After declaring that allowing men who identify as women to compete in women's sports is "cheating," tennis great Martina Navratilova has apologized.
An outspoken lesbian, Navratilova issued the apology in a column on her website after the LGBTQ organization Athlete Ally announced it was severing ties with her in response to her comments, Fox News reported.
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In her apology, she explained that her previous comments, in an op-ed for the Sunday Times of London, were to "encourage a more scientific, rather than emotional, conversation and to search for a solution that would work better than current arrangements."
"Well, I certainly stumbled into a hornets' nest," she wrote. "The support I normally get from 'my people,' the LGBT community, was replaced by a barrage of quite nasty personal attacks and I was dropped [jettisoned is a better word] as an ambassador for Athlete Ally."
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She said she was sorry for using the word "cheat," because "I certainly was not suggesting that transgender athletes in general are cheats."
"I attached the label to a notional case in which someone cynically changes gender, perhaps temporarily, to gain a competitive advantage," she said.
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In her op-ed for the Sunday Times last month, she wrote that a man "can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires."
"It's insane and it's cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair," she wrote.
In her apology, she said she "will always be a champion of democracy, equal rights, human rights and full protection under the law for everyone."
"When I talk about sports and rules that must be fair, I am not trying to exclude trans people from living a full, healthy life," she said. "And I am certainly not advocating violence against trans people, as has been suggested. All I am trying to do is to make sure girls and women who were born female are competing on as level a playing field as possible within their sport."