#aflw

The story below has been shared by one of our AF4WR members playing in the AFL Women's competition and highlights the persecution being experienced by women in Australia who refuse to use the language of gender ideology.

This year I signed up to play my first season of AFL football. I never took an interest in sport when I was younger because my only experience playing it was in PE class where the boys completely dominated the game and the girls were left standing around because we weren't strong enough or fast enough for them to bother passing us the ball. Now in my 20s, after a couple of years of casual running and weightlifting I finally felt like I was ready to participate in a team sport. The increased availability of women's competitions compared to ten years ago also influenced this decision.

I ended up choosing AFL instead of soccer in part due to becoming aware of the Flying Bats scandal and not wanting to subject myself to the physical risk when my team would be almost certain to lose anyway. The team I joined has many wonderful people who completely embraced me as one of their own.

Then we played Newtown, whose women's team on this occasion included a biological male. In the back of my mind I had assumed this day would come eventually, but that didn't make me any more prepared for when it did.

On the field, when I heard this player speak, my gut instinct was that it was the male umpire talking. The voice was indistinguishable from a regular man's. He towered over everyone else on the field, his tackles hit harder and his kicks were longer. The only saving grace for our team was his lack of accuracy. I did not play to the best of my ability as I would have against an all-female team, instead I modified my game in order to keep a greater distance from this player and avoid contact with him at all costs.

One of our players came off the field crying from frustration because of the strength with which this man hit her. Another sustained an injury from this male player that has taken her out of the game for weeks if not for the rest of the season. I overheard what I believe was one of the injured players complaining to our coach, but the coach responded that "her" hits were "completely legal".

In footy parlance, Ebony Marinoff is in and under, she puts her body on the line and gives 110 per cent. Every single week. Symons says the photo of a blood-soaked Marinoff leaving the field made a lot of people uncomfortable and fuelled conversations about women playing contact sport. It’s an argument infamously articulated by former player and coach and now ABC Radio commentator Mick Malthouse in 2018 when he called for AFLW to be modified to remove tackling and heavy bumping to reduce injuries because of the experience of women in his family. “I don’t say you shouldn’t play it,” he told ABC. “I say I don’t like it.” Symons says it’s a complicated image because she doesn’t want “to romanticise injuries in sport”. But injuries are a part of sport and “we don’t want to create a narrative where we need to put bubble wrap around these women athletes”. “Marinoff is one of the most exceptional players that we’ve had in this competition since day dot. I think for her to unapologetically… [say] ‘yeah, I get hurt and I keep playing, this is what we do’ is great.” The Office for Women in Sport and Recreation’s annual report into the representation of women in sports news coverage found that in 2023-24 women were less likely to be depicted in images showing action than male athletes. They were also less likely to be depicted in portrait images.