LGBTQ group ejects tennis great Martina Navratilova after transgender comments

A LGBTQ organization announced Tuesday it was severing ties with tennis legend Martina Navratilova after comments she made regarding trans athletes.

Athlete Ally, a nonprofit whose mission is “to end rampant homophobia, transphobia in sport and to activate the athletic community to exercise their leadership to champion LGBTQ equality,” claim that they were removing the tennis great as their organization’s ambassador and from their advisory board.

The social justice warriors said Navratilova’s recent assertions in an op-ed she penned for the Sunday Times about trans athletes were “transphobic, based on false understanding of science and data, and [perpetuated] dangerous myths that lead to the ongoing targeting of trans people through discriminatory laws, hateful stereotypes and disproportionate violence.”

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

Yes, it would be “cheating” to allow transgender women to compete in women’s sporting events due to “unfair physical advantages,” the 18-time Grand Slam tennis champ said.

“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,” she wrote.

“It’s insane and it’s cheating,” she continued. “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.”

Navratilova is considered one of the greatest female tennis players in the history and has been campaigning for gay rights after she came out in the 1980s.

Athlete Ally said this is not the first time they have “approached Martina on this topic.”

“In late December, she made deeply troubling comments across her social media channels about the ability for trans athletes to compete in sports,” Athlete Ally said in a statement. “We reached out directly offering to be a resource as she sought further education, and we never heard back.”

Navratilova has not immediately responded to being dropped by the organization.

photo courtesy of LC.org

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