In honor of Pride Month, Zwift is celebrating its LGBTQI+ community with riding and running events throughout June. These Pride events will be a safe space for all. And they’re happening Tuesdays and Saturdays all month.
LGBTQI+ community members and allies are leading the group rides. Keep an eye out for some special guests joining throughout the month, too! The pace? Casual—the ideal speed for getting to know fellow Zwifters. LGBTQI+ community members and allies are also leading group runs. These workouts are for athletes of all skill levels. We encourage runners to join ahead of time to share support before the start of the event.
Special guest ride leaders include:
Stephanie Labbé - Olympian and goalkeeper for Canada’s Women’s National Soccer Team.
Complete any event to unlock this year’s PRIDE kit, which includes a jersey or tech T-shirtt and socks.
In addition to the in-game events, Zwift is giving back to the LGBTQI+ community. We’re supporting Athlete Ally with a $25,000 donation to help the non-profit make sports more inclusive and diverse.
Athlete Ally believes that everyone should have equal access, opportunity, and experience in sports—regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
Their mission? To end homophobia and transphobia in sport and to activate the athletic community to exercise their leadership to champion LGBTQI+ equality.
So, I love the initiative, and look forward to joining a ride…
But…
Zwift is still the only online fitness site I use that doesn’t have non-binary options for gender. I understand with Zwift there are character models etc which could make things interesting (though other games have gotten around that by allowing avatar selection seperate to gender). My situation is a little different, I’m transitioning to femme, and am happy with a female gender marker and avatar, but I don’t really want to be counted in womens results for the time being. Anti androgens are working their wonders, but they’ve still got work to do on my old time-trialist pins. (That’s how I feel for me, it’s not my position on trans people in sport)
Hiya @Claire_S
Glad you raised this issue, because it’s one that Zwift has been working on for some time. It’s a multifaceted issue that goes beyond the binary gender options we offer at the moment.
If you look at Zwift as “just a game” then it’d be simpler to offer a range of non-binary identities that have no repercussions outside the Zwift bubble. Because Zwift partners with national cycling federations to offer e-sport national championship title races, the non-binary identity options Zwift could readily implement inside our bubble have real-world implications.
We’ve been consulting with Athlete Ally on our rules for e-sports competition. At present, racers taking part in community races may participate in the gender category that they identify with.
For federation national championship events or UCI events, participants must adhere to the rules set by their own national federation or by the UCI.
Gender-fluid Zwifters (or those in the process of transitioning) can request to change their avatar’s gender selection by reaching out to us at support@zwift.com
That’s great, but one of the first choices when creating an account is to choose either Male or Female – which is excluding non-binary athletes.
This is an opportunity for zwift to really lead the way in creating an inclusive environment for all athletes. I hope you can work with members of the community to find a better solution.
Right?? Athlete Ally works in many sports to lobby different national federations for broader gender inclusivity, which is why Zwift supports their work.
As far as the binary account settings - Zwift is very much aware. We’re working on it.
At the very least, Zwift could change the description of the field – instead of “this is your gender” it could be “this is the gender category you compete as” (with men’s/open and women’s) as the two options – there are probably slightly better ways to word that but the idea should be clear – make it clearly about category rather than identity. Changing nothing except the wording, but at least acknowledging it right up-front. Still doesn’t allow for avatar flexibility etc, but is a change that could happen much more quickly.
I agree. I’m new to Zwift (love it!) and struggled with choosing a gender. I went with male initially because I feel more comfortable with the male avatar but may change to female for more accurate power calculation, etc. Both my current (large) male avatar and the female avatars seem wrong. I’d love a more androgynous one.
