Sometimes It Doesn’t Get Better: A Public Call-Out of OrangeTheory Fitness
Update 3/11/2024: Windy City Times published this article about Orangetheory’s transphobia. I spoke with the reporter over a month ago (on February 9). They contacted Orangetheory corporate for comment, but the company has not responded at the time of publication.
Update 2/3/2024: Thanks for your support so far. By request, here is a document you can print and give to people outside OTF locations. This is one page/one side and this is the same thing but 2-to-a-page that prints both front and back.
TLDR: After countless conversations and years of transphobia and erasure, I am publicly inviting allies to demand Orangetheory does better. There is a list of things you can do at the bottom.
I didn’t document the countless times I was misgendered during my almost 200 workouts since I returned to Orangetheory Fitness in August 2022 at their Evanston location. Nor did I document the hours of conversations I had with several coaches and front desk staff asking them to stop misgendering me and erasing trans and nonbinary people in their everyday practices. I explained the harm they’re causing in depth and gave them tools to be more affirming. Part of me felt hopeful still and part felt like I was wasting my time, but I can’t say I didn’t try. I constantly questioned why I was willing to try OTF again after previously fighting transphobic practices and microaggressions in 2020, but I knew I was between a rock and a hard place - I had similar (or worse) experiences at other gyms and they were even more expensive and/or less accessible.
After being misgendered and navigating transphobia, erasure and empty promises regularly, I finally reached a point where I need to draw the line so I cancelled my membership on February 1, 2024.
I made this decision in late January 2024 as Florida - where Orangetheory Fitness was founded and is headquartered - banned gender marker updates. This made it even more timely for me to speak up as my community continues to be slowly banned, erased and violently and systemically deemed inhumane. It may seem like a small issue to some people or just a gym or a form or a contest, but it’s not to those of us trying to simply exist as our authentic selves. Hundreds of laws are trying to erase us and incite violence. Tending to my health and going to the gym that boasts "equitable and inclusive culture" and has "accountability" and "community" on their commitments list shouldn’t resemble what I’m already navigating with over 400 active anti-trans bills in this country. My experience at Orangetheory proves exactly the opposite of what they’re claiming. Telling the truth should be the bare minimum.
Orangetheory gave me a shorter, less vibrant life. OTF exemplified inequitable and exclusive culture. I saw very little integrity and no accountability as exhibited by zero change after promises made in countless emails, phone calls and in-person conversations.
I am tired of having to choose between liking the workout and not experiencing transphobia and nonbinary erasure. As a fat trans person with a beard, there are not many options for gyms that have members who don’t exude toxic gym culture/masculinity. OTF has been better than most in this regard for me, and their workouts are challenging but not too impossibly hard. I haven’t found a workout anywhere else that works for my body. I’m very sadly so used to not being able to have both - a good service and an affirming space; this is a common choice with limited healthcare options.
For years I chose my physical health/a regular workout I could do over my mental health and safety as a trans person. I can’t do it anymore. These daily experiences add up. It’s like that quote “death by a thousand stabs” - none of the transphobic experiences are necessarily super egregious or more intense than the last, but eventually one of the stabs kills you. I constantly braced myself for discrimination and then had to choose to either ignore it or speak up yet again. I guess they did get my heart rate up, just not in the way everyone else’s workout does.
I’ll be honest and say that I was hesitant to go public as we witness so many rising global inequities (that have only increased as COVID rates continue to rise) and as we watch atrocities and genocide in many countries on our screens. However, I feel called to publicly share what I’ve been navigating for years because we cannot allow this to just be the status quo. Making your workplace, place of worship, or gym trans-affirming is relatively easy. It requires a little language shifting, cultural humility and maybe a new checkbox or form option. Sometimes it is more complicated than this, but in the case of Orangetheory, it isn’t hard at all. It’s a case of actively choosing to prioritize cisgender people’s comfort over the inclusiveness and safety of transgender, intersex and nonbinary people.
Within the last couple of months, I started saying to coaches and the front desk staff, “Please do better. Please fix your forms and your app that lists ‘male and female’ genders and offers only two options. It’s not hard and we can save everyone so much time and energy if you just make these changes. I don’t want to protest or boycott you and you don’t want a PR issue. I just want to do my workout and go home.” I am not sure if they took that seriously or not as I did say it in somewhat of a joking tone as an attempt to avoid feeling ignored again. OTF updated their system in November 2023 and emailed members asking us to fill out electronic paperwork that was previously only in paper format. I refused to fill it out because the options were male, female or prefer not to say. None of those are accurate for me. I prefer to say and I want it to be known that I am nonbinary.
When I again voiced my concerns, the Support Desk emailed me and said I needed to talk to my home studio. My studio told me it’s a corporate issue. I was sent in a never-ending circle again. Around this time, a new manager started and a new option appeared on a clipboard sign-up for the Transformation Challenge that wasn’t just male or female. This made me hopeful. I’ve previously avoided all their contests and extra challenges to avoid being misgendered. I circled “nonbinary/other” on the form and got excited for things to finally improve. However, when they posted about benchmarks on Instagram, they didn't include nonbinary people like the sign-up sheet had. More erasure. More performative bullshit, just like them selling rainbow merch to make money off the LGBTQ2IA+ community while doing little else to show actual support for us in a way that doesn’t also benefit their profit margin. Why would they have a sign-up form that includes “nonbinary/other” but then only post about men and women? It reminds me of the person on a Zoom call last week who listed his pronouns in his name but misgendered me three times, with no apology, even after I corrected him.
All of this is on top of the fact that the 2023 holiday fundraiser supported the Salvation Army, one of the most notoriously homophobic nonprofits in the US or their partnerships with Chick-Fil-A across the country, another corporation that has donated millions to anti-LGBTQ+ causes globally. And not to mention that when the Edgewater location did this in 2020 and LGBTQ2IA+people and allies commented on Instagram asking questions, they deleted all of our comments and tried to erase and silence us then, too. What happened to doing better for future challenges as the franchise owner told Windy City Times in 2020? It was another lie. The three staff he sent to the training with Andersonville Chamber of Commerce (that I facilitated) quit before I published my previous post, before I talked to corporate, and before WCT covered the story. He told the reporter that they were implementing what they learned, which was yet another lie. I’m pretty sure this is the same owner who told me on a phone call that he “gets it because there’s a they/them at my church.”
It is not okay that anyone is discriminatory, but it’s especially nefarious when it comes from people who talk about inclusivity and equity in their mission. It is clearer than ever, though, that OTF cares more about money, cisgender comfort and transphobia than inclusivity.
I am pretty gracious and patient with people making mistakes. I misgender people by accident sometimes too. We’re human, mistakes happen. It’s the not-even-trying-to-do-better or caring when harm is caused that is an issue. It’s when I’m seen as the problem because I ask people to be inclusive of everyone. I am no longer going to be quiet and let these things just be written off as par for the course. We must stop normalizing this. And we have to stop relying on people who experience this daily to be the only ones speaking up, boycotting or doing anything about it.
If you call yourself an ally, I invite you to speak up about the pervasive cisnormativity and transphobia at your gym, your job, and with your family and friends. Please don’t be complicit in the exclusion and sometimes pure hatred that trans, intersex and gender nonconforming people navigate every day, often in silence. We need you to be actively standing up for us. And note that real solidarity and allyship often does call for you to give something up, like a membership to the gym you like or that’s close to home.
What else can I do?
If you’re a member at any OrangeTtheory, cancel your membership until OTF globally addresses the issues listed below.
Tell other members to boycott.
Email, call and @ Orangetheory’s main accounts and any local franchises near you demanding they address their transphobic practices and fake, performative commitments in their mission.
Leave reviews on Google, Yelp and your local OTF studio’s Facebook page about their harmful and exclusionary practices. Tell them to fix their unscientific and transphobic workouts and systems.
Demand that OTF studios across the world:
Add more options to “gender” on the app, heart rate monitor and in-body machine. At a minimum, offer a disclaimer acknowledging there are limited options.
Differentiate sex and gender and explain why you need to know this information about your members.
Add intersex to your list of male and female.
Clarify if you’re asking for sex assigned at birth, legal gender marker and/or gender identity and why you need this information.
Include intersex and nonbinary people in everything, including contests and social media posts across all gyms worldwide.
Invest in trans-affirming training for all current staff and implement onboarding training for new staff (or at minimum, tell them to not gender people without their consent e.g. sir/ma’am and Mr/Mrs/Miss)
Stop partnering with the Salvation Army
Donate all proceeds from your rainbow merchandise to Ilya Parker who is working to build a physical space for their trans-affirming workouts
Here are some images you can post on your social media.
In the meantime, for harm reduction, OTF can:
Explain (on all paperwork and on OTF’s website) which “gender” trans, intersex and nonbinary people should select with your current 2 options + why.
Explain what your monitors and machines (and anywhere else you input demographic information) is actually measuring. Is it hormone levels? Does it have to do with chromosomal makeup? Do you actually need this info?
Apologize for the harm you’ve caused. Apologize for making empty promises to do better.