“We must prepare to fight!” Well, but how?
Many LGBTQ+ people in Texas feel they are at risk. In addition to the numerous new anti-LGBTQ laws passed in the past few Congresses, hate crimes against the LGBTQ community are on the rise across the United States. According to a GLAAD study, Texas ranks third in the nation for attacks targeting LGBT people.
It’s no surprise that many LGBTQ Texans want to study mixed martial arts (MMA). The problem is that there are relatively few explicitly LGBTQ-friendly MMA gyms in the state. Even though MMA has become mainstream since the rise of the UFC, it’s still rare to find a fighting dojo that isn’t filled with men who are interested in both practical self-defense and who LGBTQ people feel they need protection from.
Black Widow’s Lou Villarreal already knew how to fight when she began her gender transition five years ago. Born and raised in Austin, Villarreal turned to martial arts after surviving a robbery in 2010. They earned black belts in Byun Mudu, purple belts in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and became USA Boxing Bronze Coaches. For non-fighter readers, this toolkit can basically handle everything except firearms and magic.
Still, the transition was costly. Villarreal felt unwelcome at most dojos in Austin.
“Although my mental health has improved significantly, I have had to terminate two coaching contracts due to issues related to my transgender identity, and I have made peace with what I thought at the time was the end of my path to competitive opportunities,” they said in an email interview. “As a woman and a transgender person, I have experienced my fair share of coercion, manipulation, and disrespect from training partners, coaches, and students in the martial arts arena. I was used to feeling like I had to hold myself back in a stoic manner and ‘prove’ that I belonged in the gym, and I was tired of the depletion that vigilantism had on my health and athletic performance.”
Today, Black Widow MMA is perhaps the most well-known LGBTQ-friendly gym in the state. There are only a handful of such gyms in Texas, but each one finds aspiring fighters and enthusiasts looking for a way to learn defense.
When Laura Hayden came to Sun Dragon in Austin, it was already a queer-run dojo. Suzanne Pinet founded As Every Woman Self Defense in 1989 as a place for women and children to learn Kyokushin Karate and self-defense outside of the male-dominated martial arts space she had been involved with. It wasn’t easy for a queer woman to start a dojo in Texas in the 1990s, but Pinet built it into an institution.
Pinet resisted the full inclusion of transgender people in his dojo until he retired. Things changed in 2006 under new ownership, and Hayden and his wife, KJ, became instructors. Sun Dragon continues to teach karate, but also focuses on non-physical de-escalation techniques that benefit marginalized people in a hostile world.
Image provided by: Sun Dragon
“People of color, gay people, people who present differently than people think they present? We always have to deal with issues like that,” she said in a phone interview. “That gets old quickly. But hearing ways of coping that make you feel more comfortable and get more comfortable over time makes your world a little bit easier.”
Sun Dragon Formula is gaining popularity at one of the few LGBTQ-friendly gyms in Texas. This is a nonprofit organization focused on serving the community rather than making money or developing champions. Black Widow is currently seeking a similar position. Recontextualizing the nature of MMA and self-defense also has the added bonus of removing the overly competitive nature of most gyms. Hayden can still teach someone to break a board (or a knee), but there’s much less of an effort to dominate in her space.
Houston has few LGBTQ-friendly MMA gyms, but Third Ward Jiu-Jitsu is already well-known in the city. Another nonprofit organization, they offer self-defense instruction and workshops, especially as part of the city’s LGBTQ Activist League.
Instructor Andrew Degar is not LGBTQ, but his partner is. He works in genetic testing during the day and trains people in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at night. In addition to being a dominant discipline in the professional MMA world, it tends to be the perfect martial art for smaller people because it teaches you to fight from your back on the ground.
Degar and his staff opened the studio in the Third Ward specifically to emphasize their commitment to underserved communities. In addition to our work with LGBTQ students, we also focus on addressing neurodiversity, which is often the target of bullying and attacks. When Degar moved to Houston from South Carolina in 2015, he found too many gyms allowing harmful activities that were not to his taste.
“I was coaching at a mixed martial arts gym here in Houston, and I knew that certain students were gay and people would call them slurs on the mat. I’m going to speak up as a coach, but it’s important that the people who are running the space create a safe space where these people don’t have to worry about coming and being called slurs,” he said in a phone interview.
In the world of MMA, a certain amount of physicality is expected. After all, the goal is to learn to hurt someone if necessary. Changing that aspect to something positive rather than one based on institutional bias requires a dedicated focus, but most gyms seem indifferent to this.
“I think it might be a lack of empathy,” Degar says. “I think sometimes people get into these sports maybe for the wrong reasons.”
Proper MMA training will build confidence and reduce your fear of physical confrontation. Moving around trying to lock in an armbar is a great way to get used to your body and how it functions. MMA has positive potential and can provide safety in an increasingly unsafe world for LGBTQ people.
However, work on LGBTQ inclusivity in this field is still in its infancy. There are thousands of gyms and dojos in Texas, but even in major cities, only a small percentage of them intentionally provide safe spaces for LGBTQ students. Villarreal has watched with pride and hope the rise of female athletes in the UFC and other leagues, but the prevalence of transphobia among the field’s top stars is a reminder that parity is still a long way off. They’re trying to build their own network of tournaments and workshops in hopes that one day LGBTQ acceptance will become the norm in the fight space.
“We all need to be more self-reflective,” Villarreal said. “MMA attracts a lot of insecure people, myself included, who see training as a path to confidence and power. If you don’t really examine your motivations for training, you can easily fall into reproducing cycles of domination within yourself and the culture of your gym. It’s been a long journey for me to love myself and be confident in my body, but I don’t think this is a uniquely trans experience. What’s good for queer people is good for everyone.”
