Persistence of Cis-Genderism in LGBT+ Inclusive Dancesport Competitions in the United Kingdom: Disciplining Trans* Sporting Bodies to Fit in?

Dance is unique to many art forms in that it is expressed in and through the human body, which becomes a symbolic embodiment of culturally patterned notions of genders, sexualities and moralities. This paper draws on an autoethnographic study of the United Kingdom’s Equality Dancesport scene and 35 semi-structured interviews with LGBT+ dancers to problematise the cis-genderist practices in competitive ballroom dancing. Equality Dancesport is a competitive ballroom dance scene which emerged from the LGBT+ community. As a sporting activity, Equality Dancesport is governed by rules and regulations around its participation. These competition rules were revised in 2019 with the aim to promote greater inclusivity of trans* dancers, specifically to be applied to equality dance competitions hosted in the United Kingdom. In this paper, I examine the discourses shaping this recent revisions in the rules and the accompanying experiences of trans* equality dancers within this competitive arena. Findings suggest that despite challenging some cis and heteronormative practices in mainstream Dancesport spaces, essentialist notions of sex and gender continue to shape Equality Dancesport competition rules. This means that trans* dancers continue to face several challenges participating in a competitive sport which operates on a binary sex system. Illustrating instances of institutional violence perpetuated against trans* equality dancers, the paper concludes with a proposal for radical regulatory and policy changes to facilitate the development of LGBT+ inclusive sporting contexts. Proposed changes include (1) questioning the epistemological understandings of sex and gender, and (2) celebrating other values in competitive sports such as camaraderie, empathy, respect and the embodiment of queer joy, apart from the current overemphasis on fair play and winning.