Brass neck
Crowd justice:
Fighting the ban on trans women in rugby
by Julie-Anne Curtiss
Curtiss blurbs himself:
I am a human being. Beyond that I am a transgender woman & believe that trans-rights are human rights. The purpose of this campaign is to challenge the legitimacy of RFU’s ban on trans-women in rugby.
Trans people should have human rights as all humans should. Men playing women’s rugby is not a human right.
Who am I
First and foremost, I am a human being. I happen to love playing rugby. I also happen to be trans. Following transition, I started playing rugby for an amateur women’s club. Anyone who loves sport will know how much community is built within a team: for the first time I was able to play the game I loved, as myself.
He can say he “happens to be” trans all he likes, but that doesn’t change the fact that male people don’t get to play in women’s sports.
In July 2022, the RFU essentially decided to ban all trans women & girls from playing rugby at all levels. This meant I was suddenly unable to play the game I have loved my whole life, simply because I am a trans woman.
No, not because he’s a trans woman; because he’s a man.
I don’t think this is fair and I am here to challenge it.
So he does think it’s fair for men to endanger women and cheat them in sports. What a peculiar notion of what is fair and what isn’t.
The new RFU policy has resulted in me suddenly not being able to participate in amateur women’s contact rugby this season because I am trans.
No, dude, because you’re a dude.
The first part of the process is the ‘pre-action’ stage. For this, my solicitors sent a pre-action letter to the RFU asking it to explain why it thinks its new policy is lawful.
We have now received a response to our pre-action letter. We are not able to provide the RFU’s response because it is confidential, but I can confirm that the RFU seems intent on defending its policy.
I should damn well hope so. You seem intent on cheating women out of their own sports.
What a contemptible piece of dung.
This lie in particular gets told so often, that some people might even begin to believe it’s true:
The RFU has never banned trans women and girls from playing rugby. No sport has banned trans women and girls from playing. They’ve just continued to prohibit, or returned to prohibiting, men from playing in women’s competitions, no matter how they identify.
Curtiss, like any trans woman, remains perfectly able to play the game he has loved his whole life. He can play any sport he likes the same way he did before he began to identify as a trans woman – in men’s competitions, or in mixed-sex competitions, if they’ll have him. He just can’t play it in a women’s competition, because women are also people with rights, and he doesn’t get to take women’s rights away because of his feelings.
Such fragile, tender feelings. Does he mean to say he just now started playing rugby? Or just now started playing rugby as a ‘transwoman.’ Because if he thinks that this is just a thing he can do because the competition is a different level accessible to him, then that furthers the insult to women.
He’s 52. He’s overweight. He’d never qualify for a man’s rugby team, but that’s not the problem of the women he wants to get in a scrum with.
“…RFU’s ban on trans-women in rugby.” The standard lie. No such thing, and the author knows it. He continues, with my emphasis: “the RFU essentially decided to ban all trans women & girls from playing rugby at all levels.” Why the qualifier if the ban was literally against trans women in rugby at all? Curtiss is another liar lying by weasel word.
Liar. The RFU did not “ban trans women in rugby.”. You can still play rugby. You’re not banned. You can still play — as you’ve done up to now — in the men’s division.
Liar. You have always played “as yourself.” It’s the only way to play. No matter where you go, there you are. Some men may wish they were women, and prefer feminine stereotypes. If your fellow male players aren’t used to that, then work on “building a community” with your fellow male players, so they understand how to get along with men “who happen to be trans” on their men’s teams.
Liar. RFU never “ban[ned] all trans women & girls from playing rugby at all levels.” You can still play at any level you qualify for in the men’s division.
Liar again. You were never “unable to play” the game you claim to love. If it was really about playing a sport you love, then you would continue to play, as always, in the men’s division.
Liar, liar, liar.
The entitlement of these jerks is off the scale.