exists in direct tension with the experiences of athletes whose embodiments are outside the normative expectations of race and gender. The current binary of men’s and women’s sports, as well as those policies that determine the boundaries of gender send a clear message: ‘you either fit in, or you get lost’ (de la Cretaz, 2021). For athletes like Layshia Clarendon, this means that unless they conform, they are forced out and left to mourn a career in a sporting category in which they never truly fit (de la Cretaz, 2021). The rules of sex segregation in professional sports mean that, regardless of gender identity, athletes must conform to the standards of allowed gender to be eligible to participate.

Embodying Disobedience To embody disobedience is to resist regulation and categorization. It is to challenge and subvert dominant paradigms of societal understanding. Despite the unyielding regulation of binary segregation in professional sports, or perhaps

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because of it, nonbinary athletes continue to challenge the dimorphism of sex-gender. The year 2020 saw multiple high-profile athletes come out as nonbinary, including basketball player Layshia Clarendon and Canadian soccer player Quinn (Ennis, 2020). Layshia Clarendon is a shooting guard in the WNBA and the vice-president of the WNBA Players’ Association. As a Black, queer, nonbinary person, she embodies disobedience in intersectional and nuanced ways (Bar-Lavi, 2020). Since coming out, Clarendon has been an outspoken advocate for trans rights, as well as being part of league-wide social justice endeavours in the WNBA. This includes ‘Say Her Name’ campaigns in honour of Black women killed by police and efforts to increase voter turnout for the 2020 presidential election. Citing poet Andrea Gibson in an Instagram post, Clarendon has stated: ‘My pronouns haven’t been invented yet’ (Clarendon, 2020). In doing so, Clarendon situated herself as transcendent of arbitrary gender labels and liberated from normative ontology. Like scholar Marquis Bey, who considers Blackness and transness to be ‘an escape from confinement and a besideness to ontology’ (Bey, 2017, p. 278), Clarendon does not just resist categorization but exceeds it. At the same time, Clarendon asserts that pronouns are never the only way to embrace gender diversity and that learning must evolve in the same ways that gender evolves. ‘I know that we all have masculinity and femininity inside of us and mine show up equally and wholly and fully’, says Clarendon (2020). Here, Clarendon simultaneously problematizes the masculinity/femininity binary and the idea of masculinity and femininity as a spectrum. Rather than masculinity and femininity existing independently or counteracting each other, one rising as the other falls, she claims both ‘equally and wholly and fully’. Thus, her critique is simple yet powerful: experiences of masculinities and femininities, rather than being a balancing act, are beautifully and complicatedly co-constituted. A limited focus on discourse and language fails to account for the material violence that nonbinary people experience due to their gender subversion. Thus, more widespread respect for pronouns must happen in concert with increased access to medical healthcare for transitioning and legislative protections (Bar-Lavi, 2020). Without expanded protections and support, trans and nonbinary athletes already active in leagues may be discouraged to come out publicly and the systemic issue of nonbinary sporting participation may be reduced to individual experience rather than a critique of sex segregation as a whole; Layshia Clarendon elaborates that ‘I don’t wanna reduce nonbinary or trans people just to like; “You’re just your pronouns”!’ (Bar-Lavi, 2020). Getting pronouns right is crucial to cultivating gender-affirming environments for nonbinary athletes, but Clarendon stresses that the emphasis on pronouns should not distract from other vital points of focus in sports. This includes trans-led educational endeavours and expanded support for athletes who seek gender-affirming technologies of transition. The current barrage of anti-trans bills aimed at access to gender-affirming medicine and trans girls in sports indicates that embodying disobedience is not an entirely celebratory endeavour (Pape, 2022). The experiences and embodiments of nonbinary athletes provide a framework of expansiveness from which there is

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much to learn. At the same time, the regulatory nature of acceptable gender in sports means that nonbinary athletes face significant discrimination, from policies and categories of competition to audiences and social media trolls. Furthermore, bodily resistance specifically comes at a tremendous cost, as exclusionary policies and harassment lead to an increased lack of access to technologies of transition and gender-affirmative healthcare. In January 2021, Clarendon had top surgery and described it on Instagram as ‘freedom at last’ (Clarendon, 2021a). Though Clarendon embraces the gender-diverse trans umbrella, he categorically refuses the binary model of justification that is often required of people seeking technologies of transition (Malatino, 2017). Clarendon’s decision to have top surgery allowed him to access both material and emotional levels of gender euphoria. The surgery was in effect ‘a refusal of the notion that [their] corporeal queerness needed to be fixed or remediated’ (Malatino, 2017, p. 165); top surgery is largely sought out by trans men and, while Clarendon is not a man, this surgery lent itself to affirming their queerness and expansive gender embodiment. Furthermore, Clarendon was not using the surgery to transform from one physically incorrect state to another physically correct one – the transnormative discourse that accompanies many of these gender affirmation surgeries (Engdahl, 2014), but rather was ‘feeling a sense of gender euphoria’ (Clarendon, 2021a). She had a physically altering surgery without ascribing to the common trans narrative of being trapped in the wrong body (Engdahl, 2014) and, instead, accessing a technology of transition that helped her more wholly align her experience of sex-gender. This challenge to transnormative-wrong-body narratives is particularly relevant to Clarendon’s role as an athlete. While numerous sporting gender regulation policies include stipulations of hormonal and surgical medicine to either produce or maintain a correctly gendered body (Ravat, 2022), Clarendon’s top surgery was deeply personal. The removal of a normatively feminine feature, breasts, while continuing to participate in a women’s league is an embodiment of disobedience. Knowing that she might not be ‘accepted by a sports world that was not designed for nonbinary trans people like her’ (de la Cretaz, 2021), Clarendon went through with the surgery. His body, now more clearly aligned with his nonbinary identity, does not ascribe to traditional womanhood and every game that he participates in is a public display of that resistance. Clarendon pushes back against the ways in which gender is rendered binary. In their ‘coming out’ post on Instagram, Clarendon argued for gender fluidity as a resistance to the ‘molds [sic] that keep trying to hold it down and box it in’ (Clarendon, 2020). When asked about their platform as a role model for gender diverse athletes, Clarendon noted that the bottom line is that ‘we’ve always been here’ (Bar-Lavi, 2020; emphasis original) even when being underrepresented or intentionally erased. Her provocative statement challenges the notion that sex-gender diversity in sports is a new phenomenon, instead asserting that subversions and contestations of sex segregation have always existed in sports histories. Similar to Jules Gill-Peterson, who critiques the ‘so-called newness and now-ness of trans life’ (2018, p. 1), Clarendon directly connects current

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embodiments of disobedience to an established and expansive genealogy of resistance. Individualized support for athletes’ gender autonomy fails to challenge systemic gender regulation in sport, while simultaneously disenfranchizing nonbinary athletes from being able to compete. In fact, despite an increasing number of nonbinary athletes competing publicly, most leagues and sporting competitions are wholly unprepared to provide safe environments for nonbinary athletes’ participation. In relation to their top surgery, ‘the WNBA supported Clarendon as well as it did only because Clarendon advocated for themself behind the scenes for months’ (de la Cretaz, 2021). This included Clarendon sharing personal medical decisions with league leaders, such as her choice to undergo top surgery, while being unsure whether such a disclosure would render her ineligible to continue playing in the WNBA. Around the same time, Reign Football Club player and Olympic gold medallist Quinn came out as nonbinary to a lack of explicit team and league support and was misgendered on air during their first game after coming out (Yoesting, 2021). Thus, despite the presence of nonbinary athletes and the seeming inclusivity of leagues, there remains a crucial need for ‘intentional conversations around how to create healthier, safer, more inclusive environments in sport’ (Clarendon, 2021b) for those athletes who do not fit the mould. Interestingly, most out nonbinary athletes currently compete in women’s sports (Baeth & Goorevich, 2022). This includes Quinn and American skateboarder Alana Smith, with figure skater Timony LeDuc being the only exception at the moment. Because nonbinary athletes, even trans-masculine ones like Clarendon, are largely sequestered in women’s sports, there remains an emphasized dichotomy between the asymmetrical regulation of men and nonmen (Pape, 2019). This dichotomy works to reassert the hierarchical assumption that athletic prowess is more aligned with traditional masculinities (Anderson & Travers, 2017; Sykes, 2006). While the WBNA’s limited support for Clarendon is crucial in expanding acceptable gender diversity in sport, it is an exception to the rule of gender regulation. Masculinism and homophobia, especially in men’s sports, as well as policies that emphasize and regulate binary sex-gender in women’s sports continue to perpetuate hostile environments for nonbinary athletes.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined the construction and challenge of racialiszd gender in professional sports. Using the experiences and narratives of basketball player Layshia Clarendon, I have explored how nonbinary athletes subvert, challenge and refuse binary regulation in sport. I show that athletes such as Layshia Clarendon living as openly nonbinary and queer are more than simply demanding agency as individuals. Through their resistance to being categorized in a binary way, Clarendon and other nonbinary athletes embody disobedience against a system that seeks to disenfranchize them.

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While I attempted a broad analysis of nonbinary embodied disobedience in this chapter, I intentionally centred the voice of Layshia Clarendon. This was done to challenge the vilification of trans athletes, as seen through the creation of moral panic around a trans invasion in sport (Baeth & Goorevich, 2022). In doing so, I hope to contribute to a growing scholarship that critiques hypotheticals and moral panics regarding trans athletes and, instead, centres the experiences of those most marginalized by sex-gender regulation. Layshia Clarendon claims his Black nonbinary identity as a ‘superpower’ (Bar-Lavi, 2020) and, while this challenge to the rigid binarization of sport is critical, this superpower cannot be relied on to restructure dominant understandings of gender in sport. Though Clarendon’s public and powerful rejection of categorization is instrumental to expanding gender possibilities, sport remains a deeply regulatory space for athletes’ bodyminds. So where do we, as fans, as athletes, as sports scholars, go from here? Perhaps, the work is rooted in making ‘superpower’ identities less super, in making it such that sex-gender is not a marker of necessary activism and simply a facet of human ontology.

Notes 1. The 2020 USF SEWSA Organising Committee coined the term Embodying Disobedience as half of the title for the annual SEWSA conference (https:// www.sewsa.net/sewsa2021). In utilizing term in this chapter, I hope to pay homage to the committee while also expanding on what embodying disobedience looks like in the material world, in this case, the world of sport. 2. Building on Anne Fausto-Sterling’s notion of sex/gender (2012), I utilize a framework of sex-gender (hyphenated) to illustrate that the two concepts are co-constituted and have entangled impacts. 3. In ‘The Bodymind Problem and the Possibilities of Pain’ (2015), Margaret Price challenges the Cartesian dualistic notion that bodies and minds are connected yet distinct. Instead, she developed the concept of bodyminds, wherein bodies and minds are enmeshed and intrinsically connected to experience, identity and understanding. 4. I use the plural ‘biologies’ as a reference to Margeret Lock’s concept of ‘local biologies’ (1993), wherein bodies are considered as constantly evolving in relation to biomedical science and social context. Thus, I am resisting the universal principle of biomedicine that considers bodies as biologically the same in all contexts.

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Bar-Lavi, D. (2020, August 19). “Being Black and NonBinary Is My Superpower”: Layshia Clarendon on Race, Gender, Social Justice and the WNBA. Venus Sports. https://venussports.co/2020/08/19/being-black-and-nonbinary-is-my-superpowerlayshia-clarendon-on-race-gender-social-justice-and-the-wnba/ Batelaan, K., & Abdel-Shehid, G. (2020). On the eurocentric nature of sex testing: The case of Caster Semenya. Social Identities, 27(2), 146–165. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13504630.2020.1816452 Bey, M. (2017). The Trans*-ness of Blackness, the Blackness of Trans*-ness. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 4(2), 275–295. https://doi.org/10.1215/232892523815069 Caudwell, J. (2003). Sporting gender: Women’s footballing bodies as sites/sights for the (re) articulation of sex, gender, and desire. Sociology of Sport Journal, 20(4), 371–386. https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.20.4.371 Chelladurai, P. (2004). Group Dynamics in Sport. Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology (pp. 127–136). https://doi.org/10.1016/b0-12-657410-3/00807-2 Clarendon, L. [@layshiac]. (2021a, April 16). Link in bio! Blown away at @britnidlc phenomenal story telling skills. It’s one thing to have your story told and another to have it done by someone with such care, nuance and flat out skill [Instagram photograph]. https://www.instagram.com/p/CNv43mwh46w/?utm_medium5copy_ link Clarendon, L. [@layshiac]. (2021b, January 29). On Jan 13th at 10 am I hugged my wife in front of my surgery building, walked in and took a deep breath. . .The day was finally here [Instagram photograph]. https://www.instagram.com/p/CKpAwB5 hYC8/?igshid5tz08w5gdxcpb Clarendon, L. [@layshiac]. (2020, December 9). There is indeed no way to be Trans. Over 5 years ago I wrote in a @playerstribune article that I identified as noncis gender [Instagram photograph]. https://www.instagram.com/p/CImivz2htO8/? igshid517qjopm23y97u Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and Power. Blackwell. de la Cretaz, F. (2021, April 16). Living Nonbinary in a Binary Sports World. Sports Illustrated website. https://www.si.com/wnba/2021/04/16/nonbinary-athletestransgender-layshia-clarendon-quinn-rach-mcbride-daily-cover Dembroff, R. (2018). Nonbinary Identity Is a Radical Stance against Gender Segregation. Aeon Magazine. aeon.co/essays/nonbinary-identity-is-a-radical-stanceagainst-gender-segregation Education Amendments Act of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §§1681–1688. (2018). Engdahl, U. (2014). Wrong body. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1(1–2), 267–269. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-2400226 Ennis, D. (2020, December 27). Outsports NonBinary Athlete of the Year: Quinn. Outsports. www.outsports.com/2020/12/27/22196235/outsports-nonbinary-athletequinn-transgender-canada-sweden-vittsjo-gik-layshia-clarendon-wnba Erikainen, S. (2020). Gender Verification and the Making of the Female Body in Sport: A History of the Present. Routledge. Erikainen, S., Vincent, B., & Hopkins, A. (2020). Specific detriment: Barriers and opportunities for nonbinary inclusive sports in Scotland. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723520962937

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Fausto-Sterling, A. (2012). Sex/Gender: Biology in a Social World. Routledge. Garrison, S. (2018). On the limits of “trans enough”: Authenticating trans identity narratives. Gender & Society, 32(5), 613–637. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243 218780299 Gill-Peterson, J. (2018). Histories of the Transgender Child. University of Minnesota Press. Jordan-Young, R. M., & Karkazis, K. (2019). Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography. Harvard University Press. Magubane, Z. (2014). Spectacles and scholarship: Caster Semenya, intersex studies, and the problem of race in feminist theory. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 39(3), 761–785. https://doi.org/10.1086/674301 Malatino, H. (2017). Gone, missing: Queering and racializing absence in trans & intersex archives. In C. Cipolla, K. Gupta, D. A. Rubin, & A. Willey (Eds.), Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader (pp. 157–172). University of Washington Press. Malatino, H. (2020). Trans Care. University of Minnesota Press. Nicholas, L., & Clark, S. (2020). Leave those kids alone: On the uses and abuses and feminist queer potential of nonbinary and genderqueer. Journal of the International Network for Sexual Ethics & Politics, 36–55. (Special Issue 2020). https://doi.org/ 10.3224/insep.si2020.03 Nyong’o, T. (2010). The unforgivable transgression of being Caster Semenya. Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, 20(1), 95–100. https://doi.org/10. 1080/07407701003589501 Pape, M. (2019). Expertise and nonbinary bodies: Sex, gender and the case of Dutee Chand. Body & Society, 254, 3–28. https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034x19865940 Pape, M. (2022). Something old, something new: Feminist resistance to trans inclusion in sport. In H. Lenskyj & A. Greey (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles. Emerald Publishing Limited. Pape, M., & Pielke, R. (2019). Science, sport, sex, and the case of Caster Semenya. Issues in Science & Technology, 36(1), 56–63. Pastor, A. (2019). Unwarranted and invasive scrutiny: Caster Semenya, sex-gender testing and the production of woman in ‘women’s’ track and field. Feminist Review, 122(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141778919849688 Pronger, B. (1990). The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex. St. Martin’s Press. Ravat, S. (2022). Incorrect Athlete, Incorrect Woman: IOC Gender Regulations and the Boundaries of Womanhood in Professional Sports. Masters Thesis, University of South Florida. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. Richardson, S. S. (2017). Sexing the ‘X’: How the X became the female chromosome. In C. Cipolla, K. Gupta, D. A. Rubin, & A. Willey (Eds.), Queer Feminist Science Studies: A Reader (pp. 30–42). University of Washington Press. “Sex Discrimination: Overview of the Law.” Home, April 13, 2023. https://www2.ed. gov/policy/rights/guid/ocr/sexoverview.html Snorton, C. R. (2017). Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity. University of Minnesota Press. Sykes, H. (2006). Transsexual and Transgender policies in sport. Women in Sport & Physical Activity Journal, 15(1), 3–13. https://doi.org/10.1123/wspaj.15.1.3

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Travers, A. (2013). Thinking the unthinkable: Imagining an ‘un-American,’ girl-friendly, women- and trans-inclusive alternative for baseball. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 37(1), 78–96. https://doi.org/10.1177/0193723512455926 Yoesting, T. (2021). NWSL Announcers Really Need to Fucking Stop Misgendering Athletes. https://the18.com/en/soccer-entertainment/nwsl-misgendering-announc ers-quinn

Chapter 9

Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Persons’ Experiences of Recreational Sport and Physical Activity Eva Boˇsnjak and William Bridel

Abstract This chapter examines trans and gender non-conforming persons’ experiences of recreational sport and physical activity (PA). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with trans and gender non-conforming people, which were then analyzed using critical discourse analysis (CDA). Participants highlighted that while they did derive enjoyment from sport and physical activity, most mainstream spaces they had experienced, such as organized sport and gyms, were still unsafe and unwelcoming. These experiences were largely due to the continued influence of binary notions of gender on the organization of sport and physical activity as well as assumptions about bodily performance and presentation. Participants discussed how gendered bodily norms influenced the way they experienced their own bodies, both a result of others’ perceptions and through self-surveillance. They also reflected on creating their own physical activity communities as a way to derive the benefits of physical activity while avoiding discriminatory experiences in mainstream spaces. Keywords: Recreational sport; physical activity; accompliceship; bodily norms; transgender; gender non-conforming

Introduction Trans and gender non-conforming persons experience many different types of discrimination across myriad social spaces, which include sport and physical activity (PA). In general, the fact that sport is primarily organized around the gender binary where men and women – who are expected to have different and distinct bodies – are separated is often pointed to as a leading contributor to the Trans Athletes’ Resistance, 115–127 Copyright © 2024 Eva Boˇsnjak and William Bridel Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited doi:10.1108/978-1-80382-363-820231009

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negative experiences and/or exclusion of trans and gender non-conforming people. Research done within the academy and by advocacy organizations has elucidated these negative experiences, which include gender policing (e.g. Herrick & Duncan, 2018), impacts of (cis)heteronormativity (e.g. Caudwell, 2014; Hargie et al., 2017), changerooms (e.g. Caudwell, 2014; Greey, 2022; Hargie et al., 2017; Oakleaf & Richmond, 2017), questions of fairness (e.g. Teetzel, 2017), the effects of medically transitioning on sport participation (e.g. Elling-Machartzki, 2017; Jones et al., 2017), as well as discriminatory language, ignorance and transphobia (e.g. Travers, 2018). Paradoxically, many of these same issues are reproduced in sporting spaces that have been created by and for members of the queer community (e.g. Ravel & Rail, 2007; Travers & Deri, 2011). With all these obstacles, it is unsurprising that trans and gender non-conforming persons drop out of sport at higher rates compared to cisgender persons (Arcelus et al., 2016; Doull et al., 2018). In this chapter, we (the co-authors) share some findings from Eva’s graduate thesis. The primary objective of their work was to explore trans and gender non-conforming peoples’ experiences in sport and PA, focusing particularly on what we defined as recreational (or, non-competitive) participation. Their goal was to augment existing literature by extending the definition of ‘athlete’ beyond involvement in organized, high-performance sport. They also aimed to explore the experiences of gender non-conforming people in social spaces that are largely organized around the gender binary. With respect to the latter point, our goal was to examine a range of trans and gender non-conforming identities to understand the experiences of various gender diverse individuals, as previous literature has shown that not all persons with non-cisgender identities have the same experiences in sporting environments (e.g. Greey, 2022; Herrick & Duncan, 2018; Travers, 2018). The primary influence for undertaking this work was our shared passion to increase and then disseminate our understanding of what trans and gender non-conforming persons need to thrive in sport and PA environments, because, ultimately, trans and gender non-conforming people deserve to be able to participate in sport and PA as their full authentic selves.

Positionality and Contributions Eva is a queer, transmasculine, nonbinary, white settler, able-bodied and neurotypical person. They are a former competitive athlete and an equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) practitioner with a passion for advocating for the trans community. Their work has focused on coordinating and implementing data-driven EDI initiatives within post-secondary institutions. They have also conducted critical reviews of trans inclusion and other EDI-related policies for sport organizations across Canada. Eva believes that to foster true equity and inclusion, the current sport system must be radically challenged. William is a gay, cisgender, white settler, neurotypical and able-bodied man. His research and advocacy work has largely focused on LGBTQ2S1 inclusion in sport, examining policies and rules of the sport, as well as learning and writing

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about the experiences of LGBTQ2S1 sport participants. For this project, William served as Eva’s supervisor, providing support through all phases of the work. For this chapter, William worked collaboratively with Eva to decide on and help write the content that has been included.

Notes on Theory and Method The tenets of queer theory were employed as a theoretical framework for this qualitative research project. In brief, queer theory urges individuals to consider critically what society takes-for-granted as universal truths about gender and sexuality; rather than being inherent or innate, gender and sexuality are discursively constructed and maintained (e.g. Jagose, 1996; Kirsch, 2000). The construction and maintenance is an ongoing, cyclical process that occurs through, for example, constructed notions about standards of beauty, expected performances of masculinity and femininity that align with perceived biological sex, laws regarding marriage, expectations of sexual behaviour, etc. (e.g. Jagose, 1996; McCann & Monaghan, 2020). Specific to our work, queer theory was the most useful lens through which to explore the ways that sport and PA reinforce the limiting confines of the gender binary, or the creation and maintenance of so-called normative and non-normative gender and sexual identities. However, queer theory also helps to draw out contradictions and tensions, thereby allowing us to consider where dominant ideas about sport, PA and discursively constructed notions of gender were challenged, subverted and resisted. In the original research drawn on for this chapter, Eva conducted virtual interviews with six participants who all described themselves as transgender and/ or gender non-conforming or under the umbrellas of those terms. Interview questions broadly focused on experiences within sport and PA, as well as why trans and gender non-conforming persons may choose not to participate in these spaces. The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed and then subjected to analysis informed by Fairclough’s (2001) three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis (CDA). This approach focuses on making sense of individual experiences in relation to the larger cultural context through description, interpretation and explanation of texts, which in our research were interview transcripts. It is an analytical approach that seeks to avoid making a participant group seem more homogeneous than it really is, while simultaneously being able to create some themes through shared experiences and ideas. We, as co-authors and collaborators, engaged in ongoing conversations throughout the analysis, conversations which were informed by our positionalities, our understandings of queer theory and our knowledge of various bodies of related academic literature and advocacy work. The study was approved by our university ethics board.

Introducing the Participants Of the six participants interviewed for Eva’s thesis, four consented to have their stories shared in this chapter: Em (they/them), River (they/them) and Conrad

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(they/them) are nonbinary and Katie (she/her) is a queer, butch, gender non-conforming woman. All participants identified themselves as white. Each participant was currently active or had been active in sport and PA in the past five years at the time of their interview.

On the Body, Lived Experience and Community-Making While our research participants certainly had unique experiences within sport and PA, our analysis of the interview transcripts also revealed many similarities. For example, all participants cited the idea of enjoyment as a primary motivation for participating in sport and PA, although what constituted enjoyment varied. Some described enjoyment in relation to sensorial experience, to sociality, and/or to sense of accomplishment (e.g. acquisition of new skills). Participants also spoke openly about negative experiences in sport and PA contexts, experiences that shared many similarities. For example, participants spoke about negative experiences in changerooms, exclusion from gendered sport teams and lack of inclusive policies in PA-related organizations and companies (e.g. fitness chains). In this chapter, we focus on two themes: dominant bodily norms and community-making. Each includes stories of discrimination, but also of resistance.

Dominant Bodily Norms and Lived Experience As a point of entry into conversation about dominant bodily norms, some of the participants whose stories are shared in this chapter conceptualized that their experiences were impacted by the expectation to create and maintain a body that matched discursively constructed ideals in relation to dominant notions of gender. How exactly these bodily norms were discussed varied. For example, some participants talked about negative experiences in traditional men’s and women’s changerooms, including comments on appearance and the anxiety they experienced related to anticipated stigma, discrimination and misgendering, which oftentimes resulted in long-term avoidance of changerooms: I’m never going to be read as someone who’s gonna pass in a male bathroom, so I’ll never go to that bathroom. So, it’s about level of safety. (River) The number one thing that stops me from doing a lot of things in life is changerooms. . .. I maybe used a male changeroom a few times in my life because of that. It stops me from going swimming. It stops me from doing a lot of things because I’m just terrified of how I’m going to be seen within that room. How I will feel comfortable in that room. Even the smells. Like men’s changerooms suck. It’s also like how things like porn have used changerooms as a storyline for something to happen. It’s just a place that I have great anxiety around for sure. (Conrad)

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River and Conrad’s negative perceptions and experiences of changerooms are consistent with other researchers’ findings (e.g. Greey, 2022; Jones et al., 2017; Sykes, 2011) and should continue to be important conversations and sites of interventions given the impact on trans and gender non-conforming people and their participation in sport and PA. In this section of the chapter, however, we focus more on how normative ideas about the body worked in more implicit ways, leading participants to feel that their gender was being policed by others, but also by themselves through self-surveillance. Three participants (Em, River and Katie) discussed expectations related to normative notions about femininity and self-imposed and external perceptions of femaleness. Em described, for example, feeling pressured to conform to normative body expectations when they were a dancer: Especially in dance, which is always perceived as a very feminine sport, I felt like I needed to be very feminine, and I definitely was for quite a number of years. Em highlights the ways that dominant norms within a particular form of PA (i.e. dance) can become internalized and influence one’s performance of gendered expectations, even if not explicitly expressed (at least in what Em shared with Eva during the interview). River noted, however, that in their experiences, normative body expectations were forced upon them by a personal trainer at a gym. Specifically, they were asked, ‘Do you wanna lose weight? Do you want to make your butt bigger?’ This trainer assumed River’s gender, imposed dominant constructions of femininity and presented them exclusively with training goals that were tied to idealized physical traits generally associated with women. While making one’s butt bigger does not align with Euro-, cis-centric standards regarding femininity, in recent years it has become popular for white women to appropriate Black women’s features, also known as blackfishing (Cherid, 2021). Like River, Katie discussed how her experiences in/of PA spaces were impacted by others’ perceptions and explicit comments: I feel like it has to do with kind of a few intersecting ideas, in terms of particularly gendered bodies, in what your goals are supposed to be, based on your sex or gender. The perpetual pursuit of women [that they] are supposed to be toned is infinitely frustrating as somebody who does not seek to fulfil that. That’s not how my goals align, but as somebody who is female, that is imposed upon me without me wanting it. . . Or even just little, needing to clarify if people are like, “oh, well don’t get too bulky” and I’m like, “no, no, that’s what I want”. That general ideas around what idealized bodies look like don’t fit with what my idealized body looks like. Bodies perceived to be female are expected to be toned, meaning to be slim with minimal muscle, a physical look that has been associated with an idealized form of femininity (Krane et al., 2004). Despite others attempting to define her

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body, Katie idealizing her body as bulky – a larger body with greater muscle mass that takes up more space and is associated with masculinity – can be read as resisting dominant notions of femininity. Indeed, Katie specifically commented that she enjoyed using sport and PA as a means to defy gender norms, such as working out to gain muscle mass: I think for me it’s that I personally have a good relationship with my body, in that I feel at home in my body. I feel like myself mentally and physically. I am comfortable and at home in my gender and for me that is enough. I choose whether or not to engage with other people’s opinions of that, depending on a myriad of social factors, but it’s like, for me engaging with my body and using it for sport and exercise and PA really helps me connect with my body and feel comfortable in it. The only downside for me would be the potential for uncomfortable and potentially dangerous interactions with other people, who choose to impose their assessments on my body. Katie was able to use the activities she was involved in to improve relationships with her body, leading to a feeling of empowerment through the resistance of normative constructions of, in this example, femininity. Thus, while extremely restrictive, sport and PA can also provide opportunities for individuals to resist dominant constructions of gender and affirm one’s gender (Oakleaf & Richmond, 2017). The dominant and powerful idea that bodies must conform to binary, cisnormative constructions was consistent in the stories many participants shared about their experiences. For Conrad, their experiences were somewhat different. They highlighted the conflict they often experience between how they want to look in general and when in physical activity spaces (e.g. gyms). Specifically, Conrad commented about the expectation others hold that nonbinary people will always present androgynously: I find people really struggle with the concept of me with the beard, but with my nails, but with this hat. Being like, “you don’t identify as a gender, but you look like one”. I struggle with that. And I don’t blame people because people see nonbinary as androgynous, and I like how I look. It’s tricky cause people really want to understand it, which I get. But I’m not what comes to mind when people hear nonbinary and that’s kind of a friction that I have to deal with. Conrad, despite liking the way they look, nevertheless also felt pressured by societal expectations to look more androgynous so that people would believe them when they say they are nonbinary:

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I’m actually growing my hair out right now so I have longer hair so I can start entering a more androgynous look. Which is bullshit. Sorry to swear, but it’s bullshit that I even am censoring myself in a way to make myself more palatable to society. And I hate that so much. Here we interpret Conrad’s experience as largely reproducing discursively constructed gender norms, despite an obvious discomfort in doing so. Put another way, in this statement, Conrad conceptualized nonbinary as synonymous with androgyny and, moreover, androgyny as striking a perfect balance between masculinity and femininity. The nature of dominant gender discourse – which constructs gender as a rigid binary – is insidious; it can shape understandings and experiences of the body in many ways even when seeking to subvert or challenge it. Galupo et al. (2021) have asserted that there are expectations placed on nonbinary people to embody ‘genderlessness’ in order to appear ‘authentic’ and avoid, for example, misgendering. We argue that these expectations reproduce heterosexual, cisnormative ideals created and maintained by the gender binary. The desire for some nonbinary people to present in an androgynous or genderless way also reflects that gender identity and gender expression, while separate constructs, are often conflated (Galupo, 2021). Conrad’s experiences further demonstrate the problematic norm that a person’s gender identity and expression must align in order to find greater societal acceptance (Pecoraro & Pitts, 2020) in similar ways that Em, Katie and River experienced gendered expectations of their bodies and appearances. The four individuals’ experiences, in general, reflected the many ways that dominant gender discourse is reproduced in sport and PA, both by others and by themselves, where being cisgender is an implicit norm. Discursively created gender norms, for example, materialized often through misogyny and sexism directed at individuals who were perceived as women. But that is not to say that these norms weren’t also subverted in different ways as participants sought to express themselves in ways that felt authentic to them. It was also these experiences that, at least in part, served as motivation for participants to find alternatives to mainstream sport and PA spaces.

Physical Activity and Community-Making Conrad, Em, Katie and River all expressed a preference for participating in activities that were more individualized. This was largely because they were unable to find teams and/or leagues that made them feel comfortable and safe. This comment from Conrad reflects the general sentiment shared by the group: I don’t know how to find the groups to hang out with, or to participate with, or how to find a safe one. Or even how to have a conversation with a group about how it can be safe or made safe.

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While one participant indicated that they mostly worked out at home, the three other participants were participating in physical activities outside of their home at the time of the interviews. Specific activities that they mentioned included swimming, rock climbing, mountain biking, running and working out. The draw to individual activities is consistent with findings from previous research; while there remain obstacles to participation in sport writ large for trans and gender non-conforming people, individual sport and other physical activities may be more accepting than team and group scenarios (Hargie et al., 2017). However, what we found particularly interesting was that while the participants talked about these activities as individual pursuits, doing these activities with others was also mentioned: When it comes to rock climbing and other PAs, I can be like really picky about who I wanna take. I’ve had really great experiences rock climbing and I take people who I like, or I go with people who are super specific. So, I have a really fun time with them. It’s not super goal-oriented, it’s just out there to have fun and we do, and we have great laughs, and we get stuck on rocks and it’s fun. I don’t think I would necessarily say. . . like, other than rock climbing I’ve had positive experiences. (River) I’m only mostly doing like individual work at a gym. . .. In terms of the people that I choose to train or do activities with [they] are generally friends who are also queer, and I feel very safe within those groups. (Katie) This sense of community and of safety was a common discussion point in the interviews, however, while participants desired it, finding community proved to be difficult. For instance, rarely did participants experience a sense of community in organized sport, noting social isolation and exclusion as common outcomes. Instead, they turned to individual activities and then created their own communities, as River and Katie both allude to in the quotes above. There was an active effort to surround themselves with like-minded people – who were oftentimes queer and/or trans themselves – to ensure validation, acceptance, and, ultimately, safety, when engaging in an activity that they enjoyed. This creation of community follows from a more general history, borne out of necessity, of queer people creating their own spaces as a way to find comfort and kinship, as well to create a space in which to challenge heteronormativity and other discriminatory and marginalizing social norms related to gender and to sexuality. In Canada, these spaces have included house parties, bars, bathhouses, community groups and organizations and ‘alternative’ media outlets as far back as the 1930s if not earlier (Jennex & Eswaran, 2020; Korinek, 2018). In the last 40 years or so, LGBTQ2S1 sport teams and organizations have also served a similar purpose but, admittedly, have often struggled to be truly inclusive and safe spaces for all members of the LGBTQ2S1 community (e.g. Davidson, 2014; MacDonald &

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Bridel, 2020; Travers & Deri, 2011), which our participants also talked about in the interviews. While our participants discussed the importance of finding other trans, gender non-conforming and/or (per Katie’s quote above) queer people to join them in their PA endeavours for sake of comfort, friendship and safety, comments were also made by some participants about self-made activity spaces in which they engaged with people who were not queer or trans. These individuals were most often acquaintances, colleagues or friends of friends who the participants knew had previously been in spaces with trans and gender non-conforming persons. For example, Em stated: I guess, like, the times that I have gone mountain biking over the summer, with my coworkers who I am out to, those have been very positive experiences. . . We’ve been in chats now talking about next season and you know where we’ve all ordered bikes and we’re waiting for them to come in. I would say that makes me feel more comfortable. Participants’ comments about the inclusion of cisgender and/or heterosexual people into these informally organized PA spaces, led, in some interviews, to conversations about allyship in sport and PA more generally. Katie, for example, commented: I feel like the role of allies is to make space for trans and gender non-conforming people where it doesn’t currently exist. To take some of that work off the community. And because they do have that privilege within those spaces, their voices will often be heard more clearly and afforded more attention. Using that notoriety and space, whether it’s like teammates on a rec league saying like, “Okay, what do we have policies in place, what are things we’re going to do to make sure that we’re a safe place for people regardless of gender?” Also speaking out if anyone is being transphobic or not accepting, whether explicit or implicit. So, like those kinds of community roles and then thinking about the impact of people at higher levels of sport. . . organizers and cisgender teammates saying, “We need to make space for our trans and gender non-conforming teammates” and like how those interactions play out. Other participants commented in varying ways on allyship. For example, it was mentioned that, at minimum, allies must actively use gender inclusive language, and avoid the use of gendered language when addressing a group (e.g. referring to the full group as ‘guys’). Another way allyship was conceptualized was by allies creating and maintaining a space where people feel comfortable sharing pronouns and making a genuine effort to correctly use others’ pronouns. Additionally, some participants, such as Em, described allyship as ensuring

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employees in sport and PA spaces are properly trained on issues such as dealing with harassment in changerooms. Conrad explained that, at minimum, education and familiarity is fundamental to being an ally to the LGBTQ2S1 community and, particularly, trans and gender non-conforming people, but also noted the limitations of the concept of allyship: [An ally is] somebody who’s done the work. They have done the research and stuff to know how to make a space feel comfortable for trans/nonbinary folk. . .. I feel like allies are great, but I want an accomplice to help me accomplish the things that I want to do. It’s great when people are like, “yeah, we are inclusive” but if I’m not seeing the action and I’m not seeing the steps set in place and I’m not seeing the outreach happen, I really struggle with allyship. According to Jackson et al. (2020), allyship focuses on supporting equity-deserving or equity-owed groups by creating respectful relationships and holding others accountable for their actions. Accompliceship includes allyship but moves into the realm of advocacy, where an accomplice will put their own privilege on the line and challenge systemic oppression at the risk of their own personal comfort. While Conrad used the term accompliceship specifically, we would argue that Katie’s quote above also suggests the need for allies to serve more as accomplices. To be clear, none of the participants had come across such allies or accomplices in sport and PA environments. Indeed, a lack of allies and accomplices was another reason why participants actively sought out or made their own communities and activity spaces with other queer and/or trans people.

Connections, Extensions and Concluding Thoughts The participants who shared their stories and experiences with us spoke about negative experiences not only in organized sport, but also in recreational, non-competitive sport and PA spaces, such as the gym. These experiences speak to the far-reaching influence of dominant ideas about gender in sport and the work that needs to be done across sport and PA spaces of all kinds. Yet sport and PA also serve as spaces for resistance, where dominant discourse can be challenged or subverted. For example, some of our participants talked about challenging normative, gendered ideas about the body despite others’ insistence on their appearance aligning with constructed notions of femininity, masculinity, or androgyny. Participants also discussed making their own activity communities, composed of other trans, gender non-conforming, and/or queer people and allies. Because participants found organized sporting and other activity spaces to be unwelcoming or overtly intolerant of trans and gender non-conforming persons, they could have been deterred from engaging in sport and PA altogether. However, each discussed how they found a way to participate in physical activities that

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allowed them to experience joy, to foster friendships, to find or create community, and/or to experience a sense of belonging. It is essential to note here that all the participants who consented to have their experiences included in this chapter are white. This is an important point as trans and gender non-conforming people may also experience compounding levels of marginalization through other factors such as race and disability (Meade et al., 2015), particularly as scholars have argued that sport reproduces ideas of whiteness, heterosexual masculinity, female fragility and class privilege (Lenskyj, 2003; McDonagh & Pappano, 2008). This is a limitation of our work, but we are hopeful that our research provides a helpful starting point for future investigations that seek to intentionally explore, for example, the experiences of Indigenous and racialized trans and gender non-conforming people in sport and PA. In closing, we, the authors, want to note that LGBTQ2S1 people have long been doing the work to try to make sport and PA more inclusive, not an easy task within institutions that have been created in such a way as to exclude anyone who is not cisgender, heterosexual, white, able-bodied and neurotypical. One outcome has been, as we have discussed in this chapter, the creation of new alternative spaces. We encourage cisgender people involved in sport and PA to become accomplices with trans, gender non-conforming and all gender diverse people to co-conspire in making systemic change. We encourage cisgender people to be braver, to speak out, to throw away complicity and to tackle and meaningfully address bigger questions about our still limited ideas of gender, not only in sport and PA but also in the larger cultural context. There is much work to be done, but the possibility of change is there.

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Chapter 10

Conclusion: Resistance: The Way Forward Helen Jefferson Lenskyj and Ali Durham Greey

Abstract This chapter investigates resistance initiated by trans athletes and their allies and evaluates developments in policies and practices at the international, national and local levels of sport. The limitations of liberal approaches to trans inclusion are identified, and examples of radical, transformative approaches grounded in intersectional feminism are presented, together with an analysis of the crucial roles of solidarity work provided by allies and accomplices. The potential offered by boxing as a route to empowerment for trans and nonbinary participants is examined. An overview of recent media coverage of trans athletes suggests that global resistance is having an important impact on mainstream journalism. Finally, this chapter outlines how a successful campaign challenging a trans-exclusive Sport Canada’s 2022 opinion survey and a recent report by Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport provide further evidence of effective resistance to trans exclusion in sport. Keywords: Transgender; resistance; sport; policy; inclusion; nonbinary

Reform or Radical Transformation? Helen Jefferson Lenskyj Contributors to this book represent a wide range of subject positions and theoretical approaches to the broad topic of trans resistance. Those who take an autoethnographical approach add a particularly valuable dimension by speaking from lived experience as trans or nonbinary athletes. Researchers who are active participants within all levels of sport and physical activity serve as positive exemplars of social justice activists and allies working together on trans-inclusive policies and practices. Overall, their recommendations take a multi-faceted approach that recognizes intersectionality, that is, the ways in which systems of

Trans Athletes’ Resistance, 129–149 Copyright © 2024 Helen Jefferson Lenskyj and Ali Durham Greey Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited doi:10.1108/978-1-80382-363-820231010

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oppression based on sex/gender, ethnicity, ability and socio-economic status intersect in the lives and experiences of trans athletes. To date, trans-inclusive initiatives have tended to focus on high-performance sport, with advocates calling for changes to the existing policies of national and international sports governing bodies. These reform efforts are obviously an important first step, but more fundamental change is needed. A radical reorganization of sport at all levels would take the form of a transformation that would welcome individuals of all genders, ethnicities, abilities and socio-economic status. Many of the initiatives that have their origins in community-based recreational sport represent significant progress towards that goal, as some contributors have demonstrated.

IOC Framework and Position Statement Although the IOC is the self-appointed ‘supreme authority’ for world sport, it handed over control of policies on trans athletes to international federations in 2021, after releasing its non-binding Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Non-Discrimination. In an important 2022 follow-up Position Statement (Martowicz et al., 2022), also non-binding, the authors noted that, unlike earlier eligibility guidelines, the IOC’s position now rejected a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. Instead, it recommended sport-specific approaches, on the grounds that each sport has ‘unique performance characteristics’. Most significantly, the Position Statement pointed to the need to celebrate ‘diversity while offering safe, fair and inclusive sporting environments for all athletes, regardless of their status related to gender identity or sex variations’. The overall tone of the Position Statement is promising: its 10 principles address many of the problems currently experienced by trans and intersex athletes. Significantly, it differentiates between elite competition, where eligibility criteria may apply, and youth and community sport, where inclusion should be prioritized. Participants’ safety, prevention of harm, positive support of health and a welcoming sport environment are identified as key goals for all organizations. Addressing past injustices, and in keeping with the principle of determinative freedom discussed in Chapter 1, Principle 3 of the Position Statement focuses on non-discrimination, stating that eligibility criteria should not be based on ‘discriminatory assumptions about a broad class of people. . . [or] assumptions about an athlete’s sporting performance based purely on their sex variations or transgender status. . . physical appearance or gender expression’ (emphasis added). Similarly, Principle 5, ‘No presumption of advantage’, states that no athlete should be excluded from competition ‘on the exclusive ground and an unverified, alleged or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status’. These guidelines stand in stark contrast to the eligibility rules based on arbitrary testosterone levels that international federations like World Athletics and UCI have imposed on the ‘broad class’ of trans and intersex athletes. Similarly, Principle 6 calls for an

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evidence-based approach, based on ‘robust and peer-reviewed research’, although it does not address the problem of policy-based evidence – that is, research commissioned by international federations and conducted by in-house scientists with the goal of generating findings in support of existing policies (Lenskyj, 2020, Ch. 8).

Small Steps Forward Recent changes at the international federation level reflect some gradual progress towards more inclusive policies and practices that go beyond binary thinking about sex and gender. These changes may potentially offer trans athletes greater opportunities for inclusion. Since 2015, men have been allowed to compete in male–female duets in artistic swimming (synchronized swimming) while 2024 Paris Summer Olympics marks the first time that FINA (Swimming IF) has permitted a men’s team and male duets. International Skating Union (ISU) introduced same-gender pairs in 2022, a move that promises to change the longstanding heteronormative interpretations demanded of pairs figure skaters and ice dancers (Lenskyj, 2013, Chapter 5). More significant changes were made by two American sports organizations, Major League Quidditch and US Quidditch, to disassociate the sport from its origins in Harry Potter books, and hence from its connection to their high profile anti-trans author, J. K. Rowlings. Organizers of the sport, now renamed Quadball, noted two equally significant factors behind the change: firstly, that Warner Bros. owned the copyright for the name Quidditch, thereby limiting sponsorship and broadcasting opportunities, and, secondly, that the association with Rowlings was a barrier to recruiting new players (Quidditch changes name, 2022). Significantly, organizers gave equal weight to the financial and the moral rationales, perhaps anticipating that this approach would render the change more acceptable to transphobic critics. Like US Quadball, US Ultimate, the sports governing body for Ultimate (frisbee), implemented rules in 2020 allowing athletes to self-identify their gender, or to identify as nonbinary. In 2017, 150 professional players had boycotted the national league because of its domination by cisgender white men, and the next year they established their own organization, the Premier Ultimate League, with the stated goal of increasing access and visibility of ‘women, transgender, nonbinary, genderqueer and genderfluid people’ and centring anti-racism (Burtka, 2022). As non-Olympic sports, Quadball and Ultimate have greater freedom to introduce inclusive policies that could serve as a model for other sports with a community and/or recreational focus.

Single-Issue Activism Vs. Intersectional Approach What does an intersectional analysis look like in relation to trans people’s access to sport and recreation? A brief account of my experiences in a queer community

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group demonstrates how activists who supported the public provision of recreational facilities and services for LGBTQ users were opposed to a sport-related project that ignored racism, poverty and homelessness, in other words, a liberal, single-issue approach. In 2015, an activist friend invited me to join a group called Queer Trans Community Defence (QTCD) that was addressing gentrification in Toronto’s Downtown East (DTE) neighbourhood. The main target of QTCD’s activism was a proposed ‘LGBTQ-focused’ sport centre at Moss Park, intended to replace the existing public community recreation centre. The project was a joint venture of an anonymous donor, the City of Toronto and the 519, a city-operated community centre designated to provide services to LGBTQ communities.1 According to 519 staff, the name for the proposed centre was amended to ‘LGBTQ-focused’ rather than ‘LGBTQ’ to reflect the new ‘inclusion model’ that it belatedly embraced – that is, months after community groups, including QTCD, had voiced their concerns. Although the intentions of the anonymous donor (who had committed about $CAN100m) were reportedly philanthropic, his 2012 vision had originally focused on the recreational needs of predominantly middle-class LGBTQ users in the increasingly gentrified neighbourhood adjacent to Moss Park. He was subsequently persuaded to remove any conditions attached to the donation following community opposition. So why did QTCD oppose a project that would provide recreational facilities and services for LGBTQ users? DTE was one of Toronto’s poorest neighbourhoods. Reflecting the city’s longstanding housing and homelessness crisis, Moss Park continues to be occupied year-round by poor and homeless people, including significant numbers of racialized and Indigenous men and women, as well as sex workers and drug users. Yet the City and 519 staff expressed confidence in the ‘community benefit model’ which would bring about inclusion and ‘social bridging’. The growing numbers of middle-class LGBTQ residents living in new condominiums, the current residents in subsidized housing and those who live (or survive) in the park would mingle without any difficulty and everyone’s needs would be met, according to this ungrounded reliance on ‘social bridging’ logic. A developer had already purchased more than 10 properties in an adjacent city block, with three high-rise condo towers planned, thereby contributing to the growing gentrification and exacerbating the threat to already marginalized communities. Apart from a small number of queer academic activists like myself, most members of QTCD were queer and trans frontline workers in the neighbourhood – individuals who had firsthand knowledge of the issues and extensive contacts with low-income residents, homeless people and sex workers, some of whom were trans women. Our meetings with 519 staff were unproductive, and we continued our opposition through public meetings and mainstream media, with some successes (Lenskyj, 2016). The project stalled at City Council for several years, and,

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in 2019, the project partners announced that the planned recreation centre was not feasible. This example demonstrates how a liberal LGBTQ initiative that failed to recognize intersecting systems of oppression would have inevitably perpetuated existing injustices, including the further marginalization of disadvantaged community members, among whom were, of course, LGBTQ2S people. And although this kind of intersectional organizing posed challenges for the diverse group comprising QTCD, our ultimate success demonstrated the power of coalitionbuilding. QTCD’s interventions represent an important step that goes above and beyond ‘official solutions’, the term that American radical queer and trans activists Morgan Bassichis, Alexander Lee and Dean Spade use to describe the approaches commonly used by ‘well-resourced segments of our community’ – a reference to LGBT-rights organizations that have budgets over $US1 million (Bassichis et al., 2011, p. 38). With a focus on legislative change, liberal/reform approaches do not pose a serious challenge to existing power relations and oppressive institutions. ‘Transformative approaches’, on the other hand, offer ‘broad-based, social-justice solutions’ grounded in an intersectional analysis, joining in the struggles of other oppressed communities in order to address racism, poverty, ableism, interpersonal and intergenerational violence as well as homophobia and transphobia. Most significantly, in relation to the focus of this book, radical queer and trans activists ‘support strategies that weaken oppressive institutions, not strengthen them’ (Bassichis et al., 2011, p. 34). Trans athletes’ interests are not well-served when sports organizations make superficial policy changes for the sole purpose of enhancing their brand. Clearly, for trans athletes and allies, a radical approach demands more than simple entry into the oppressive institutions that constitute sport. A trans youth who is permitted to join a female gymnastic team or swim team, for example, is a young athlete who is doubly vulnerable to sexual abuse at the hands of male coaches. A trans youth who is permitted to play male team sports is doubly vulnerable to brutal training methods and hazing rituals. A nonbinary athlete is unlikely to feel accepted and comfortable in a sport such as figure skating that demands a narrow range of gendered self-presentation. A Black or minoritized trans athlete faces a triple threat in all these scenarios. On the bigger question of advocacy – as an ally or as an accomplice – insights and guidance from anti-racist and social justice educators are relevant to these debates. An ally responds with empathy, advocates on behalf of others, works towards making changes at the individual level and expresses solidarity with disadvantaged individuals and groups. An accomplice goes further, by attacking injustices on an institutional level and working towards dismantling oppressive structures and policies, while understanding that stakeholders in the marginalized group must direct this work (Clemens, 2017). Discussing the ‘white saviour industrial complex’ in 2012, Teju Cole summarized his argument, ‘If we are going to interfere in the lives of others, a little due diligence is a minimum requirement’ (Cole, 2012). In relation to trans issues in sport, this ‘due diligence’ must involve

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listening to the voices of trans and nonbinary athletes as they document their experiences and identify necessary structural and policy changes.

Boxing and Empowerment Two contributors to this book, Ali Greey and Dan Irving, document their personal journeys in boxing and its significant role in their lives as nonbinary and trans athletes. In their accounts, and in those of other contributors, they demonstrate how sport and physical activity facilitated their sense of belonging, identity, meaning and self-actualization. For those who have no personal experience with boxing or other combat sports such as wrestling or martial arts, the empowerment that these activities provide may not be immediately apparent. To explore the process further, I reflect on my own brief experience in martial arts, as a white, cis lesbian recreational athlete with no prior experience in contact or combat sports. The Latin roots of the word ‘competition’ connote ‘striving together’ as well as ‘striving against’. In principle, your opponents are not your enemies; you need them so that you can engage in competition together. This is particularly salient in the context of combat sports, as reflected in Greey’s and Irving’s accounts. They and their sparring partners have mutually consented to fight, in a sense relishing the risks because the rewards are worth it, despite, or perhaps because it is literally a bloody activity. For a few years in the early 1980s, I practised hapkido, a Korean self-defence system. This brief experience represented a major turning point in my life, nurturing a new sense of physical and mental empowerment. Most of the participants at the informal dojo where I trained were young men, including two black belts who led the group. The class began with warm-up kicks and punches, followed by practising prescribed attack and defence techniques; only black belts engaged in sparring. In that relaxed and friendly setting, I recall completing a successful defence against one of these men, who then joked ‘That wasn’t very nice!’ ‘I don’t come here to be nice’ was my retort. He smiled, with understanding. In the 1972, Canadian women developed a self-defence system for women called wen-do. Based on martial arts, the 12-hour course focused on both physical techniques and mental attitude. Discussing wen-do in 1986, I wrote, ‘The ability to defend herself does not make a woman a feminist, but fundamental issues of power crystallize around a woman who defends herself’ (Lenskyj, 1986, p. 119). In the twenty-first century, challenges facing those who are trans or nonbinary are obviously more complex than simply defending oneself, but experiences in sport, including combat sports, remain significant. Children and youth who have played contact sport learn to get back up after a fall, a useful survival skill and mindset for people of all genders and ages. Furthermore, the body language of individuals who are physically and mentally prepared to stand their ground and defend themselves can potentially deter attackers. Combat sport offers all these benefits. Others who have reflected on the physical and mental aspects of boxing – an activity that is both an art and a skill – include Australian filmmaker and

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university lecturer Donna Lyon (Lyon, 2022). A survivor of child sexual abuse and trauma, Lyon took up boxing in her 30s and recognized its potential for survivors as ‘a recovery tool, a mode of empowerment to express their trauma’. In 2019, having completed trained as a boxing coach, Lyon organized workshops with women and gender-diverse adults. The group produced a collection titled Left Write Hook: Survivor Stories from a Creative Arts Boxing and Writing Project, and are working on a documentary film, with the goal of ensuring that survivors’ voices are amplified. From different perspective, critical sport scholar Mac Ross shared his experiences in an 3 October 2022 Twitter post. Explaining how much he missed boxing – both the community and the sport – he wrote, ‘With my OCD, sparring is one of the only places I experience complete peace. It removes the world, quiets my mind, and forces me to live in the moment’. His reflections shed light on the empowerment potential of contact sport, or indeed any sport, as a treasured respite from the demands of the outside world. People of all genders need and deserve the opportunity to enjoy this state of flow while participating in the sport of their choice.

Media Treatment of Trans Issues In the early months of 2022, as we were writing the conclusion of Justice for Trans Athletes, there was ample evidence of mainstream media’s damaging role in marginalizing and demonizing trans athletes, especially trans women. A survey of Fox News (US) found that in the period January to March 2021, it had aired 72 segments on trans issues, more than double that of the preceding two years. Fox commentators and guests could only identify nine trans women athletes, none of whom dominated their sport, but still viewed these nine as examples of ‘extreme’ Democratic policies (January, May 3, 2021). A 2021 Los Angeles Times opinion piece by trans athlete and sport scholar Rook Campbell (he/him, they/them) examined the shortcomings of mainstream media treatment of trans and nonbinary athletes (Campbell, 2021). The magazine Swimming had published an interview with Campbell that reflected ‘a fixation with hormones and transitions [that] reduces trans, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people to anatomy and physiology’ while ignoring the legal and social dimensions as well as ethical, scientific and human rights debates about hormones. Campbell advised journalists to let individuals tell their own stories, rather than assuming that medical transition was a major part of their experience. In a similar rejection of the medical model, the 2019 policy developed by the Edinburgh branch of the University and College Union (UK) exemplifies a trans-positive approach: . . .a social, rather than a medical model of gender recognition that will help challenge repressive gender stereotypes in the workplace and in society. UCU supports trans rights and, as champions of

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Overall, while mainstream media have continued to present biased and flawed accounts of trans-related issues, there have been signs of somewhat more progressive coverage in the genre of ‘human interest’ stories2. At the recreational level, for example, a July 2022 article on ABC News (Australia) celebrated the courage of a trans woman who was the organizer of a local fun run (O’Halloran, 2022). Other coverage that presented many sides of the issues includes the Guardian’s analysis of the legal implications of FINA’s (swimming) ban (White, 2022), Psychology Today’s ‘The evidence for trans youth gender-affirming medical care’ (Turban, 2022a) and Scientific American’s ‘Trans girls belong on girls’ sports teams (Turban, 2022b). In August 2022, a professional Australian athlete featured in news around the globe. Ellia Green, an Olympic rugby sevens player, came out as a trans man, after retiring from rugby in 2021. In the Associated Press article that was reprinted in hundreds of international news sources, Green discussed his childhood, his recent depression and the joy he now felt as a man and father of a new baby. Significantly, he made his goals clear: to advocate for others and to emphasize the harm that trans exclusionary policies inflict on trans and nonbinary sportspeople (Passa, 2022). Also in August, American Olympic skateboarder Leo Baker spoke to journalists about coming out as trans (Marks, 2022). The Netflix production that documented his journey was widely promoted in mainstream media. Significantly, both Green and Baker were trans men, and both had retired from competitive sport before speaking publicly about their lives. Another trans athlete’s journey was the subject of a 2022 ITV documentary titled Race To Be Me. In April that year, as a result of UCI’s and British Cycling’s new restrictions, cyclist Emily Bridges had been banned from women’s national competition, and hence unable to secure a place on Team Wales at the 2022 Commonwealth Games. As she explained, her goal for the film was ‘to humanize’ the debates and to ‘inspire and show young people that there is a place for them in sport’. For its part, British Cycling pointed to a new policy to be published in spring 2023, and claimed that they remained ‘committed to ensuring that trans and nonbinary people are welcomed, supported and celebrated’ (Webb, 2022). A rare opinion piece by a prominent trans athlete was published in USA Today in June 2022. Layshia Clarendon, whom Sabeehah Ravat discusses in this book (Chapter X) issued the warning: ‘Republicans are coming for all of our rights. Yours, too’ (Clarendon, 2022). Clarendon, like earlier critics, documented how Republicans, ‘under the guise of unity, fairness and protecting women’, were attacking hard-won LGBTQ rights and reproductive rights on all fronts. As Clarendon noted, in sport contexts, Republicans even attempted to make it legal for unspecified adults ‘to inspect no only trans kids but your cis straight daughter’s genitals’ if their gender was in dispute. (Following widespread opposition, Ohio lawmakers eventually rejected the ‘genital inspection’ clause, but other states passed similar laws in 2022).

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Sport in the United States: Wins and Losses for Trans Athletes In dozens of US jurisdictions, politicians have enacted laws banning trans girls from competing in high school sport, even in states where the actual number of trans girls targeted is almost zero (See Greey & Lenskyj, 2023). Some mainstream media have provided insightful coverage of these developments, emphasizing the disproportionate response to a non-issue. In Alabama in April 2021, when the governor signed a trans ban bill, WKRG News reported that a spokesperson for the Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) said he was not ‘aware’ of any trans teen, current or present, who had played in AHSAA sport (AHSAA, 2021). When Kentucky passed a similar trans ban bill in 2022, the author of a Washington Post article titled ‘Kentucky’s lone transgender athlete can’t play on the team she helped start’ pointed out that 13-year old Fischer Wells was the only known trans student-athlete in the state (Balinget, 2022). On another positive note, Roger Pielke reviewed US trends in a December 2022 analysis titled ‘Transgender athletes are winning’ (Pielke, 2023). He documented an emerging consensus in law, policy and science supporting trans athletes’ ‘regulated inclusion’. As he noted, it is discriminatory and unethical ‘to ban an entire class of people based simply on who they are’ rather than developing inclusive policies based on ‘reasonable accommodations, consistent with evidence and data’. At the international level, he pointed to Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which codified trans rights and extended the application process to 16- and 17-year olds, and to the IOC’s position statement supporting regulated inclusion rather than outright bans. One of the US court decisions that Pielke cited is particularly illustrative of the arrogance and entitlement motivating those who seek to ban trans women from female sporting competition. Represented by a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, four former high school students in Connecticut, a state that has allowed trans girls to compete in girls’ competition since 2013, first filed a lawsuit against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and individual school boards in 2020. They argued that rules permitting two Black trans athletes to compete against them had deprived them of ‘the chance to be champions’ and to win scholarships, alleging damaging implications for future employment.3 Inter alia, the plaintiffs sought a rewriting of the records to redress the alleged ‘injury’ caused by the policy. A lower court had dismissed the lawsuit, and a federal appeals court upheld that decision in December 2022, in part on the grounds that the plaintiffs’ arguments were ‘speculative’. The ruling noted that the four young women had regularly competed in, and often won high school championships, including events in which their opponents were the two trans athletes. Even if rewriting the records were feasible, the court pointed out that this would only provide ‘psychic satisfaction’, something that does not constitute a legal ‘remedy’ in this context. Citing a 2021 ruling on a similar issue, the appeals court decision pithily summed up the futility of seeking a ‘moral victory’ through the courts: ‘The “psychic satisfaction” of winning doesn’t cut it’ (Selina Soule

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et al., 2022). In the mainstream media, however, ‘the court of popular opinion’ tended to lean towards ‘a moral victory’ for the complainants.

Media Coverage of Trans Bans In 2022, when multiple international sports federations announced new rules that were the equivalent of bans on trans women’s participation, some mainstream journalists attempted to present all sides of the issue. These included articles featuring high-profile athletes, for example, Time magazine’s interview with American soccer player Megan Rapinoe, a prominent lesbian advocate who supports trans inclusion (Gregory, 2022), and the Western Australian’s interview with champion swimmer Maddie Groves, who urged opponents of trans inclusion to educate themselves (Lutton, 2022). Retired Australian Olympic champion and LGBTQ advocate Ian Thorpe echoed these views in a November opinion piece, labelling FINA’s policy ‘wrong’ and pointing out the obvious flaw in their argument that trans women would dominate cis women in competition. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Thorpe pointed out, weightlifter Laurel Hubbard came last, and another trans woman, American BMX rider Chelsea Wolfe, was an alternate and did not compete (Thorpe, 2022). The original Australian Associated Press article was reprinted by dozens of global media outlets. (Thorpe failed to mention Quinn, a nonbinary trans soccer player who was on Canada’s winning team at the Tokyo Olympics, and American nonbinary skateboarder Alana Smith, who competed in the preliminary event in Tokyo). On the merits of the argument invoking examples like Hubbard and Wolfe, however, it is important to note that transphobic critics are rarely swayed by empirical evidence from the actual field of play. On the contrary, their usual practice is to cherry-pick findings from science or pseudo-science that support their trans exclusionary position (Pape, 2023; Pielke, 2023). For their part, readers who rely on mainstream media accounts and opinion pieces for their information on trans issues may place more value on purported ‘science’ than on real-life evidence of female sporting achievements. Even the well-respected UK Guardian headline recently referred to these extremely complex issues as ‘the trans row’ (the term row in British English meaning a noisy argument), thereby trivializing a problem that has life-altering and career-ending implications for trans athletes (Ingle, 2022, emphasis added). In a later interview, Maddie Groves publicly challenged FINA’s new ruling that excluded trans women, and pointed to the mixed messages presented by her teammate Cate Campbell and reported in detail in a Guardian article. After expressing her support for FINA’s rule in the interest of ‘fairness’, Campbell had contradicted that assertion, expressing the hope ‘that a young gender-diverse child can walk into a swimming club’ and feel accepted. As Groves responded, ‘So you ban them from competing with their peers. You’re ok with ostracising an already marginalized group? Real accepting’ (Kemp, 2022). Thorpe also referred to

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Australia’s trans community as ‘some of the most marginalized and disadvantaged people in this country’ (Thorpe, 2022).

Resistance: Trans Athletes and Allies Vs. Sport Canada In March 2022, Canadian and American trans athletes and allies were surprised and shocked to discover that Sport Canada had commissioned UK ‘independent researcher’ Cathy Devine to conduct a survey of Canadian high performance athletes regarding their views on trans women’s participation in women’s sports. Devine’s 2021 and 2022 publications on these topics amply demonstrated her opposition to trans inclusion, on the grounds that girls’ and women’s sport needed ‘protection’ from ‘biological males’ (Devine, 2021a; 2021b, 2022). The term ‘biological males’, as applied to trans girls and women, appeared in the first sentence of the survey, while unscientific references to ‘puberty-related male advantage’ set the tone for the rest of the questionnaire. In 2021, Devine claimed that her own ‘academic freedom’ had been threatened when a referee had critiqued her use of the term ‘biological male’ in her draft submission to a journal (Devine, 2021a). In other words, she was fully aware of the term’s connotations when used in debates over trans inclusion/exclusion. Had Sport Canada done due diligence before commissioning Devine, they would have known about stance on trans issues. In response to the announcement that Sport Canada had selected Devine for this project, more than 250 academics, athletes and sport administrators from Canada, United States and United Kingdom signed an open letter on May 6, expressing their concerns. The US organization Athlete Ally facilitated the process and sent the letter to Sport Canada’s director, Pascale St-Onge, as well as posting it on social media (Athlete Ally, 2022). Among other serious concerns, the letter noted that a university-based Canadian researcher would have had to satisfy an ethical review board, and there was no evidence that Devine, as an ‘independent researcher’, had done so. Given the survey’s lack of respect for the dignity of human subjects, the letter argued, a Canadian university would have been unlikely to grant approval. Individual advocates also contacted Sport Canada leaders to express their opposition to Devine’s proposed research, pointing to the extensive consultation already conducted by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) as a basis for trans-inclusive policies. More than 30 of the 250 signatories took the time to add their own comments critiquing the obvious bias in the survey: ‘An ideologically oriented opinion poll’; ‘It’s impossible to answer the way I feel. So much is loaded into it already’; ‘Don’t fund something so transexclusionary’; ‘[it] may give a skewed view on trans rights. . .[and] is unethical’ (Athlete Ally, 2022). For the brief time that the survey was active online, it was clear that the framing of the questions reflected Devine’s well-established position (Devine, 2021a; 2021b, 2022). Critics expressed concerns about her impartiality in creating, administering and interpreting the results of this kind of research, particularly since Devine’s preamble stated that Sport Canada would use her

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report ‘to inform and balance policy insight in this area’ (Athlete Ally, 2022, emphasis added). The reference to balance implied that there was a current state of imbalance that she was commissioned to address. In her 2022 journal article, Devine reported the results of a survey that appeared similar in design to the Sport Canada survey. She used Likert scale questions (‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’) to investigate the views of 19 female Olympians who had been whom she had recruited using the snowball method. There was little effort to disguise the leading questions that were scattered throughout the survey, on average one for every topic. Examples include the following: ‘I am concerned about sponsors if I ask questions or speak freely about TG inclusion’; ‘I am concerned for my career if I ask questions or speak freely about TG inclusion’; ‘[IOC] rule changes are likely to be exploited by some countries’; ‘the rules. . . are unfair. . .’; and ‘female sport categories should be for female athletes only’ (Devine, 2022). (The survey item’s gratuitous allusion to ‘some countries’ may have referred to the well-documented racist practice among western athletes and coaches, aided by mainstream media, of challenging the eligibility of female athletes from Africa and India on the grounds that ‘they don’t look like (real) women”.) Sport Canada leaders remained silent until May 9, when mainstream media reported that Devine’s research had been suspended because of concerns raised by signatories to the open letter, and that Sport Canada had ‘met with partners who raised them to discuss how we can move forward’. In one media report, Canadian Olympic trans soccer player Quinn expressed their dismay at the ‘deeply harmful stereotypes’ perpetuated in the survey (Sport Canada to stop, 2022). From another perspective, retired Canadian Olympic cyclist Alison Sydor (#alisonsydor) critiqued Athlete Ally’s open letter in a strongly worded Twitter post on May 10, adding that she was ‘stunned’ to see academics, especially women (F) like Lenskyj, who had supported female sport and were now allegedly ‘F silencing F’ (meaning, women silencing women). In a follow-up tweet on November 13, she claimed that ‘female sport has been compromised’ by ‘academics who live in a bubble’. Specifically, she defended Devine, ‘a F with a 201 year career in sport’. Apparently, her critique of ‘academics’ did not extend to university-based scientists on whose contested findings most IFs have based their trans-exclusionary policies (Pielke, 2023). Others who opposed trans inclusion objected to the fact that an American organization, Athlete Ally, was allegedly leading the opposition to Devine, claiming that Sport Canada was allowing non-Canadians to dictate its domestic policy – a flawed argument that ignored the obvious global implications for high-performance athletes. The widespread opposition that Sport Canada faced concerning Devine’s survey was the driving force behind the reversal, thereby sending a clear message to national and international sports organizations that trans athletes, allies and advocates will challenge any policies based on flawed and biased research methodology. Conversely, trans advocates will challenge ‘policy-based research’ – that is, research designed to generate findings to support a policy that a sports organization wants to justify by invoking ‘science’ (or social science).

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Later in 2022, UK opponents of trans inclusion did not hesitate to express their views on another Canadian initiative. Devine, together with Emma Hilton, Tommy Lundberg, Jon Pike, Miroslav Imbrisevic and Leslie Howe (Imbrisevic et al., 2022), co-authored a critique of the CCES document, Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sport: A Scientific Review (CCES, 2022). They alleged that the publication was ‘wholly unscientific’ and ignored the importance of the body, while focused instead on gender identity. Hilton, a UK developmental biologist, was well-known for her affiliations with the trans-exclusionary organizations such as Fair Play for Women and A Woman’s Place UK. As Pape (2022, p. 226) explained, those groups treat Hilton as ‘an expert on sex differentiation in the context of sport’, although that is not her specific area of expertise. The same group of authors (Imbrisevic et al., 2022) were acknowledged in a December opinion piece by Jon Pike, who was identified as a political philosopher at UK’s Open University, as was his colleague, Miroslav Imbrisevic. Pike resorted to ridicule and rhetoric, labelling the CCES document ‘misleading at best, intellectually dishonest at worst’ (Pike, 2022). The piece was published by the MacDonald Laurier Institute, a Canadian think tank self-identified as ‘independent and non-partisan’, although its managing director publicly embraced ‘modern conservatism’ (Crowley, 2022). That a UK-based academic’s opinion piece was published on this ‘modern conservative’ Canadian think tank’s website is therefore not so surprising. In fact, in 2021, the MacDonald Laurier Institute had commissioned Pike, Hilton and Howe, three members of the team who were already widely recognized as opponents of trans inclusion, to write a ‘policy document’ titled Fair Game: Biology, fairness and transgender athletes in women’s sport (Emma Hilton, 2022). All these developments reflect the bigger issue of the so-called culture wars that have come to dominate political debates in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and elsewhere, primarily as a route for conservative politicians to distract voters from more urgent social problems, most notably, in the case of United Kingdom, the economy. In a post on Twitter (18 February 2023), Roger Pielke, a contributor to Justice for Trans Athletes (Pielke, 2023) and author of the blog and Twitter account ‘The Honest Broker’, aptly summarized the issue: Sport regulation can be complicated & contested, for sure, but certainly a lot easier than trying to win a broad spectrum culture war with sport as collateral damage to the campaign.

‘Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sport: A Scientific Review’ In 2022, the CCES published the report ‘Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sport: A Scientific Review’ (CCES, 2022). This report provided an exhaustive review of scientific literature surrounding the question of whether trans women have a competitive advantage over cis women.

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Stakeholders in elite women’s sport are increasingly requesting guidance on whether trans women should be permitted to compete in elite sport (CCES, 2022; Ingram & Thomas, 2019; Jones et al., 2017; Pielke, 2023). As Canada’s national anti-doping organization, CCES is positioned by National Sport Organizations (NSOs) as the main source of guidance on ethical questions. The 2022 report was greatly anticipated by many in the Canadian sport community: athletes, fans, scholars, coaches and NSO administrators, among others. With a number of IFs, as well as NSOs in the United States and elsewhere, electing to put a blanket ban on the participation of trans women in women’s elite sports, Canadian NSOs have repeatedly identified the need for empirical science to inform their trans-inclusion (or exclusion) policies. The financial constraints placed on many Canadian NSOs preclude opportunities for conducting empirical research on their own to identify whether trans women have a competitive advantage over cisgender women (Bekker et al., 2017; Storr et al. this volume). As a result, NSOs have eagerly awaited a report of this kind: one reviewing and evaluating the available research on the question of fairness regarding trans women athletes’ inclusion. The report provided a review of English language peer-reviewed academic literature directed towards trans women’s inclusion and/or participation in elite women’s sports. The authors’ criteria included publication between 2011 and 2021, inclusive; they excluded opinion pieces, commentaries or other texts that did not include empirical or theoretical research. They divided the report into two sections: biomedical and sociocultural perspectives. Both sections presented a comprehensive review of the relevant literature in order to identify empirical research that addressed the question of the alleged competitive advantage that trans women have over cisgender women, and, therefore, whether or not competition between the two groups of women is unfair, with regards to physiological equivalency. In the area of biomedical research, the report finds that trans women who have undergone testosterone suppression for longer than one year ‘have no clear biological advantage over cis women in elite sport’ (CCES, 2022, p. 4). The sociocultural findings of this study point to the imperative to foster the inclusion of trans women and girl athletes, who remain underrepresented in elite women’s sports.

Biomedical Findings Of the approximately 50 academic articles, books and grey literature identified as meeting the literature review criteria, very little valid biomedical data were found. The studies on trans women’s alleged physiological advantage often had low validity. For example, they compared cisgender women to sedentary trans women, rather than to trans women athletes, employed small sample sizes and drew upon inconsistent techniques to measure athleticism. As Rebecca Jordan-Young and Kristina Karkazis argue in Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography (2019), athleticism is an unwieldy concept to measure. There remains a lack of consensus on what exactly constitutes athleticism. Is it endurance, explosive strength, muscle mass, coordination, explosive speed, athletic strategy

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or another component of athletic importance? The biomedical studies reviewed in the CCES report rely on a vast array of measurements for athleticism, making it difficult to identify and measure what exactly is meant by a ‘competitive advantage’. The CCES report identifies a similar lack of consistency and validity with regards to studies on the effects of testosterone on athletic performance. Testosterone is not a consistent or uniform substance; it comes in many different forms, and the concentration and effects of testosterone are highly variable, not only between individual athletes, but also within an individual athlete depending on the time of day and biosocial factors (Jordan-Young & Karkazis, 2019). Research surveyed in the CCES report, however, studied the effects of testosterone, a synthetic, performance-enhancing drug rather than as an endogenous, (naturally produced) hormone. These studies, therefore, provide low validity findings on the question of trans women’s alleged competitive advantage over cisgender women. Equating the athletic performances of trans women with cis male athletes, or with cis female athletes who have taken testosterone as a performance enhancing drug is neither appropriate, nor empirically grounded. It is also worth pointing out that cisgender women also produce endogenous testosterone (Jordan-Young & Karkazis, 2019) and that research consistently shows that testosterone is not a simple substance to study, since it fluctuates greatly both between and among athletes, irrespective of gender (Pastuszak et al., 2022). Despite decades of research, scientists have yet to establish a simple relationship between testosterone and athletic performance. The report’s summary of findings also shows how social expectations of what science ‘should’ find often dictate what scientists report. In this regard, studies can function to compound collective ignorance informed only by ‘common sense’. Common sense, however, is often misleading when it comes to scientific phenomenon. The CCES study reports that ‘Some significant studies used misleading data sources and actively ignored contradictory evidence’ (Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, 2022, p. 4). In this regard, these studies lacked an empirical basis. After reviewing all the biomedical scientific literature available, the authors found that trans women who have undergone testosterone suppression for longer than one year do not have a physiological competitive advantage over cisgender women.

Sociocultural Findings Of course, biomedical science does not paint a complete picture of the athletic field. The report also outlines sociocultural findings from the empirical literature reviewed. These findings examine how social factors may also contribute to performance. The authors point to how biomedical perspectives tend to be prioritized and used to discredit sociocultural factors, despite research pointing to the importance of the latter (CCES, 2022). First, the report’s authors point to the ways in which only select biomedical factors – notably those allegedly linked to gender, primarily, testosterone – are

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identified as grounds for exclusion. Missing from this myopic focus are the myriad social factors which contribute to competitive advantage. Research has shown, for example, that financial resources have a significant impact on performance (CCES, 2022; Pape, 2023). If calls for trans women’s exclusion from elite women’s sport are grounded in a discourse of ‘fairness’, would it not be logical to assume that this concept of ‘fairness’ would be applied across not only biomedical variables, but also sociocultural ones? Second, the report also identifies the ways in which the focus placed upon trans women’s exclusion from sport ignores and detracts attention away from some very real and tangible factors impacting and threatening women’s sport (Lenskyj & Greey, 2023; Schultz et al., 2023). Drawing on a 15 February 2023 Tweet from my friend and colleague, Chris Mosier, an outspoken trans athlete and activist: There are ways we can truly ‘save women’s sports’: – – – – – – – –

Invest in women’s leagues Give media coverage to leagues, teams and players Pay equity Sponsor leagues, teams and players Hire women for coaching and front office positions Buy tickets Watch games Buy merch

Allegations that trans women are a threat to women’s sport not only draw attention away from these actionable items, they also proliferate hatred and violence towards an already marginalized group. Third, the CCES Report’s authors point to how trans-inclusion policies use arbitrary testosterone boundaries to limit the amount of testosterone in blood. For example, in 2019, World Athletics lowered the limits it had previously placed on testosterone concentration in the blood of competitors in the women’s division from 10 nanomoles/L to 5 nanomoles/L. These testosterone boundaries, however, aren’t determined through scientific research, but by social assumptions about testosterone and athleticism. Testosterone naturally occurs in cisgender women, just as it does in trans women. Upwards of 10% of cisgender women who are of reproductive age are diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). Women with PCOS produce significantly higher levels of testosterone than what is considered the ‘normal’ range for cisgender women (Lerchbaum et al., 2014). Although cisgender women with PCOS who have higher than ‘normal’ rates of testosterone in their blood do not face exclusion from sport, a trans woman athlete with a comparable rate of testosterone in her blood is ineligible to compete. The CCES reports notes that these testosterone limits aren’t empirically informed and they don’t reflect the hormonal realities of cisgender women, for whom testosterone occurs naturally on a wide spectrum. And finally, the report unpacks the myth that trans women are taking over women’s sports. Although trans women have been out and visibly competing in

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women’s elite sports for decades, they remain under-represented in elite athletics. When trans women finish in the middle or end of the pack, they don’t make headlines and they aren’t reported on, simply because their performance doesn’t support the discursive portrayal of trans women taking over sport. To conclude, the report points to the need for elite sport policies to foster, rather than bar, trans athlete inclusion. Any policy developed should carefully consider the current lack of participation of trans athletes (in many sport organizations there is a complete absence or outright exclusion) and balance the value of fairness with inclusion. Policies should be crafted in ways which clarify and highlight administrators’ duty to prevent and actively attend to barriers, carefully considering the administration of any such policy in ways which do not further discourage participation through the creation of unnecessary barriers, or unnecessarily infringe on the individual’s privacy (including their right to not openly identify as transgender). Additionally, these individuals should not be excluded during any non-competition periods from participating with a team through training, exhibition matches or social activities. (Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, 2022, p. 10) The CCES’s report ‘Transgender Women Athletes and Elite Sport: A Scientific Review’ provides a ground-breaking synthesis of the available empirical research. The report provides an empirically informed call to include trans women athletes in women’s sports. As the chapters in this volume have demonstrated, trans athletes’ resistance often takes place on the margins of sport, through small acts of ‘embodied disobedience’ (Ravat, this volume) and ‘healing justice’ (Irving, this volume). This report, from an internationally respected organization, one central to the governance of sport in Canada, represents a significant milestone for trans resistance, both in Canada and abroad.

Conclusion In this concluding chapter, we review and reflect on the myriad ways in which individuals and organizations have resisted, and continue to resist, the powerful forces of trans exclusion in sport, globally, nationally and locally. Institutional change is slow, but there are signs of progress, for example, the IOC Framework and Position Statement, the CCES Scientific Review and policy changes in sports governing bodies, as well as victories in US courts and evidence of more positive mainstream media coverage. On the broader issue of resistance, the limitations of liberal approaches are identified, and examples of radical, transformative approaches based on intersectionality, together with the concepts of ally and accomplice, are investigated.

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Several contributors shared their personal experiences, adding invaluable insights for both researchers and policymakers. Community-based sport appears to offer the most promising ground for trans-inclusive initiatives, and changes at this level could potentially pave the way for policy change at the national and international levels. However, many progressive voices among trans athletes and allies are calling for a transformation of sport, rather than simply being allowed access to existing sport systems that perpetuate racism, sexism, classism, homophobia and transphobia, and to sports organizations that cover up abusive coaching practices for the sake of Olympic medals. Certainly, for elite female trans athletes, eligibility to compete in the female category is a top priority, but for most trans athletes, male and female, freedom to participate in the sports of their choice and to experience acceptance and belonging are of paramount importance.

Notes 1. LGBTQ rather than LGBTQ2S1 was the terminology most often used in the time period under discussion here, and a reference to 2S (Two-Spirited/Indigenous) peoples would be inaccurate. 2. This overview of mainstream media coverage is based on daily reading of relevant online sources, not on any systematic data collection process. Hence, these are general conclusions about trends. 3. Based on online bios and images of the four young women, it appears that three, Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell and Ashley Nicoletti, are white, and one, Alanna Smith, is Black.

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variation of serum testosterone levels as men age. Andrology, 10(2), 209–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/andr.13108 Pielke, R. (2023). Making sense of debate over transgender athletes in Olympic sports. In A. Greey & H. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes (pp. 31–43). Emerald Publishing Limited. Pike, J. (2022, December 8). Transgender women athletes and elite sport. MacDonald Laurier Institute. macdonaldlaurier.ca/transgender-women-athletes-and-elite-sportmisleading-at-best-intellectually-dishonest-at-worst/ Quidditch changes name to quadball after JK Rowling’s trans statements (2022, July 20). The Guardian. guardian.com/sport/2022/jul20.quidditch-changes-name-toquadball-after-jk-rowlings-trans-statements Ross, M. [@punchingprof] (2022, October 3). Need to box once a week soon. I miss the community as much as the sport. . . [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/ punchingprof/status/1576717241298845696 Schultz, J., Baeth, A., Lieberman, A., Pieper, L. P., & Sharrow, E. (2023). The Future of Women’s Sport Includes Transgender Women and Girls. In A. D. Greey & H. J. Lenskyj (Eds.), Justice for Trans Athletes: Challenges and Struggles (pp. 15–27). Emerald Publishing Limited. Selina Soule et al. v. Connecticut Association of Schools et al. (2022, December 16). ACLU. aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document_3.pdf Sport Canada to stop survey after complaints of discrimination against transgender athletes. (2022, May 9). Global News. globalnews.ca/news/8822169/sport-canadasurvey-transgender-athletes Sydor, A. [@AlisonSydor] (2022, May 11). I’ve read the letter v carefully. . . [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/AlisonSydor/status/1524448805554249757 Sydor, A. [@AlisonSydor] (2022, November 13). Academia compromised. . . [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/AlisonSydor/status/1591930948475817984 The Honest Broker [@RogerPielkeJr]. (2023, February 17). It was never about sport. . . [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1626711986854846464 Thorpe, I. (2022, November 16). They’re actually got it wrong. Guardian. guardian. com/sport/2022/nov/16/they’ve-actually-got-it-wrong-ian-thorpe-questions-finastrans-swimming ban Turban, J. (2022a, January 24). The evidence for trans youth gender-affirming medical care. Psychology Today. psychologytoday.com/us/blog/political-minds/202201/theevidence-trans-youth-gender-affirming-medical-care Turban, J. (2022b, March 16). Trans girls belong on girls’ sports teams. Scientific American. scientificamerican.com/article/trans-girls-belong-on-girls-sports-teams/ UCI. (2022). Press release: UCI Management Committee. uci.org/pressrelease/ucimanagement-committee-approves-the-federations-agenda-2030-and-awards-the/ 2YzsHNKvfDZTytpsYw5e6p UCU. (2022, December 12). Statement on Edinburgh AFAF film screening. UCU Edinburgh. usuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/7659ss58k7t283zp4dt29an8r7ssa9 Webb, K. (2022, December 1). Trans cyclist Emily Bridges: ‘I’m still here’. Outsports. outsports.com/2022/12/1/23488184/emily-bridges-cycling-trans-itv-documentaryuci-british-transphobia White, R. (2022, June 22). Here’s the result of the trans swimming ban. The Guardian. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/22/trans-swimming-ban-sports-lawyers? CMP5share_btn_twy

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Index Ableism, ableist, 133 Abuse, 18, 49, 107 Accomplices, accompliceship, 10, 124–125 Accountability, 124 Activism, activists, 7, 18, 34–35, 96, 132 Adolescence, adolescents, 89 Advocacy, advocates, 116–117, 124, 133 Affect, affective, 9, 60–61, 63–64, 66–68, 79, 94 Africa, African, 35, 140 African American, 34, 131, 133, 136, 138, 140 Aggression, aggressive, 8–9, 18, 34, 64–65, 79–81, 84 Alabama, 137 Allies, allyship, 4, 7, 10, 48, 89, 96, 123–124, 129, 133, 139–141, 146 Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA), 78 America, Americans, 34, 36, 138–140 Androgynous, 120–121 Androgyny, androgynous, 121, 124 Anti-doping, 142 Anti-trans movements, 8, 17–18, 20–23, 30, 46, 49, 89–92, 95–96, 108, 131 Athlete Ally, 91–92, 94, 96, 139–140 Aussie Rules Football, 50 Austin Killips, 7, 16–17 Australia, 3, 45, 47, 49, 51, 141 Australian Human Rights Commission, 45–46

Autoethnography, autoethnographic, 8–9, 129 Baker, Leo, 136 Bans, on trans athletes, 49, 137–138 Basketball, 92, 108 Belonging, 1–7, 10, 125, 134, 146 Bias, 8, 139 Binary thinking, binary gender, 2, 4–5, 9–10, 81, 107, 131 “Biological male”, 15, 22, 90, 139 Biology, 20, 90, 106 Biomedical research, 142 Black athletes, 107 Bodily norms, 118–121 Body image, 22, 33, 36, 39–40, 62 Boxing, boxers, 9, 60–68, 72–73, 75–84, 134–135 Boys, 1–3, 7, 30–31, 51, 79–80, 82, 106 Brazil, Brazilian, 7, 30–37, 39–40 Bridges, Emily, 136 British Cycling, 136 Bullying, 50–51 Cameron, Molly, 23 Campbell, Cate, 138 Campbell, Rook, 135 Canada, Canadian, 77, 116, 122, 138–139, 142, 145 Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES), 129, 139, 143, 145 CCES Report, Transgender Athletes and Elite Sports: A Scientific Review, 143–144 Chand, Dutee, 5 Changerooms, 50, 116, 118–119, 124 Children, 2, 4, 22, 47, 50–51, 134 Chromosomes, 106 Cis-centric, 22, 119

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Index

Cisgender, 3, 8, 32, 46, 75, 77–78, 80–81, 83, 92–93, 106, 116, 121, 123, 125, 131, 142–144 Citizenship, 6 Clarendon, Layshia, 5, 10, 104, 107–110, 136 Classism, classist, 2, 146 Clubs, 23, 45–52, 94 Coaching, coaches, 6, 9, 18–19, 21, 51, 62, 64, 67, 78, 81, 88–89, 92, 94–96, 133, 140, 142, 144, 146 Cole, Teju, 133 Colonialism, colonialist, 34–35 Combat sports, 66, 134 Community consultation, 47, 49 Community sport, 8, 43–48, 50–51, 130 Connecticut, 137 Connection, 3, 44, 88, 124–125, 131 Conservative politics, 30, 32–33, 35–37, 39, 90, 137, 141 Covid-19, 45, 66 Culture wars, 33–35, 141 Cultural intelligibility, 19–20 Cycling, cyclists, 16–17, 19, 23, 136 Cyclocross, 16–18, 23 Dance, 68, 119 Determinative freedom, 130 Devine, Cathy, 139–141 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), 20 Discrimination, 2, 44, 46, 49–50, 87, 90, 106, 109, 115, 118 Disobedience, 110 Diversity, diverse, 21, 31, 45, 47, 52, 63, 95–96, 130, 133 Docile bodies, 19 Doctors, 74 Doping, performance-enhancing drugs, 143 Downtown East (DTE), Toronto, 132 Education, 2, 46–48, 51, 124

Eligibility, 4–5, 17, 23, 48–49, 89, 95, 127, 130, 140, 146 Elite athletes, 145–146 “Embodying disobedience”, 107–110 Empowerment, 120, 134–136 Ethics, ethical, 31, 44, 52, 63, 135, 139, 142 Ethnicity, 130 Europe, European, 17, 34 “Evil deceiver”, 20 Exploitation, 32, 65, 140 Fairness, 15–16, 22, 45–46, 48, 92, 107, 116, 130, 136, 138, 141–142, 144–145 Femininity, 10, 21, 78, 93, 106–108, 117, 119–121, 124 Feminism, feminist, 4, 8, 10, 24, 32, 34–35, 84, 104–106 Figure skating, 133 FINA (F´ed´eration Internationale de Natation), 106, 131, 136, 138 Fitness, 32, 118 519 Community Centre, Toronto, 132 Football (soccer), 30–31, 50, 110 Fox News, 135 Franklin, Ursula, 4 Friendship, 3, 31, 123, 125 Futebol, 7, 30–33, 37 Gender diversity, 45, 47, 106, 108, 110 Gendered sports categories, 118 Gender expression, 7, 9, 52, 94, 121, 130 Gender non-conforming, 10, 95–96, 115–119, 122–125 Gender verification, 106 Genders, 8, 44, 46, 52, 75, 83, 105, 130, 134, 135 Gentrification, 132 Girls, 2–3, 5, 7, 21, 50, 75, 79, 90, 93 Gleaves, John, 9, 73, 92–93 Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, 6 Green, Ellia, 136

Index Groves, Maddie, 138

Justice, 31, 36

Hapkido, 134 Healing justice, 9, 60–61, 64–66, 69, 145 Health, 44, 53, 91, 130 Hegemonic femininity, 3 Hegemony, 32–33, 93, 107 Heteronormativity, heteronormative, 20, 32–33, 35, 116, 122, 131 Heteropatriarchy, 60 Heterosexism, 7, 18 Heterosexual, heterosexuality, 5, 32, 35, 75, 77, 121, 123, 125 High performance athletes, 139–140 Hilton, Emma, 141 Homelessness, homeless people, 132 Homophobia, homophobic, 60, 81–82, 84, 110, 133, 146 Hormones, 50, 89, 92, 106, 135 Hormone suppression treatment, 89 Howe, Savoy, 72, 75 Hubbard, Laurel, 138 Human rights, 22, 33, 44, 46, 135

Killips, Austin, 7, 16–17, 20, 22

Ideologies, ideological, 7, 16, 18, 21, 33 Inclusion, 1, 5–7, 16–17, 21–22, 24, 43–51, 92–94, 116, 130–132, 142, 145 Indigenous peoples, Indigeneity, 3 International federations (IFs), 48, 130–131 International Olympic Committee (IOC), 45, 78, 94 International Olympic Committee Framework on Fairness, Inclusion and Nondiscrimination, 45, 48, 130 Intersectional analysis, 131, 133 Intersex athletes, 3–4, 130 IOC Position Statement (2022), 48, 130–131, 137 Journalism, journalists, 135–136, 138 Joy, pleasure, 7–8, 10, 36, 39, 80, 125, 136

153

Law, legislation, 9, 90–91, 95, 117, 137 Ledecky, Katie, 22 Lehrbach, Tim, 9, 73, 75, 92–93 “Level playing field”, 16, 18–19 LGBTQ2S1 (lesbian/gay/bisexual/ queer/2-spirited/1), 23, 88, 93–94, 96, 116–117, 122, 124–125, 133 Locker rooms, 10, 39, 93, 96 Lyon, Donna, 135 Major League Quidditch, 131 Martial arts, 2, 80, 134 Masculinity, masculinities, 10, 34, 39, 73, 77–79, 81, 108, 120–121, 125 Medals, 146 Media, 17–19, 22, 30, 35, 45, 49, 78, 82, 135–136, 138–139 Medical model, 135 Medicalized bodies, medicalization, 20 Memory work, 9, 87–88 Meninos Bons de Bola, 7–8, 30–40 Misgendering, 118, 121 Misogyny, 73, 80–83, 121 Moral panic, 22, 111 Moreau, Sophia, 4–5 Mountain biking, 122–123 Muscles, muscular, 21–22, 39, 80 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), 9–10, 17–18, 22, 88–92, 94–95 Nonbinary, 3, 5, 7–10, 44, 51, 72–73, 75–78, 81, 84, 104–105, 108–110, 133–134, 136, 138 Oates, Joyce Carol, 60, 63–64, 67, 75–76 Ohio, 17, 136

154

Index

Olympic Games, Olympic sport, 78, 82 Pain, 9, 19, 60–61, 64, 67–68 Paris 2024 Olympics, 78, 138 Physiological equivalency, 142 Pielke, Roger, 4, 46, 81–82, 106, 137, 140–142 Pike, Jon, 141 Play, 2, 5–6, 10, 22, 33, 45, 50–51, 89, 95 Policy, 4, 7, 21, 24, 44, 48–50, 95, 133, 145–146 Politics, political, 6–7, 30, 32–36, 40, 105 Prejudice, 48 Professional sports, 10, 104, 106–107 Proud2Play, 45, 47, 50 Quadball, 131 Queer futures, 7, 22–24 Queer theory, 105–106, 117 Queer Trans Community Defence (QTCD), 132–133 Quinn, 108, 110, 138 Race, 8–10, 16–17, 23–24, 63, 73, 81–83, 88, 91, 104, 107, 125 Racialized bodies/athletes, 8 Racism, racist, 2, 10, 18, 24, 60, 68, 107, 132, 146 Radical transformation, 129–130 Rage, anger, 9, 60–61, 64–65, 67–68, 80–81 Rapinoe, Megan, 138 Recommendations, 95, 129–130 Recreational sport, 10, 130 Reform, 129–130, 133 “Regimes of looking”, 20 Registration forms, 50–51 Regulations, 45 Republicans (US), 136 Resistance, 1–7, 33, 35–36, 40, 48, 60, 78, 109, 118, 120, 145 Respectability, 20 Richards, Ren´ee, 22, 106 RIDE (cycling group), 23

Rights, 22, 33, 90, 136 Rock climbing, 44, 122 Rowing, 88–89, 91 Rugby, 24, 77, 136 Safety, 51, 78, 118, 122–123, 130 “Save Women’s Sport”, 17–18, 144 Science, 4, 8, 137–138, 143 Scotland, 137 Semenya, Caster, 4–5 Sexism, 60, 121, 146 Sexual abuse, 133, 135 Sexual harassment, 18 Sexualities, 8, 93, 117, 122 Shields, Claressa, 73–74 Skateboarders, 110, 136, 138 Smith, Alana, 110 Soccer, 7, 30–33, 108, 138, 140 Social justice, 23, 60–61, 65, 108, 129, 133 Social media, 5, 18, 109, 139 Socialization, 1, 3 Socio-economic status, 130 Softball, 24, 91 South Africa, 21 Sparring, 9, 60–61, 63–67, 79–82, 134 Sport Australia, 45–46 Sport Canada, 129, 139–141 Student athlete, 10, 17, 88–89, 96 Surgery, 109–110 Surgical requirements, 50 Swimming, swimmers, 17, 22–23, 44, 77, 122 Swimming Australia, 49 Sydor, Alyson, 140 Synchronized swimming, 131 Testosterone, 2, 4–5, 17, 86, 89, 92, 130, 142–144 Thomas, Lia, 7, 16–18, 20–23, 93–94, 96, 142 Thorpe, Ian, 138–139 Title IX, 90, 106 Tokyo 2020 Olympics, 138 Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club, 72 Track and field, 19

Index Trans inclusion policies, 7–8, 46, 94, 144 Transformation, transformative, 33, 36, 44, 66–67, 106, 130, 133, 146 Transition, 5, 16, 24, 62–63, 88, 92, 108–109 Transness, 7, 16, 18–24, 108 Transphobia, transphobic, 36, 68, 73, 81–82, 84, 89, 92, 97, 116, 123, 131, 133, 138, 146 Twitter, 135, 140–141 UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale), 130, 136 UCI World Cup, 17 Ultimate Frisbee, 131 Uniforms, sporting, 34, 82 USA Cyclocross, 17, 23 USA (United States of America), 16–20, 23, 77, 90, 95, 137–139, 141–142 U.S. Quidditch, 131

155

U.S. Ultimate, 131 Values, 3, 18, 21, 23, 32, 34, 45, 48–49, 51–53, 66, 83, 91–92, 138, 145 Violence, 7–9, 18–19, 21–22, 29–30, 34–35, 39, 40, 49, 65–66, 69, 108, 133, 144 Violent potential, 79–81 Weightlifting, 19 Whiteness, 10, 20, 23, 34, 125 White supremacy, white supremacist, 7, 16, 18–19, 21–22, 60, 82 Wolfe, Chelsea, 138 Working out, 120, 122 World Athletics, 50, 130, 144 World Rugby, 24 WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association), 5, 10, 104, 108, 110 Youth, youth sport, 2, 44, 52, 130, 134

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