[Martina] Navratilova added that, as a lesbian, she is sensitive to feelings of sexual minorities and has no issue with addressing a transgender woman according to preference. Nevertheless, she draws a “critical distinction” between transsexualism and transgenderism. Indeed, she herself had a transsexual coach and friend — Renee Richards — and Richards now shares Navratilova’s concerns about transgenderism as it relates to women’s sports.
Navratilova also drew an even more critical distinction: intersex conditions. In her article, she pledged support for Caster Semenya, the Olympic 800-meter champion, who is female but has a rare condition that results in naturally high testosterone levels, and who is challenging the International Association of Athletics Federations at the Court of Arbitration for Sport after they introduced a rule requiring her to take hormone therapy.
So far, so uncontroversial — one would think. But apparently not.
Within days of the article’s publication, Athlete Ally, a New York–based LGBT-rights organization, expelled Navratilova on the grounds that her “recent comments on trans athletes are transphobic, based on a false understanding of science and data, and perpetuate dangerous myths.” Chase Strangio of the ACLU, a trans activist, told The Nation that “Athlete Ally’s decision was absolutely, 100 percent correct.”
As Breitbart.com’s John Hayward tweeted yesterday, “Generations of hard work cultivating women’s sports, oceans of money spent, and ‘transgender activists’ will burn it all to the ground in a matter of months. Women’s sports are over, feminists. You lost an intersectional squabble with a more preferred victim group.”