When The Guardian revealed that World Rugby had drafted a proposal to ban transgender athletes from the women’s game, the U.S. rugby community recoiled. Grace McKenzie, who is new to rugby but not to the vitriol of trans discrimination, has been instrumental in amplifying the voice of those opposed to the potential ban. The 26-year-old is informing the public, building presence online, and connecting with USA Rugby and advocacy groups in the name of community education and policy impact.
McKenzie grew up playing team sports in Niagara Falls, Ontario, but once she transitioned, she presumed that part of her life would be over.
“There is a lot of toxic rhetoric regarding transgender athletes,” McKenzie said. “It’s a real battleground issue for me.”
But then two years ago at a queer tech conference in San Francisco, she was recruited to play rugby with Golden Gate.
“Rugby found me,” she said. “I was really surprised by how welcoming and inclusive the community was. Show up as you are, put in the work, and we’re happy to have you. It was wonderful.”
McKenzie is in her second year with Gate and joined the executive board as Rookie & Recruitment Co-Chair this season. She focused energies on how to grow the game, while building a network of support and friendship with teammates.
McKenzie during the 2019 Pacific North 7s Championship (Photo: Jackie Finlan / TRB)
“When the recommended guidelines [for trans athletes] leaked from World Rugby, it was very distressing to hear that something so near and dear to my heart could be taken away,” McKenzie said before launching into action.
RELATED: Four Myths About Trans Athletes, Debunked [ACLU]
McKenzie was very active in student government while at the University of British Columbia and held the highest student office position – president of the student union, the Alma Mater Society – at one point. The 2016 graduate also served on the UBC Board of Governors, which helps shape education policy for the university and province, and worked for UBC Athletics & Recreation before moving to the Bay Area.
In other words, McKenzie knows how to organize a campaign, and she was especially motivated to mobilize against transphobic policy in rugby. She started with The Guardian article itself, which bore a troubling tone.
“The unfortunate thing with The Guardian article is that it’s based in the U.K., where there is a very frustrating conversation going on right now – a moral panic – around trans rights in England,” McKenzie explained. “The reporting was colored by the climate over there.”
The article reads supportive of the research that claims trans women athletes have a 20-30% advantage over cis women even after taking testosterone-suppressing medication for a year, as per the current guidelines adopted in 2019. A February World Rugby forum gave rise to the new guideline proposal, and McKenzie took it upon herself to review all of the presentations given during the event.
“I was surprised to see what groups were involved in that forum,” McKenzie said of World Rugby’s transgender working group. “A number of the groups who were supposed to be representing this issue had ties to anti-trans organizations in the U.K. that have been working to block athletes from sports, and more broadly transgender people from society. … It’s all very suspicious to me. One of the researchers has very clear anti-trans views and posted anti-trans rhetoric online, and she is directly connected to one of the anti-trans groups – Fair Play for Women – that was advising World Rugby. These groups want to be perceived as independent, but there has been a concerted effort to coordinate and push forward an agenda.”
McKenzie (far left) with members of SFGG (Photo provided by McKenzie)
Within days of The Guardian article’s publication, McKenzie posted a petition to the proposed ban and detailed the conflicts within the working group as well as common strategies anti-trans lobbyists employ to influence opinion.
“One of the frustrating pieces that is present in the World Rugby guidelines and the vast majority of research that is then used in arguments, is using comparisons between cis[gender] women and cis men, and using it to show gaps in performance,” McKenzie said. “They might show that there is a 20% difference in strength or aerobic ability [between cis women and cis men] and then extrapolate that to the trans population. Trans women are [erroneously defined as] ‘biologically male,’ which discredits the medical process we go through. ‘But you went through male puberty, so we can use that comparison to another population.’ There are no real studies comparing trans women athletes to cis women, so people make the logical leap that cis men are trans women.”
For rugby, specifically, there is a need for a study of injury data, since safety concerns are being wielded in support of exclusion. Statistics need to be kept for when trans women are and are not participating in a game, and then an examination of whether injuries increased needs to follow.
“It would be interesting to see,” McKenzie said. “I’m willing to bet the data would be inconclusive.”
Additional research is on-going, McKenzie noted, and pointed to authorities like scientist Joanna Harper, who is advising World Rugby and building a study with a larger sample size and trans women athletes across multiple sports.
Today, McKenzie’s petition boasts close to 16,000 signatures, and it’s an important home base for updates, social media direction and action items as supporters look for more ways to publicly oppose the proposed ban. She intends to send the petition, with all of its signatories and comments, to World Rugby directly as part of the formal feedback process. That process involves consultations from all of World Rugby’s member unions, including USA Rugby. Unions have until Aug. 31 to review the proposed guidelines, and those insights will be funneled into a vote and used to form policy in November.
McKenzie has communicated with Jenny Lui and the International Athlete Council, which is compiling its own data for submission to USA Rugby, and drafted an open letter [link to sign] to the national governing body for community clubs to sign. She’s connected with the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [DEI] Committee, which is facilitating this process for USA Rugby and making sure different opinions funnel upward. The USA Rugby Board of Directors will ultimately decide what is forwarded onto World Rugby.
“I do have a concern at the World Rugby level,” McKenzie considered the virtue of the many moving pieces. “They have been careful about how to promote these guidelines. ‘These are just guidelines and if your national union adopts other policy, then that’s fine, but World Rugby events have to follow these guidelines.’ So USA Rugby could come out with different policy for trans inclusion but the highest level of the game would block trans players.
“It’s concerning because there’s a lot of miseducation or unsureness across the board, even in community rugby,” she said of trans athletes in sport. “It would be easy for unions to say, ‘Our policy matches World Rugby’s policy,’ instead of working on its own guidelines relevant to its community. Especially with USA Rugby reorganizing and with limited resources, it’d be easy for them to say, ‘We don’t want to do the work; we’ll point to World Rugby policy and let it trickle down to the grassroots.’ In U.S. rugby, there are no trans women athletes at the highest level of the competition, so World Rugby is solving a problem that doesn’t exist. They’re writing their policy for the elite level but it’s the trans athletes at the community level that will be affected and pushed out at the lower levels of the game.”
McKenzie in the lineout against Life West (Photo provided by McKenzie)
McKenzie knows that education is an important component in fighting for trans inclusion and points to useful resources as well as one she’s developing herself. The ACLU and its work with discrimination at the high school and collegiate levels is a good starting point to learn about issues per state. Olympic hopeful Chris Mosier maintains transathlete.com, an educational tool and watchdog for all sports. It reviews policies and relates them to modern science and applies them to today’s conversation. Athlete Ally features balanced opinions and fantastic ambassadors, and McKenzie is working with the advocacy group to develop educational webinars that can be disseminated to various levels of the game.
“There are 50+ community clubs and colleges that have signed the open letter to USA Rugby saying that they oppose the ban, mostly because they get it,” McKenzie said. “They’ve played with trans athletes and understand it’s a manufactured issue. Because trans women are not present in certain competitive spheres, there are people who are unsure [on their stance] and need information, because they don’t have those lived experiences. It’s the neutrality that worries me. It’s easy to adopt policy when there isn’t a loud voice to oppose, and education is the most important element to ensure that doesn’t happen.”
McKenzie is doing everything she can to amplify the U.S.’s support of trans inclusion, and she’s getting the help she needs at home. But the U.S. is just one channel feeding information to World Rugby.
“We have a lot of momentum and people concerned about this in the U.S., but at the end of the day, World Rugby has a number of national unions across the world,” McKenzie said. “The one thing that keeps me up at night is: Are these conversations taking place in other countries, and to what degree are they progressive or regressive? How do I get in touch with other countries? Are they being organized? We’re one voice in the sea of many.”
The simple fact is that World Rugby cannot espouse inclusivity if it finds a way to exclude a population that wants participate in the sport. That in itself should be a unifying tenet.
“This policy is coming out of left field and is antithetical to the spirit and identity that rugby has,” McKenzie closed.
For the latest updates, visit the petition page. Additionally, the USA Rugby DEI Committee is has requested that the rugby community share its opinions and personal accounts as it prepares its feedback for World Rugby. Read more.