An inclusive Australian soccer membership that has come below hearth for fielding transgender gamers in girls’s competitions has revealed the homophobic and transphobic abuse gamers have copped for the reason that final Girls’s World Cup.
The Flying Bats Soccer Membership, based in Sydney in 1985, has skilled a growth lately following the recognition of the World Cup on Australian soil, but additionally heightened discrimination.
The membership describes itself as the biggest and longest-running LGBTQIA+ girls’s and non-binary soccer membership in Australia.
However whereas members say the membership gives a secure and inclusive setting, the Flying Bats have additionally grow to be one of the vital controversial groups in Australian neighborhood sport resulting from their inclusion of transgender gamers in girls’s competitions.
Transgender Flying Bats footballer Riley Dennis gained a court docket case towards campaigner Kirralie Smith in 2025 after a Justice of the Peace dominated that social media posts about her had been illegal vilification.
Dennis stated the posts led to abuse, on-line assaults and folks filming her video games, making it troublesome for her to proceed to play.
Based in Sydney in 1985, the Flying Bats are Australia’s oldest LGBTQIA+ girls’s and non-binary soccer membership at present
President Samantha Lewis says the membership has grow to be a lightning rod for criticism and destructive consideration just lately
The controversy intensified after the Flying Bats dominated their Sydney competitors whereas fielding transgender gamers in 2024
However regardless of that final result, Flying Bats vice-president Alexandra Watson stated abuse stays a actuality for some gamers.
‘I have been on the sphere and I have been the goal of some actually ugly homophobic language,’ Watson stated in an SBS function.
‘I have been known as slurs, I have been misidentified and misgendered earlier than.’
Membership president Samantha Lewis stated the Flying Bats had more and more grow to be a focus in broader cultural debates.
‘We have grow to be a little bit of a lightning rod for lots of destructive media consideration and loads of assaults,’ she stated.
‘From largely right-wing or conservative politicians, spokespeople and neighborhood campaigns.’
In 2024, a social media web page titled Save Girls’s Sports activities Australasia posted its opposition to the Flying Bats competing in girls’s competitions.
One Nation chief Pauline Hanson known as for a Senate Inquiry into Gender Dysphoria & Girls’s Sport in 2025
Writer J.Ok. Rowling shared experiences in regards to the Flying Bats controversy with hundreds of thousands of followers on-line
One Nation chief Pauline Hanson known as for a Senate inquiry into gender dysphoria and girls’s sport
‘The feminists aren’t doing it. They’re sitting again saying nothing about it,’ Senator Hanson stated on the time.
In Might 2024, Liberal Senator Claire Chandler used a parliamentary adjournment speech to criticise the Flying Bats.
‘For years now, extremely paid sporting CEOs and authorities ministers have instructed us that equity for feminine gamers at neighborhood stage is not a precedence,’ she stated.
‘The Flying Bats are proving that that is certainly the case.’
The feedback come as girls’s soccer enjoys unprecedented visibility following the Matildas’ run to the semi-finals of the 2023 Girls’s World Cup and through a match that has once more centered worldwide consideration on the ladies’s recreation.
Lewis stated the World Cup growth had led many new gamers to the membership.
‘We have had so many individuals flock to the Flying Bats after the Girls’s World Cup in 2023 within the midst of the Matildas fever,’ she stated.
‘So many individuals who’ve picked up neighborhood soccer once more, after not having performed since they had been youngsters.’
The membership stated elevated consideration adopted the Matildas’ World Cup success and surge in participation nationwide
The Flying Bats have skilled a growth for the reason that 2023 World Cup, but additionally heightened assaults on its gamers
The Flying Bats had been based by a bunch of ladies and non-binary locals dwelling in Sydney’s interior west who had been on the lookout for a option to keep lively collectively.
‘We determined that we might love to do some form of exercise to maintain ourselves wholesome,’ founding member Tracey Atkinson stated.
‘And we thought of ‘why do not we do soccer?’.’
Fellow founder Alison Todd stated the membership was constructed round neighborhood slightly than politics.
‘We actually had been simply selecting a sport,’ she stated.
‘It was for neighborhood, friendship, well being, simply to have a little bit of enjoyable collectively.
‘It was predominantly lesbian, nevertheless it was by no means unique. Everybody was welcome, homosexual, straight, it did not matter. Younger or outdated, we had a really broad vary of ages.’
Todd believes attitudes in the direction of LGBTQIA+ folks have worsened lately.
The Flying Bats began with humble beginnings, initially an inclusive group attempting to remain match and have enjoyable
‘Everybody was welcome, homosexual, straight, it did not matter,’ she stated.
‘The world on the minute has taken a retrograde step. It appears like loads of the onerous work that has been achieved is being undone.’
Nevertheless, a lot of the scrutiny directed on the Flying Bats has centred not on sexuality however on the membership’s participation insurance policies concerning transgender athletes.
The talk exploded in 2024 when the Flying Bats’ Girls’s Premier League facet went undefeated whereas fielding a number of transgender gamers.
The workforce gained all 16 regular-season matches, scoring 65 objectives and conceding simply 4 earlier than profitable the premiership.
A number of rival groups selected to forfeit matches slightly than play towards the Flying Bats, whereas the controversy attracted consideration from media shops in america and Britain.
Opponents argued the scenario raised reputable issues about equity, security and aggressive integrity in girls’s sport.
‘Our ladies are right here to play for enjoyable and anticipate to play within the feminine competitors. They didn’t join a combined competitors,’ one membership official instructed the Each day Telegraph in the course of the peak of the controversy.
Flying Bats gamers (in crimson and black) taking part in of their grand last in August 2024, which they gained after profitable all 16 of their regular-season matches whereas scoring 65 objectives and solely conceding 4
Flying Bats gamers in a workforce photograph taken in 2024, when the facet’s unimaginable unbeaten run of their Sydney competitors first made headlines
‘Among the mother and father had been so involved, they might not let their daughters play.
‘It was so disheartening for them to see the massive distinction in capacity – they’re killing it.’
Advocacy group Binary Australia additionally criticised the participation of transgender girls in feminine competitions, arguing it undermined alternatives and protections for ladies and ladies in sport.
The problem grew to become so contentious that experiences emerged of golf equipment being discouraged from forfeiting fixtures towards the Flying Bats after a number of walkovers throughout their dominant season.
The talk ultimately attracted remark from abroad figures together with Harry Potter creator JK Rowling.
The creator, who has been a vocal critic of the transgender motion, reposted a narrative in regards to the Flying Bats controversy to her 14 million followers on X in 2024.
The Flying Bats reject options their gamers have an unfair benefit and say they’re complying with the principles established by soccer’s governing our bodies.
Former membership president Jennifer Peden beforehand defended the membership’s place.
‘Trans girls belong within the girls’s competitors as a result of that’s the gender with which they determine,’ she stated.
‘Trans girls have performed with the membership for a minimum of 20 years, at ranges starting from newbie to expert, identical to our cis girls gamers.’
Soccer NSW’s Gender Range Coverage states that neighborhood gamers are permitted to take part in soccer in response to the gender with which they determine.
Soccer NSW and Soccer Australia have repeatedly said their insurance policies function inside Australian anti-discrimination legal guidelines and the Australian Human Rights Fee’s pointers on transgender participation in neighborhood sport.
Lewis stated the membership had more and more embraced a broader advocacy position.
‘The Flying Bats have reworked into turning into a way more advocacy-focused organisation and turning into an even bigger image for what inclusion in neighborhood sport, and broader society, seems to be like,’ she stated.
For Watson, the membership’s legacy extends past soccer.
‘I confirmed as much as observe and I used my pronouns for the primary time, which is such a nerve-wracking however actually stunning expertise,’ Watson stated.
‘Alison and Tracey, in addition to plenty of different founders and co-founders of the Flying Bats have created an unimaginable legacy over generations of gamers within the queer neighborhood.
‘We do not have lots of people and position fashions and older [generations] that we will look as much as.
‘I am equal elements excited and grateful that they paved the best way earlier than me, as a result of now I’ve such a shiny beacon to look forward to.’
