Martina Navratilova hails trans bans as step forward for fairness

Global tennis icon Martina Navratilova says the ‘topsy turvy’ gender stances of world sporting bodies are now heading in the right direction.

FINA is the first big organisation that has gone all in for fairness in female sports, says Martina Navratilova. Picture: Getty Images

Global tennis legend Martina Navratilova has hailed increasing bans on trans athletes in inter­national competitions as a huge step forward for “fairness” in female sports, saying the “topsy-turvy” gender stances of sporting authorities are now heading in the right direction.

On Tuesday, the International Rugby League decided that players who transition from male to female will not be allowed to play in sanctioned international events until further research is conducted, ruling them out of this year’s World Cup in England.

World Athletics is considering a tougher transgender policy and global soccer body FIFA announced it would revisit its policy in light of the International Swimming Federation’s ban at the weekend on trans athletes in ­female-only competitions.

Navratilova, one of the greatest tennis players of all time who has repeatedly called for “biology” to trump “inclusion” in elite women’s sports, told The Australian in an exclusive interview that the FINA decision should hopefully be ­embraced by more world sporting organisations.

“It’s been such a topsy-turvy situation, especially for the last two years … with the momentum totally on the side of the transgender athletes,” Navratilova said.

“Going further and further into the inclusion, without the mitigation or very little mitigation and too many organisations pushing for no mitigation, and just self ID. Including the ACLU – the American Civil Liberties Union – [who] are all in for total inclusion and putting the full weight of their lobbying behind that.

“When it comes to sports, biology is the biggest divider and decider of which category … people go into. So FINA, it’s the first big organisation that has gone all in for fairness and maybe it will try to include people as possible as is fair. But fairness has to be first, and that’s where I’ve been coming from. Always.

“Actually my whole life has been about fairness and FINA has gone all in on fairness. We’ll see how the other bodies, like international athletics go. [World Athletics chief] Seb Coe has just spoken out also for fairness over inclusion in track and field … I think this is a step in the right ­direction.”

Coe on Monday said FINA’s call to ban transgender women from elite female competition was in “the best interests of its sport”. He alluded his sport could possibly be next to place a firm ban on trans women in elite competition.

It contrasts to the International Olympic Committee transgender framework released last November, which loosened restrictions on trans women athletes. The IOC said national sports bodies were responsible for their trans policies but concluded they should not assume that trans women athletes had an inherent advantage over females. The IOC framework also says transgender women should no longer be required to reduce testosterone levels to compete in the women’s sport category.

Navratilova, who won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, said it would be the end of elite women’s sports if there were no restrictions on trans athletes and “self identification” was all that was required to participate in the female category.

“If self ID is the only determining factor, that would be the end of women’s sports,” Navratilova said. “Fortunately, even within the trans inclusion lobby, most people are not saying that.

“But it just gets really complicated as you try to figure out, OK, how much of an advantage is (it in) different sports? How do you police it? How do you define it? How do you implement these different rules for different sports, different categories, even different events, be it 100m or a mile …

“As [trans US swimmer] Lia Thomas showed in the swimming … she excels in the sprinting categories … and the advantage kind of evaporated for the most part in the longer distances as strength is diminished … compared to the shorter races.”

She said the IOC had shown no leadership in this area and had thrown underfunded sporting federations under the bus.

“The IOC has completely punted,” Navratilova said. “That ‘Oh, we will leave it up to the individual federations’. How can these individual federations within their country make their different rules? They have to do the research and the implementation … and it costs money to then figure it out, and it’s impossible.”

Navratilova is one of the highest profile female athletes to have called out the inclusion of trans women in elite sport. She has been criticised for her opinion of trans woman swimmers like Thomas who if they win women’s races, should have “an asterisk” by the victory because “the rules are not correct”.

Navratilova said she had endured a “vicious” wave of criticism over the past three years after calling for stricter rules around trans athletes. In a 2019 Sunday Times column entitled “The Rules on Trans Athletes Reward Cheats and Punish the Innocent”, she said allowing trans athletes to compete in women’s sports was “insane and it is cheating”.

Navratilova later blogged that she had “stumbled into a hornets nest”, had been labelled as “trans­phobic” as a result, and was sorry for “suggesting that transgender athletes in general are cheats”.

Since then, she has advocated on social media and in the media for preserving the “integrity” of women’s sports, but has still been labelled a TERF (an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist) and “transphobic”.

“[Trans activists] who are trying to get me fired from BBC and Tennis Channel [where she is a commentator], you know, like really personal stuff,” Navratilova said.

“And I’m not the only one. They’ve gone after other athletes and other activists. It’s been pretty vicious. Death threats. I didn’t have any death threats, but there have been death threats [against other activists].”

Navratilova has also been vocal on this issue alongside Olympian and lawyer Nancy Hogshead-Makar and been part of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, with the organisation repeatedly calling for sporting bodies to embrace “biology” and make the playing field “fair” for elite female athletes. However, the WSPWG mission statement also rejects “both the effort to exclude” transgender women from sports and the effort to have female athletes compete against them.

Under the FINA’s policy, transgender competitors must have completed their transition by age 12 to be permitted to compete in women’s competitions.