On 17 February, tennis legend Martina Navratilova published an article in the
The Sunday Times wherein she voiced her concerns about men who "decide to be female" participating in women's sports. The followup to this publication was met with Navratilova being subsequently dropped as an ambassador by Athlete Ally, an organisation which supports LGBT athletes, and she was removed from the advisory board of Trans Actualy, a non-profit U.S. organization. Here's the back story.
In December, Navratilova
responded to a tweet from one of her followers about female-identified biological males participating in women's sport: "Clearly that can't be right. 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." Rachel McKinnon, a male-born Canadian philosophy professor who competes against women as a transgender athlete, weighed in with a lengthy social-media dissertation, in which
McKinnon informed Navratilova that "people's genitals are irrelevant to sports performance," and called her comments "transphobic."
In recent days, this fight has entered a new phase, with Navratilova's article being reported in other media outlets as if what she were saying was not just unreasonable but bigoted. CNN's
coverage, for instance, declared: "Martina Navratilova criticized for comments about trans women in sport." At the BBC, meanwhile, producers allegedly rescinded an invitation to a guest who sought to defend Navratilova, and instead gave the air time to McKinnon, who
declared that having a debate on the issue was tantamount to "a black person [debating] a KKK member on civil rights."
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