Experimenting with All-Gender Category in Gay Games Hong Kong: Soccer and Lotus Sports Club

On December 8, British lawmakers signed a letter to urge the Football Association (FA) to revise its rule on trans inclusion policy to ban assigned-male-at-birth athletes from women’s teams. This followed incidents in November when four women league teams withdrew from matches against Rossington Main Ladies’ transwoman footballer Francesca Needham. Currently, the FA allows adult trans players to play in a league based on their “affirmed gender”. Each application requires athletes to meet specific testosterone levels, and decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. Despite Needham meeting every requirement set out by the FA, she was eventually “forced to quit playing due to perceived discrimination against her”.

 

In a contrasting move on the opposite side of the world, Gay Games Hong Kong (GGHK) has taken a groundbreaking step by introducing an “All-Gender” category in soccer, which allows athletes to compete together without regard to their gender identity.

 

Gay Games Hong Kong was held on November 3-11 amidst political and COVID challenges. A few sports, including soccer, mahjong, and dragon boating, are among the 18 official sports to have implemented an All-Gender category. Soccer took center stage at GGHK, especially with the involvement of Lotus Sports Club. This national champion team consists of trans and queer Cambodian players, who were featured in the award-winning documentary Lotus Sports Club (2022).

 

I interviewed Emery Fung, the soccer lead and Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of GGHK, to discuss how the organizers have experimented with the All-Gender category, setting examples for alternative sporting categories regardless of sexuality and gender.

 

According to GGHK’s Gender Inclusion Policy, the community sports event is committed to creating “alternative formats” of competition categories such as “mixed gender competitions, specific non-binary competitions, or open competitions with no gender categories at all”. Emery highlighted that GGHK fosters an “inclusion-first” space, encouraging “experiments” and embracing “trials and errors” in categorizing athletes.

 

Explaining the All-Gender category, Emery clarified that it is designed to be inclusive for athletes of all sexual and gender identities. To respect privacy and avoid disclosure of sex/gender, GGHK recommends that teams playing in this category include players from at least two genders without strict enforcement.

 

Emery distinguished the All-Gender category from a Mixed category, highlighting that the latter still relies on a binary notion of gender. In a mixed-gender soccer match, there is often a specified quota for female athletes, reinforcing the binary differences between male and female. The All-Gender category aims to challenge this binary gender and quota system in sports, creating an inclusive space for nonbinary and intersex athletes who may not identify within the traditional gender framework. It also provides a safe space for trans athletes at various transition stages, preventing them from being labeled based on their assigned sex at birth. The category also departs from an Open category, which often segregates transwomen, nonbinary, intersex, and sometimes transmen athletes into a separate, “inclusive” category, away from the women’s category.

 

As the first visible transman soccer player in Hong Kong, Emery shed light on the challenges faced by many women soccer players in the city who may identify as trans but opt not to undergo the laborious process of changing their gender markers to play in the men’s teams. Despite undergoing medical transition through testosterone use, Emery remains on the women’s team, as his identity document still lists him as female, even though recent changes in the city’s requirements no longer mandate sterilization for transmen to change their legal gender.

 

Unlike the withdrawal of women’s teams in protest of Needham’s participation, Emery’s choice to play in the women’s team faced minimal opposition from other women players. Nevertheless, the accusation of (trans)masculine athletes playing in women’s teams persists in Asia, perpetuating similar anti-trans rhetoric about unfair competition advantages for transman players against cisgender women, irrespective of their medical transitions. For instance, Cambodia’s Lotus Sports Club, a soccer women’s team “dedicated to girls of all sexual orientations”, is consistently criticized for having “boys” playing in the women’s team.

 

Salun, a genderfluid Ph.D. candidate at the University of Hong Kong studying Cambodian pride events and working closely with Lotus Sports Club, clarified that the queer Cambodian members of the team don’t neatly fit Western notions of lesbian and transgender.  Some players, identifying as “lesbian short hair”, present themselves in opposition to Cambodian societal norms of femininity, characterized by women with long fair hair. Expressing a desire for more masculine appearances, these players cut their hair short and occasionally bind their chests. While socially identifying as men, many do not wish or have no access to undergo hormone replacement therapy. In terms of sports, they view themselves as “biological woman”, although the Cambodian sports community often perceives them as embodying more strength and power than cisgender women.

 

For Lotus Sports Club players, competing in an All-Gender category was an entirely new and unexpected experience. At the Gay Games Soccer 7s, 14 out of 16 teams had at least 2 different genders on the field. Emery praised the soccer tournament as a success in crafting spaces to experiment with alternative sporting categories challenging today’s stigma towards gender-diverse players. He expressed the importance of creating an environment where people of diverse identities can play together without fear of exclusion or anxiety about disclosing their gender.

 

While members of Lotus Sports Club cherished the opportunity to compete overseas with players of different nationalities, abilities, and genders, Salun expressed a common concern about All-Gender categories in sports. They noted that assigned-male-at birth teams often won matches because they were “taller, stronger, and faster” than teams with a majority of assigned-female-at-birth players.

 

Although an All-Gender category ideally creates an inclusive space, its implementation comes with challenges. Emery acknowledged dissatisfaction among some players due to competitive teams sending all-biological-male teams to maximize their chances of winning. Lotus Sports Club members, according to Salun, had to adjust strategies when playing against cisgender male teams, attempting to use their smaller size to their advantage but falling short due to biological differences between males and females.

 

Questions arise about the role of male physiology in team sports. While one cannot entirely discount the physiological advantages of strength, speed, and power that cisgender men display in team matches, team sports require male and female athletes with a diverse combination of skills based on their sports positions. Emery explained that mainstream soccer training is highly segregated by gender, emphasizing strength and speed for men and strategies for women. An All-Gender category in soccer could potentially bring creative combinations of players from different training backgrounds, enhancing overall athletic performances.

 

Community sports events like GGHK offer opportunities for organizers to experiment and learn about the potential and drawbacks of All-Gender categories in sports. Emery and Salun both acknowledged that while the All-Gender category is far from perfect, “we have to start from somewhere”.

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Original Article posted in TransGriot.com