It seems like yesterday that we were celebrating laws that promised to protect everyone’s dignity. However, waking up in March 2026, the outlook feels a little grayer. Visibility is a double-edged sword: the more they see us, the more those who fear diversity point us out.
This year, the media focus has been on sport. It’s curious, right? Sport, which should be that space for improvement, health and community, has become the main political battlefield. We have seen progress, of course. There are federations that have tried to integrate, that have sought solutions based on science and empathy. But we are also experiencing a wave of prohibitions that smells rancid, like closets that we thought we had burned a long time ago.
Sport: The podium where we don’t all fit
When we talk about trans people in competition, the conversation usually gets muddy quickly. People talk about “biological advantages” as if they were absolute truths engraved in stone, ignoring that each body is a universe. What hurts me, and I tell you this from the bottom of my heart, is that under the banner of “fair play” children, adolescents and adults are being expelled from spaces that are vital for their mental and social health.
What message are we sending them? Basically, they can be who they are, but only if they stay at home. That they can exist, but not win. That their identity is a “technical problem” that the federations do not know how—or do not want—to solve. We have seen how international regulations have become more restrictive this last year, and that has a domino effect that reaches the sports center in your neighborhood. If the elite excludes, the base feels authorized to point out.
Hate speech: When noise becomes direct danger
We can’t talk about sports without talking about what happens off the slopes. The advance of hate speech in 2026 is something that keeps me up at night. They are no longer just four anonymous profiles on social networks; They are discourses that have been institutionalized.
The narrative is always the same: erase trans identity to “protect” something else. Sometimes they say they protect cis women, other times they say they protect children… there is always an excuse for exclusion. But the reality is that this constant noise has direct consequences. Minerva, our data expert, gave me some scary figures the other day: physical attacks on people from the LGTBIQ+ group have increased, and trans people continue to be the main target.
It is exhausting to have to explain every day that existing is not an attack against anyone. Just because a trans woman wins a race does not erase the rights of other women. Why is it so difficult for us to understand that human rights are not a cake that ends if it is distributed among more people?
Do we really have all the answers?
This is where I stop and look you in the eyes (through the screen, you know what I mean). Sometimes they ask me what is the definitive solution for sport to be 100% fair and 100% inclusive, and the truth is that I don’t know. I don’t have a magic formula. Is it possible that we need new categories? Or perhaps rethink the sport from scratch, based less on binarism and more on real capabilities? These are questions I ask myself every night. We don’t have all the answers, and perhaps recognizing this is the first step to stop fighting and start building. What I do know is that the solution can never be the humiliation or erasure of a person.
The “Emptied Spain” and the memory that sustains us
I don’t want to end this article without looking beyond the big cities. At Rainbow Magazine we are very focused on the situation in España Vaciada. If being trans in Madrid or Barcelona is already an act of bravery, imagine being trans in a town of 200 inhabitants where everyone knows each other. There, visibility is not an option, it is constant exposure.
We are working on a report about how the lack of references and specialized health services is pushing many young people into internal exile. And that is where historical memory makes sense. Remembering cases like Tefía is not just looking at the past out of nostalgia; It is remembering that the rights that we enjoy today—and that today they want to curtail—cost the blood, sweat and many tears of those who preceded us.
Towards visibility that heals
Today, March 31, you will see many flags in town halls (where they are still allowed) and many beautiful posts on Instagram. But the real visibility is what happens on April 1, May 2 and every Monday morning.
The visibility we need is the one that allows a trans boy to play soccer with his friends without anyone asking for his birth certificate. The one that allows a trans woman to go to her workplace without being “the anecdote” of the office, nor the joke in the coffee machine. The one that allows us all, as part of the LGTBIQ+ community, to walk down the street without turning our heads at a loud noise.
What can we do? Listen more. Read more to those who live these realities in first person. And, above all, not to remain silent when we see an injustice, no matter how small. Dear ally, if you don’t stop the joke, you are participating in it.
Do you think we are ready as a society for a sport that does not segregate by gender, or are we still very far from that ideal? I would love to know what you think.
Today we celebrate trans life. We celebrate resistance. But, above all, we celebrate that, despite all the noise and hate, we are still here, visible and stronger than ever.
See you in the streets.
