The journey of transitioning: Being a trans male athlete in college sport

“Just Existing Is Activism”: Transgender Experiences in Martial Arts

“…Similarly to previous studies on trans and non-binary experiences in sport (e.g., Klein et al, 2019), participants described mostly positive experiences of coming out in their martial arts contexts. For example, when Participant D was asked how his coach and teammates reacted when he revealed his transgender identity to them, he responded: Participants' accounts were also in line with findings from previous studies that have advocated…”

“…Acknowledging (and seeing as legitimate) all the small annoyances and major traumas that have been caused from hetero-and cis-normativity in sport and PE, instead of judging themselves for not being physically active enough, can be seen as an act of self-care. Participant E explained that in their community-led gym, they take past sport traumas into consideration when planning their martial art intro classes: As previous research has shown, trans people can become more engaged in sporting environments where their previously negative experiences are recognized and legitimized (Klein et al, 2019), which is borne out here in our findings.…”

Transgender and Non-binary Swimming in the UK: Indoor Public Pool Spaces and Un/Safety

“…Recent studies (since 2015) demonstrate a number of items that cause exclusion of transgender participants from physical activity and sport. For example, changing/locker rooms, school sport, and public spaces (Hargie et al, 2017 ); how transgender people are imagined—by Spanish University sport science students—through tropes of abjection and alterity (Pérez-Samaniego et al, 2016 ); the binary arrangement of sport within UK University environment and policy (Phipps, 2019 ); both internal and external barriers and facilitators for young transgender adults (Jones et al, 2017b ); embodiment, fear, transitioning, social support, physical education, and how space is regulated (López-Cañada et al, 2019 ); the body, pre- and post-transition, stigma and pride (Elling-Machartzki, 2017 ); and identity, participation, competition, physical embodied change, and coming out (Klein et al, 2018 , 2019 ). Implicit to most existing studies is the element of safety and feeling safe.…”

“…These recent research-based studies as well as the previous studies highlighted by Jones et al ( 2017a ) and Pérez-Samaniego et al ( 2019 ) have theorized findings through critique of: current policy and provision; past and present pedagogy and ethics of care; the obdurate sex-gender binary arrangement of sport; queer theory, transgender theory, feminism, queer-feminism, and transfeminism. Klein et al ( 2018 , 2019 ) are explicit in their transfeminist framing. This approach—transfeminism—is significant, given the broader debates within feminism and transgender studies (cf.…”

Law, policy, and the participation of transgender athletes in the United States

“…What do pending legal developments and political controversies portend for the rights of transgender athletes to compete in category that affirms their gender? In an effort to build upon this journal's contribution to scholarship in support for LGBT-inclusive policies in sport (e.g., Cunningham, 2011;Klein et al, 2019;Shaw, 2019) this article aims to describe and clarify competing considerations that sport organizations find challenging as they develop policies governing participation by transgender athletes. It also explains the role that public law has had on the participation rights of transgender athletes in the United States.…”