The RFU initially resisted tracking World Rugby recommendations to ban trans women in 2020, instead favoring a case-by-case approach, but the move to introduce a blanket ban led to a group of protesters gathering outside Twickenham last month.
On the day the ban was passed, Fitzgerald chose to stay at home, numb, she says, “with a tremendous sense of rejection.” The phone rang. It was a member of her rugby club who wanted to check on her. “My wife, Anne, picked it up. I couldn’t answer the call. It was the second worst day of my life,” she recalls.
One trans woman who did show up to express her disappointment was Julie Curtiss. The Hove RFC player had contacted the RFU’s welfare officials in early June – more than a month before the news of the trans women ban was announced – after being invited to play for the Sussex veterans team in a competition this fall.
“The team manager needed a letter from the RFU stating that I was a fully registered trans player,” explains Curtiss, 52. “So I spoke to them about how we are rectifying this. They said, ‘You can’t do anything right now because it’s the off-season. Once the season opens in August, just re-apply and you’ll be fine.’
“I find it extremely unlikely that the RFU did not already conduct these deliberations. If they had, why did they choose not to participate? Looks like they did this whole thing, secret squirrel.’
‘A male coach couldn’t get his head around me because he wasn’t as strong as I appeared to be’
A former semi-professional player on the men’s side of Randburg Diggers in South Africa, Curtiss had been in the closet for years because of her gender identity. She eventually came out as trans in 2016, but it wasn’t until after Covid restrictions were lifted that she decided to return to rugby.
After meeting the then-requirements of the RFU to keep her testosterone levels below 5 n/mol, having been on hormone therapy for at least a year, she joined Seaford RFC. Although the club was welcoming, one particularly unsavory experience stood out.
“One of the male coaches couldn’t help but believe that I wasn’t as strong as I seemed,” she says. “He thought, ‘Oh, this is going to be great, because I can have a trans woman and they’ll cut their way through the opposition.’ He kept running into me, ‘Why don’t you just walk through these people?’ I just wasn’t at that level where I was significantly stronger than anyone else.”