A transgender rugby player has spoken out about what it’s really like competing as a trans man in sport, saying he can’t even ‘come close to the level of athleticism’ he used to achieve before he transitioned.
Emma Farnan, who plays for the Southern Headliners Rugby Club women’s team in the Premier Rugby (PR) Sevens league, told Good Morning America ‘being trans doesn’t mean inherently that I’m going to be a good player.’
‘I still work my a** off to be able to be where I am in sport and to continue performing,’ the 27-year-old aerospace engineer, who is studying his PhD at Indiana’s University of Notre Dame, said.
‘So often discussion of trans women in sport comes down to assuming that we are able to play at the same level as men, and we just can’t. We are women, and we compete equally as a woman.
‘I feel like a shell of the athlete that I used to be after taking hormones for a year or two years. Like I can’t even come close to the level of athleticism that I used to be able to compete with.
‘There’s not been a single time with PR Sevens that I walked out, and I felt like I was the strongest or the fastest or the tallest girl on the team.’
Emma, who is originally from Bay Shore, New York, also expressed his frustration over not being able to play at a higher level than the PR Sevens after the world body for rugby banned transgender women from playing in international events, such as the Olympics, in 2020.
World Rugby said after months of research, it had ‘concluded that safety and fairness cannot presently be assured for women competing against trans women in contact rugby,’ however allowing national federations to implement grassroot policies.
‘I just think it’s really dangerous because there’s so many people like me that have went through all of the precautions and went through all of the steps to meet to be able to compete fairly,’ Emma told GMA.
‘And I don’t have any opportunity to play at any higher level, regardless of whether I trained my a** off or not.
‘And it’s really tough to be in a position where my career isn’t limited because I go and tryout and I’m told I’m not good enough, my career is limited because of my medical history.’
In a recent PR Sevens video, Emma shared his struggles with coming out as a trans woman.
‘When I was younger I pretty much always knew that I felt more like a girl, [but] I didn’t have the language to describe that,’ he said.
‘Early on I recognized that my attempts to described that would often lead to bullying and stuff.
‘And so I tried to keep it as hidden as possible between abilities in sports and school, I felt like this was just an issue that I had to overcome.
‘It was around my senior year of college that I sort of realized that I couldn’t actually go on like this. I wasn’t enjoying life as much as I felt like I could and I felt like I wasn’t genuinely being myself. It was at that point that I decided to transition.’
