Trans Boxing

They used to play basketball growing up. But once they got home, they would sit on the couch and watch boxing matches on television with their “nonno”, grandpa. “I have warm memories of those afternoons in Italy”, recalls Hill Donnell (they/them), “I was very young, but I remember thinking that it was such a cool sport. And many more years later, when I showed up in that hot, sweaty gym basement in Bed-Stuy, New York, my mind went back to that.”

Hill began boxing in New Orleans in 2017. “The beauty of sport is that it has rules and parameters within which you can play, ensuring its fairness.” However, this contrasts sharply with a binary reality where public spaces, including boxing gyms, are strictly gendered. As an alternative, one of their friends offered some queer classes, which for Hill, “was a way to connect with other queer people and feel embodied and strong.” After moving to New York City, they sought a similar place to further develop their boxing skills. Soon, their lives became intertwined with a pioneering project: Trans Boxing.

“An art project in the form of a boxing club.” If you ask Nolan Hanson (he/them), the founder and head coach of Trans Boxing, for a definition, this is probably the first thing he would say. “To me, that framing is valuable because it opens up spaces for poetic and symbolic meaning to come through.”

When he started boxing in his early 20s, this conceptual delineation was not on his mind. He was looking for something to channel his energy and exercise while also finding a new community. “I first trained at the New Bed-Stuy Boxing Center. It fulfilled many of my needs and gave me goals and a purpose,” Hanson says. He began competing seriously shortly after, but a wrist injury forced him to take some time off from the ring. This period allowed him to look inward and reflect on his life; during this time, he decided to start coaching and medically transition. Eventually, these two choices converged in what later became Trans Boxing, a boxing club for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people. “The rigid gender segregation of the conventional model of boxing didn’t work for me, which is why I wanted to create a space where fighters could focus on the sport and feel comfortable,” says Nolan.

Nolan and Hill used to hang out at a bar near the gym as a social activity, reflecting on ways to improve the boxing classes, which quickly gained popularity. Many fighters would join them after workouts, and “without even realizing it, we created a community of trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people in New York City who loved sports and wanted to work on certain aspects of their physicality,” Hill explained. It was time to formalize both the boxing classes and the insights gained from the subsequent conversations. “Nolan and I did a lot of thinking about how to give a solid structure to the project, and that’s how Trans Boxing was conceived around the fall of 2017.”

The idea behind Trans Boxing was to create a space where sport and culture coexist symbiotically. Sport, in general, and boxing, in particular, provide a rich lens for examining identity formation and how people express who they are through gestures and actions. It visibly highlights “‘that clunky and clumsy process of identity formation.’ When you observe a fighter throwing punches effortlessly, it seems as though they’ve always been capable of doing so. However, that’s not the case, and the same applies to identity. Sometimes we perceive them as inherent traits that we simply enact in the world, but in reality, we learn and adopt how to be from somewhere” explains Nolan, “and I enjoy reflecting on these concepts through boxing.” This sport has historically served as a platform for social change, whether it involves racial and ethnic integration or the inclusion of women in the professional arena. “I hope that by being visible—not just in terms of media and representation, but also in a very physical and embodied manner—and placing ourselves in a social context, that it will alter the perceptions of those who come into the gym and see us working out,” concludes Nolan.

The project has come a long way from those early boxing classes at the Bed-Stuy Boxing Center. It now also holds regular training in Los Angeles, and has facilitated workshops in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Cincinnati, and New Orleans. Since 2021, Nolan has run the program at the Gleason’s Gym in Dumbo, Brooklyn, which is the oldest boxing gym in the U.S., where fighters such as Muhammed Ali, Jake La Motta and Myke Tyson used to train. Gleason’s was also the first gym to allow businessmen and women to train together. “The Trans Boxing is the most recent group I’ve brought in. They asked me if I was interested in running the program at Gleason’s and I was very excited. Everybody who comes up here is equal. It doesn’t matter where you are, who you are, or what you do, if you like boxing and want to take advantage of the facility, you’re welcome at Gleason’s” says Bruce Silverglade who has owned the gym since 1984.

The classes are now mixed and open to everyone, regardless of gender identity. “It’s been a weird, wild journey, but it’s been really cool to become part of this community and watch Nolan be respected by the other trainers while making a home in this historic gym,” says Sam Miller, the first fighter Nolan trained individually. “The last couple of years at Gleason’s have been overwhelmingly positive,” acknowledges Nolan. “The biggest threat is the myth that we are not real. It’s extremely dehumanizing, but I hope that by changing a specific context, such as a boxing gym, the effects will be wider eventually,” says Nolan. In a world where trans people are constantly targeted by unfair policies, the solitary sport is once again showing what the word “community” means – and hopefully leading the way for collective social change.