Everything Martina Navratilova has said about transgender athletes

Nine-time Wimbledon champion and tennis legend Martina Navratilova remains an avid activist for the LGBTQ+ community, as does USWNT star Megan Rapinoe. Both women have worked to uplift and build the community, both on and off their respective fields of play, but they remain at odds on one issue.

As she prepares for the World Cup with the United States team Rapinoe was asked about the idea of transgender participation in women’s sports in a recent interview with Time magazine. Rapinoe said that lawmakers were “trying to legislate away people’s full humanity” and explained why she would accept a transgender woman on the U.S. team.

She said: “You’re taking a ‘real’ woman’s place;’ that’s the part of the argument that’s still extremely transphobic. I see trans women as real women. What you’re saying automatically in the argument – you’re sort of telling on yourself already – is you don’t believe these people are women. Therefore, they’re taking the other spot. I don’t feel that way.”

Navratilova, who has consistently voiced her opposition to transgender women participating in sports alongside cisgender women, gave a one-word response to Rapinoe’s quotes. She wrote: “Yikes…”

In 2019, Navratilova stated that trans athletes competing in women’s tournaments is “insane.”

In the Sunday Times, she wrote: “You can’t just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women. There must be some standards, and having a penis and competing as a woman would not fit that standard.

“To put the argument at its most basic: a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires.

“It’s insane and it’s cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.”

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And earlier this year, Navratilova called the World Athletics ban on transgender women competing in the female category “a step in the right direction” as she called for new categories to be introduced.

She told The Times: “I think the best idea would be to have “biological female,” “biological girls” and “open” categories. 

“It would be a category for all-comers: men who identify as men; women who identify as women; women who identify as men; men who identify as women; non-binary — it would be a catch-all.”

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