“The only way I can describe this is that it’s like grief. It’s like something has been ripped away.”

So many good comments - on here and under the article. And yes to the press giving a platform to self absorbed, self pitying individuals determined on trashing women's rights, privacy and safety. Because all time they whinge, they expose their excessive levels of narcissism and the world goes

“I don’t have an advantage” says 54 and 52 year old males playing against young women.

Can they not hear the contradiction? The only reason tw can keep up is because tw have been through make puberty and their been through female puberty.

Exactly!

The phrase 'act with the confidence of a mediocre white man' keeps coming in to my mind for some reason.

Thank God

I don’t get why the men aren’t embarrassed to be so obviously bigger and stronger. Like if I went to sports day and raced against the kids and then got really excited when I won. It would be so cringe. How can they not see this?

'“I personally don’t think that the people who are running around and trying to influence various sports bodies have women’s sport at heart,” insists Curtiss. “I don’t think any of them are particularly interested in women’s sport, ultimately. I think their main thing is to try to systematically go through each of the sectors of society where we want to exist and kick us out.”'

My main thing, personally, is women and girls' safety and right to a fair competition.

Photo caption: "Julie Curtiss (with the ball) came out as trans in 2016"

There’s something particularly creepy about wanting to play with women half your age. As if Fitzgerald Is ‘one of the girls’.

women his age are menopausal, not lithe & young.

Yep, this comment sums it up

Well said!

NOBODY says TW are "not woman enough". There isn't a scale of womanhood, despite how much they try ti drag people with DSDs into it.

where I’m reminded by institutions that I’m not ‘woman’ enough,” says Curtiss. “It’s really hard to quantify exactly what that means

🤔is it now?

This.

Grieving for a world where women didn’t get fired for saying that sex exists.

Grieving for a world where children weren’t taught sexist stereotypes at school and told to get genital surgery and take drugs for life if they don’t match those stereotypes.

Grieving for a world where self-loathing was not celebrated, and delusion wasn’t unquestioningly “supported”.

Grieving for sanity.

The Telegraph comments on this issue are always 99.9% in favour of sanity and the importance of biological sex.

Not many 54 year old blokes can play on either. Unless they have the advantage of playing versus women.

Heartening to read the comments by men. Doesn't seem that long since rugby was the last bastion of male chauvinism. Now there are gay players. And racism is not tolerated by either supporters or players.

But the TRAs will no doubt try to paint the RFU as reactionary bigots all the same.

I wonder if they're just being smart about it.

The comment section is just a reflection of what we say on here. Deluded, or cheating.

We all know that the best argument we can make is to let transactivists speak. I guess the Telegraph are doing just that. It's certainly not the evoking the slightest bit of sympathy if the comments are anything to go by.

I've just registered for free and can read the article.

How can I read this. A pop up is there stopping me asking me to subscribe.

Because the telegraph philosophy is to publish both sides but, unlike the guardian, they actually include enough detail for people to join the dots.

I love this article because it hoists this transwoman by her own petard. It's absolutely clear from the photos and ages what the problem is but the Genderists can't call it transphobic.

When you combine that with the feminist viewpoints they publish as well it means a telegraph reader will understand the arguments much better than someone reading coverage on the BBC (for example).

"Old man is sad because he can't play with women half his age anymore" - is that even a news item??

There are sacrifices involved do sport at any level really. But especially, hugely, at elite level.

I'm a naturally fast swimmer but am too vain about my hair to do it more than a couple of times a month. And I'm too wedded to nice food and my social life to have ever tried competing.

Women's lives are full of weighing stuff up. Feeling rubbish on hormonal contraception vs unwanted pregnancy. Career vs children.

As PP said, trans people really do need to be informed of the implications of their choices.

Why is the Telegraph publishing this shit?

The only 54 year olds I know playing Rugby is at the annual Christmas father vs sons game.

They can still play non contact... (like many teenagers... the boys and girls teams train together at DDs club but split into age and sex categories for Contact training and games)

How many 54 year old women can still play full contact team sports with opponents, in some cases, who are 30 years younger than them? Childbirth, menopause and caring responsibilities (which still largely fall on women's shoulders) are 3 pretty big obstacles.

I saw someone in a tweet reply offer up a link to an article about old (50-60) club rugby players, as some sort of attempted rebuttal to someone posing this question.

Every single player in the article was male though. No examples of older women...

I think the age profiles of lower-level male and female teams look very different, with female skewing much younger.

It's got to be much easier for men to keep up a sport at club level a their hobby after having children. I can imagine the drop-out rate of women who never go back is huge.

And maybe there are just more male teams, so there are 5th (or whatever) division teams for older men to play on - there probably is no equivalent female division.

Awww poor diddums