Tennis legend Martina Navratilova fired again at a reporter who labeled her “transphobic” on Friday as she campaigned with the Impartial Girls’s Discussion board as a part of its “Take Again Title IX” initiative.
Ben Rothenberg, a tennis journalist who’s now a podcast host and wrote a Naomi Osaka biography, provided his tackle Navratilova’s involvement with the ladies’s group after the group’s bus was vandalized in North Carolina.
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Martina Navratilova performs pickleball throughout a promotional match on the French Open at Roland Garros on June 7, 2024, in Paris. (Fred Mullane/ISI Images/Getty Photos)
“Martina Navratilova turning this anti-trans campaign into her life’s obsession in recent times stays dispiriting!” Rothenberg wrote. “And he or she turns it into far more transphobic vitriol than simply discussing sports activities equity, as I’ve lined earlier than, simply being nasty and merciless and dehumanizing. Boo.”
Navratilova responded later Friday night time.
“One more man telling girls what they need to care about,” Navratilova wrote. “And who’re you precisely? Oh yeah, the reporter who tells tennis gamers its off the document after which prints what they stated anyway. Good to know you care about girls’s sports activities and girls’s intercourse based mostly areas. I care.”
Rothenberg responded to Navratilova.
“I’ve by no means performed that. However I care additionally, about somebody who was a beacon of freedom and inclusion within the sport I’ve lined sadly selecting to erode the platform she constructed with cyberbullying campaigns geared toward obscure, low-level beginner athletes. I want you have been higher than that.”
Navratilova seemingly took challenge with the assertion she was “cyberbullying.”
Martina Navratilova throughout trophy shows, which she introduced together with Chris Evert, after the ladies’s singles last on Court docket Philippe-Chatrier on the French Open at Roland Garros on June 8, 2024, in Paris. (Tim Clayton/Corbis by way of Getty Photos)
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“Cyber bullying- wow. I’m blocking you as soon as and for all. To your data I’m doing an entire lot extra than simply tweeting. You’ll be able to simply go away now. Hope I see your nasty self at Wimbledon- if you’re there.”
Navratilova is a pioneer within the lesbian and homosexual neighborhood and in girls’s tennis. She’s advocated for equity in girls’s sports activities amid the talk over transgender participation.
She applauded World Athletics final yr for creating an open class for transgender athletes. She wrote in an op-ed it was a “step in the best course.”
“Within the wake of World Athletics’ announcement, I believe one of the best concept can be to have ‘organic feminine’ and ‘organic ladies’ classes after which an ‘open’ class,” she wrote. “It could be a class for all-comers: males who establish as males; girls who establish as girls; girls who establish as males; males who establish as girls; non-binary – it might be a catch-all. That is already being explored in athletics and swimming in Britain.
Martina Navratilova receives flowers throughout the Italian tennis internationals on the Foro Italico in Rome, Could 21, 2023. (Massimo Insabato/Archivio Massimo Insabato/Mondadori Portfolio by way of Getty Photos)
“Organic females are most definitely to compete within the organic feminine class, as that’s their finest shot at successful and it maintains the precept of equity. With an ‘open’ class there are not any query marks, no provisos, no asterisks, no doubts. It’s a easy resolution.
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“As soon as any person has gone by means of male puberty, there isn’t any method to erase that bodily benefit. You can not merely flip again the clock, as an illustration by attempting to decrease testosterone ranges.”
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