"Red-faced, slick with mud, perpetually in last place. That’s how, as a slightly overweight 6-year old, my lifelong love affair with running began."
Red-faced, slick with mud, perpetually in last place. That’s how, as a slightly overweight 6-year old, my lifelong love affair with running began. I joined the cross-country running club and, though I was consistently the slowest, I loved spending time outdoors, chatting away with classmates, and filling my little lungs with fresh forest air. It was also the only sport that wasn’t segregated by gender. Football was for boys, netball was for girls. That’s just how it was.
At secondary school the class sizes ballooned and removed any hope of playing sports with the girls. For the boys, it was football for a term, then rugby, then basketball. I despise football as, for me, it encapsulated a chest-thumping, hyper-masculine culture I didn’t understand. Rugby was just an excuse for bigger boys to pummel the smaller ones into the mud, while the teacher looked on, applauding such a show of rugged, pre-pubescent masculinity. Basketball made more sense to me, but I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just play netball with the girls – wasn’t it almost the same thing? “No”, my teacher growled, “You’re a boy, so play with the boys or not at all.”
I opted for the latter, so for five years I was shut out from playing with my friends and deprived of any sort of physical education – just because I didn’t feel comfortable with the boys. I spent my time in the drama studio instead, where I met new people, wrote and rehearsed plays. So I can’t be too mad at my expulsion; one door closed and another opened. And while I did continue running throughout my teens and 20’s, I never quite managed to replicate that sense of joy I’d felt as a kid in the cross-country club. That feeling of moving your body, feeling a rush of endorphins alongside people that make you feel safe and seen and welcome. I definitely didn’t expect to find that feeling again after almost 20 years.
Discovering FLINTA Sports Collectives
A few years ago I moved to Berlin for something like a fresh start. Berlin is the kind of city that forces everything you thought was set and rigid to become fluid. Anxiety, relationships, sexuality, gender. I found all those stubborn neural pathways were starting to be rewired. I started putting myself out there more, meeting new people, discovering who I was. This is what ultimately led me to FLINTA* Running. One October morning I joined for a sunny, slightly foggy run in Prenzlauer Berg. A handful of us ran, chatted, ate cake and drank coffee together. On the surface it was everything I imagined a running club would be. But at some point on the route I felt an enormous self of relief and elation, the righting of some ancient wrong. Here I was, twenty years later, exercising with people I felt comfortable with.
That’s why I’m working with the team at FLINTA Running to promote and champion FLINTA sports collectives across Berlin and beyond. I want to support people who, like me, fell out of love with sport because we weren’t made to feel welcome. Those that still feel unable to go to gym classes, or are scared to try new sports, purely out for fear of being sidelined, ostracised or abused. I can’t go back and convince my teachers that it's totally okay for little boys to play sports with little girls, as long as they're learning and having fun. But I can play some small part in moving the dial towards a world where sport is open to all, no matter their gender expression.
‘This article is the perspective of the author and does not necessarily reflect the view of the EGLSF’.