Lower thirds:

0:03  Report by / Birgit Maaß
0:28  Natalie Washington / Transgender football player and transgender rights activist
1:15  Birgit Maass / DW Correspondent, London
2:00  Maya Forstatter, women's rights activist
2:28  Natalie Washington / Transgender football player and transgender rights activist

Script:

0´01
Playing football has always been part of Natalie Washington´s life. First as a boy, then as a man. After changing her gender in her late twenties, she applied to play with the local women´s team, who welcomed her, she says. Now, she has to give back her shirt.

O-Ton (engl) Natalie Washington, transgender football player and transgender rights activist

We have my shirt, which I can no longer use. This is a football team I have been playing for for ten years, which is a big part of my life. People I played with are people that I´ve got to know pretty well, people that came to our wedding, so good friends.

Deciding to change gender took many years, painful surgery and hormone treatment. The support of her football team helped her a lot, she says.

O-Ton (engl) Natalie Washington, transgender football player and transgender rights activist

When I first started playing, I was I had not long come out as trans. I was kind of still quite nervous, you know, being able to kind of go out and kind of do anything is quite hard in that, in that time of life.

The Football Association bases its decision on a ruling by the UK´s highest court.

Birgit Maass in London

In April this year, the UK Supreme Court had decided that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, and not on gender identity.

But the court also pointed out that transgender people are protected by the law, and should not be discriminated against.

Maya Forstatter and Venice Allen both welcome the ban.

Maya Forstatter, women's rights activist

It's not safe in any kind of contact sport to have to collide with, with male bodies. They have, stronger heads, stronger necks, stronger shoulders and torsos. They are faster and more powerful. It's just basic facts of biology.

The campagaigners see themselves as feminists in the tradition of the Suffragettes, who fought for women´s rights. They want to see women´s spaces protected for biological women.

O-Ton (engl) Natalie Washington

People who identify as trans women are male, and they're welcome to play in the male game or in mixed games, but where you've got the female category, which is for, safety and fairness for women and girls, that has to be all female. when you're in a situation where people expect privacy, bodily privacy, where they're taking their clothes off, it's not appropriate to have men in a women's space.

But for Natalie Washington, playing in a men´s team is not an option.

O-Ton (engl) Natalie Washington

I wouldn't fit in there. I'm not sure how welcome I'd be. And so, realistically, this means me not playing football now.

But whatever happens - football is the sport she will continue to love.