3-Time Olympian Martina Navratilova Eviscerates Liberals

Martina Navratilova backed the demand that the WNBA stop treating “woman” as an undefined word. The tennis champion answered after an American Olympic gold medalist and other athletes pressed the league to say, in plain language, who is eligible for a women’s roster.

The WNBA’s collective bargaining agreement says, “Only players who are women are eligible to play in the WNBA.” It does not define the word. Critics say that silence leaves the door open to male-bodied athletes.

Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham had already forced the subject into the open. In an ESPN profile she said she wanted to “protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.” She rejected the charge that the comment was hatred. “I never once said that,” she said. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth.”

When commentators called Cunningham “problematic,” Navratilova answered on social media: “Sophie is not the PROBLEM!!! Nor is she problematic.” She also shared a petition seeking female-only eligibility. A user told her the league was already female-only. “No it is not. Try again,” she wrote.

Navratilova has used the same definition for years. “A woman is an adult human female. That’s it. No need to redefine it at all,” she posted. “Women is not a feeling, women is not a spelling contest, women is not a costume.”

She has said the female category exists to exclude male advantage. “The female category was created to provide opportunities for women to compete fairly. It was always intended to exclude males. We need to keep excluding them.”

On policy she is blunt. “The solution is obvious. No male bodies in women’s sports and no male bodies in women’s sex-based spaces.” She argues safety, dignity, fairness, and privacy are not optional extras.

She has also rejected the idea that kindness requires rewriting sex. “They are not female no matter what word anyone chooses…I don’t call them men out of respect but they are male.”

Three-time Olympic swimming gold medalist Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a civil-rights lawyer, made a parallel case: the fight is over women’s rights to their own teams and locker rooms, not a referendum on anyone’s identity. Navratilova’s reaction put that argument in the voice of one of the most decorated players the women’s game has produced.

The league still has not published a tighter definition. The public argument is no longer confined to tennis press conferences. It is now sitting on a WNBA roster question that the contract language never answered.