‘It’s Just Safer When I Don’t Go There’: Trans People’s Locker Room Membership and Participation in Physical Activity

ABSTRACT

Building on findings demonstrating that transgender and gender non-binary (trans) people’s participation in physical activity is impacted by their experiences in locker rooms, this study examines how trans people navigate transphobia and cissexism in locker rooms. I consider the concepts of membership and belonging to illuminate how locker room access impacts trans people’s participation in the public sphere. Drawing on interviews with trans people, this study suggests that—because of iterative encounters of surveillance, scrutiny, harassment, and violence—trans people regularly adopt strategies for navigating locker rooms as nonmembers. To access locker rooms despite a denial of membership, trans people employ various strategies to minimize the visibility of their transness and/or gender non-conformity through managing the perceived threat their gender expression poses to a “cisgendered reality.” Strategies such as hurrying, avoiding nudity and eye contact, and recruiting ally support function to facilitate locker room access by minimizing attention to trans nonmembership. The findings of this study suggest that whiteness broadens the availability of strategies for navigating locker rooms. This study offers insight into how people respond to stigma, evade surveillance and exclusion, and access public space despite a denial of membership.

Keywords:

• transgender
• locker room
• physical activity
• sport
• public sphere

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Hae Yeon Choo, Vikki Krane, Boba Samuels, and JOH’s two anonymous reviewers who provided invaluable feedback in the development of this manuscript. Special thanks to Caroline Fusco and Jessica Fields for their dedicated support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For the purpose of this analysis I am using the term trans as an umbrella term which encompasses “all people living within, between, and/or beyond the gender binary” (Sumerau et al., 2016, p. 294). In this regard, I am using this term to be inclusive of gender queer, gender non-binary, gender non-conforming, and myriad other non-cisgender gender identities.

2. Throughout this article, I use the term binary-gendered instead of gender-segregated to refer to single-gender facilities. I make this decision out of a concern that the latter term risks deploying the legacy of anti-Black Jim Crow segregation as a call to action for trans inclusion in binary-gendered facilities (Juang, 2006).

3. Cisnormativity is the expectation that all “normal” people are cisgender (Schilt & Westbrook, 2009).

4. This article presents findings from data collected as part of a larger study examining trans experiences in binary-gendered facilities more broadly (see also Greey, 2020). With the exception of two participant quotations, this article does not duplicate any previously published content.

5. “Stealth” means that others consistently assume that Cheri is a cisgender woman.

6. To be clocked is to be non-consensually outed as trans.

7. Melissa appears to be using the word Cacau to refer to Caucasian.

8. GNC refers to gender non-conforming.

Additional information

Funding

This article draws on research supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.