We live in a world where we are expected to fit in, this is true for transgender women as well. We are expected to "pass." For those that don't know, passing is where you look like a cis-gendered woman to the extent that if you don't tell anyone, people don't know that you're trans. A lot has been written about passing in other places, so I’ll leave you this:
I would if I could, but I can’t, so I shan't.
Now down to the purpose of this post. I like rugby (do you understand my blurb on passing?). It’s much more entertaining than American football. I like it so much that I want to play. Now as a trans woman, you need to make sure of a number of things if you want to play a sport, most important among them, are you allowed to. So, I spent some time on Saturday searching for and finding a local woman’s rugby club and found that they are looking for players for the new season. I chatted with the woman monitoring their Facebook page and discussed possibly trying out. I was upfront about my transgender status and my age. I told her that my fitness level left a lot to be desired and that my talents in the sport were dubious, and yet she still wanted me to come out, she was very welcoming.
She wasn’t sure of the rules from her rugby union regarding transgender players but thought that there may be a hormone replacement requirement of six months. Folks, I got that hands down. Since I’m a naturally curious person I decided to do a little research on my own and found that USA Rugby does not have an independent policy on transgender women playing, instead, they use World Rugby’s gender policy (https://assets.usarugby.org/docs/medical/Gender_Policy_EN.pdf) Which stipulates that in order for a transgender person to play on a team that matches their gender, the player will have had have undergone gender confirmation surgery. I was crushed! Here was a welcoming group where I might have fit in and I can’t play due to a policy that was put in place more than ten years ago. Even the Olympics have no surgical requirements, just hormones.
Now in the interest of fairness, World Rugby does say on their website, that they are going to review their transgender policy after the Olympic Committee changed their rules (http://playerwelfare.worldrugby.org/?documentid=175).
What it comes down to, for me, is that I want to play. I’m sure that some of you out there will think that I would have an unfair advantage. Medical research indicates that that is not the case (Jones, Arcelus, Bouman, & Haycraft, 2017) . I’m not going to get into all of the medical reasoning, but I want to point out that I would not be the largest, tallest, or fastest player on the field.
Back to my desire to play rugby, the person I talked to still want’s me to a practice, for me that’s a win. I may not be able to play this year, but maybe, just maybe, there is hope for the future.
Hugs and Kisses,
Vicki
References
Jones, B. A., Arcelus, J., Bouman, W. P., & Haycraft, E. (2017). Sport and Transgender People: A Systematic Review of the Literature Relating to Sport Participation and Competitive Sport Policies. Sports Medicine (Auckland, N.z.), 701-716.
