In late August, just as the Women’s World Rugby Cup kicked off, Abby Barras (she/her) caught up with Verity Smith (he/him) to talk about rugby’s approach to trans women’s inclusion, if the sport has become more progressive over the years, and how can activists and allies support their trans and non-binary friends and teammates. 

 

You can read the full transcript and hear the interview here: 

 

Abby; Hi. I am here with Verity Smith, um, my good friend and former colleague at mermaid to chat about the Women’s World Rugby, which is currently going on in the UK right now. Verity, it’s lovely to see you. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Verity: Hi, my name is Verity. My pronouns are he, him, and I’m a former women’s rugby player.

Abby: And I’m here to just ask Verity a few questions about the Women’s Rugby World Cup. I said that the right way round.? The Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025. So, are you excited about the World Cup?

Verity: I am excited, but I’ve also got, as you said earlier, I’ve got mixed feelings around it.  I would have been in the stands with the tickets and buying all the nations myself, but due to the transparency in the way that everything’s been portrayed and the last few years, it’s sort of left a sour taste in my mouth after all these years. One person taking a stand isn’t ideal, but hopefully as a cohort, then we can maybe make a difference during this time.

Abby: So, will you be going to watch any of it at all?

Verity: I’m not. No. I’ve actually been offered tickets. I’ve been offered VIP tickets, and unfortunately, it’s nice to see the scores on the boards, and it’s nice to see all the women out there celebrating and how women’s rugby’s come on so much in the last 30 years. But for me, until all women are able to play sport and open and freely, then I think it’s going to be something that I’m going to be taking a step away from, unfortunately.

Abby: Yeah. You raise a really good point there. And I can appreciate that it’s a really important aspect of what’s happening with rugby and in sport in general at the moment. In what ways, do you think, before we come back to that, that women’s rugby has come on in the last 30 years?

Verity: I think in the last 30 years we’ve come on from being in porta cabins and sharing the fourth team’s kit that’s ripped and filthy and still not being washed from the Sunday previously, to the fact that we’ve now seen women who have got contracts to play as a full-time job. With seeing more media attention around it, we see more people buying tickets to attend is more young people wanting to get involved in the sport. So we’ve seen a massive come on in the last 30 years. We still need to be seeing that the women are getting paid the same as the men. We still need to be seeing that they’re getting the same funding, the same equipment, the same access to coaches as everybody else. And I think that also plays a massive part in that. And also,  a lot of sexism in there as well. We need to be making sure that that’s sort of taken into account in this, because a lot of the time we’re seeing really, really bad comments online from misogynistic men that have never even played sport themselves, thinking what they can say about these female athletes. I think as a sport, they need to step in there as well.

Abby: Thank you. I completely agree. Some really important progressive things happening but sadly still some of those very, very tired, very familiar, tropes still existing within the sport. How do you feel things are in sport sort of generally at the moment, for trans and non-binary and other members of the sporting community, how have things been? It’s not been an easy year, right?

Verity: No, definitely. It’s been one of the worst years in a very long time in regards to this. We started seeing sport coming along in 2018. We saw very inclusive policies, non-binary policies being worked on., and after World Rugby, unfortunately pulled the policies for trans women, we saw a massive decline. Everybody sort of followed suite, , but we still not seen sports say what research they’re actually using. Nobody’s been very open and honest about why they’re banning, we’ve not seen any legal challenges,  because the trans community haven’t got the funding to be able to do that at the moment. And until we see a challenge taken to court, I don’t think we’re going to see much change in that area. For young people is a massive downfall. I’ve seen a 16 year old lose her sport after finding a girls team of football. We saw a 14 year old get banned from playing rugby union. Rugby league is taking a full on ban, even though there was no trans players out at the time playing as I’ve retired and, some other people retired, and every child should be able to dream. It may be just that one person. I mean, there’s only 7% of young people that want to be athletes and want to go to that level in the Olympics, but every child should be able to have that same dream as everybody else. And I think at the moment we need to be looking at, what that involves, because sport doesn’t just give you the rules and the reasons to play the game, it teaches you skills. It teaches you problem solving, it teaches your time management, it teaches you how to make friends and all these things that we take into our adulthood, in our work, in life. We’ve got a whole demographics of young people that are currently missing out on that, and we need to be making sure that everybody has the same access.

Abby: Yeah, it’s really important that visibility and representation. And when we did that research a few years ago around young people in the sport, that was a really strong key finding, right? Abby is referring to this.That being part of your community, part of a team, transcends this, that sport isn’t sometimes even about sport, it’s about a whole bunch of other things as well.

Verity: Definitely. It’s about finding family for a lot of these people. And again, for adults, not just young people is about if maybe you lost your family due to coming out, you may be in a situation where you don’t know anyone. You’ve had to move away, you’ve separated. It’s about finding your family, your tribe, and it’s about finding the people where you fit in. And you know that you can rely on them and they’re going to rely on you.

Abby: Absolutely. So, Verity, I know that you are really active in and around the community and sport and all sorts of other places, so as allies, how can we help support our trans and non-binary friends and family and team members in sport?

Verity: I think it’s about being visible. And being vocal is about having people’s backs when they’re not in the room. It’s about calling things out what you see and rather than thinking somebody else is going to call the out in as a single person is not going to make a difference. But the more people to do it and as a collective, we can make a difference. And that’s what we need. We need more voices. We need more people in the room. We need more allies to say that we need lived experience in that room as well, because we call have people making decisions on trans people that haven’t got a trans history, all of that experience. And again, it’s about the younger generation as well. It’s about getting their voices in the room and listening to what their needs and wants are in this current climate.

Abby: That’s really brilliant advice. Thank you so much, Verity. Where can we find out more about what you about what you do and all those sorts of things? If we want to kind of tap into the amazing work that you do, where can we find you?

Verity: You can find me on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/smithverity/hl=en), you can find me on Twitter (@veritySmith19). I just set up a charity called Tribe (Tribe Identity.com: https://www.tribeidentity.com/), which is a free service registering new sports, adventure activities, youth clubs and just bringing the whole community together and people being able to find that tribe, that family, and to be able to find inclusive activities and small so you can get involved in. Give it a reach out. If you can’t find a sport and you want someone to talk to, give me a message.

Abby: Brilliant. Verity Smith legend. Thank you so much for talking to me on behalf of the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender at the University of Brighton.  I shall speak to you again soon. Take care.

 

About Verity Smith: Verity is a UK rugby player, trans man and LGBT+ rights activist. He has served as diversity and inclusion lead for International Gay Rugby and previously played rugby union for Rotherham Phoenix and rugby league for Dewsbury Moor. Verity currently works for the UK charity Mermaids as their Communities Officer, and is also the dashing cover star of Abby’s book, Transgender and Non-Binary People in Everyday Sport A Trans Feminist Approach to Improving Inclusion (2024). You can find out more about Verity and his work here and here.