“This is a world first to see so many national sporting organisations in Australia coming together to collectively show their support for a particular part of our community,” said Beau Newell, National Program Manager of Pride in Sport Australia, an NGO promoting inclusiveness.
“Everyone should be humbled about this experience.”
Eight Australian sports federations, including peak bodies for tennis, rugby union and Australian Rules football, issued guidelines to encourage the participation of transgender athletes in competition on Thursday (October 1).
The initiative will break down stigma and give “trans and gender-diverse” people pathways from community sport through to the highest level, advocates and athletes told Reuters at a launch at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Hayden Moon, a transgender competitor in Irish dancing, said it was a “heartbreaking, stressful, humiliating” experience switching from women’s dancing to men’s dancing a few years ago.
“It’s my hope that trans and gender-diverse people don’t have to go through what I went through in the future,” Moon said.
“I felt I had to prove myself, I felt like I would never belong and I had to watch as people decided whether I would be allowed to compete as myself.”
Tennis Australia, Rugby Australia and national federations for Australian Rules football, hockey, netball, water polo, Touch Football and university sports issued guidelines governing inclusion at grass-roots and community level.
Netball Australia and the Australian Football League (AFL), the Aussie Rules governing body, also issued fresh guidelines for the elite level.
While unified in purpose to promote inclusion, the guidelines differ in their details across the sports.
Rugby Australia requires trans athletes to have a medical specialist complete a consent form that specifies that their “physical development, skill level and experience are appropriate” for the full-contact sport.
Tennis Australia takes a much lighter touch, discouraging officials from questioning athletes about their transitioning or requesting medical examinations.
The participation of trans athletes in sport has proved divisive, with federations grappling to find a balance between fairness and inclusion.
Cricket Australia came under fire last year from critics including Prime Minister Scott Morrison over their gender diversity policy, which only requires a nomination of gender identity for athletes at community level.
Women’s sports advocates argue that the naturally acquired physical benefits a transgender woman receives by going through male puberty last long into adulthood and provide an unfair advantage in competition.
Transgender advocates, however, say inclusiveness should be the over-riding factor and that preventing trans athletes from participating in women’s sport only increases the stigma and discrimination they face.
Former middle distance runner Ricki Coughlan, one of Australia’s first trans athletes to come out in the early 1990s, said the guidelines allowed room to deal with “concerns about size, or weight, or performance.”
“So there’s a pathway to achieving that and I’d just say that every transgender person is different and that let’s begin with inclusion,” she told Reuters.
A number of other Australian federations, including for soccer, golf, swimming and athletics, committed to emulating the other sports by producing their own inclusion frameworks.
Australian sports have been criticised in the past by transgender activists for not doing enough to include trans athletes.
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