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

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.

Citation

Ravat, S. (2023), "Embodying Disobedience, ¹ Inciting Resistance: Nonbinary Athletes and the Limits of Gender in Sport", Greey, A.D. and Lenskyj, H.J. (Ed.) Trans Athletes’ Resistance (Emerald Studies in Sport and Gender), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 103-114. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80382-363-820231008