A couple of years ago, Emily, a teenager from Liverpool, approached me after being forced to leave school because of transphobic bullying and violence. Her trauma reminded me of my own youth, when I played on a woman’s rugby team and cried myself to sleep at night knowing I was trans and not a woman, but unable to tell anyone. Or, decades later, in 2017, when I was beaten up by the opposition during a game, and later outed by them as trans to the press.
Women and girls have long faced challenges in accessing sports. This can be seen in a multitude of ways, from the cancellation of the women’s UK cycling tour due to lack of funding to the tens of thousands of hours of lost PE lessons for girls, which were highlighted in the wake of the England Lionesses’ World Cup victory last year.
Now, the weaponisation of unevidenced and ideologically motivated bans on participation are building a new class of discriminated athletes: trans young people.
These new victims are being blamed for injustices not of their making. And in the process, they’re being prevented from taking part in the activities they love – activities they might otherwise have relied on as a safe haven to help them to survive the backlash against them.
The Covid-19 public inquiry is a historic chance to find out what really happened.
As an elite trans athlete and an advocate for trans young people in sport at Mermaids, a charity that supports trans and gender-diverse...
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