Martina Navratilova Wants You To Believe She’s Not A Transphobe

What’s not to love about this photograph of Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King at Wimbledon in July? They each sport a different expression of disappointment and dismay in reaction to dramatic events on the court, seated with their wives in the Royal Box, just behind the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William and Kate. While the royals and Julia Lemigova look delighted, Navratilova, King and Ilana Kloss appear despondent.

Similar expressions surely appeared on the faces of many transgender people all over the world as soon as they saw that Navratilova was once again speaking about trans athletes last week in Outsports.com. It’s her first interview with the LGBTQ sports site since being labeled a transphobe in February 2019.

“Martina Navratilova has been a key figure for helping usher in an entire platform for hatred of the trans community,” out trans powerlifter JayCee Cooper said about the out lesbian tennis trailblazer.

A Divided Community

The “transphobe” label came after Navratilova declared that transgender women are men who “decide to be female,” and inflamed divisions within the LGBTQ community.

There are those who agree with Navratilova when she said to allow trans women to compete with cisgender (meaning not transgender) women is “insane and it’s cheating… it is surely unfair on women who have to compete against people who, biologically, are still men.” They cheered her words and applauded her for defending girls and women, specifically, cis girls and cis women. So did conservatives in Montana and other states, who happily quoted Navratilova in writing their anti-trans legislation.

Others, like Cooper and me, felt betrayed.

“Martina Navratilova, who first came out as lesbian in 1981, came out again Sunday as a transphobe,” I wrote in Outsports on Feb. 17, 2019. “In an op-ed for The Sunday Times of London, the tennis icon wrote a clear-cut explanation of her perspective that transgender women athletes should not be allowed to compete as women.”

The LGBTQ sports nonprofit Athlete Ally dropped Navratilova as one of its ambassadors and pulled her off its advisory board. “Martina Navratilova’s recent comments on trans athletes are transphobic, based on a false understanding of science and data, and perpetuate dangerous myths that lead to the ongoing targeting of trans people through discriminatory laws, hateful stereotypes and disproportionate violence,” wrote Athlete Ally spokesperson Joanna Hoffman at the time.

One month later, Navratilova apologized for using the word “cheating” and vowed to work to find a solution to what she termed “the transgender problem.” As before, she did so publicly on social media, then in a BBC documentary not shown in the U.S., and through her co-founding of the cisgender-focused Women’s Sports Policy Working Group. None of the Working Group’s founders is trans, but it does count four out trans athletes among its supporters.

The organization seeks to find “a middle way” forward for cisgender girls and women, advocating against “forcing” them “to compete against some trans athletes with male sex-linked physical advantages.” It also rejects outright bans on trans athletes, such as those on the books in eight states so far.

Navratilova’s Evolution

In April 2021, Navratilova teamed-up with out trans runner Juniper Eastwood and Working Group co-founder Dr. Doriane Coleman to co-write an op-ed opposing one of those proposed bans on trans athletes, saying the bill in North Carolina goes too far. The bill was ultimately set aside. Eastwood is one of those four out trans supporters of the Working Group.

So, in the space of two years, Navratilova has gone from accusing trans girls and women athletes of “cheating” to now publicly stating her support for what Outsports co-founder and editor Cyd Zeigler called “a path to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.”

“That’s exactly what we’re trying to do,” Navratilova told Zeigler in the story published Sept. 22. “We don’t know what that path should look like.”

Actually, the Working Group had made it very clear what path it wants adopted, and despite their founders’ statements, it’s actually a far cry from full participation or inclusion.

Since its earliest days, the organization has determined that trans girls who either cannot or choose not to undergo a medical transition, as in puberty blockers or female sex hormones, should be barred from “head-to-head” competition with girls who are not transgender.

The reasons why a young person might not begin a medical transition range from not desiring such changes to their body, to being prevented from doing so by their parents, not being able to for medical reasons, or because they lack appropriate insurance or the financial support necessary to obtain the safe, reversible blockers, or for hormone therapy.

The only trans female athletes who would be permitted to compete with cisgender girls and women under the policy proposed by the Working Group are those who have not undergone any stage of male puberty, or can compete because rules established by a sports governing authority allow them to, such as the International Olympic Committee or the NCAA.

The Number Zero

This part gets complicated, but that’s because scientific research into trans athletes has not been conclusive. The key number to know here is zero: Opponents of inclusion rely on studies that compare cisgender men to cisgender women, or zero trans women. Others compare average trans women to cis women, instead of how trans female athletes match up with cis female athletes; Such research was cited by World Rugby in instituting a ban on trans women in 2o20 without studying a single trans rugby athlete, or zero trans ruggers. Advocates for inclusion note that research into trans athletes is still underway, and there are no studies strictly focused on trans student-athletes who are still minors. Again, zero.

Trans female athletes are eligible to compete under current NCAA rules after completing one full year of testosterone suppression treatment. Trans men are not eligible to compete on a women’s team once they begin taking testosterone but can compete alongside cisgender men without restrictions.

Since 2015, the Olympics have allowed trans women to compete with cis women if they record a total testosterone level in serum below 10 nanomole per liter (nmol/L) for at least 12 months prior to their first competition, and remain below 10 nmol/L throughout the period of desired eligibility.

According to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, 10 nmol/L is at the low end of the normal range for the average cisgender man; The normal range for the average cisgender woman is 0.5 to 2.4 nmol/L. It is that statistic that has observers expecting the IOC to lower its testosterone limits below 10 nmol/L, possibly below 5.0 nmol/L before the next Olympic Games.

Until this summer, zero out trans athletes had qualified to compete in the Olympics, despite the rules saying they could; Then, this year in Tokyo, Canadian soccer player Quinn became the world’s first-ever trans nonbinary gold medalist. New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard was the first out trans woman to compete in an Olympics, and nonbinary skateboarder Alana Smith and out trans BMX competitor Chelsea Wolfe also went to Tokyo.

Something else to consider: elite athletes’ testosterone levels can vary widely from “average” folks. For example, the prevalence of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) in elite women athletes is one reason why many of them register higher testosterone levels than the average woman, as researchers wrote in Endocrine Review in 2018. A British researcher, Daniel Kelly, argued in an April 2019 article that how testosterone affects the body can vary widely based on genetics, the time of day it is checked, as well as where someone lives and even their wealth.

Others argue that trans female athletes who take testosterone-suppressing medications register T-levels in the normal female range, or even lower. I’m no athlete, but that was my experience.

Maayan Sudai, writing in the Journal of Law and the Biosciences in 2017, “testosterone should not necessarily be the focal point of attention in designing fairness in sports: human biology is far too complicated to be represented in a single criterion.”

What Does Navratilova Say Now?

In August 2020, Navratilova, at least one other Working Group co-founder and more than 300 other women athletes and coaches signed a letter to the NCAA, stating their opposition to trans inclusion in college sports. The letter was organized by an anti-inclusion group, Save Women’s Sports.

Now that she and Donna de Varona have joined the three other women and one man who formed the Working Group, Navratilova has modified her position. She supports full inclusion for trans girls or women who have not yet started puberty; for those who have, she prefers some kind of transition requirement before they can take part in competitive sports. Navratilova points to her own experience as a youth, competing with athletes while growing up in Czechoslovakia.

As Zeigler wrote: “She stopped being able to compete with many athletes once they hit puberty; Athletes she could beat at age 8 quickly became untouchable. ‘Once they hit puberty, they became a lot stronger,’ she said. ‘And if you’ve gone through puberty, we have to mitigate that.’”

How to mitigate that, however, is not something the Working Group wants to discuss. Co-founder, civil rights attorney and three-time Olympian Nancy Hogshead-Makar made it clear in a tweet that their organization believes trans female athletes, which it insists on calling “biological males,” must mitigate the advantages conferred by male puberty, but it refuses to take a position on the ways that can be accomplished.

“Political Fodder”

The real-world impact of such a stance, however, robs the Working Group of the opportunity to defend trans girls and women from laws like the one enacted by Arkansas, outlawing gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary youth. In July, a federal judge temporarily blocked that law from taking effect.

Arkansas is one of the eight states that have banned trans student-athletes from competing, by law and by executive order. The Trevor Project has certainly seen the impact of those anti-trans bills and laws: An increase of 150% in calls to its suicide hotline from Texas, where lawmakers have labeled gender-affirming care as child abuse and are once again targeting trans student-athletes with new legislation, as reported by the Los Angeles Blade.

“They are feeling stressed and considering suicide due to anti-trans laws, including sports bans, being debated in our state,” said Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas. “These are real kids and real lives and should not continue to be treated as political fodder, session after session. Trans and LGB people do not deserve to live under constant threat and fear of their safety and well-being.”

Where Cyd Zeigler Stands

If Navratilova has an opinion about those frightened children and teens, it’s not something anyone will learn from reading Zeigler’s published account. He’s the interviewer tossing Navratilova softball questions; A cisgender out gay man who is an author, referee and, with journalist Jim Buzinski, the co-founder of both Outsports and the National Gay Football League. They were inducted into the LGBTQ Journalists Hall of Fame by the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association in October 2020.

Zeigler has written extensively about transgender athletes, and the debate over fairness, inclusion and sports policy. In July, he focused on the conflict between LGBTQ advocates and the Working Group over the focus on medical transition. He’s also interviewed Hogshead-Makar, and unbeknownst to Outsports readers, has been courted by the Working Group since January 2021 to join them as a supporter.

He did not respond to questions regarding his article. But Zeigler did tweet that in this, his second interview with the tennis legend, Navratilova “was open and honest about her experiences and perspectives.”

“She may claim her actions were honorable and backtrack as she sees the harm caused but the fact remains that a major part of her legacy will be the anti-trans landscape that the community is currently enduring,” Cooper told me. “Make no mistake, she should be held accountable for that.”

That’s not something Zeigler did. And for all his efforts, Navratilova has apparently not unblocked Outsports from following her on Twitter. She should, especially now that the transgender managing editor who labeled her a transphobe no longer works there.

Come to Connecticut, Martina!

There can be no denying her legacy as a sports icon, a crusader for human rights, a champion for cisgender women and girls, and now her efforts to help trans girls and women get on what Zeigler calls “a path to inclusion in women’s sports.” But what Navratilova and her colleagues in the Working Group won’t consider is something that has already won the approval of a federal judge, a state policy in Connecticut that allows all girls to compete fairly, whether they are trans or cis, without the need for medical intervention.

The Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference doesn’t just provide a path to inclusion; the CIAC opened the door wide, to all. If Martina Navratilova would come to Connecticut, she’d see for herself how this policy works for all girls and young women.

Zero cisgender student-athletes have lost scholarships to transgender athletes. Zero trans-student athletes have won sports scholarships. Zero school sports events have been dominated by trans student-athletes; win some, lose some.

Connecticut’s policy works. It’s fair. And it’s what the Working Group and the extremist hate group fueling the nationwide conservative campaign against trans youth, the Alliance Defending Freedom, fear most: Competition for all.