Between stigmatization and empowerment

In this chapter the authors mainly focus on those persons with an ambivalent or incongruent gender identity combined with unease about their body and the wish or intense need to (partially) change their gender of birth through hormone treatment and/or surgery. They present the findings of two explorative, qualitative studies about the experiences in physical activities and sports among trans men and trans women. The results are based on biographical narrative interviews with a total of thirty transgender people, varying from 12 to 51 years of age. The findings of the research partly affirm existing research that illustrates how transgender people, before, during and after transition, may feel excluded or forced to ‘fit’ into binary gender structures and cultures of (competitive) sport spaces. But there were also counter narratives that showed how trans men and women may use sport to cope with their feelings or (re)build embodied gender identity.