Megan Rapinoe Rips Mask off Once and for All in Letter on 'Protection of Women in Sports' Act

U.S. women’s soccer team star-turned-media darling Megan Rapinoe is truly one of the most annoying public figures on the planet. Not because I disagree with her from a political standpoint, but because she is constantly talking at cross-purposes, and clearly lacks the self-awareness it takes to realize that the arguments she makes on hot-button topics like “transgender rights” and “women’s equality” are on a collision course with each other.

Case in point, a letter Rapinoe signed on to along with 40 or so other prominent woke female athletes opposing the Republican-introduced “Protection of Girls and Women in Sports” Act, which would keep boys and men who identify as a girl or a woman from being allowed to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.

If passed, it would become part of Title IX, which the Biden administration is fighting to radically change to further accommodate transgender athletes. GOP governors like South Dakota’s Kristi Noem are already vowing to push back.

Here’s what the letter Rapinoe signed, which was posted to the “Athlete Ally” website (without mentioning the name of the act, of course), states:

Right now, transgender and intersex human rights are under attack, with politicians in Washington D.C. pushing forward H.R. 734, the so-called “Protection of Girls and Women in Sports Act”, which would stipulate that Title IX compliance requires banning transgender and intersex girls and women from participating in sports. If this bill passes, transgender and intersex girls and women throughout the country will be forced to sit on the sidelines, away from their peers and their communities. Furthermore, the policing of who can and cannot play school sports will very likely lead to the policing of the bodies of all girls, including cisgender girls. This will deter girls from participating in sports and create additional barriers. Denying children access to a place where they can gain significant mental and physical health benefits, and learn lifelong lessons that come from being part of a team and working hard towards your goals does not protect women in sports.

We believe that gender equity in sport is critical, which is why we urge policymakers to turn their attention and effort to the causes women athletes have been fighting for decades, including equal pay, an end to abuse and mistreatment, uneven implementation of Title IX, and a lack of access and equity for girls of color and girls with disabilities, to name only a few.

Our deepest hope is that transgender and intersex kids will never have to feel the isolation, exclusion and othering that H.R. 734 is seeking to enshrine into law.

Athlete Ally’s stated mission “is to end the rampant homophobia and transphobia in sport and to activate the athletic community to exercise their leadership to champion LGBTQI+ equality.” Because apparently it’s “transphobic” to recognize that there are innate physical differences between men and women that can’t be changed by doctors.

In my opinion, signing on to this letter was Joe Biden’s pal Rapinoe once and for all ripping the mask off, and picking the lane she wants to be in. Not the women’s equality one – as far-fetched as her position on that was, but the one that says men can be women if they merely claim to be and can take over their sporting events if they want to because it’s “just not that important” to make the distinction.

To reiterate points I’ve made before, Rapinoe has been a pretty lousy spokesperson for the women who she claims to represent when you consider the fact that she’s also an advocate for men who identify as women to be allowed to play on women’s teams, a position which completely undermines women’s sports. Here’s what Rapinoe wrote about this debate two years ago:

Proponents of these bills argue that they are protecting women. As a woman who has played sports my whole life, I know that the threats to women’s and girls’ sports are lack of funding, resources and media coverage; sexual harassment; and unequal pay.

As I’ve said before, there are plenty of women who would argue that the real threat to women’s sports are activists on the left who can’t see the forest for the trees on this issue. For instance, sports legend Martina Navratilova who, like Rapinoe, is a left-wing lesbian, has argued against including transgender women in women’s sports on grounds that there are “inherent” differences between men and women that don’t change just because one begins to identify as the other gender. In response, the LGBTQ community tried to cancel her.

Navratilova’s was a simple straight-forward argument, and the science backs it up.

All that said, it’s amazing to me that a supposedly “brilliant” woman like Rapinoe would dare think she could simultaneously lobby for both women’s rights and the right for transgender women to compete in women’s sports and that nobody would see straight through it and call her out on it.

The latter, if it were to become the rule of law here, would cancel out the former. I feel sorry for Megan Rapinoe that she either doesn’t see it or won’t acknowledge what the end result of what she advocates would achieve, and what a catastrophic setback it would be for the very women she has claimed to want to champion.

On the other hand, maybe she would finally see the light on this if she was replaced by a transgender “woman” on the soccer team.