The Football Association’s change to its transgender policy, stating that transgender women and girls will no longer be allowed to play affiliated women’s and girls’ football in England and Scotland next season, feels both surprising and expected.
Trans rights groups anticipated that the Supreme Court’s ruling last month would have implications for access to single-sex spaces. Most sports have legislated against transgender athletes’ participation at both the elite and grassroots levels, among them the Rugby Football Union, the England and Wales Cricket Board, British Cycling, UK Athletics and British Triathlon. Within the last three years, World Aquatics, World Athletics and the World Chess Federation have also all banned any athlete not assigned female at birth from competing in the women’s category.
However, women’s football and the Football Association have taken a different standpoint — until now. The FA’s previous stance was to honour the gender identity of transgender women who wanted to play in women’s leagues without sacrificing fair and safe competition, through a testosterone-suppression model to ensure blood testosterone levels remained “within the natal female range” and that assessments of safety and fair competition were kept.
In an…
