“They’re Rubbing it in my Face.” A study of Embodiment When Being Trans in PE

Research that investigates the impact of heteronormativity on physical education (PE) is extensive. In this paper, we expand previous knowledge that describes PE as heteronormative, binary, and hierarchical by offering phenomenological analyses of transgender people’s experiences of PE. The paper builds on data presented in the third author’s master’s project (Strømman, 2022), in which she explores trans experiences in PE in a firstperson perspective. This paper, however, expands on embodiment, as it appears to be an underexplored approach when we seek to understand minority experiences. We bring attention to how the moving body is at the core of every human experience. In our analysis, we present five themes: 1) PE causes discomfort; “It’s like you wait to explode”; 2) It feels good to forget the troublesome presence of the body; 3) PE- still a subject with masculine connotations; 4) Even when binaries are challenged, discomfort persists; 5) Bittersweet solutions. In these themes, the moving body is accredited as an approach to understand the body as object and subject at the same time. Methodologically, we combine embodied phenomenology and phenomenology of practice to get close to the embodied experiences of our participants. Where previous research has focused on structural binary arrangements in PE, we describe the embodied experiences of such arrangements. In other words, the occurrence of binary arrangements is not a new finding; rather, our contribution is how binary arrangements shape lived embodied experiences.