Queer-only sports groups provide affirming spaces for folks to reconnect with the field, and stay active and socialise.
“Queer football has made my life a lot better and kept away the despair”, said Malvika*, a 27-year-old trans woman who has been playing with Bangalore Queer Football (BQF) for over a year.
Started in January 2024, BQF is a group of queer and trans folks that come together to play football every weekend in Bangalore, come rain or traffic. Malvika found the group through an Instagram post, which declared, “sport isn’t just for the straights.”
Malvika recalled that she had always been interested in learning to play football. But in school, she had often felt unwelcome participating in team sports because she lacked skill and experience. She said that since she was nerdy, her classmates did not expect her to play well either.
BQF allowed her to give sports a real chance for the first time. “I could barely kick a ball straight before joining queer football,” she said with a laugh. Malvika is now the group’s top goal-scorer. She helps organise games and has found a tight-knit group of queer friends. She even met her current partner through the group (he plays defence; I think they make a good team).
In the queerbeat story ‘Where do the quiet gays go?,’ Shruti Sunderraman asked where the non-consumerist, introverted queer folks who don’t enjoy overstimulating parties and flamboyant pride marches find community. One of the answers to that question is that they’re out playing football. Or they are running, playing cricket or badminton. In Bengaluru, where I live, queer sports spaces have, of late, been increasingly gaining visibility and are starting to serve as a radical and transgressive alternative to existing events for queer folks living under capitalism and cis-hetero-patriarchy.
After quitting my corporate law firm job in 2023, I felt a bit adrift. As a neurodivergent person without a schedule, I struggled with day-to-day functioning. I had a lot of free time on hand and needed distractions. In a quest to play with a group not composed exclusively of straight men, my friend and I started a queer football group. Cobbled together from all the queer folks that we knew—close friends, friends of friends, our partners’ friends—the group eventually came to be known as BQF. 12 people, including Malvika, showed up for our first game. I remember standing around nervously before the game began, checking the WhatsApp group for potential last-minute dropouts and scanning the turf for visibly-queer strangers. Since then, the group has ballooned to over 200 folks. We have had to move to a bigger turf on game days to accommodate all the people who turn up.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over a year of running and being a part of BQF, it is that queer people are not a monolith. We aren’t all fashionable, artsy gays. Some of us are sports gays. Through the group, I discovered a community of diverse queer folks and reconnected with my intense passion for sports. It feels radical to structure my weekends around play and meet my full queer self in that space. It makes me happy.
In my pursuit to better understand the role these queer sporting communities play in the lives of Bengaluru’s queers, especially its impact on their wellbeing and mental health, I spoke to six queer folks who are active in various queer-specific sports groups in the city. In our conversations, a common theme emerged: they had all felt excluded in traditional sporting spaces.
Research shows that their experiences are fairly typical. Although I was unable to find India-specific data on queer people in sports, 18 different studies conducted across several other countries between 2007 and 2019 all pointed to the same conclusion: “LGBTQ+ people regularly experience discrimination and exclusion in sports.”
Another point of agreement that emerged in my conversations was that for queer people these queer sports spaces, where the focus is on community-building and joy, felt much more welcoming. Through my conversations for this story, I encountered multiple accounts of queer folks who had little to no competitive experience in sports and had never thought of themselves as particularly athletic, embracing the opportunity to participate. My observations suggest that due to the inclusive nature of these queer sports spaces, they serve as a medium for queer folks to access gender euphoria and body positivity.
However, spaces of all kinds come with their contradictions and these queer sporting communities are no exception. The diversity in age, gender, caste and class among the participants means that asymmetrical power relations sometimes arise. Over the course of my discussions with queer sportspersons in Bengaluru, I sought to uncover the joys and tensions that simultaneously exist in these groups.
“Queer football has made my life a lot better and kept away the despair”, said Malvika*, a 27-year-old trans woman who has been playing with Bangalore Queer Football (BQF) for over a year.
Started in January 2024, BQF is a group of queer and trans folks that come together to play football every weekend in Bangalore, come rain or traffic. Malvika found the group through an Instagram post, which declared, “sport isn’t just for the straights.”
Malvika recalled that she had always been interested in learning to play football. But in school, she had often felt unwelcome participating in team sports because she lacked skill and experience. She said that since she was nerdy, her classmates did not expect her to play well either.
BQF allowed her to give sports a real chance for the first time. “I could barely kick a ball straight before joining queer football,” she said with a laugh. Malvika is now the group’s top goal-scorer. She helps organise games and has found a tight-knit group of queer friends. She even met her current partner through the group (he plays defence; I think they make a good team).
In the queerbeat story ‘Where do the quiet gays go?,’ Shruti Sunderraman asked where the non-consumerist, introverted queer folks who don’t enjoy overstimulating parties and flamboyant pride marches find community. One of the answers to that question is that they’re out playing football. Or they are running, playing cricket or badminton. In Bengaluru, where I live, queer sports spaces have, of late, been increasingly gaining visibility and are starting to serve as a radical and transgressive alternative to existing events for queer folks living under capitalism and cis-hetero-patriarchy.
After quitting my corporate law firm job in 2023, I felt a bit adrift. As a neurodivergent person without a schedule, I struggled with day-to-day functioning. I had a lot of free time on hand and needed distractions. In a quest to play with a group not composed exclusively of straight men, my friend and I started a queer football group. Cobbled together from all the queer folks that we knew—close friends, friends of friends, our partners’ friends—the group eventually came to be known as BQF. 12 people, including Malvika, showed up for our first game. I remember standing around nervously before the game began, checking the WhatsApp group for potential last-minute dropouts and scanning the turf for visibly-queer strangers. Since then, the group has ballooned to over 200 folks. We have had to move to a bigger turf on game days to accommodate all the people who turn up.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over a year of running and being a part of BQF, it is that queer people are not a monolith. We aren’t all fashionable, artsy gays. Some of us are sports gays. Through the group, I discovered a community of diverse queer folks and reconnected with my intense passion for sports. It feels radical to structure my weekends around play and meet my full queer self in that space. It makes me happy.
In my pursuit to better understand the role these queer sporting communities play in the lives of Bengaluru’s queers, especially its impact on their wellbeing and mental health, I spoke to six queer folks who are active in various queer-specific sports groups in the city. In our conversations, a common theme emerged: they had all felt excluded in traditional sporting spaces.
Research shows that their experiences are fairly typical. Although I was unable to find India-specific data on queer people in sports, 18 different studies conducted across several other countries between 2007 and 2019 all pointed to the same conclusion: “LGBTQ+ people regularly experience discrimination and exclusion in sports.”
Another point of agreement that emerged in my conversations was that for queer people these queer sports spaces, where the focus is on community-building and joy, felt much more welcoming. Through my conversations for this story, I encountered multiple accounts of queer folks who had little to no competitive experience in sports and had never thought of themselves as particularly athletic, embracing the opportunity to participate. My observations suggest that due to the inclusive nature of these queer sports spaces, they serve as a medium for queer folks to access gender euphoria and body positivity.
However, spaces of all kinds come with their contradictions and these queer sporting communities are no exception. The diversity in age, gender, caste and class among the participants means that asymmetrical power relations sometimes arise. Over the course of my discussions with queer sportspersons in Bengaluru, I sought to uncover the joys and tensions that simultaneously exist in these groups.
Navneet is a long-time runner and ex-President of Bengaluru Frontrunners (BFR), a community for queer runners and walkers in Bengaluru. Started in 2021, BFR is an Indian affiliate of International Frontrunners, which acts as an umbrella organisation for more than a hundred LGBTQIA+ running and walking clubs in various cities, globally.
Growing up, Navneet wasn’t really into sports. “I grew up in Bhopal in the 80s and 90s and went to an all-boys school. I was not involved in any physical activity and was often teased for being ‘girly,’” he said. After moving to Bengaluru, he joined BFR because he wanted to try something new and potentially meet other queer folks. At BFR, he found he could finally participate in a physical activity without being shamed or mocked. It became a safe space for him, where his fitness journey was supported.
Studies conducted in Australia, Europe, and North America found that the casual usage of homophobic language as well as gendered and sexual stereotyping kept LGBTQ+ people away from sports. According to the first international study of homophobia in sports, conducted in Australia in 2014, 84 percent of gay men and 82 percent of lesbian women reported having been subjected to verbal slurs such as “faggot” and “dyke.”
From my experience of participating in sports, I have noticed that it requires a certain performance of gendered behaviour. Even children on the playground can really sense it if you’re not one of them and your body language does not fit cis-heterosexual standards.
Participating in sporting communities can be beneficial for your mental health. Studies have shown it can lead to reduced anxiety, depression and stress, particularly for people who participate in a team sport. It can help improve body-image-related concerns and foster an increase in one’s sense of agency and confidence. This holds true more so for queer folks, because of the community support they receive in queer sporting spaces, leading to an increased sense of well-being. The queer folks I interviewed felt that participating in a queer-only sports space can allow for identity formation outside of cis-heteropatriarchy and offset the effects of minority stress– the stigma and discrimination queer folks face for being a minority group which places them at a risk for negative mental health outcomes.
Sunil, the founder of Gamepoint, a queer badminton group in Bengaluru, told me, “When playing sports with a queer group, I’m able to focus on only playing and it’s not about how I’m walking or talking or how my hands are moving. The pressure is off and I can enjoy the sport.” This is particularly important for non-binary and trans folks who are often forced to participate in dysphoria-inducing gendered categories and environments in mainstream sporting communities, which can leave them feeling left out.
In 2016, Claire Carter and Krista Baliko, researchers affiliated with the University of Regina in Canada, surveyed several queer sporting spaces across Canada and found that queer people perceive queer sports teams as spaces of possibility, where there can be fluidity of sexuality and gender and a diversity of bodies can be embraced.
Harshinee, a non-binary illustrator and mural artist based in Bengaluru said, “Running with my non-men friends at BFR has been a truly transformative experience. Earlier, I used to worry about being able to keep up with other runners,” they said. “I preferred lone runs and would say that I’d meet everyone for breakfast once I was done.” Now, they told me, they get to discuss and dissect life on runs with their non-men friends. There’s a lot of giggles and care involved and before they realise it, they’ve all completed a 10-kilometre run.
Harshinee also highlighted the accessibility of BFR as a queer sporting community because of the lack of financial barriers. They said, “For a lot of young queer folks who are students or have moved cities and are desperately looking for queer spaces, financial accessibility is a huge barrier. If I had to pay even a very small amount of money to access a sporting space, it would have been hard for me to frequent it.” The weekly runs at the Cubbon park are free and newer runners are provided need-based funding and sponsorship for runs that require a registration fee.
From my own experiences of attending queer events in metro cities, I have found that most of them are consumptive and commercial: one night of food and drinks can make a sizable dent in your wallet. Malvika, who shares my disillusionment with these spaces, described how playing at BQF feels like a break away from the ever-penetrating sphere of rainbow capitalism and feels less like a “rich queer” activity.
For neurodivergent folks like Harshinee, it is also much easier to find a community with similar-minded people in a group like BFR that allows for the building of intimacy outside of dating and sex. Given the large overlap of queerness and neurodivergence, it is often vital for queer folks to have access to neurodivergent-friendly spaces.
I spoke with Vatsala, a queer and neurodivergent therapist at The Mirrored Room, a queer-affirmative neurodivergent-friendly psychotherapy practice in Bengaluru. She is certified in nature therapy and makes time to go climbing every day in between her sessions. She told me that given neurodivergent people may face difficulty in maintaining focus, spending time on a football field or hiking or climbing can help them concentrate on something for a set amount of time and lean into being present in their bodies.
“There’s a narrative that people with ADHD can’t focus on paying attention. But the evidence shows that it is a dysregulation of focus and attention. Spending time in nature and in playing sports literally trains your brain to focus on what’s around you and focus on one thing and removes a need for multi-tasking. ” said Vatsala. As a neurodivergent individual myself, I have discovered that the structure of planned weekly or alternate-day games can really make a positive impact on one's mental health.
While queer sporting groups can be joyful, affirming, and neurodivergent-friendly, they are far from being a utopia for queer folks. Most of the groups in Bengaluru that I have looked into are nascent and as a consequence, there are many gaps and limitations that they are grappling with.
Although the sports groups aim to be inclusive, I have noticed that most of them are either dominated by gays or lesbians, leading to trans folks being excluded. Four trans persons I spoke to expressed that they have not always felt their gender affirmed in the sports spaces they are part of. They have often had to correct other people about their pronouns and reiterate their gender during interactions.
Transmasculine football player Kai narrated, “I once showed up to a football match without my usual workout clothes, and one of the players assumed that I was a woman and used she/her pronouns because of the way I presented and I had to correct them.” Kai explained that while there is indeed greater acceptance and room for trans people in these groups, mainstream notions of gender based on appearance often end up being reproduced in these communities. It has been exhausting for Kai and other trans people to have to bring it up with players again and again, in order to comfortably exist in the group.
A kind of bio-essentialism – a belief that certain traits are determined by biology and unchangeable – also fails to tackle the complexity of the difference between sex and gender in sports spaces. It plays into how trans bodies are often perceived in line with their assigned gender at birth, especially for trans folks who may be on hormone replacement therapy. There is often no critical interrogation about ‘what bodies are expected and desired to participate’ and be present in sporting activities. For instance, the queer groups I largely came across are dominated by cis gay men who also hold positions of leadership and power.
Both Harshinee and Navneet, who have been part of the leadership group in BFR, stressed the necessity for fostering dialogue and discussion so to create room for understanding concerns voiced by non-binary and trans folks. At BQF, most of the organisers are gender non-conforming and trans, which makes it easier for trans-friendly practices to be upheld, like an emphasis on players’ introductions with pronouns before and after games. However, I have observed that safety for trans people often hinges on the receptiveness of cis queer folks. For queer sporting spaces to be truly trans-friendly, they need to be willing to engage with the concerns of trans members and correct their behaviours when they slip up.
Despite such occasional conflicts, community spaces are vital for queer folks, said Sunil, the founder of Gamepoint. “Many people join the group seeking friendship and community, sometimes even after suffering heartbreaks. It does become complicated sometimes because the same space where you find family and friendship can also be the same space that causes tensions and stress.”
Like Sunil said, “Straight people can just leave groups and find other groups but there’s only one queer running group, only one queer badminton group in Bengaluru.” It is difficult to raise your voice in a group which is also your sole support system.
Sporting communities need organisers to invest a lot of unpaid labour to keep the spaces active and ensure that there is not only diversity but a safe space for accommodating such diversity.
In the early days of BQF, when I was the primary organiser, I found it hard to be the person in charge of ensuring that a game takes place every weekend. I started dreading the process of booking turfs and managing all the other logistics. Over time, I’ve learned that sports groups can self-sustain only through a rotation of responsibilities and by giving new members the space and confidence to volunteer for roles.
However, it isn’t always easy to enlist volunteers.“People really enjoy volunteering for one-off events instead of taking ownership of tasks throughout the year,” said Harshinee. “We encourage that kind of participation as well.” Navneet expressed that it is important to make it exciting for volunteers to participate and said he generally allows them to choose the roles that they would be interested in taking up.
Again, conflicts may arise due to the identities of those in these positions of relative authority. For example, if cisgender folks are in charge of organising activities, it can be hard for non-binary and trans folks to raise their concerns.
It isn’t just the group dynamic that the organisers need to mediate. The outside world can present a challenge whenever a group of queers congregate in public. Queer runner Rohil recounted, “A differential lens is often applied in terms of who has to seek permission [from local authorities] to conduct events in urban parks. I have seen that many straight running clubs that have sprung up in Bengaluru’s largest park have not had to seek any sort of permission but many limitations are imposed on the queer groups that organise events in the same space in terms of how many people are allowed and how long their events can go on for.”
While organising runs and events in public parks, queer organisers who preferred to stay anonymous in this story, recounted incidents of facing mockery and unkind language from local authorities. Despite such challenges and the effort required to run such sporting groups, the organisers continue to invest their time in bringing people together. The motivation seems to be the queer person within them that needed this kind of space in their lives. It is incredibly fulfilling for me to watch these groups grow into spaces that queer folks need and desire.
As a 7-year-old who was deeply obsessed with sports, I wanted to play for the Indian women's cricket team. While I’m not sure that would’ve been the right space for me now, I am thankful that I get to regularly play sports with other queer folks and then drink watermelon juice afterwards. Over time, I’ve watched the Bangalore Queer Football develop from a football-playing group into a community for trans and neurodivergent folks in Bengaluru. I’ve learned that queer-exclusive sports communities are a vital reclamation of urban spaces and a significant part of queer lives to find joy, community and selfhood.
This story is supported by Mariwala Health Initiative.
Prakhya (she/they) is a writer, lawyer, and researcher passionate about access to justice for marginalised groups and underdog sports teams like Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
Visvak (they/he) is a writer and editor, mostly of narrative nonfiction.
Jose (she/they) is a non-binary illustrator from Kerala whose work highlights personal stories marked by gender, body experiences, and their South Indian heritage. While not lost in their sketchbook, they can be found devouring all things camp and horror.
Ankur Paliwal (he/him) is an independent journalist, and founder and managing editor of queerbeat.
