Navratilova demands – Tennis legend Martina Navratilova has challenged Billie Jean King over her stance on transgender athletes, arguing King’s position “doesn’t square” with physiological differences and asking to put her on record after years of private conversations that never h
Martina Navratilova didn’t wait for a debate to cool down. In a new interview, the former tennis great pressed Billie Jean King for a clear answer on transgender athletes, pointing to what she calls contradictions and insisting King has never truly engaged with her “other side” of the argument.
The dispute has simmered for years between two gay icons of the sport. Navratilova is firmly against transgender athletes competing in women’s sports after they have changed genders. King. meanwhile. has long supported transgender athletes competing. including calling a broad ban against trans competitors a “nightmare.” In 2020. King said. “I’m proud to support all transgender athletes who simply want the access and opportunity to compete in the sport they love.”.
Navratilova says King’s view doesn’t align with what she describes as the physical realities between men and women. Speaking to right-wing sports outlet OutKick, she said King’s position “doesn’t square” with physiological differences.
“I think she thinks that they play fair and square, meaning males identify as women, take all the hormones and do everything, like Renée Richards did 50 years ago,” Navratilova said. “And that it’s just nice to include everybody.”
Navratilova also argued that King wants to broaden inclusion only up to a point. and she offered a hypothetical she believes shows why she sees it as unequal. In her scenario, a high school boys basketball team accepts ten boys from a tryout and rejects five other boys. If those five then try out for—and make—the girls team, Navratilova said, five girls lose their spots.
“That’s not equality,” she said. “That’s a total takeover.”
“The solution is obvious,” Navratilova added. “No male bodies in women’s sports and no male bodies in women’s sex-based spaces for many different reasons, not the least of which is women’s rights to safety, dignity and fairness and privacy.”
The most direct friction, though, is personal. Navratilova said she believes private conversations she had hoped would lead to a deeper discussion with King have instead left her frustrated. She claimed King has repeatedly told her over the last four or five years that she would “love to talk to me about it. ” and that King “defers” to Navratilova because she believes Navratilova “knows a lot more about it” than she does.
But Navratilova said those talks never materialized. “However, those conversations never materialized – leading Navratilova to believe King has never ‘heard the other side of the debate.’”
“Without talking to me really and listening to what my points were, she just went her way and put out the statement by her and the Women’s Sports Foundation about inclusion and all this stuff,” Navratilova said.
She finished with a demand aimed squarely at King’s record. “Please get Billie Jean on record. I’d like to know how she explains it because she hasn’t been able to explain it to me.”
Martina Navratilova Billie Jean King transgender athletes trans athletes inclusion Women’s Sports Foundation Renée Richards sports debate tennis icons