By Ariana Castro (she/her)
Photo by Ariana Castro/OutWrite
Content warning: transphobia
When applying to the UCLA Women’s Rugby team, Kelsey (she/her), a trans female undergraduate in her first transfer year at UCLA, was optimistic. In the past, she had played U19 rugby as a prop and flanker for three years.
“I didn’t know there was a UCLA Women’s Rugby team until I went to Cookies and Queers and [they] had been looking for players. That right there was my indication; you would not be here at Cookies and Queers at UCLA if you were not prepared for the idea of transgender women joining your team or wanting to play,” Kelsey recalled.
Since she had moved from Mississippi and begun transitioning in 2020, she had dismissed the idea of playing college rugby altogether. After coming across the team, she was thrilled that her favorite sport might include her at UCLA.
The barriers to playing women’s rugby
To her surprise, she faced several medical and legal barriers while applying for the team. UCLA Women’s Rugby required not only a basic physical checkup but also blood work to record her testosterone levels. Given their limited advisory resources, team leadership fell back on USA Rugby’s policies for trans female athletes.
USA Rugby is the governing body of 15-player rugby union in the United States. In adherence with the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s 2015 Consensus Meeting on Sex Reassignment and Hyperandrogenism, which has been updated and replaced by a 2021 framework, the national member union has taken steps to expand trans athletes’ eligibility for national competitions.
However, this eligibility is currently limited and heavily skewed. Trans men are able to compete in USA Rugby-sanctioned rugby without restrictions, whereas USA Rugby requires trans women to “demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition.” Their testosterone must remain at this level throughout the season, risking a 12-month suspension if it surpasses this threshold.
Under USA Rugby guidelines, opposing teams can challenge trans women’s eligibility at any time throughout the season by repeating the evaluation process. Although the scarcity of trans female rugby players means such challenges are rare, the implications are worrisome. In addition to limiting time spent on the field, trans female athletes would face the trauma of repeatedly undergoing an invasive medical evaluation, proving their identity, and navigating gender dysphoria.
These additional hurdles reminded Kelsey of the conservative environment she left behind. “Why are Mississippi thinking and Mississippi worldviews holding me back [and] making me miss practices?” Kelsey said. She emphasized how disappointing it was that her participation was controversial even at UCLA, “one of the largest, most well-funded, most progressive universities in the nation.”
By deferring to USA Rugby procedures, UCLA Women’s Rugby and, by extension, the university potentially violated Title IX, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in education programs receiving federal financial assistance.
Kelsey understood it was not the intention of the UCLA Women’s Rugby team to discriminate against her on the basis of her transgender identity. If she were to join the team, she would be the first trans female athlete in UCLA Women’s Rugby history.
Banned from participation at the international level
World Rugby is the global governing body for the sport of rugby union. Their guidelines for transgender women state that trans women “who transitioned post-puberty and have experienced the biological effects of testosterone during puberty and adolescence cannot currently play women’s rugby.”
It cites that the higher levels of testosterone in biological males during puberty result in “larger and denser lean muscle mass,” “greater force-producing capacity of skeletal muscle,” and “stiffer connective tissue” than in biological females, among other physiological markers.
“The media has focused on a few outliers who have breakthroughs in their sport,” said Kelsey. “And it’s unfortunate that their athletic excellence gets called into question merely because of some factor of their biology they can’t control.”
She echoes the outcry of many trans players and activists who find data on trans athletes sexist and unreliable. Some trans women may possess physical abilities advantageous to their sport, but natural variations in anatomy are equally present in cis women.
By comparison, World Rugby’s guidelines permit transgender men to participate in men’s rugby regardless of the timeline of their transition. Kelsey warns that the implications of these discriminatory trans policies affect everyone: “If a woman is too good, she must be a man and excellence means something contrary to femininity. The flip side of this, too, is the way this affects trans men. They’re not man enough for it to be a problem.”
Despite differing from rugby union in its rules and governing body, 13-player rugby league similarly restricts trans women. The International Rugby League (IRL), rugby league’s governing body, released a statement last year announcing that “male-to-female (trans women) players are unable to play in sanctioned women’s international rugby league matches.”
“The IOC concluded that it is the remit of each sport and its governing body to determine how an athlete may be at a disproportionate advantage compared with their peers — taking into consideration the differing nature of each sport,” the statement read, in reference to the IOC’s 2021 Framework on Fairness, Non-Discrimination and Inclusion on the Basis of Gender Identity and Sex Variations. This decision stands in stark contrast to the IRL Women and Girls Advisory Group’s vision to ensure that “any female, any age, anywhere can participate in rugby league” and principle 3.1 of the IOC framework, which instructs on eligibility criteria that “does not systematically exclude athletes from competition based upon their gender identity, physical appearance, and/or sex variations.”
Moving forward without the promise of joining a once-safe space
Kelsey’s primary and transgender care physician at the UCLA Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center consulted UCLA Recreation and Ashe’s gender care team regarding her eligibility to play. Since UCLA Women’s Rugby competes at a club level, they concluded that USA Rugby’s policies do not apply to her or the team.
“At the same time, these are just assurances from my physician and comments from various departments, but that’s obviously not anything in writing or anything legally binding,” Kelsey reflected.
Weeks of waiting for answers has caused Kelsey a great deal of stress and despair. Amidst her personal journey of healing, she came to the difficult decision to no longer pursue rugby at UCLA. At the end of this challenge, she considers: “Why am I going to internalize this and feel what is ultimately shame when the shame should be on the university, for making this an issue? Why am I the one who should be made to feel like the troublemaker for just wanting to play a sport?”
Credits:
Author: Ariana Castro (She/Her)
Artist: Ariana Castro (She/Her)
Copy Editors: JQ Shearin (She/Her), Emma Blakely (They/She/He)