The debate over whether transgender females should compete in women’s sports has become a hotly contested issue, amplified all the more so by the Olympics. Here are 10 award-winning athletes who have, either wholly or partially, spoken out against the inclusion of biological men in women’s sports.
Brett Favre
The former Super Bowl-winning Packers quarterback is the most recent high-profile athlete to speak out on the issue.
“It’s a man competing as a woman. That’s unfair,” he said on his podcast Tuesday. His comments were in reaction to the New Zealand Olympic Committee’s announcement that Laurel Hubbard, a transgender female weightlifter, would compete in the Tokyo Olympics.
As a player, Favre led the Packers to two straight Super Bowls in 1996 and 1997, winning the first one. He retired in 2010.
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Caitlyn Jenner
The California gubernatorial candidate spoke out on the issue soon after declaring her candidacy for the nomination to oppose Gov. Gavin Newsom in his recall election.
“This is a question of fairness. That’s why I oppose biological boys who are trans competing in girls sports in school. It just isn’t fair,” she said on May 1.
Before transitioning to become Caitlyn, Bruce Jenner won gold in the decathlon at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal after finishing 10th in the event four years earlier.
Jenner was awarded the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the ESPYs after transitioning in 2015.
Martina Navratilova
The Czech-American former tennis star first voiced her opposition to transgender women competing with biological women in 2019.
“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,” she wrote in an op-ed.
In February, she called upon President Joe Biden to alter his Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation, which he signed his first day in office. Navratilova wanted assurance that the order would not create a situation in which biological men and women would not be competing against each other solely on personal identity.
As a player, Navratilova won 59 Grand Slam tennis titles (singles and doubles), including a record nine Wimbledon singles wins.
Paula Radcliffe
The retired long-distance runner supported Navratilova’s 2019 criticisms of policies that allowed trans women to compete on the same track as biological women.
“If you are born and grow up male you cannot be allowed to compete in female sports simply because you ‘identify’ as female. It makes a mockery of the definitions of male and female sports categories,” she tweeted in February 2019.
“Will it open the door up there,” she asked in an interview two months later, “to transgenders actually being able to say, ‘You know what? We don’t need to bring our levels down, either. We don’t need to have any kind of surgery. We can just identify how we feel, and then we can just come in and compete in women’s sport’? And that would be the death of women’s sport.”
Radcliffe won the London Marathon in 2002 and 2003, as well as the London and New York marathons in 2005.
Kelly Holmes
The former Olympic runner was another defender of Navratilova in 2019, when she first began to speak out about the issue.
“Anyone can live how they want to live, but let women have their rights too,” Holmes tweeted. She called trans athletes topping biological women “a bloody joke” in another tweet.
Holmes won two gold medals in the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics after suffering leg injuries in both of the two previous games.
Sharron Davies
The former Olympic swimmer joined a chorus of voices in 2019, when she reacted to the rule changes of the International Olympic Committee to allow transgender athletes to compete in international events.
“If you just ignore that potential benefit, women, XX-born natal females, will not be able to win any of their medals, any of their sports scholarships, any of their profile opportunities to be able to get a platform. How is that fair? We are in a society where 50% of us are women,” she said in an interview with the BBC.
Like Favre, Davies sounded off on the decision to allow Hubbard to compete in Tokyo.
“We have men & women’s separate competition [for a] BIG reason, biology in sport matters. Separate categories give females equal opportunities of sporting success, the average age of a female Olympic weight lifter is 23. Laurel Hubbard is 43. 30% unfair advantage! Sex not gender [for] Sport,” she tweeted.
Davies represented Great Britain in the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics, where she finished fifth in the 200-meter backstroke. Four years later, she won the silver medal in the 400-meter individual medley at the Moscow Summer Olympics.
Chelsea Mitchell
The youngest athlete on this list, Mitchell was at the top of the Connecticut high school track circuit in 2020, but transgender competitors made the track one-sided, she said.
“I Was the Fastest Girl in Connecticut. But Transgender Athletes Made it an Unfair Fight,” she wrote in a USA Today op-ed. That op-ed, published May 22, was updated three days later when the editors changed the word “male” to “transgender” each time she described her opponents. The editors apologized for the original “hurtful language.”
In February 2020, Mitchell joined a lawsuit from the Alliance Defending Freedom against the Connecticut Association of Schools attempting to change the state’s policy that allowed transgender athletes to compete against her. Their case was dismissed in April 2021, but it was appealed in May.
Although she was able to beat the transgender athletes later in her high school career, she lost “four women’s state championship titles, two all-New England awards, and numerous other spots on the podium to male runners,” she wrote. She is currently competing on scholarship at the College of William and Mary.
Donna de Varona
Although the former Olympic swimmer is not in favor of banning transgender athletes from competing with women altogether, she does not support a hands-off approach, either.
“Before puberty, boys and girls play together all the time. You see that on soccer fields across America. After puberty, you have to take into account sex-linked advantages,” she said earlier this month.
She helped found the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group in April, which hopes to provide a “middle way” on the issue. De Varona supports requiring transgender athletes to attempt to lower their testosterone for a year before they compete. For athletes who refuse to comply, she favors the institution of separate leagues, she said.
De Varona was the youngest American athlete at the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics. In Tokyo four years later, she won two gold medals.
Nancy Hogshead-Makar
Another “middle way” proponent and former Olympic swimmer, Hogshead-Makar worked with de Varona on the creation of their think tank.
“From the onset of male puberty, because of the constructive effects of testosterone on the male body, it’s not possible to ensure that females have equal opportunities without distinguishing the sexes,” she wrote in a USA Today op-ed.
However, she, like de Varona, supports requiring lowering of testosterone, as well as allowing transgender competitors who have not undergone male puberty.
Hogshead-Makar won three gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
Donna Lopiano
The retired softball star attempted to broker a compromise in Mitchell’s complaint against Connecticut authorities, but it never materialized. She is also on the Board of the Women’s Sports Working Policy Group.
“I’m not saying transgender girls are going to take over women’s sports. I’m saying that the law protects girls and women, and they shouldn’t have to compete against someone who has an immutable testosterone-based advantage,” she said in April when the think tank was launched.
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As a softball player, Lopiano was part of six national championship teams and was a nine-time all-American at four different positions on the diamond. She is a member of the National Sports Hall of Fame and the National Softball Hall of Fame.
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Tags: News, Transgender, Transgender Issues, women, Sports, Caitlyn Jenner, Girls, Olympics, 2020 Olympics, sex
Original Author: Charles Hilu
Original Location: Athletes who have spoken out against transgender females in women’s sports