Former Tennis Pro Weighs In Again on Transgender Athletes

Madisan DeBos, cross country and track athlete at Southern Utah State University whose relay team lost to a transgender athlete, speaks at the “Our Bodies, Our Sports” rally at the Freedom Plaza in Washington DC on June 23, 2022. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

Martina Navratilova said after doing more of her own research she is sticking by her original opinion that transgender individuals do not belong in female sports competitions.

Ms. Navratilova, who has won 18 Grand Slam tournaments including nine Wimbledon championships, said because she was attacked for her stance on transgender athletes in 2019, she decided to do a lot more research and learn the science behind the men who compete in women’s sports.

The “transphobe” label was given to Navratilova after she declared that transgender athletes are men who “decide to be female.”

“I got attacked like crazy on Twitter. Wanting to be open-minded and respectful, I took the tweet down and promised to educate myself, and for the past five years, I’ve been doing that. I’ve been reading about testosterone. I’ve been talking with scientists. I’ve been listening to female athletes and trans athletes, young and old. And I’ve learned a lot,” wrote Navratilova in a recent article in Genspect.

The tennis star cites a recent Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll that found 69 percent of males who identify as women have not taken any hormone treatment, and 84 percent have not surgically altered their bodies.

Navratilova said this shows that they are still physically men.

Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas (2nd L) of Penn University and transgender swimmer Iszac Henig (L) of Yale pose with their medals after placing first and second in the 100-yard freestyle swimming race at the 2022 Ivy League Women's Swimming & Diving Championships at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on Feb. 19, 2022. Joseph Prezioso/Getty Images

Even with the 21 percent who have undergone hormone treatment, there is still a proven performance advantage, based on physical attributes of height, weight, heart size, and lung capacity.

She cites a transgender tennis player, Renée Richards who publicly in 2012 admitted that no woman could have beaten him in his 20s, even with surgery, reversing what he said earlier in his career.

“I know if I’d had surgery at the age of 22, and then at 24 went on the tour, no genetic woman in the world would have been able to come close to me. And so, I’ve reconsidered my opinion.”

During the David Letterman show in 2013, Serena Williams refused to compete against Andy Murray, admitting she would lose to a biological man because they have an advantage.

“Andy Murray, he’s been joking about myself and him playing a match. I’m like, ‘Andy, seriously, are you kidding me?’ If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0, 6-0. The men are a lot faster, and they serve harder. They hit harder. It’s just a different game,” said Williams.

Other scientific studies also show male biology provides powerful athletic advantages. Multiple government studies found that men outperformed women by about 36.8 percent in their separate Olympic weightlifting events. Other studies show that men have significantly more skeletal muscle mass than women, especially in the upper body.

Recently the international governing body for track and field events, The World Athletics Council announced they will prohibit biological males from competing against biological females.

The Council said in a statement that it has agreed to exclude male-to-female transgender athletes who have been through male puberty from the female World Rankings competition, effective from March 31, 2023.

“In the wake of World Athletics’ announcement, I think the best idea would be to have ‘biological female’ and ‘biological girls’ categories and then an ‘open’ category,” Navratilova wrote.