In 2017, Taylah Moore played one season of football before saying goodbye to the sport she loves - thinking it would be her last.
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After playing an outstanding season for Macedon football club's men's reserves side, the committed footy player left the club to commence her gender transition.
"Being trans was something that I entirely hid from everybody that I played with in that year, it wasn't something that I spoke about at that club," Taylah said.
"This was my sort of last chance to do this. So it was all about me, just being able to do something one more time - something I love, I love the sport, I love footy."
"The question was always like, how would I be perceived? Where can I play in a team? Even like mixed sports, you have to have a certain ratio, where does that put me?" she said.
However, after several years of navigating the "ebbs and flows" of transitioning, at the start of 2021, Taylah was at a stage in her transition where she felt she was "ready to put energy outwardly".
"Going back to sport was obviously that natural light bulb, it's what I have always loved doing."
As members of socially marginalised communities have done for centuries, Taylah looked to the people that came before her to get her across the line.
One of those inspirations was transgender Melbourne football player Hannah Mouncey, who made her VFLW debut in 2018 - despite being knocked back from the 2017 AFLW draft.
"I saw that she did it and then researched as much as I could to see if I could play," she said.
After what one might call a full scale investigation, consisting of days trawling through AFL Victoria's fine print guidelines, Taylah discovered that - at a club level at least - players could participate in whatever gender they identified.
"So I found a club and called them up and asked if I could play," she said.
Taylah said the process of having to justify herself over and over again to the league was tricky - although not unexpected.
"I had to have quite a formal in person sit down with members of the league and tell them about my transition and where I was at, had to provide things like previous hormone levels and current ones for risk assessment for other players," she said.
"It's a little bit confronting having to sort of give up so much personal information, so it's quite intimate.
"But I was anticipating having to do something like that, which made it a little bit easier to deal with, and having the support of the Strathfieldsaye club I was with was great too."
Taylah is playing this season for the Kyneton women's side in the Central Victorian league, and is just keen to get on with the sport she loves.
For the young player, she feels like she's been mostly embraced by her community, but the political conversations surrounding her everyday life are frustrating and invalidating - particularly those in the past few months.
Trans kids were thrown into the spotlight in January, as their rights were debated in federal parliament over the Religious Discrimination Bill.
After a monumental week of intense debate, the bill was shelved in the senate, only to be replaced by the Save Women's Sports bill a week later from Tasmanian senator Claire Chandler.
The bill was introduced to amend the Sex Discrimination Act, aiming to "make clear that single-sex sport for women is lawful, encouraged and supported by the Parliament of Australia", and was endorse by the Prime Minister.
The bill would ultimately make it easier for organisations to exclude transgender players, in particular those trans children under 12.
"Can you just imagine what it'd be like to have someone tell a little, young trans kid that they can't play sport because some group of politicians decided that there's some great abomination happening if they do?" said Taylah.
"In Australia, there's no push for this at the moment, there's no backlash, there's not a situation that's kind of requiring action to be taken, nothing has happened... it's all a political agenda, which really makes it worse.
"I don't understand where, where and why it's coming from, if you look at Scott Morrison's history, he doesn't care about women, he doesn't care about women's sport - he's not trying to protect the sanctity of women's sport.
Taylah said in a lot of ways, sport saved her, and now cannot imagine a world where she wouldn't be allowed to play.
"I've had so much confidence put into me by being around people who accept me as I am," she said.
Though the road hasn't been easy, Taylah encourages all young trans kids to get involved as much as they can.
"I'm proof in a way - as well as every other trans person that plays sport - you can play and you can be accepted and you most definitely can be welcomed."
A fiercely defiant Bendigo woman, brimming with warmth, wit and a deep hatred for politicians that question her worth, Taylah is a force to be reckoned with - both on and off the field.
March 8 marks International Women's Day. The theme of this IWD 2022 is #BreakTheBias. The Bendigo Advertiser will be publishing several articles over the course of the day sharing the stories of women in the Bendigo community, their triumphs and their battles. To learn more about the week, visit International Women's Day.
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