Out in more ways than one: preliminary study on the perceptions of Filipino transgender athletes regarding their exclusion from participating in sports competitions.

Abstract

Despite being labelled as the most gay-friendly country in Asia and one of the most gay-friendly countries in the world, transgender women and transgender men in the Philippines still face a lot of challenges. One of the most controversial issues concerning transgender people is their participation in sports competitions. Though there exists an increasing volume of literature about the topic, they are mostly focused on theoretical arguments and policy reviews - the views of the transgender athletes themselves are seldom heard. This research contributes to this gap in the literature by identifying and describing the perceptions of transgender athletes regarding their exclusion from participating in sports competitions. This study explored said perceptions generally through a constructivist framework with socialization as mechanism and a feminist approach. Due to lacking documentation on the population of study, the research participants were selected using volunteer sampling and the chain-referral method. Through the use of an online semistructured survey, the responses of eighteen transgender athletes were thematically analyzed.