Trans embodiment and combat sports: Queer subversion, intimate violence and haptic encounters at the edge of legibility.

Trans access to sports is a contested area: new IOC (2021) guidelines recommend greater inclusion for trans competitors. However individual sporting bodies can make case by case decisions on inclusion, allowing the reinstating of invasive testing, harmful and excluding practices. Rather than forming an argument in opposition to anti-trans rhetoric, this practice-based research uses both performance and sport disciplines to argue the benefits of combat sports (wrestling, boxing) activities for trans people. This project proposes that new forms of trans embodiment are built and genders expressed, negotiated and unlearnt through the intimate violence and haptic
encounters of combat sports.