#1032: Trans* Body Politics in Sport: Learning Through Portraits of Violence, Pain, and Resistance

Trans* bodies are at the center of attacks within current US fascist governance, as we observe the obliteration of policy and democracy. I draw on the budding foundations of queer and trans* scholarship within the Learning Sciences to ask, what is our role as learning scientists and scholars of educational discourse in centralizing trans* politics as inherent to learning? I locate this discourse as embedded within the Learning Towards Justice Team’s (2025) principles for avoiding detours toward equity. Using Lugones’s (2007) coloniality of gender as my theoretical framework, I engage five trans* student-athletes, through portraiture methodology, to explore their lived experiences of violence, pain, and resistance as we navigate this current sociopolitical climate that demonizes trans* bodies. This work offers novel and nuanced directions for the political in learning as deepening trans* engagement while expanding forms of learning as imagined within the context of sport and trans* policy in higher education.