Dur à Queer, 2025
Inside the First Trans MMA Club Recognised by a National Federation
In a context where combat sports have rarely welcomed non-normative identities, a group of trans people meets to train, support one another and claim space through practice rather than spectacle. In Paris, Neo Fighting Club is a trans-friendly MMA club founded by a trans man, offering an exceptional space for practice and visibility. Affiliated with the French MMA Federation, it stands as a rare, perhaps unique, example of institutional recognition for a trans-inclusive combat sports environment. Training sessions take place twice weekly. Here, mutual care and collective support meet the rigour and challenge of physical confrontation.
Photographed between November 2025 and the end of January 2026, this project appears at a moment when the presence of trans people in sports is intensely contested, defined by bans, misinformation and polarised public discourse. Against this backdrop of exclusion, the club stands as something more than a gym. It operates as a site of negotiation between vulnerability and strength, intimacy and defence, marginalisation and physical visibility. A place where bodies learn not only technique, but trust.