A trans-identified male in Germany is suing a women’s gym after having his membership cancelled for challenging their “no penis” policy. Joseph Bellissimo, also known as Jake “Marlene” Bellissimo or “Avelo,” admitted to deliberately targeting the gym after hearing that they had turned away other trans-identified males.
Bellissimo was originally born in the United States, but moved to Germany and started an independent record label. He currently works as a self-described comedian, musician, and activist. In 2024, Bellissimo was featured on a season of The Voice Germany.
Bellissimo first took to social media to complain about the gym’s policies in October of last year, posting a TikTok video where he claimed to have signed up to a women’s gym in Berlin and began using the facilities over a period of two weeks. One day, Bellissimo called the gym and asked them to confirm their policies on trans-identified males. A staff member reportedly told him that males may be permitted but only if they had undergone a vaginoplasty.
“According to the General Equal Treatment Act, that’s illegal,” he says in the video. He then describes visiting the gym to confront the staff in person, who asked if he had been honest about his biological sex or transgender status when he signed up. He was also asked if he had undergone “sex reassignment surgery,” which he refused to answer.
“Legally speaking, I am a woman so I am allowed in the women’s fitness area,” he says. “She asked if I wanted to cancel my membership. I said I did not want to, but if it had to be cancelled I wanted to have a legal reason for it. She told me I would receive an email explaining why.”
Bellissimo was then told he was not permitted to continue working out at the facility.
In December of 2025, Bellissimo announced he was planning to take legal action against the gym for discriminating against trans-identified males. He launched a fundraiser shortly after, seeking financial assistance to carry the cost of the suit.
“My name is Marlene Bellissimo. I am an artist and active online under the name Avelo (@avelospricht). I am also a trans woman and was convinced that I was discriminated against by a women’s gym in Berlin. As I mentioned in my last video on TikTok and Instagram, I therefore decided to take legal action against the studio,” Bellissimo writes in the fundraiser description.
“I successfully enrolled in the studio and trained there for two weeks. Only after I had come out as a trans woman, I was asked if I had performed a gender reassignment operation. I didn’t have to answer that question legally. My ID says ‘female’ and I was initially clearly accepted as a woman – otherwise I would not have been allowed to train there … I tried to resolve the conflict out of court, which unfortunately was not possible. That is why I decided to sue.”
So far, Bellissimo has raised just under 2,000 Euros of his 10,000 Euro goal. He has said he intends to donate any winnings from the case to a “BIPOC and trans community center in Berlin-Kreuzberg.”
In February, Bellissimo was interviewed by a German news outlet where he recounted his experience at the gym and added: “There is no legal difference between a woman with a penis and a woman with a vagina.”
He continued: “It’s not about the safety of women, but about how they have to be. Can she have a deep voice? Short hair? Masculine trains? We see this in the USA, where cis women are thrown out of women’s rooms because they seem masculine. These rules harm all women.”
Bellissimo also admitted to knowing of explicitly trans-friendly gyms in his area, but said he refuses to use them. “I don’t want to provoke. I just want to live my life. Of course, there are also queer gyms, and that’s good – but I don’t want segregation. I just want to be a woman in everyday life.”
But while Bellissimo has presented his case as being a spontaneous instance of alleged discrimination, last week, he appeared on an English-language podcast and admitted that he had been fully aware of the gym’s policies prior to signing up for a membership, and had effectively attempted to “test” the gym.
“I had heard of this fitness studio where someone I knew, a trans woman, was allegedly not allowed to join… I thought, I’m looking for a new place to go, and so I signed up at this gym,” Bellissimo admitted. “People don’t generally clock me as trans in my life. They don’t usually recognize I’m trans. So I thought it would be interesting to see if I could train at this gym. I was successful at registering … I went there a few times over the course of two weeks, and I was making TikTok videos about it because I thought it was an interesting experience I wanted to share with people. After two weeks, I decided I wanted to disclose I am trans.”
Bellissimo said that it was at that point he called the gym pretending to be someone else and confirmed that trans-identified males who had not had genital surgery were not permitted to join as members.
“To my knowledge, that does not appear to be in accordance with the [law],” Bellissimo said, going on to explain that his membership at the gym was then canceled. He alleges that he was later told by a gym staff member that the gym was a “pure women’s fitness studio.”
While the status of Bellissimo’s case is currently unknown, he is likely to benefit from Germany’s extremely strict gender identity protections. In April of 2024, the German federal government passed the Self-Determination ACT (SBGG), which established “gender identity” as a protected characteristic.
Bellissimo is also not the first trans-identified male in Germany to take legal action against a women’s gym for attempting to restrict membership, with another recent case in Erlangen, Bavaria, having been successful.
In that case, Lady’s First fitness studio was ordered by the Independent Federal Commissioner for Anti-Discrimination to pay 1000 Euros to a balding trans-identified male who had been refused access to the women’s shower room.
The man, Laura Holstein, claimed he had been subjected to “personal injury” as a result of being rejected from using the women’s showers, a policy Lady’s First had in place to protect its female Muslim clientele.
GERMANY: A balding trans-identified male is suing a female-only gym for €2,500 after being denied access to the women's showers.
— REDUXX (@reduxx) June 12, 2024
Laura Holstein, 25, launched the suit days after the gym was ordered to pay a €1,000 discrimination fine by the government.https://t.co/WVo3mHvhDN
But Holstein was not satisfied with the ruling, and sought additional compensation after complaining that he had become the victim of a “media witch hunt” after the news broke about his crusade against Lady’s First. Holstein acquired legal representation and sought an even larger payout from the gym.
Following international backlash, Holstein teamed up with a publicly-funded “anti-hate” group to censor media outlets which “misgendered” him or published his photo.
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