“It’s not gay if it’s rugby,” is a tactless phrase I’ve heard uttered multiple times by the Men’s Rugby team, usually after drunkenly kissing a comrade in Zoo. For Women’s Rugby, it’s a whole different field (you didn’t think I was NOT putting a pun in there, did you?).
Women’s Rugby, along with other women’s sports clubs, has a stereotype of having a lot of LGBTQ+ players. However, what makes it different to societies like Pride Alliance or iFemSoc is that it does not explicitly market itself as an LGBTQ+ club. LSE Women’s Rugby, and most other women’s sports clubs with which we have interacted, attract freshers with the sport, the social life, and the tight-knit family we provide.
Emma Lyons, player for LSEWRFC, comments on this:
“I think first of all the idea of rugby players being queer is kind of self-perpetuating —in a good way! Because if you’re not straight, and you’re looking for some like-minded friends, you’ll probably have heard of women’s rugby as being a sort of hub for queer women… It’s different to a lot of other LGBTQ+ groups, because there’s not a huge political or identity element. It’s based around this really absorbing, addictive sport instead. So its a space where a lot of people might be queer, but you’re not only bound together by identity, but by a shared interest.”
This year more women and girls are playing rugby than ever before. The RFU (Rugby Football Union, a governing body for British rugby) set participation targets four years ago to double the number of women and girls playing rugby. Their success is marked: around 37,000 women and girls are playing rugby in clubs in 2019, up from 25,000 in 2017. The RFU’s Inner Warrior Camps – designed to introduce women and girls to rugby – have attracted over 18,000 women over the last two years.
LSE’s club has also seen major growth over the last two years, from barely being able to fill a team of 15 in first year to now having over 35 playing members.
I shared a Vice article entitled ‘How Rugby Gives Queer Women a Place to Be Themselves’ with teammates, and many members were in agreement with its basic principle: “Because rugby players come to the sport in all manner of sexualities, sizes, and gender presentations, it provides a unique space where females are allowed to be unabashedly themselves.”
The consensus seems to be that this is an unintended consequence of the intensity of the sport. On a regular basis our players are put under a lot of physical and mental pressure in games, so social stigmas are not so much tackled as they vanish completely in the face of an intimidating number eight barrelling towards you.
“What the article didn’t mention so much, why rugby is a safe space, if you will, is because it’s about physical ability and mental capacity on the pitch,” adds Bron Jackson-Turner, player for LSEWRFC and the Saracens. “Everything else is secondary, respect is earned on how well your body can do and how you work as a team, things like sexuality [are] much less important.”
The social life (possibly including Zoo — ew) is also paramount to creating a comfortable and safe environment. Clubs and societies are where most people find friends on this socially atomized campus and invite each other to do things, without the pretext of doing it for gender or sexual identity, but because you want to be friends. This latter point can be applied to most clubs.
Hannah Kierspel, alumni player for LSEWRFC, examines this further, saying, “generally I think rugby is a great unintended safe space for girls to explore their sexuality in a depoliticised context and also a context that isn’t explicitly gay. So, like if you want to experiment or discuss your thoughts but would feel ashamed or find its is too intimidating to go to a gay bar because that’s admitting something solid to yourself… I feel there is space to do that within the club.”
It is also worth noting that, although Women’s Rugby has been highlighted because of its stereotypes, there are other women’s sports clubs that promote inclusivity as well and actively: again, the focus is on the sport or activity.
So, is it gay if it is rugby? The point is, it doesn’t matter, because the game, and the friends you make take pride of place. Outside the team there may still be a stereotype, but within the team little thought is given to that, it all falls away.
