Participation in Organized Physical Activity and Discomfort with Locker Rooms Among Youth Across Sexual, Gender, and Racial Identities

Objective: Participation in organized physical activity contributes to well-being and positive youth development. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and gender diverse, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) youth, across racial identities, experience barriers to organized physical activity, including discomfort with locker rooms. The current quantitative analysis expands existing qualitative evidence to understand the relation between discomfort with locker rooms and participation in organized physical activity among youth across diverse sexual, gender, and racial identities. Method: High school students (N = 13,469) in the Midwestern United States completed questions about physical activity and discomfort with locker rooms. Independent sample t tests assessed differences in mean participation in organized physical activity by discomfort with locker rooms across LGBTQ+ and racial identities. Results: LGBTQ+ youth endorsed half the participation and eight times the discomfort with locker rooms as cisgender/ heterosexual peers. Discomfort with locker rooms was less impactful for LGBTQ+ youth of color than white LGBTQ+ youth. Locker rooms were also less of a concern for white LGBTQ+ youth who were active in organized physical activity relative to white LGBTQ+ youth who were not active in organized physical activity. Conclusions: Locker rooms may be a larger barrier to any engagement in organized physical activity rather than frequency of activity, and strategies to promote engagement must consider the intersection of LGBTQ+ and racial identities. Pediatric psychologists can intervene through supporting youth’s problem-solving and self-advocacy skills while also advocating directly with schools and community spaces for the restructuring of the binary nature of gendered locker rooms to be more accessible and inclusive for youth with diverse identities.