Trans sport world-building: Original work book club as anti-oppressive methodology


Andy Z. Coyne, Carleton University

Canadian discourse around transgender participation in sport largely focuses on policy issues in competitive and professional sport, meaning the desires of the average trans athlete are not foregrounded. Therefore, for my master’s thesis, I am investigating trans sport futurity, using a desire-based innovation in methods to co-produce visions of the future of trans sport with trans athletes from my community. Using book club-style focus groups, where participants discuss a fictional work I authored, this study is designed to cultivate trans joy and radical imagination, resulting in a collective form of knowledge production. With the abstraction of discussing fictional characters, this method is also anti-oppressive in that it resists the extraction of participant experiences common in damage-centred studies (Tuck, 2009). Drawing on our lived experiences as trans athletes, my participants and I will think together about trans futurity and where sport may fit into our visions for a better world.

This paper will be presented at the following session: