British Trans Woman Player Discusses Challenges in Men's Soccer
(Reuters) -Natalie Washington, a British transgender woman who plays women's football, said the Football Association’s move to ban trans women from the sport could force many transgender women out of football completely.
Washington, who is also the campaign lead for the group Football v Transphobia, said returning to men's football would be potentially unsafe and mentally challenging.
Transgender women will be banned from playing in women's soccer in England from June 1 after the FA changed its policy following a UK Supreme Court ruling that only biological women met the legal definition of a woman under equality laws.
The governing body said they were in the process of contacting registered transgender women currently playing in England to explain the changes and how they can continue to stay involved in the game. The Scottish FA has also banned transgender women from women's football.
Washington, one of around 28 trans women registered to play amateur football in England, told the BBC the policy change was shocking.
"It is a de facto ban for transgender women from football more generally, realistically, particularly people who have been playing in women's football for decades," the 41-year-old said in an interview on Thursday.
"It's going to be very mentally challenging and actually potentially physically dangerous for those people to go back and play in the men's game - if they ever even did play in the men's game.
"So really this is pushing those people out of football altogether."
Washington, who has undergone genital reconstruction surgery, previously played in a men's league but joined a women's team in 2017, the BBC said. "I didn't feel it was a safe place to transition," she said of men's football.
"The effect that hormones have had means when I do play an occasional five-a-side kickabout with men, I don't feel like I can compete with men my sort of age and with similar physical characteristics."
The FA had allowed transgender women to play in the women's game as long as they kept their testosterone levels below 5 nanomoles per litre (n/mol) for at least 12 months.
Former chairman of the FA David Triesman, told local media there should be "consequences for the most senior FA officers" who took the decision to previously allow transgender women in women's soccer.
"The FA has finally seen sense. It would have been the utmost foolishness to disregard the Supreme Court," he said.
(Reporting by Shifa Jahan in Bengaluru; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
