Anti-transphobia campaigner and avid footballer Natalie Washington talks about being banned from the sport as a trans woman
BY LARA IQBAL GILLING, IMAGES BY EMMA HEN
Self-proclaimed “do-y person” Natalie Washington can’t relax. “I have to be doing something,” she says, brushing her black hair over her shoulders. “Keeping my mind and body busy is my way of coping with things.”
She counts running as “chill-out time” and enjoyed completing her first marathon last year. As a trans woman, she prefers to focus on what her body can do rather than what other people think of it.
Washington, 41, is an IT director by day, a campaign lead for anti-discrimination movement Football v Transphobia later in the day, and, until June, played for Rushmoor Community Football Club in the evenings. She sits in her home office in the house she shares with her wife.
Although she admits it sounds strange, Washington associates calm with football too. “It’s often an intense game, but there’s a mental calm there. Some of the moments that I’ve been happiest are around football.
“It feels like a little community,” she continues, a smile hovering at the edge of her lips. “I’m aware that my presence there is almost a political act in and of itself, but it doesn’t feel like that. It’s an oasis of not having to worry about all of that nonsense.”
One especially positive experience was when she played on the women’s team for the UK’s trans-only club, TRUK United, against Dulwich Hamlet’s women’s team in 2022. A team made up of trans women was a world first. “We had such a varied team that we got absolutely hammered, but in a way that was quite enjoyable,” she laughs.
“For the last five years there’s always been anti-trans stuff rumbling in the background, so it felt important that we had this whole team of trans women together. It was quite emotional at the end, even though we lost seven nil.”
Although Washington has enjoyed watching football for most of her life, she only “got the bug” for playing at age 20. She set up a Sunday league team with friends and played up to five times a week for the next eight years.
At this point on her journey with gender, Washington had started to paint her nails and shave her legs. “But, the Camberley and District Sunday football league wasn’t a particularly safe place to experiment with gender,” she says. “[Transitioning’s] pretty scary, so I was trying to avoid it if I could.”
When she finally decided to transition at 29, she told the team she was retiring and wrote to Rushmoor FC in the Hampshire County Women’s Football League to ask if she could join as a trans woman. The coach said that they didn’t know what the rules were, but to come down and get involved anyway.
Despite joining the club in July 2015, it was two years until she was back on the pitch. The Football Association (FA) told her that her testosterone levels were not low enough, but did not disclose what the appropriate level was. Washington waited 13 months to get an appointment to swap her testosterone-suppressant pill for a more effective injection, and shortly afterwards underwent gender-affirming surgery.
Finally, at the beginning of the 2017/18 season, Washington was able to play regularly again. Back as midfielder, she was open to questions, aware that most of her new teammates wouldn’t have knowingly met a trans person before.
Fortunately, she felt welcomed. “A few people were like: ‘This is new. I hadn’t really thought about this before.’ But there were people that had met and played football with trans people. The main feeling was ‘let’s get on with it’.”
Almost eight years later, Washington unknowingly played her last game of football on a Tuesday night in May. “I still haven’t got my head around it. I don’t know what I’m going to do in future,” she says.
Although she knew that other sports were banning trans women, Washington thought that football was different. That is, until the April Supreme Court ruling which defined “woman” by biological sex put pressure on the FA to change its policy.
Now trans women are banned from playing in FA-affiliated women’s teams at any level from 1 June. There are fewer than 30 trans players on the blacklist, some of whom are inactive – like Washington’s wife who hasn’t played in over a year.
“I worry that I will just get depressed,” Washington says. “I’m still running away from the emotional consequences of it, but there will be a time that I’ll get upset about it, and I’m not looking forward to that. Maybe it’ll be the beginning of next season when everybody else starts playing again.”
In spite of it all, Washington still believes that most people are good-hearted. “There’s this real energy, particularly in the grassroots women’s game, around creating this culture which is inclusive and joyous. That’s exciting.”
DIVA magazine celebrates 31 years in print in 2025. If you like what we do, then get behind LGBTQIA+ media and keep us going for another generation. Your support is invaluable.
One thought on ““My presence there is almost a political act”: the final whistle for trans women in football ”