Penna Dexter

Tennis great, Martina Navratilova is speaking out bluntly against the trend in which athletes who are born male but identify as female are increasingly allowed to compete in women's sports. Navratilova is a lesbian and has promoted women's professional sports and LGBT causes for decades. Now, for speaking the truth, she's in hot water with her tribe. In a recent op-ed published in the Sunday Times of London, she wrote:

"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."

Some pro sports are looking at relaxing the rules regarding males competing as trans women. The 18-time Grand slam tennis champion says, "It's insane and it's cheating." Last December she tweeted: "You can't just proclaim yourself a female and be able to compete against women." Martina Navratilova was quickly dropped from the board of Athletes Ally, an LGBT sports advocacy group she's served for years. Canadian cyclist and college professor Rachel McKinnon blasted her, calling her a traitor. McKinnon, a male who identifies as a transgender woman, has argued against requiring biological males to suppress testosterone as a requirement for competing against women. It's "a rights issue" says McKinnon who won the women's sprint in the Masters Track Cycling World Championship in October. This nonsensical agenda threatens to undo feminists' hard work in elevating women's sports. Women are losing titles and even scholarships to biological men. Martina Navratilova wrote: "The rules on trans athletes reward cheats and punish the innocent." Sports is such an obvious area where biology really matters. Perhaps Navratilova's celebrity and accomplishments and, ironically, her past efforts on behalf of LGBT issues will convince the sports world to heed her common-sense arguments.