In a Sunday post on her personal website, Martina Navritilova addressed the issue of male transgenders in women's sports for the second time this year. And for the second time, her comments drew outrage from LGBT mouthpieces — including a comparison to Nazis and Joseph Goebbels, by Outsports writer Dawn Ennis.
Navratilova apologized for having called (would-be) male-to-female transgenders "cheaters," in her Feb. 17 op-ed in The Times of London piece, "The rules on trans athletes reward cheats and punish the innocent". Her new attempt to address the differences between men and women prompted this angry response from Ennis:
"The Nazis had 'The Jewish Question,' and history records the horror which its leaders called the 'Final Solution.' Navratilova treads a very dangerous line in asking if this issue of inclusion should be called a name that’s not so far off from Joseph Goebbels’ nomenclature."
Here's what Navratilova wrote to draw the Nazi comparison:
“...we should be wary of solving the transgender problem (if I may call it that) by creating further categories. For while they are intended to be fair and inclusive, multiple categories can also fragment a sport and cause confusion. ... I am certainly not advocating violence against trans people, as has been suggested. All I am trying to do is to make sure girls and women who were born female are competing on as level a playing field as possible within their sport.”
Navratilova, who is lesbian, said Sunday she only wanted to open a "debate about equality and fairness in relation to transgender participation in women’s sport." Because, she wrote, too many voices were silenced and shamed into submission and that is not right. She sought to "encourage a more scientific, rather than emotional, conversation and to search for a solution that would work better than current arrangements.":
"I was motivated by concern about the future of women’s sport and my worry that by trying to be fair and inclusive for one group, others can be adversely affected, that eliminating one kind of discrimination can inadvertently give rise to another."
Navratilova realizes she stumbled into a hornets’ nest in February, drawing a barrage what she calls nasty personal attacks, getting called a "Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist (TERF)" and being jettisoned as an ambassador for the LGBT group Athlete Ally. At the end of her latest post, she lists links to three scientific journal articles about hormone levels in males and females.
Ennis strongly disputed Navratilova and said she "repeated the fantasy that a male might undergo a gender transition, even temporarily, 'to gain a competitive advantage.'” The former tennis legend allegedly committed the cardinal sin of echoing conservative sentiments about LGBT "rights" diminishing religious freedom:
"Navratilova once again echoed the arguments of those on the right who claim marriage equality discriminates against people with deeply-held religious beliefs, in expressing her 'worry that by trying to be fair and inclusive for one group, others can be adversely affected, that eliminating one kind of discrimination can inadvertently give rise to another.'
"Even straight people understand that equality is not a pie. Giving equal rights to those who have few or none doesn’t eliminate the rights of others."
Ennis says females are no more indisposed by biological male competitors than were white major league baseball players from integration. She insists that biological males increase competition in female sports and it is not a matter of discrimination. Really? Try selling this argument to the high school girls in Connecticut who just ate the dust of two boys who beat them in the state indoor track and field sprint championships.
Ennis says no transgendered men have reached Olympic women's competition in the 15 years since they became eligible. Red herring alert: few people have even tried to do that, but Canadian Rachel McKinnon won a world cycling championship and the very macho Brazilian volleyball hitter Tiffany Abreu (seen at left in above photo) may be an Olympian in the next Summer Games. Coincidence? Luck?
With a dogged determination to prove scientifically that men have no advantages in women's athletic competitions, Ennis cites three trans women advocates to support her belief. Obviously these women all have a dog in the fight, and their objectivity is open to question. She also cites trans men's lowered testosterone levels in an attempt to prove they have no advantages. Well pay no attention to that "woman's" bulging muscles.
After invoking Nazis, Ennis hypocritically says she agrees with Navratilova that the debate over transgenders in women's sports should be civil. Ennis ends her transgender "white paper" by re-writing Navratilova's message to one that suits her own agenda:
“If fair and open discussions can be held without preconceptions or prejudice, and without people being ‘transphobic’ or failing to accept trans women as women, trans men as men, or to recognize that it’s not just ‘having a different point of view’ when someone aims to exclude any athlete from competition because of their gender identity, it’s discrimination... then: by all means count us in!”
