Introduction
Insights from Sam Lewis, President of The Flying Bats Football Club, the oldest and largest LGBTQIA+ women’s and non-binary community football club in the world. Sam spoke at the Progress 2026 conference which was hosted by Australian Progress on March 24-25 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in Narrm/Melbourne.
This article was produced by The Commons Library to enable ongoing learning.
Football for All?
The Flying Bats Football Club are based in Sydney’s Inner West in Australia. Founded in 1985, the Flying Bats has spent four decades creating a safe and inclusive space where women and gender-diverse people across the community can experience the many benefits of sport including physical and mental health, social connection, purpose, confidence, value and belonging. The club’s mission is “football for good, football for all”.
Sport plays a powerful role in society, and can be used as a platform to create significant and long-lasting change. While we started out as a club for lesbians, we’ve evolved over the years to become a space that welcomes everybody from across the rainbow family. – Flying Bats Website, Source
However, the Flying Bats found themselves at the centre of a growing culture war. The club faced false and misleading headlines, attacks from shock jocks, abuse on social media, stalking, doxxing, deadnaming, vandalism and threats directed at players. It became a target of anti-trans hate.
Much of the battle not only took place on the football field but also in the narrative space.
Progressive movements are losing the public narrative battle for trans inclusion, with sport and healthcare the two biggest canaries in the coal mine. Anti trans voices dominate the platforms and mastheads that much of the world consumes, giving them the power to shape how the public, as well as decision makers, think, feel and behave. – Sam Lewis
Reframing the Story
The Flying Bats recognised that the struggle for trans inclusion was therefore not only about access to sport. It was also about who got to shape the story. So the club used its position in community sport to challenge harmful narratives and build solidarity.
One of the team members, Riley Dennis, became the human face of the campaign.
The team agreed that Riley’s personal story would have the greatest potential impact. Rather than responding directly to hostile commentary or debating the issue on its opponents’ terms, they wanted to put a human story at the centre of the conversation.
They connected with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s ABC 7.30 program to tell Riley’s story to a wider audience.
The goal was to shift the public frame. The dominant narrative presented trans women as men seeking to dominate women’s sport. The Flying Bats wanted to challenge that framing by showing something much more ordinary: that trans women, like many other women across Australia, simply want to play sport, spend time with friends, and be part of a community without fear or harm.
The story was reframed around a simple message: Trans women wanted to play sport without fear, just like everyone else.
The club identified several key messages to anchor the story:
- A love of sport
Riley was a footballer who simply wanted to play the game she loved. - Community and belonging
The Flying Bats provided friendship, connection and a place to belong. - Safety and dignity
Players should be able to participate in sport without harassment, abuse or fear. - A human story
Rather than making the story about an abstract political debate, Riley became the person audiences could connect with.
Shifting the public frame was our goal. We needed to challenge the wide narrative that trans women are men wanting to dominate women’s sport. Like so many other women in Australia, they just wanted to play sport with friends without fear or harm. – Sam Lewis
Transgender soccer player speaks out after vilification went international, ABC 7.30
Transgender soccer player Riley Dennis has won a court case over vilification against her that went international. Speaking exclusively to 7.30, she has detailed her trauma.
From Storytelling to Campaigning
The Flying Bats were conscious that telling one personal story might not be enough to shift the broader narrative. The media story needed to be supported by a campaign that gave people a way to act.
They launched a petition, Petition – Help us protect LGBTQIA+ Inclusion in sport directed at Football Australia. The petition created a clear action alongside the media coverage, allowing supporters to move from empathy to participation.
The campaign was promoted widely through the Flying Bats’ networks, including their mailing list, media contacts, queer sporting clubs in Australia and overseas and allied organisations. The campaign also attracted support from politicians and generated significant public attention.
The club also launched a 40th anniversary Flying Bats jersey, connecting the campaign to the club’s history and four decades of creating inclusive sporting spaces.
A central campaign message was: Attacks on trans women are attacks on all women.
The campaign deliberately combined the personal story with a structural story. Riley’s experience provided a human point of connection, creating empathy between the audience and a person directly affected by the issue. The broader campaign then connected that experience to questions of power, responsibility and injustice.
This approach helped frame the issue not simply as a debate about trans participation in sport, but as a question of who had power, who was vulnerable to harm and who had a responsibility to act.
By combining a human story with a clear injustice and a pathway for action, the Flying Bats were able to turn media attention into a campaign, building a bridge between empathy and collective action.
Lessons from the Campaign
The Flying Bats’ experience highlighted several lessons about using storytelling, media and campaigning to shift public narratives.
- Have a personal story that builds empathy…
Putting a person at the centre of the story helped audiences connect emotionally with an issue that was often presented as an abstract political debate. - … And a structural story that builds a sense of injustice.
Connecting the personal experience to the wider systems, institutions and power structures behind the issue helps generate anger and a desire for change. - Use the community that already exists.
The Flying Bats were able to amplify the campaign through their existing networks of players, supporters, queer sporting clubs, allied organisations and media contacts. - Create a pathway from story to action.
The petition gave people who had connected with the story a concrete way to take action and show their support. - Think about how impact could be measured.
Beyond media coverage and reach, campaigns could consider how to assess whether a story had shifted attitudes, generated new supporters, changed political conversations or moved people to take action. - Find new audiences and new places to tell the story.
Campaigners could look beyond their existing supporters and ask where else the story could be told and which audiences might help “move the middle” of public opinion.
Ultimately, the campaign showed that changing a narrative was not simply about telling a better story. It was about telling a compelling story, building empathy and a sense of injustice, mobilising an existing community, reaching new audiences and giving people a way to act.
Watch Videos
Playing against prejudice: The community sports team fighting homophobia and transphobia, SBS Audio
For over 40 years, the Flying Bats Football Club has been a safe space for LGBTIQ+ women and non-binary people. But the recent spotlight on transgender athletes has triggered a spate of misinformation targeting their teams.
Examines Extra: How a community football club got caught up in a culture war, SBS
In this extended interview, SBS Examines hears how the world’s largest LGBTIQ+ women’s and non-binary football club is facing the real-world consequences of misinformation on their community.
About the Speaker
Sam Lewis (she/they) is the President of The Flying Bats Football Club, the biggest and longest-running LGBTQIA+ women’s and non-binary soccer club in Australia. She is also a women’s football journalist, podcaster, and advocate, having covered all levels of the game from grassroots through to World Cups for organisations including the Guardian, ABC, ESPN, and SBS.
Explore Further
- Flying Bats Football Club
- Gender & Sex Diversity Policy, Flying Bats Football Club
- Supporting Transgender and Gender Diverse People in Organising and Campaigning
- Fighting Disinformation and Transphobia with Alex Kelly and Jackie Turner
- The Anti-Trans Disinformation Handbook, Trans Justice Project
- The Anti-Trans Movement Framework
