Solidarity at Trans Boxing
One of our recent preoccupations at Lux has been the role of sports as the frontline of the “gender war.” Our Issue 13 cover story is about gender testing and its long, racist, and sexist history. Trans athletes are under attack across the country; the Trump administration has banned trans people from participating in women’s sports and passed an executive order recognizing only two genders. The federal government has sued Maine already for not complying with the trans ban; in response, Minnesota has just preemptively sued on the basis that the ban is unconstitutional. Trans people are high on the list of the Trump administration’s targets. At the same time, another group of people – immigrants — are also in the crosshairs. ICE kidnappings and harrowing tales of detention conditions appear daily in the headlines. When even white Canadians are being locked up for weeks in horrifying conditions, we’re in truly new waters.
I spoke recently to Nolan Hanson, a boxer and coach whose work in the gym has led to a close friendship with another coach, Talap Mamyrkanov, who was recently detained by ICE. We talked about how the gym functions as a place for building solidarity between communities who are under attack. —Cheryl Rivera
CHERYL RIVERA Nolan, you’re a boxer, you’re trans – tell me about the intersection of those identities.
NOLAN HANSON I started this project called Trans Boxing in 2017, and when I started it, there wasn’t anything like it. I started it as a donation based class, just for trans and gender variant people. Throughout the years, it’s shifted to become an experimental kind of open project that’s responsive to different kinds of conditions, contexts and resources. As there are shifts culturally, I try to be nimble.
In 2021, I started working at Gleason’s Gym and brought that project, framing it as a residency. What was different about our trans boxing classes in the past was that we had done classes when the gym was closed. We weren’t really integrated into a larger gym community. When I started at Gleason’s, I was like, okay, I’m gonna become a coach here and then I’m also gonna do this Trans Boxing project experiment and see how the gym responds to it. I didn’t know if it would stick. I didn’t know what it was gonna be like. I had enough trust in the gym to try it, though.
Overwhelmingly, it was really positive. And over time, I saw that it was more beneficial to become even further integrated. Now, I don’t really delineate between trans boxing and my other training. I just train fighters, some of them are trans, some of them aren’t. In my boxing work and solidarity work in general, I think about connecting across differences for a common goal. I think a boxing gym can function as a space where these things can happen in ways that we don’t see reflected in dominant culture.
CR We connected through a writer, Oksana, who also boxes. Through that community, she learned about a boxing coach who had been picked up by ICE. This is one of your closest friends in the community and you’ve been fighting to get him out of detention, right?
NH Yeah, Talap was detained on March 19th. I’ve been really involved in trying to advocate for him and help find a lawyer and build an asylum case. A big part of this case is his support for trans boxing and trans athletes.
I guess it was maybe two years ago. Talap started working at the gym and we just struck up a friendship and became close. I’d just had a falling out with the coach that I had been working with. Talap teaches a different style of boxing than I was taught; he’s from Kyrgyzstan and it’s a different style. I became his student and his colleague and over time, we developed a relationship outside of the gym. He’s always been a huge supporter of not just me, but also my students and my work. It’s shown me that there really is this rich potential for diverse coalition building at the gym between trans people and immigrants, especially right now.
Talap moved to Russia in 2002 for work and renounced his Kyrgyzstan citizenship. But he’s of Turkic ethnicity and he’s Muslim, so he fled Russia in 2019 due to persecution based on ethnicity and religion. I didn’t really know what was going on with Russian legislation and LGBTQ groups. When he got detained I learned so much about immigration and law — and I also learned that in 2023, Russia passed legislation where LGBT groups are designated as extremist groups. If you even show visible support for these organizations, you could be persecuted. So as we’re building his asylum case, this is the basis for it.
CR It’s interesting that the case to not deport Talap from the U.S. rests on the fact that he may be persecuted in Russia based on his support for trans people, when we here in the U.S. are also seeing increased persecution of trans people. Our legal structure is still a holdover from more liberal administrations, but we’re in a huge backlash wave against LGBT people and trans people in particular.
NH Yes. We’re only like a couple years behind Russia in this regard. So this argument for Talap would only be able to happen now in this brief moment.
Seeing the immense support from the trans boxing community and queer and immigrant communities has been really powerful. Both of these demographics are being targeted with efforts to denationalize us. In the gym, we’re a team, so people come to me and ask about him.
The gym is full of immigrants. There’s a lot of Guyanese trainers. At first, I didn’t really know that people were following the whole thing, but they are. I had one guy from Guyana come up to me, and he’s like: I trained one of the best immigration lawyers in the city, please let me know if you need anything.
One of his fighters, a younger guy, said “what the fuck — it’s not like he’s a gangster from El Salvador.” And I had to tell him, “yeah man, all that is propaganda. They’re trying to tell you it’s bad people, and it’s just not true.” A lot of these guys are reckoning with the ideas that these policies won’t touch them.
CR Leveraging our identities to mutually support each other is a really important part of solidarity, I think, and to do that we often need spaces where people can interact across differences. We don’t all have power in the same ways, so we have to patchwork it together.
NH Yeah, for sure. I’m trans so I’m marginalized in some areas. But in other ways, I have immense privilege. I have the cultural capital and resources to talk to you, for example. Talap doesn’t have that. It’s important for queer and trans people to understand the kinds of resources and privileges that we have. It’s not as simple as just saying “Oh, we’re both marginalized.” Marginalization is also a spectrum — and contextual.
I think the boxing gym is a good place to look at for that kind of stuff, too. Someone may be very marginalized but still be very powerful in the gym. Talap is an incredibly powerful person in the gym. Yet, we’re seeing that his power doesn’t extend to the world outside.
CR Except in the form of social support, right?
NH It’s true. At first when I visited him, he was like: “don’t get a lawyer, don’t waste the money.” And I had to go coach mode with him. I was like, “Look you have support this time.” And the next time I saw him, he said he realized that what I said was true — that he had friends now. And the reason he has that is because of how he shows up at the gym, his passion and dedication.
It doesn’t save him from being affected by these brutal, degrading political initiatives, but it can potentially, we hope, allow him to get the kind of support he needs.
There’s so much within the queers and trans community that is culturally rich and that can be leveraged in support of other marginalized people. Owning that is really important, I believe.
Talap is currently detained in Batavia, NY and waiting for a judge to review his case. You can donate to Talap’s support fund here.