UK Bans Men from Women’s Soccer

Transgender women will be banned from playing on women’s soccer teams in England and Scotland following a U.K. Supreme Court ruling last month, the sport’s governing body said Thursday.

The Football Association said it had decided to change its rules that had allowed transgender athletes to play on women’s soccer if they had reduced testosterone levels. The Scottish Football Association made a similar decision that applies to competitive women and girls’ soccer.

The U.K’s highest court issued a ruling two weeks ago that defined a woman for anti-discrimination purposes as someone born biologically female. The head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said after the ruling that transgender women would be excluded from women’s toilets, hospital wards and sports teams.

While the ruling was cheered by some feminist groups, it has been condemned by trans-rights groups who said it would have a broad and detrimental impact on daily life.

The issue has been polarizing in the U.K. and beyond, particularly in the United States, where President Donald Trump has signed executive orders to prohibit participation of transgender athletes in sports and to use a rigid definition of the sexes, rather than gender, for federal government purposes. The orders are being challenged in court.

The FA said that its policy before Thursday had been to make the sport accessible to as many people as possible, but that it would make alterations if there were changes in law, science or the operations of “grassroots football.”

“We understand that this will be difficult for people who simply want to play the game they love in the gender by which they identify, and we are contacting the registered transgender women currently playing to explain the changes and how they can continue to stay involved in the game,” the FA said in a statement.

About 20 transgender women have been playing in English grassroots games this season.

“The people I know that are talking about this are saying: ‘Well, that’s it for football for me,’” said Natalie Washington, a member of the group Football v Transphobia. “Most people clearly don’t feel that they can go and play in the men’s game for reasons of safety, for reasons of comfort.”

Fiona McAnena, of the group Sex Matters, welcomed the English FA decision, saying it was long overdue.

“The FA has had ample evidence of the harms to women and girls caused by its nonsensical policy of letting men who identify as women play in women’s teams,” McAnena said. “The requirement to lower their testosterone tells you that everyone knew they were not women.”

McAnena said that every other sporting body needs to take similar action.

The group that oversees netball, an offshoot of basketball played mainly by women, said Thursday that its female category would apply to those who were born female.

England Netball said its decision wasn’t the result of the court ruling. It said that it would have three gender categories of participation: female, male and mixed, with the latter category allowing people to compete according to their gender identity.