Prepare to shed a tear.
Alix Fitzgerald takes a deep breath, conscious of articulating* her point in the clearest possible terms. “The only way I can describe this,” she begins, her voice tinged with sadness, “is that it’s like grief. “It’s like something has been ripped away.”
*[conscious of the need to articulate]
Fitzgerald, a proud trans woman, is mourning the loss of rugby. She had been an active member of East London RFC women’s team, but the Rugby Football Union’s ban on players “assigned male at birth” in female contact rugby last month prematurely spelt the end of her career.
I don’t give one single teeny tiny shit. Why should I? What about the woman who isn’t on the team because Fitzgerald, a man, is? What about her grief? What about what was ripped away from her? Why are we being nudged to feel lachrymose sympathy for a selfish man intruding on women and taking one woman’s place?
The rationale for the controversial decision, which echoed others made by British Cycling and swimming’s world governing body this year, was simple. Given the limited scientific research currently available on trans women, rugby’s governing body argued that the safety of female players could no longer be guaranteed.
The decision doesn’t need a “rationale.” Women’s sports are for women. That’s the whole point of them.
Fearing a ban on trans women was imminent, the 54-year-old front rower turned out for every single game for her club last year – a record she is fiercely proud of.
Women don’t need men being fiercely proud of stealing places in women’s sports. Men are not the underdogs in this scenario, so their ferocity is not that of the plucky underdog but instead that of the bigger stronger faster overdog, so get out of here with that manipulative crap.
On the day the ban was passed, Fitzgerald chose to stay at home, numbed, she says, “by a huge sense of rejection”. The phone rang. It was a member from her rugby club who wanted to check in on her. “My wife, Anne, picked it up. I couldn’t take the call. It was the second worst day of my life,” she reflects.
Diddums. Has he ever thought about how the woman he’s replacing feels?
Updating to add:
One trans woman who did turn up to voice her disappointment was Julie Curtiss. The Hove RFC player had been liaising with the RFU’s welfare officers in early June – more than a month before news of the ban on trans women was announced – having been invited to play for the Sussex women’s veteran team at a competition this autumn.
“I personally don’t think that the people who are running around and trying to influence various sports bodies have women’s sport at heart,” insists Curtiss. “I don’t think any of them are particularly interested in women’s sport, ultimately. I think their main thing is to try to systematically go through each of the sectors of society where we want to exist and kick us out.”
So we’re supposed to think Curtiss has women’s sport at heart? Ha. Curtiss has Curtiss at heart.
After the vote, the body reached out to Curtiss and suggested there were several other avenues she could explore, such as coaching or refereeing. While she does have aspirations to coach, doing so right now would be “tacitly agreeing to what the RFU has done” and a reminder of the marginalisation of the trans community across sport.
You can’t do both. You can’t both mess with your hormones and be “included” across sport. That’s not “marginalisation,” it’s just sport.
“It’s taken me back into that fear place, where I’m reminded by institutions that I’m not ‘woman’ enough,” says Curtiss. “It’s really hard to quantify exactly what that means but it has really knocked my self-confidence and my ability to operate in society.”
It hasn’t made the slightest dent in his self-involvement though.
