Women’s World Cup 2023: Sam Kerr opens up on why she had to hide her gender, Matildas vs England | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

Sam Kerr is known the world over as one of the greatest strikers the game has ever seen, and this World Cup has shown the embrace of a nation that truly cares about the Matildas.

Growing up playing junior Australian rules football for South Fremantle, Kerr said she kept her gender a secret as a “five or six” year old after being allowed to play in one of the boys’ teams.

“I knew I’d be the only girl on the team but that didn’t worry me at all,” Kerr wrote in her new book My Journey to the World Cup.

“But as good as I was out on the field, and as much as I loved playing the game, the physical differences between the guys and me eventually became too pronounced and the play was too rough.

“One day, I came home from a game with yet another black eye and bloody lip, and that’s when my dad and brother both said, ‘Nup, this isn’t happening anymore’.

“I was getting battered around so much out on the field that it was getting to be a big problem. Dad and my coach both sat me down then and said it was getting far too dangerous for me to continue to play.

“They said they were sorry, but that I wasn’t allowed to play football any more. I understood the reasons why, but I was heartbroken. Back then, there were no girls’ teams in my area for me to join, and to know that I’d never play a sport that I loved so much ever again was devastating.”

Source: Women’s World Cup 2023: Sam Kerr opens up on why she had to hide her gender, Matildas vs England | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

2 thoughts on “Women’s World Cup 2023: Sam Kerr opens up on why she had to hide her gender, Matildas vs England | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site”

  1. It is truly shocking about how people do no longer know the difference between gender and sex.
    She had to hide her sex.

    1. Yes, I find this word ‘gender’ such a vital term we ignored (as feminist lecturers) in the 1980s in academia, thinking it was just another word for ‘sex’. When it was in fact a violent change of women’s rights, which came in use via Gay Politics, where it was the term to divide normative and radical masculinity and conquer the importance of Gay Liberation.

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