Two months ago in the UK, a 17-year old girl with autism took the field in her all-women team for a match in a single-sex soccer league. She noticed that one of the players in the opposing trans-inclusive club was a bearded man in his twenties. She asked: ‘Are you a man?’ The opposing captain’s formal complaint about the remark was taken up for hearing by the Football Association. The girl was charged with two counts of ‘improper conduct,’ pleaded not guilty, and was tried before a three-person tribunal that met for several hours. It found her guilty on both counts and sentenced her to a six-game ban.

Just ponder that for a moment. In order to assuage the sensitivities of a grown transgender biological man whose self-ID belies his physical appearance, an autistic teenage girl who had asked an innocuous and not unreasonable question was left distraught after a traumatising trial that could leave a lifelong mark on her. 

wo months ago in the UK, a 17-year old girl with autism took the field in her all-women team for a match in a single-sex soccer league. She noticed that one of the players in the opposing trans-inclusive club was a bearded man in his twenties. She asked: ‘Are you a man?’ The opposing captain’s formal complaint about the remark was taken up for hearing by the Football Association. The girl was charged with two counts of ‘improper conduct,’ pleaded not guilty, and was tried before a three-person tribunal that met for several hours. It found her guilty on both counts and sentenced her to a six-game ban.

Just ponder that for a moment. In order to assuage the sensitivities of a grown transgender biological man whose self-ID belies his physical appearance, an autistic teenage girl who had asked an innocuous and not unreasonable question was left distraught after a traumatising trial that could leave a lifelong mark on her.