By Phoebe Scholefield, Senior Communications and Campaigns Manager at Stonewall
What does it actually take for a sport or fitness setting to feel genuinely safe for an LGBTQ+ person? How different does it feel to inhabit an LGBTQ+ body in these settings?
We know there is a difference. You probably know it yourself. That moment’s pause before you walk into a gym changing room or line up at the start of a running club event. It’s not always fear, exactly. Sometimes it’s just a quiet calculation – can I be openly myself here? Will I have to shrink?
That calculation is the reality of living in a queer body right now. It’s 2026, and the conversation about our bodies, trans+ bodies especially, but LGBTQ+ bodies more broadly — has become louder, more politicised, and more exhausting than ever. Legislation, media commentary and everyday assumptions all still treat our physical selves as something to be debated rather than simply lived in. Queer bodies have become contested sites, not instruments of strength and freedom – as they should be.
Disproportionally high numbers of LGBTQ+ people, and trans+ people in particular, report avoiding sport and exercise altogether rather than risk hostility or exclusion, a loss that isn’t just social but physical and mental. Movement is medicine. Community is protective.
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