Ireland’s main governing body for women’s Gaelic football, the Ladies Gaelic Football Association (LGFA), has approved the participation of a male athlete despite mounting concerns about the risk this poses to the safety of female athletes, according to campaigning group The Countess.
Giulia Valentino, formerly known as Marco Valentino, was born in Rome, Italy, but moved to Ireland in 2019 where he first joined a Dublin women’s rugby team on the basis of a self-declared gender identity.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Valentino is presently employed as a program specialist for TikTok.
Valentino first came to widespread attention after he was found to have been playing against young women and girls last summer in the Ladies Gaelic Football Junior-J Shield tournament. At the time, Valentino was a member of “inclusive” football club Na Gaeil Aeracha, which had an explicit policy stating that any person playing for the team “may play at training or in a match for the team they best identify with, without restriction.”
Photos from the tournament game began to circulate on social media after sports writer Ewan MacKenna called attention to the results, prompting outcry. One widely-shared photo shows 37-year-old Valentino on the field next to a much younger female opponent who appeared to be in her teens.
Reduxx was later contacted by a teammate of the girl in the photo who confirmed she was a minor.
As criticism escalated, multiple women’s rights activists were quickly banned for tweets about Valentino’s participation against the young female footballers, and Na Gaeil Aeracha locked down its social media accounts, refusing to respond to questions from the press.
In addition to opposition expressed on social media, a sports official had reportedly also objected to Valentino’s inclusion on the team for young women.
A source who had attended the game depicted in the image told The Independent that the referee initially believed Valentino was part of Na Gaeil Aeracha’s back room team until he saw him playing against the female athletes.
After he realized that Valentino was competing in the match, he stopped the game to tell Na Gaeil Aeracha that there was “a problem with your number 21” and told them “the player is a man.”
In response to the August 2022 controversy, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and the Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association (LGFA) issued a statement promising to work towards developing a policy on trans-identifying players.
The following month, during an interview with The Guardian, it was revealed that Valentino himself was being consulted during the process of constructing the guidelines.
A transgender policy statement posted to the LGFA official website in February of this year now explicitly permits the participation of boys and men who claim to have a female identity, beginning from the age of 12.
“The Association is committed to the inclusion of Trans-women into the LGFA. The Association intends that those Trans-women who have their LGFA Transgender Application Form approved are supported in doing so in a safe and inclusive environment. The Association reiterates that it will not tolerate any harassment or discrimination within the LGFA,” the policy states. “This Policy applies to all Trans-women, over the age of 12, who seek to play, or continue playing, Ladies Gaelic Football.”
A group which lobbies for the preservation of sex-based rights in law and policy, The Countess, released a statement in response after learning of Valentino’s approved application to continue competing against female athletes.
“The Countess Sports working group is disappointed to discover that the LGFA has approved the first male, Guilia Valentino, to play in Ladies Gaelic Football, following the introduction of its Transgender Inclusion Policy in February. It is noteworthy that the LGFA policy has no comment on how women who identify as men should be accommodated,” reads the statement.
Countess Sports Working Group lead representative, identified only as Sorcha, said, “Women and girls have a right to fair competition, safety on the field of play, and privacy in the changing areas. We are campaigning to protect all of this.”
“Participation in female sport by men who identify as women has already resulted in women losing out on competition places, medals, prize money, and other opportunities, and has also removed the right to fair play, privacy and dignity,” The Countess Sports Working Group said.
“This incursion of males into female sport will destroy it. We are beginning to hear of women players in Australian rules football who have been injured by males allowed to play in the women’s league, all because they identify as women,” the group added.
Disturbingly, while playing for a rugby team in Dublin in 2021, Valentino complained to a Gay Community News discussion that he was asked to use a separate changing room. He has also been performing at BDSM fetish clubs under the moniker DJ Mav, identifies himself as a “trans dyke,” and has made many public social media posts about his fetishism.
Prior to relocating to Dublin in 2019, he was a resident DJ at a BDSM venue called the Ritual and Torture Garden, performing at both of their locations in Rome and London. According to a post on Valentino’s SoundCloud page, he also performed at a bondage festival in Munich. He is currently the resident DJ for a fetish club in Dublin called Nimhneach, which means ‘painful’ or ‘sore’ in Gaelic.
Many of the photos on Valentino’s social media are of him in explicit fetish gear, or posing on stripper poles or in highly sexual venues.
Valentino was featured by The Everywoman Project in 2020, put on by The Stairlings Collective, a Dublin-based trans activist group. He was described as a “queer transgender woman” who is “passionate about fetish” in an Instagram post from the group. According to the Collective, the Project was “designed by young trans women to create a positive representation of trans people, to inspire confidence in others and to develop relationships with other members of their community.” His photo was projected onto the Collins Barracks Interior Courtyard as part of the Project.
In July of last year, the Rugby Football Union (RFU) and Rugby Football League (RFL) in England banned trans-identified males from competing against female athletes in the sport’s contact categories, citing safety concerns.
“For all contact Rugby League … there will be a female-only category, in which players will only be permitted to play in the gender category of the sex that was originally recorded at birth,” the RFL said.
The RFU added that it also considered the merits of a case-by-case assessment process but it was no longer a viable option due to the “difficulties in identifying a credible test to assess physiological variables.”
In 2020, experts warned that females were already at an elevated risk of concussion when playing contact sports like rugby when compared to their male counterparts, and noted that they were more likely to develop sports-related dementia as a result.
Reduxx is your source of pro-woman, pro-child safeguarding news and commentary. We’re 100% independent! Support our mission by joining our Patreon, or consider making a one-time donation.
