In late February of 2025, Trump ordered USA Rugby, the national governing body for collegiate and professional rugby in the U.S., change its eligibility policy to consist of a cisgender women’s division, a cisgender men’s division, and an open division for anyone regardless of sex assigned at birth.
Having played collegiate level rugby for a little over a year, I can say with full confidence that this rule change, while out of USA Rugby’s control, is both devastating and unnecessary. Rugby is a game proud of its inclusive nature, especially among women’s teams. At rugby games and tournaments is where I’ve met some of the kindest and most sincere people ever, and where I’ve met multiple transgender athletes.
Rugby is a physical game. There is no doubt about that. I would leave tournaments with turf rashes all over my legs, skinned elbows, bruises, and something that may or may not have been a concussion (never checked). However, I can say with 100% confidence that the transgender athletes I met on the pitch were not utilizing some sort of inherent testosterone-fueled physical supremacy over me.
It barely occurred to me in the moment of the game and looking back on my time, the people who were constantly knocking me on my ass were always the girls who would have played football if they could. Not the one or two transgender athletes who play because it’s the only sport that would welcome them. Lots of local rugby clubs have rejected the policy change. Many of these small clubs aren’t directly monitored by USA Rugby at every game and as such have no reason to bow to their policies.
To engage with the false narrative of physical ability is to stoop to a transphobe’s level. This attack is not about “saving women’s sports” or making it “fair”. It is about normalizing a culture war against transgender people and painting them as villainous and malicious.
After the legalization of gay marriage, the right had to find a new target since it became repulsive to most of society for them to target cisgender gay people. Hateful and irrevocably false rhetoric about transgender people has become a mainstream political talking point. Earlier this month, Kansas passed legislation that made all drivers’ licenses with a changed sex marker invalid. Overnight, hundreds of people’s IDs were invalidated.
This cultural move was not, however, just a project of the right. Some activists sinisterly insist on preserving the status quo. Their extent of demands ended where the powers that be say it should end. Once marriage equality was achieved, many people decided that gay people must lay low and be “good” and that pushing for transgender equality was too disruptive to the status quo. In late 2010, some activist groups suggested focusing on the ways gay relationships are equal to straight relationships instead of marriage equality. In 1973, Syliva Rivera was booed at the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally by LGB people in the crowd. There are organizations formed to specifically advocate for a divide between the LGB and the T, abandoning their trans siblings for the approval of… who exactly? To be authentic in your gender expression and to live your life in the ways that make you happy can mean becoming unpalatable to the cisgender, heterosexual elites, and we should prefer that to people subduing themselves for approval.
The endless pearl-clutching and moral panicking over transgender athletes is only a small part of a larger manufactured outrage. It sounds conspiratorial and maybe tinfoil-hat-like, but I do believe that this is intended to keep people distracted and infighting while the people in power – that we try so hard to appeal to for rights – continue to wage unnecessary wars, fund genocide and commit unspeakable crimes behind closed doors. It’s smoke and mirrors, and it feels like everybody has fallen for it.
Go join a local rugby club for a practice or two and engage with some proud LGBT people and allies. Even though the federal and local governments are trying to force a divide between transgender people and their passions, there are pockets of people resisting everywhere. Local rugby will always be with you.
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