"Women get the short straw again and I am sick of it!" - Martina Navratilova on transgender athletes competing alongside women
Martina Navratilova took to social media to make her feelings clear about the new report commissioned by the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport (CCES) on the advantages or disadvantages transgender athletes might have when competing alongside women in professional sports.
Navratilova has always been vocal about transgender people competing in sports and how they should be banned because they have an unfair advantage over the other gender.
The report notes that there is very little research on the potential advantage of trans female athletes over cisgender women before and after Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT). This presumption is based on studies using cis men and sedentary trans women rather than trans women athletes, and the results cannot be used to support the exclusion of trans women athletes from elite sports.
Martina Navratilova claimed the report could be inaccurate. She requested that CCES incorporate the benefits in the report after demonstrating no advantages. She said she was tired of women always getting the short end of the stick.
"Could be because the report is wrong. The advantages are obvious even with mitigation. Prove there is no advantage and then include, not the other way around. Women get the short straw again and I am sick of it!" she tweeted.
Could be because the report is wrong. The advantages are obvious even with mitigation. Prove there is no advantage and then include, not the other way around. Women get the short straw again and I am sick of it! twitter.com/EthicsInSPORT/…
"It's insane and it's cheating" - Martina Navratilova on transgender athletes competing alongside in women
Martina Navratilova has always stated that transgender women should not be able to compete against women.
The tennis star, who came out in 1981 and has worked for LGBT rights since she retired from tennis, believes that if transgender women are permitted to compete, men will want to enter women's sports.
"To put the argument at its most basic: 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 said, in an article for The Times.
She stated that it's outrageous and unethical and that she would not be pleased to compete against a transgender woman as it wouldn't be on equal terms.
"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 stated.