Tennis legend Martina Navratilova fired again at a reporter who labeled her “transphobic” on Friday as she campaigned with the Independent Women’s Forum as a part of its “Take Back 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 Photos/Getty Images)
“Martina Navratilova turning this anti-trans campaign into her life’s obsession lately stays dispiriting!” Rothenberg wrote. “And 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.
“Yet one other man telling ladies what they need to care about,” Navratilova wrote. “And who’re you precisely? Oh yeah, the reporter who tells tennis gamers its off the file after which prints what they stated anyway. Good to know you care about ladies’s sports activities and ladies’s intercourse primarily based areas. I care.”
Rothenberg responded to Navratilova.
“I’ve by no means completed that. But 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 novice athletes. I want you have been higher than that.”
Navratilova seemingly took problem with the assertion she was “cyberbullying.”
Martina Navratilova throughout trophy displays, which she introduced together with Chris Evert, after the ladies’s singles remaining on Court Philippe-Chatrier on the French Open at Roland Garros on June 8, 2024, in Paris. (Tim Clayton/Corbis by way of Getty Images)
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“Cyber bullying- wow. I’m blocking you as soon as and for all. For your data I’m doing an entire lot extra than simply tweeting. You can simply go away now. Hope I see your nasty self at Wimbledon- in case you are there.”
Navratilova is a pioneer within the lesbian and homosexual group and in ladies’s tennis. She’s advocated for equity in ladies’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 appropriate course.”
“In the wake of World Athletics’ announcement, I feel the perfect thought could be to have ‘organic feminine’ and ‘organic women’ classes after which an ‘open’ class,” she wrote. “It could be a class for all-comers: males who establish as males; ladies who establish as ladies; ladies who establish as males; males who establish as ladies; non-binary – it could be a catch-all. This is already being explored in athletics and swimming in Britain.
Martina Navratilova receives flowers through the Italian tennis internationals on the Foro Italico in Rome, May 21, 2023. (Massimo Insabato/Archivio Massimo Insabato/Mondadori Portfolio by way of Getty Images)
“Biological females are most probably to compete within the organic feminine class, as that’s their greatest shot at profitable and it maintains the precept of equity. With an ‘open’ class there aren’t any query marks, no provisos, no asterisks, no doubts. It’s a easy resolution.
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“Once any person has gone via male puberty, there isn’t a approach to erase that bodily benefit. You can’t merely flip again the clock, for example by making an attempt to decrease testosterone ranges.”
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