As sports release their rules around transgender athletes, veteran rugby player Alice Soper wants New Zealand Rugby to commit to including trans players at grassroots - while making the sport safe for everyone.
This year marks my 20th season playing club rugby. I was recruited, as an enthusiastic 13-year-old, to play for the Johnsonville women’s side.
This was an open grade and my slight frame was up against fully grown adults, some of who were international representatives. My teammates and coaches did their best to equip me with skills I needed to keep me safe.
And that paid off when I made the Wellington Women’s Sevens team that year alongside my school’s sports coordinator.
Local newspapers wrote excitedly about my inclusion. I was a school kid playing women’s rugby which was seemingly no cause for concern. But 20 years later, I am now being told to be afraid of playing women.
Our sport prides itself on being a space where every body type is welcomed and celebrated. It is the combination of our unique shapes and skills that build a team.
The full array of that diversity is on display each weekend at your local club match, where powerfully built front-rowers and lively halfbacks tip each end of the scale. Women’s rugby, while now requiring dispensation for ambitious youngsters, is still an open season. It’s not unusual to see crushing contact between players of vastly different sizes.
So too, given our playing numbers, do you frequently see first-timers stepping on to the pitch with Black Ferns.
There is a look you see in a player’s eyes when they realise they’ve found themselves in a mismatch. A fullback lining up a flanker on the break, a prop realising they are going to have to chase down that winger, a halfback digging in the ruck with no protection. You could argue these moments are what our game was designed for.
But does this all feel safe? Well, we’re not playing tiddlywinks here, mate.
Since 2019, there have been eight requests for dispensation from trans rugby players in New Zealand.
When women first played rugby in Aotearoa in 1888, it was under modified rules to ensure it was “free from all elements of roughness”. Those in charge were convinced that “the female frame cannot stand such a game.”
Those attitudes grew louder in the 1920s when various doctors were recruited to condemn women’s participation. Multiple column inches given to dubious medical opinions that barely masked their misogyny.
This does not feel far off current declarations being made about the risk trans women pose to cis women. Trans men, meanwhile, are seemingly invisible. If male puberty was the lethal threat that it is built up to be, you would think there would be greater concern from administrators for the trans man playing in a league of cis men.
However the erasure of trans men’s participation speaks to sports' long history of policing women’s bodies while encouraging men no matter the risk.
Those sexist attitudes, held by those in positions of power, are still the biggest threat to the women’s game. So forgive me if I find the sudden concern for my welfare disingenuous.
Where were you when your women’s team was moved to the potholed pitch in order for the men to train? Where were you when your women’s team was overlooked again at the award ceremony?
Where were you when complaints were made about that coach's conduct? And why are you here now, to defend me from a minority, when you are seemingly so comfortable with this day-to-day reality?
In 2020, World Rugby issued their guidelines barring transgender women from playing rugby internationally because of "player welfare issues". Now it's up to New Zealand Rugby to lay down its guidelines for the grassroots game, with a draft regulation coming out for consultation in the next few weeks.
Since 2019, there have been eight requests for dispensation from trans rugby players in New Zealand. Despite my obsession with our game, it seems it just isn't that popular with the trans community. And given how they see rugby treats women, queer folk and players who are not of Pākehā decent, I do not blame them.
However, I do welcome them.
For us to make our sport safe for trans men, trans women and non-binary participation, we will need to pull these issues of diversity and inclusion to the fore. We will need to start having real conversations about modernising spaces, diversifying all positions and think hard about what it means to prioritise player welfare both on and off the field.
Simply put, rugby that is safe for trans players is safe for everyone.
Trans folks' existence challenges binary thinking. There will be no one policy that will capture all the shades of difference and concern held by those who play rugby.
However, a commitment to inclusion throws the clubroom doors open to whomever may wish to enjoy our game. The same game that was built to celebrate the full spectrum of bodies after all.
