On a chilly winter night in Melbourne, Em Fox braves the cold for footy training.
She's happy to be here because 10 years ago she thought she'd never play again.
"2012 was the last year where I played in men's football competitions," she said.
"I always found playing in men's teams challenging, even though I might have been presenting outwardly as a masculine identity.
"It was not how I felt, and being in that hyper-masculine environment was very uncomfortable.
"So when I decided not to play football anymore, I thought that was going to have a lot of finality to it."
She went on to become the first openly transgender woman in the women's VFL. But tonight, she's training with the Melbourne University Women's Football Club.
"Melbourne University Football Club has had a lot of transgender athletes playing for this club, long before I was even playing women's football," she said.
"This place here has been really at the forefront."
An estimated one in 10 members of the club are trans or gender diverse — including Em Collard.
"When I joined, I joined at a time I wasn't out, in terms of being non-binary yet.
"So I guess I had the opportunity to make friends and then explore gender identity through that."
However, not every club or sport is so welcoming.
Scientific evidence not settled
Last month, swimming's world governing body, FINA, voted to bar transgender women from the elite women's competition if they had experienced any part of male puberty.
International Rugby League followed suit with a temporary ban, and cycling's governing body set stricter rules around testosterone levels and transition times for transgender athletes.
The science group behind the FINA policy found transgender women maintained a performance advantage over female athletes if they underwent male puberty before transitioning, but it is unclear how it reached that conclusion.
Associate Professor Ada Cheung says there simply is not enough evidence available for an evidence-based policy.
"I understand the need for people participating in elite sport to have guidelines and policies," she said.
Dr Cheung believes the debate around transgender athletes is disproportionate to the perceived problem.
"Even if you look at the Olympics … trans people have been allowed to participate since 2004," she said.
"But since that time, of 71,000 Olympians, there's only been two openly trans women compete, and one of them came last and the other came 37th out of 42."
There are few publicly available studies looking at the impacts of hormone therapy on performance, and the ones that are available have major limitations.
One which is often cited found the only real performance gap after two years of feminising hormones was that trans women ran on average 12 per cent faster — but that looked at US military personnel, not athletes.
Another study found trans women who underwent hormone therapy generally maintained their strength levels after one year, but that did not look at athletes either.
Dr Cheung said the evidence was anything but clear.
"I often use the analogy, if you imagine a four-wheel drive but it's being powered by a hatchback engine.
"So the muscle mass and the muscle strength is low, but the frame is bigger."
Striking the right balance
Former pro golfer and trans woman Mianne Bagger is broadly supportive of FINA's policy — a view at odds with many in the trans community.
She was the first openly trans woman to play a professional golf tournament at the Australian Open in 2004.
"When I got into sport, obviously, there was that requirement for surgery and two-year ineligibility," she said.
"In 2015, that changed to no surgery and 12 months' ineligibility.
"Now, in some places, in some sports, it's going to merely self-ID with no medical intervention. And that's wholly unacceptable."
Bagger has empathy for sports administrators as they try to create transgender policies that balance fairness and inclusion.
"Of course, everyone should have access to sport for the sheer enjoyment, the community, the benefit to personal life," she said.
"Give kids access, find a way to get kids playing sport.
"But when you get to the elite level of sport — the Olympics, professional sport — this is about people's livelihoods, earning money and medals.
"It doesn't matter what policy develops, someone is going to be discriminated against.
"And really, when it comes to women and girls sport, the one group that shouldn't be discriminated against is women and girls."
Sporting bodies are continuing to grapple with how to provide a level playing field for athletes.
But trans and gender-diverse players like Em Collard say the debate about them and their bodies has been anything but fair.
"All we're trying to do is feel comfortable in our own skin and be a part of our communities and celebrate who we are as trans and gender diverse people," they said.
"So when people say really horrible things about us mutilating our bodies or like, trying to get unfair advantage in sport, we're not trying to do that at all.
