Background: School is one of the primary settings where non-gender conformer children and adolescents emerge as vulnerable groups at high risk of suffering violence and harassment. Within schooling contexts, embodied experiences in physical education (PE) may become particularly problematic for trans students. However, there is little research focusing on trans persons’s experiences in PE. The purpose of this paper is to gather memories and impressions of a group of adult trans persons on their experiences in secondary PE. Theoretical framework: The concept of heteronormativity is used as a theoretical framework to provide insights and understanding to trans persons’s experiences in PE. It is used to characterize inequalities and hierarchies derived from the intersection of the dualistic logic of gender binarism with other social categories and ideologies. Heteronormative discourses also act regulating the way of looking at and over trans persons’ bodies, categorizing some of them as queer or abject. Participants and methodology: Study is based on semi-structured interviews to nine participants (five trans women and four trans men) from 23 to 62 years of age. A thematic analysis was carried out in order to flexibly and directly identify interpretative patterns of meaning within data, as well as to open them to interpretative frameworks. The categories were grouped into four themes best gathering the experiences of participants in PE. Results and discussion: (1) Hindering desired gender: In daily practices, participants felt in ‘the middle’ of activities, spaces and gender groups, experiencing aloofness, isolation and loneliness. Participants complained about the fact that they could not perform gender segregated activities with their desired gender group. PE teachers played an important role in supporting heteronormative system. (2) Preferences, aversions and opportunities: All participants experienced hegemonic forms of gender and sexuality linked to PE programme activities in different ways. For most trans boys, sport-based PE was their favourite subject, while trans girls found it particularly negative and demotivating. Exceptionally, some aesthetic and dance activities were recalled as nearly non-heterosexual practices. (3) Confronting transgression. Situations of stigmatization and bullying in PE were frequent as a result from situations in which gender norms were eventually transgressed. Teachers impeded any attempt of trans persons to overcome heteronormativity in PE lessons. (4) Intimacy struggles: Body intimacy was crucial for participants. Different strategies were used for the search of intimacy. Changing rooms were the most problematic spaces for trans students in educative contexts. The worse trans participants felt about their bodies, the more uneasy they felt in these facilities. Conclusions and final comments: Heteronormative contexts strongly determined trans persons’ experiences in PE. Trans participants, especially those not performing gender conforming practices, were abjectified in PE lessons. This situation generated multiple forms of exclusion and rejection, as well as episodes of harassment. However, some practices counteracted the dominance of the heteronormative system, showing their potential to destabilize this ideology in PE.

This article describes the harassment patterns and the risk profile in trans people living in Spain. A sample of 212 trans persons, aged 10–62, participated in this cross-sectional study. Results showed a high percentage of harassment (59.9%) and frequency of daily harassment (12.6%), especially verbal attacks (59%) that occurred in public spaces (49.1%) and within educational contexts (46.2%). Harassment is more prevalent in trans women than men. Those who disclose their gender identities at a younger age experience higher percentages and frequency of harassment than those who disclose at an older age. They also suffer more harassment of different types. The risk profile of harassment indicates that older trans women are more likely to suffer harassment than younger ones, and the risk decreases each year they delay their gender identity disclosure. The elimination of transphobic attitudes and the promotion of gender justice should be priority strategies in Spain.

Background: This study describes the prevalence, frequency, and type of physical activity and sport (PAS) practiced by trans persons before and after their gender disclosure (GD). Methods: A face-to-face survey was administered to 212 Spanish trans persons, aged from 10 to 62 years old. McNemar and chi-square tests were used to determine significant differences. Results: About 75.5% of the trans persons in this study engaged in PAS and more than 50% did so ≥3 times/week, which is similar as in the general Spanish population. Participation was higher in trans men (78.7%) than trans women (72%). However, GD emerges as a key issue in characterizing trans persons’ PAS participation. A group of 14.5% of them stopped activity after GD. Participation in nonorganized PAS was higher than in organized PAS, and this difference is greater after GD because most participants gave up organized PAS in favor of nonorganized PAS. Trans persons preferred individual sports and activities than team sports before and after GD, and the top 3 activities were jogging, walking, and bodybuilding. Trans men participation was higher than trans women in team PAS, whereas individual PAS were equally practiced before and after GD. Participation in football, swimming, basketball, dancing, and volleyball declined after GD, whereas bodybuilding increased in trans men. Conclusions: The results show that the high involvement of trans persons coincides with strategies used to hide or conceal their gender identities when participating in PAS. A decrease in PAS participation is observed after GD probably because it is an acute potential period of anxiety, discrimination, and victimization caused by trans persons’ body exposure.

In physical education (PE) and sports there is little theoretical and empirical knowledge about transgender people, and particularly, on how they are and can be imagined within this context. In this paper, we present and analyze a pedagogical activity based on the reading and discussion of a fictional representation of a transgender person within a group of undergraduate students of Sport Sciences. Our theoretical frame situates abjection and alterity as opposing concepts on a continuum. Results show several ways in which a transgender person is imagined by students, as well as constraints and possibilities for the pedagogical proposal to promote moral imagining of transgender. Students situated in abjection justify their rejection of transgender persons, bringing up compassion (such as pity), genitalization, symbolic violence and stigmatization of transgender persons. The realm between abjection and alterity is characterized by tolerance of different normalities, as well as linguistic constraints hindering the acceptance of transgender people. In alterity, students acknowledge their limited ability to totally imagine what it is like to be transgender, and also, their will to encounter transgender persons face-to-face. Although results of this experience should not be interpreted in a prescriptive way, they show different ways to imagine transgender people in the domain of PE and sports, as well as the importance of considering the ethics of alterity as a means to advance in the moral imagining of transgender persons and, in general, of the distant Other.

Background: In western societies, commitment to social justice claims for politics of recognition when referring to gender diversity. Gender non-conforming people, such as trans persons, represent social groups traditionally oppressed within heteronormative hegemonic thinking on gender. We present two qualitative case studies based on pedagogical activities that aim to convey our ruminations on this queer question: how can we contribute to the subversion of gender normalcy in Physical Education and Sport Tertiary Education (PESTE) through the imagination of trans persons’ Physical Education and Sport experiences? Theoretical framework: With the support of queer concepts, we theorize on trans persons and queer pedagogy. Trans persons do not fit into gender binarism which molds hegemonic ideology of heteronormativity, bringing about serious consequences that would include discrimination and harassment. Queer pedagogy efforts to enhance social justice should put the eye not only in trans persons’ experiences and feelings but also in cisgender’s (non-trans persons) beliefs and attitudes toward trans persons. Participants and methodology: Both activities were developed in the same degree with different groups of PESTE students. The first activity unfolds the use of a fictional tale, previously created for pedagogic purposes. The second activity entails queer tango as embodied performance to challenge heteronormativity. Qualitative data was obtained during the activities and was thematically analyzed to illustrate the activity and students’ interpretations. Results and discussion: A range of responses to the fictional tale resulted from the first activity. Some students legitimized sex/gender binarism and biological norms, unquestionably reflecting heteronormativity and, therefore, abjection toward trans persons. Others showed difficulties in achieving a true acceptance that would involve, for instance, an appropriately naming of gender identities. Finally, some exhibited their willingness to respect, encounter and accept trans persons. In the second activity, students found interesting the opportunity that queer tango had offered to exchange gender roles, while others expressed their difficulties in performing other gender roles than their own. Embodied experience was of significant importance in the process of gaining empathetic imagination on gender diversity. Some students questioned the rigid structuration of the beginning of the activity, while other’s slapstick performances were identified as strategies of resistance. Participants also reflected on how PESTE students imagined themselves teaching, commenting their lack of formation and ability to construct a non-heteronormative PES. Conclusions and final comments: Initiatives to sensitize about gender diversity and disrupt normalcy are necessary in PESTE. The two activities presented evidence coexisting imaginaries on trans persons. The double approach based on a fictional tale and a queer dance show different possibilities to enhance the empathetic imagining of distant others, trans persons in this case. With its limitations, politics of recognition need to enhance empathetic imagination to foster the possibilities for recognition and dialog between gender privileged and oppressed individuals and groups.